Oh my gosh and I just posted how I listen to the "old folks".....lol lol lol. I added what an old guy told me in walmart yesterday to the horse manure thread!

I KNOW that Dawn knows what she is doing...so listen to her!

One day I am going down around the Red River and find her and surprise her with a sneak visit. I will take my camera so I can post all the proof on here for all to see.
Dawn I do wish you would post pics of all your beds to help out people like me who are visual learners.

Or how about teaching a class somewhere once a week?
Seriously!

Just had to add this since I had just posted about how I listen to the "old folk" lol......Yes Dawn YOU can teach an old dog new tricks!!!! I can't...but YOU can!

G.M.

G.M.,

I am totally clueless with a camera. Maybe one of these days DS or DH will give me a lesson on how to use a digital camera, how to upload the photos to the computer and how to post the photos somewhere. My problem is that there is never enough time.

And, you know, honestly, I don't think our place looks that special...just a little country place with some landscaping, a veggie garden and fruit trees surrounded by cow pastures and wooded creek bottom land. I am by no means a landscape designer or artist of any sort, just an old dirt gardener.

I love all my dear old neighbors, but they have tried my patience with their constant criticism. I DO listen to them and learn from them too, but our ways of doing things can be VERY different.

My life is rapidly getting more complicated and I am beginning to wonder if I will have the time to do a good job with the garden this year. My mom, who lives in Fort Worth has a lot of chronic health problems that are getting much worse very quickly. She is a long-time diabetic and has recently begun dialysis. She is currently hospitalized and they will test her for leukemia and some other cancers beginning Monday. (sigh) If she has cancer (and, most likely, she does, based on her symptoms), any possible treatment is further complicated by the long-term diabetes damage AND the dialysis. And, we've been down this road before--her dad and brother both died of leukemia. So, if her health news is as expected, I'll probably spend a lot of time in Fort Worth and less time here in Oklahoma. I don't know what will become of the garden.

G.M., I cannot imagine where (even without Mom being ill) I could squeeze in teaching a class. As it is, during the spring and summer months I am often outside all day long and just squeeze in house work and cooking where I can (and, of course, I always make time to come to Garden Web for virtual gardening). And, if fires are bad, they just destroy our schedule around here. During the 2005-2006 wildfire year, I think I was mostly absent from Garden Web for months and months and months. Many months.

I need to get outside and plant like crazy if this light drizzle stops. Next week is shaping up to be a busy week.

Oh, and DS recently became engaged to the darling girl he's been dating for a couple of years. Of course, we are thrilled. Her mom really isn't involved in her life much at all, so we are helping her plan the wedding. She LOVES shopping for and trying on wedding dresses. LOL I suspect we will visit every bridal shop in the Dallas-Fort Worth area during the next few months. The wedding will not be until the summer of '09. That's just one more big "to do" on the "To Do List" (not that I mind!).

I think they want to have the wedding at the fire station (thank goodness it is pretty big and modern and nice--and we're about to add a new section to it that will include a kitchen and nice restroom), so we'll be doing a ton of decorating, and probably will get some of the firefighters (who are GREAT cooks) to cater it. What does this mean for me? More than likely, I will really, really, really have to cut way back on the vegetable garden next year. Maybe I'll only grow a few tomatoes, herbs, flowers and peppers. I don't know.

Like I said, life is getting more complicated.

Dawn

Dawn I hope you understand I am really only kidding when I say things like you should teach a class. I cannot imagine how busy your life must be with all the things you plant...just the tomatoes alone would be a full time job for me.

And before I go any further let me say how very sorry I am about your mother's health situation! I will be praying she does not have Leukemia on top of all her other problems. Oh my....how awful.

I know all too well how very stressful it is to have loved ones who are ill for extended periods of time. My dad was ill for a long time before we lost him.

My mom however is truly a mircle to be 91 and doing well and living all alone. She lives at the local retirement community only a few blocks from me, in a small apartment which is the best thing that ever happened for her. She really enjoys it there and it gives us kids a break in caring for her. Before she moved there we were all taking turns having her stay with us at night. Now I only go stay with her if she is not feeling well for some reason. And thank God that is really pretty rare.

