hairmetal4ever, I posted this on another post but I'll put it here too. Yesterday my 21-year-old son said, "This is the most bi-polar weather I have seen in my life." and I told him it's the most bi-polar weather I've seen in my life too. (I'm half a century now). I didn't actually measure but it looked like 6" on my car yesterday. A few years ago we did get snow on May 1st, but never got this cold. We broke a lot of records for cold this year. So on the bright side it's a good indication of what trees are bud hardy. Keepers: Pipestone plum, Saturn, NJ 252, and O'Henry peach (all of them still have some good buds or are blooming now). Hoyt Montrose apricot also made it through last night which went down to 22F officially. Then there's this volunteer peach that looks as if it was not affected at all; it's loaded with blooms. I will see if they are worth eating this summer. I'm rethinking my zone denial issues but also trying to come up with a good solution so next spring I don't face this problem.

Jay, It looks good here for the next couple of weeks too, until about mid-Oct., assuming we don't have a surprise frost here tonight. (It is possible because we stayed cooler than forecast all day today and our place is in a very low-lying frost pocket.) I'm not surprised NE OK has a frost advisory because they have had some really cool mornings lately, but seeing the advisory come as far down south as Pottawatomie County did surprise me a bit. I guess the sulphurs and monarchs sent everyone a message by veering towards the west while migrating, because northern/eastern/and parts of central OK are going to be very cold tonight, but the monarchs have been making their way through the parts that are staying warmer. Hmmm. What did the butterflies know and when did they know it? Were they hitching a ride on the wind currents or were they warning us of impending cold in the eastern portion of the state? As an aside, I went several days last week without seeing a hummer, then suddenly, we had hummers all over the place on Fri.-Sat. and none today, so I think the Fri.-Sat. bunch of hummers were migrating to get out in front of and stay ahead of the colder weather. Larry, I'm in a low-lying frost pocket in the Red River Valley and we have had very early frosts some years hit plants without damaging them, likely because the frost was on the plants only for the briefest of periods. I've also had some tender annual flowers survive 3 or 4 light frosts before a hard frost finally got them. It also is possible you had light wind and he didn't, so frost settled on his plants and not yours. A friend of our who lives about a mile from us but on much higher ground never sees as frost as early as we do. I'm even worried about our forecast lows here since we went 5 or 6 degrees lower than forecast last night. With a forecast of 44 for tonight, a dip 6 degrees colder than that would give us the right temperature range to allow frost to form if the other conditions were right. Our coldest temps lately occur shortly before sunup, roughly between 6 and 7:15 a.m. and I am usually awake by 6 a.m., so I'll run outside and watch to see if frost has formed or is forming first thing in the morning. If it has or is forming, I'll hose the frost off the plants or turn on the sprinkler or something to try to mitigate the damage. We just returned from Lowe's a short while ago, and our Lowe's still has tons of warm-season plants, including many tomato plants in 6" pots, and they weren't covering up anything so maybe they aren't worried about it. If I were them, I would be a little concerned. Keith, You'd better hope your stink bug buddies freeze. The alternative is that they are cuddling to stay warm (like some people do during an ice-storm-induced power outage) and will be giving birth in spring to many babies "made" during this cold night. That's a worst possible case scenario, you know. I am not liking how cold it feels here right now. It feels really chilly now that the sun is almost down and I am going to watch and see how many degrees we drop between now and 10 p.m. Dawn

Good Sunday morning from SUNNY NH!! The rain has finally stopped for the time being. The water from the brook that borders our property is uncomfortably high. The danger of major flooding is still here as some major dams have yet to reach the highest point yet. We now have majorly high winds, about 50mph gusts so we can expect lots of power outages and downed trees. I did however witness a magnificent double rainbow yesterday afternoon as the sky was clearing! It was spectacular and I hope to get a nice picture of it. There was also a beautiful near full moon that I haven't thought about in over a week! Proof that there is always light at the end of the tunnel. Patti, that's sage advice. DH and I always come to the conclusion that we are stronger together than apart and that we can get through anything together. We had friends come up from Westport, CT yesterday and it took them from 10am to 4pm because of all the detours. I91 was closed down in both directions! They probably wished they stayed home but we all had a lovely dinner together! Gretchen, I am thinking of you and your sister and hope all went well with her sugery. Check in when you can. Hope you enjoy your day.

