They said they were seeing a few 90's in Texas a few posts above.....well Oklahoma has now also seen their first 90's this last weekend as well. So the warming trend is moving north. I have some trees stuck up north waiting on a truck and I expressed my concewrns to the grower that I was getting past my comfort zone on planting time for conifers. Like most folks in the north he told me not to worry because the trees were still dormant due to the cold weather they were still in. What I try to get most northerners to realize is it's the shock factor that worries us.......not just the fact this tree will have to endure so much more heat that it has been used to throughout the summer, but nothing turns a tree into a crispy critter faster than for it to come from nice cool cloudy growing conditions and drop it right in the middle of a heat wave of 90 - 100 degree temps and full sun. mark

Carol, I think you're right, and I do think a handful of counties in far southeastern OK had one good rain of an inch or so very early in the year. For once, there are many places in OK who've had less rain than us, because we've had a whopping 4/10ths of an inch this year. Yippee. Oh, so maybe it is not such a great amount of rainfall, but it is better than nothing. I hope the scarcity of rain ends soon. There's a lot of smoke, dust, and cedar pollen in the air, and a good hard rain would give us a day or so of clean air. I keep looking at the drought map weekly and seeing the drought deepening and spreading up deeper and deeper into OK from TX and I just hope we get enough rain to reverse that trend. I swear, if it rains an inch a day the whole spring, I will not complain! I will learn to embrace the mud and enjoy it. It would be such a relief to have the dry ponds refilled again. Dawn

Ha ha! When I first saw the post-it note idea it didn't seem especially helpful. Then it came time to empty my kitchen, a daunting and discombobulating process. After checking and rechecking the same cupboard for about the tenth time, I remembered the post-it notes, which suddenly sounded genius! Thank you all for your words of encouragement! I'll post updates.

Kim, Sophie has my sympathy. Our dogs hate it too when the neighbors are shooting. I usually let them stay in, but sometimes they just have to go out at least for a couple of minutes, and then they are at the back door barking and carrying on and wanting back in within 60 seconds. I'm glad Sophie did so well getting her pins out. Nice score on all the seeds! You CAN teach a class. Just pretend you are talking to Ryder or to any of us instead of a larger crowd. You can do this! Sorry about the wind. I wish it would blow hard here---it would help dry up some of this excess moisture, but I know you don't need it there. March is coming and you live in a very windy part of Texas, so I'm guessing the wind is going to be an issue for quite a while yet. Is there any sort of windbreak anywhere near your new garden plot? Nancy, That sounds like a wedding miracle to me! Of course you cried---seeing one of your kids so happy on their special day is going to lead to tears, and rightfully so. Kim, Most of the seeds you got should do just fine with direct sowing. I am a little worried about the wind, but we have wind here too (usually not quite on the scale you have it there) and it doesn't seem to blow away my seeds. Everything you listed except ice plant and delphinium should be fine from seed sown directly in the ground. Ice plant---it might do okay. Do you have clay there? It needs well-drained sand or sandy loam and it does not tolerate staying overly wet for long periods of time. Delphinium is very iffy. They are beautiful flowers but they like prolonged, cool weather so your luck with them in any given year will depend more on the weather than anything else. Think of them as something that would like the weather in the cool, wet parts of the Pacific Northwest more than the west Texas plains, and don't get your hopes up too high. I simply grow the closely-related larkspur instead, and even the larkspur sometimes rots off at the ground when we are too wet for too long, but it tolerates the heat a lot better than delphiniums do. I have had the best luck with delphiniums when sowing them in the fall. They will germinate and remain as small plants down close to the ground all winter, but then when it warms up they'll grow pretty quickly. Sometimes I have managed to get blooms before the heat kills them, and sometimes not. Our Spring weather is so variable that the results were all over the place when I tried to grow them here. Whenever I see them in bloom in gallon pots in the stores in the Spring, I want to buy them and bring them home and plant them....but I don't.....because they'd basically be expensive annuals here in our hot climate. Jennifer, Three sounds like a nice number. Another 100 might be a bit much, you know, and that's doubly true of the straight runs, which tend to lean very heavily towards being roosters and not pullets. It sounds like yesterday was fun, and I hope you're outdoors enjoying your free afternoon now. Nancy, Well, 10 minutes of plant shopping squeezed in at the end of a day with the girls was enough to hold me another week. We saw ladybugs all over the garden center flying around, and then saw some outside Wal-mart so they certainly are swarming and enjoying this lovely day too. Rudbeckia is a large family with many members and some do great here for me, and others do not. I think some are more finicky about drainage (and powdery mildew) than others, but they're not the hardest things to grow if you choose the right ones. In my garden, most rudbeckias are happier with morning sun/afternoon shade than with full sun all day long. Kim, That's crazy about your friend's Dodge pickup. Try explaining that one to your insurance agent! We do try to be careful which way we park on really windy days, but it is more to keep the wind from slamming the car or truck door shut on someone who's attempting to get in or out in strong wind. I never once thought about the wind being able to break a door off a vehicle. It still is sunny and warm outside, so Tim's got ribeye steaks (our standard Sunday dinner) cooking on the grill and I have everything else cooking indoors. I suspect he'd have been out there grilling even if rain was pouring down, but I'm grateful he didn't have to do that. It only took one week of nonstop rain and cloudy skies to make us tired of the rain. I'm not wishing for another month or two with no rain, but I'm hoping whatever rain we get over the next couple of weeks at least will come in smaller, more manageable amounts. Dawn