Life does tend to get very complicated at times. We have certainly been through our share of very complicated seasons. It sure does make you appreciate the times when it is relatively calm. Some of the things we have been through makes me look back and wonder how we survived with any santiy still intact. Those are the times when I know God carried me through it all.

This is just a horrible day. We went to Lowes to get the stuff to amend our garden beds and BTW we got just what you recommended. Black Kow manure, mushroom compost, and the smallest pine bark mulch we could find. So when it finally warms and dries out we will need to get busy on our projects.

Anyway I lost track of where I was headed...lol. This weather is not at all pleasant. It is so damp that just being outdoors makes your clothes and hair feel damp. I will not be planing today. And I have seeds which I soaked that have now sprouted. I hope I can get them in the ground tomorrow along with some other things I have which I need to plant.

You will be busy with the upcoming wedding. With them having such a long engagement that is even more time to spend planning...lol. Some of my friends who have had children getting married all but forgot me while in the midst of all the planning.
She is sure getting a wonderful mother in law in you! For you to be taking so much time and interest in her and all the planning. I just think that is wonderful.

I am still waiting to see if I ever get to be a MIL or not. My son just broke up with yet another girl who had a wedding in HER mind(I might add it was only in her's, not my son's),but she got too pushy and now she is history....lol. The girls these days are so odd. Totally unlike anything I ever did when dating. They are so controlling and pushy I can hardly believe it. They even call me to try to get me to put pressure on my DS for things they want! And my son just is not going to take it for long...he has been single too long.

One of the things which I have bugging me now is WHEN to schedule our big garage sale so we can get that over with. It seems the weekends are the very times the forecast looks the worst. If Accuweather knows what they are doing...and they all change over time...it appears next weekend may be better weather than the following one.
I just know we need really nice weather for it in order to get the turn-out we will need.
I am so ready to take my garage back! We have left room for my little Caddy in there for now in case of storms so it makes the other half really full...lol.

And on that note I am going to find something to do....I certainly have plenty which needs doing. I just find that I am rather lazy today.

If you get out to plant don't work too hard! Surely soon we will get some nice weather like the one day this past week. I am so ready.

G.M.

G.M.,

I'm pretty much resigned to the fact that mom is facing a difficult road. We have been expecting it for a long time because she has absolutely refused to eat properly and watch her blood sugar since she was diagnosed as a Type II Diabetic in the late 1970s. (How long ago that was!) We'll just have to deal with it.

I AM so excited about the engagement. We're getting a super-sweet young lady for a DIL. Your mom is just so amazing--to do as well as she does at her age!

I was out in the garden for a while, spreading mulch and planting a few herbs and stuff, but hated that icky, wet stuff in the sky--too thick to really be fog and not heavy enough to be rain! Then a friend came by and we visited for a couple of hours, and looked at the garden, so that was fun.

I'm hoping to get some stuff done in the garden tomorrow afternoon if the weather allows. I'm glad you found what you needed at Lowe's. (What did we ever do without them?)

Oh, to schedule your garage sale.....just pick a day that is forecast to be rainy---preferably a day when they say there is a 100% chance of rain, and you'll have sunshine, guaranteed!

Dawn

Much like you Dawn - I have been ridiculed for years.

But with each successive year in an area - the ridicule becomes less and the sneaky little questions for advice and opinions become more.

In Honduras, they flat out lined up to laugh and point as I built piles of what they called garbage. They laughed even harder as I laboriously turned the aforementioned garbage into wide-row beds.

That "Crazy Gringo" was on everybody's list of attractions for the day.

They stopped laughing soon after that.

Hey, Crazy Gringo!

At least I am in good company!

I came inside from the garden and logged on so I could pull up my 2008 Grow List and see what tomatoes I intended to grow.....then I'm going to compare it to the plants I have....and see if the plants I have now are the ones I think I planted! (I am not necessarily the most organized gardener on the planet.)

Now, back out to the wide, raised beds full of decomposed garbage. (Doesn't that sound appealing?)

First, though, I have to stop by the kitchen and check on the roast beef in the crockpot. It's in a sour cream-dill-red pepper-and-chicken-broth mixture and the aroma is driving me nuts. (Note to self: dry more dillweed this year.)

See, my "to do" list is getting longer by the minute.

Dawn

Oh my gosh Dawn that roast sounds awesome! Do you give out recipes? Makes me hungry just thinking about it.

BTW did your "to grow" list and your plants match up? I don't even make a to grow list or plan anything. I just go out and buy plants or seeds and see what happens. lol.

Of course what I do is so SMALL scale compared to you. It doesn't take much planning to do what little I do.

G.M.

G.M.,

I always share recipes. It's not like it's going to hurt me if someone else makes the same thing. It is a recipe I found on the internet, but then I had to change it up just a little bit. It gives roast a bit of a different flavor, and we just love it. Here's it is:

one 6-lb. roast
4 T. butter or margarine
2 medium onions, chopped
16 oz. sour cream
32 oz. chicken stock or chicken broth
3 T. dill weed
1 and 1/2 t. seasoned salt
1 t. red pepper flakes

Pour the chicken stock, sour cream, dill weed, seasoned salt and red pepper flakes into a crock pot, and stir together. Cover the crock pot and turn it on. Let the broth ingredients begin heating up.

Melt the butter or margarine in a dutch oven on top of the stove and then brown the roast on all sides. While it is browning, chop up the onions. Remove the roast from the dutch oven and place it in the crockpot.

Saute' the onions in the dutch oven until they are lightly browned. Pour the onions/butter mixture into the crockpot and stir well. Set the crockpot on low if you want to cook the roast all day, or on high if you want to cook it for a half-day. Cook, serve, enjoy.

The longer it cooks, the more the liquid cooks down and thickens. Sometimes, if I only cook it for 6 hours, the liquid is a little runnier....more like au just when I want it a little thicker like gravy. So, to remedy that, I pour about 80 percent of the liquid into a saucepan and simmer it on the stove for a while to evaporate more moisture. Then I pour it back into the crockpot and stir everything together again. (Usually, while I am doing that I am preparing the side dishes.) If I cook it all day on low, the moisture usually has cooked out and the broth is thickened up the way we like it.

A roast this size makes the four of us a couple of big meals, and there is usually some meat left for sandwiches. I like to make open-faced sandwiches like the open-faced roast beef sandwiches at Cracker Barrel. Just chop up some of the leftover roast beef and heat it and the sauce. Serve over thick slices of sourdough bread. Yummy!

And the tomato plants.....well, the ones I have more or less match what I thought I was raising. I have to finish the comparison tomorrow, as I got distracted by a movie DH was watching and sort of stopped in the middle.

There are a few tomato plants that weren't on the original list, which isn't unusual. Often, after starting my seeds in late January, I come across a variety that sounds delicious and decide to start "a few more tomatoes". LOL And, of course, sometimes a few seeds don't sprout, or sprout and die, or sprout and get eaten by the deer or rabbits when I leave the flats sitting outside at night. (sign) Tomorrow, I'll let you know how much the list changed.

I know I did add Ramapo F-1, which is back on the commercial market for the first time in quite a while. I ordered seeds from the New Jersey Agriculture Extension Service at Rutgers University (in January, I think) and they didn't arrive until March 10. I started them right away, and they are now about 3" tall and have 2 to 4 true leaves, so they'll have to grow a little before they go into the ground. Still, with the very warm weather we're having, I think they'll reach planting size pretty quickly.

Sometimes I think back to how easy it used to be before I started raising my own from seed, and think that life was so much simpler then. (smile) But, I do love the huge variety of colors and flavors, so I don't really mind.

I want to plant a lot Monday, so I'm free to run down to Ft. Worth the rest of the week to see Mom in the hospital, especially if they start the tests Monday. I think the oncologist is going to try to diagnose the probable cancer without extracting bone marrow (due to her age and lower bone density), so it may take a few extra days to get a definite idea of what is going on.

We also have the annual Fire Dept. awards dinner Saturday, and have to do some running around one day this week to pick up plaques and other awards and stuff and get ready for that.

I hope for a rain-free Monday so I can plant, plant, plant, since the weather seems good in the extended forecast, and it may be the only day I have "free" this week. (At least the recent rainfall has kept down the number of grass fires, so I'm not having to drop everything and go!)

Dawn