What! A! Day! Yesterday! I was planning to finish up with bringing in the tomatoes and then posting that it was the first time I had ever done it when it was HOT out! Well! It WAS hot out when I started—and I was rather leisurely untying them from their “cages,” “bundling the stems,” and hanging them in the garage—when all of a sudden….. OMG! The wind picked up like there was a hurricane moving in! The “hot” got COLD! The olde cottonwoods in the neighbors’ yards were blowing around so furiously that I was pretty sure it wasn’t even safe to stay out there—but I was NOT gonna desert my tomatoes to the wind and the cold! The twine I tie around 6’ stakes to cage them was Blowin’ in the Wind! I could hardly figure out which piece went which way to get it all off of the stakes it was tangling up so badly in the wind! And my hands were getting too cold to effectively use! I came in for a half an hour to watch the National news and warm up a bit—and switched from shorts to long pants and put on a flannel shirt to “stay warm” and went back out to “finish” the last 5 plants! The long pants and shirt didn’t help much at all in staying “warm!” And my hands were once again quickly close to unusable! I usually wind up cutting them down in a “cold drizzle,” and I was delighted this year to have “good weather” to do it in! HA! It was dark—and I still had two cherries to extricate from their “cages!” The cherries are always the “hardest” to get down because of all the tiny tomatoes that get tangled up in each other and the twine and stakes—and between the dark, the wind-blown tangled twine, and fingers that weren’t working anymore, the Sungold got half “pulled” off of the stakes and the twine! The tomatoes that fell or got pulled off got picked up—some by sight and some by touch!—and put in a tray to ripen. I managed to weight down a blanket enough to get the plant “mostly” on it—and it’s now laying on the floor in the garage! Gonna carry it in the house soon to get the stems tied together and hang it! And there was still one last red cherry, ‘Farthest North’, a “trial” one for me this year! It was a LOT smaller than the Sungold (Is there anything that gets as big as Sungold?) and I did pretty much the same thing with it—undid as many of the strings as I could—and pulled! It too is on a blanket in the garage—to be hung! I was freezing, and miserable, and very unhappy after the wind came up—but I am SO happy to have them safely in the garage—where I will, hopefully, be eating them little by little over the next couple months! There were two—smallish—ripe Cherokee Purple, and I see a large BLT in my immediate future! Have one Amana Orange that's about half ripe and a Brandywine (first year) that’s starting to ripen—ALL the rest are totally green! That’s because almost none of the plants set fruit until the plants were starting to “recover” from their Close Encounter with roundup this spring shortly after they were put in the ground. So virtually all the fruit I have set and developed after I left on my fall trip on August 30! Considering that, I’m absolutely amazed how many green tomatoes there are! All smaller than in a “normal year,” but still large enough to ripen in the garage. There are only a couple of obviously “immature” ones that won’t ever ripen! Considering that for all summer, thru August, I thought I was only gonna get a couple cherries and maybe a couple Cherokee Purples, I’m delighted with what I wound up with! And I sure hope I never have to go thru another Roundup Catastrophe again—ever! After the tomatoes—practically frozen stiff!—I put a BIG box over my paprika peppers—which I had “prepared” earlier in the day—hoping to be able to keep them in the ground long enough to ripen! There are LOTS of large, long GREEN peppers on them (ever hear of green paprika?), and they do NOT ripen once they’re cut/picked, so my only hope is to see if I can keep them alive in the ground long enough to ripen. I had covered the BIG corrugated box with a HUGE trash bag to keep it from getting soggy, and I have the inside of the box “lined” with “another layer” of corrugated cardboard. It fits perfectly over the plants—all planted very close together. My hands were so cold by then I was having a problem even manipulating something as large as a big cardboard box—but I don’t give up easily!!! I laid a couple large rocks on top of it to keep it from blowing away—and partly to help add “heat,” maybe, and I put bricks all the way around the bottom—to keep out any possible wind—and, again, to hopefully add a bit of heat. The box will stay till it’s for sure staying above freezing over nite, so it’ll be a couple days till I see if I’m successful! The sun is coming out now and in a while I’m going out to throw some heavy blankets over the box, and the snow!—couldn’t do that last nite because of the WIND! I have my fingers crossed—and this is all to give the peppers to a friend who uses paprika if I successfully get them to ripen! I don’t use enough to keep them for myself! Then I came in to warm up—and looked at my list! Uh-oh! I had forgotten to cut down the basil—which goes to a neighbor who makes pesto! Back outside! Cut the green ones and stuffed them in a bag—and cut down the one nice purple one I have/had and it’s now in a vase by my kitchen sink—perfuming the air! Back in to the list! Uh-oh! I forgot to cut down the roses! Back out—the front door this time—and with (thin) leather gloves on! It was pretty hard to see what I was doing but I cut anything that looked like it might still be good—and a whole bunch of buds—and right now a have a large pitcher and a large bucket stuffed with them! Later today, or, more likely!, tomorrow I’ll put on my (better) leather gloves and go thru them and put them into actual vases! Most of them are the yellow one I have—which is my favorite anyway—and with all the buds I suspect I’ll have them around for a couple weeks! (But the gloves I put on quickly last nite were “too” thin and I got badly stuck several times! But they ARE pretty!) I’m sure glad I made up the list, ‘cause by then I NEVER would have remembered those things—until it was WAY too late! The only thing I did not get done last nite was to fill ALL the bird feeders—I had filled two fairly big ones in the morning, so at least the birds had “something”—when I wasn’t going back and forth in the yard at least! Earlier in the day—during the Leisurely part of the day I had “dismantled” the birdbath—actually a VERY large pot saucer!—and scrubbed all the scum out of it (barefoot and in shorts!), and scrubbed the rocks I keep in the water for the birds to get onto, and got that all reassembled—WITH the defroster in it! So the birds were/are good to go with water—no matter how cold it gets! Every year when I plug it in for the first time I keep my fingers crossed that it still works—and, this morning, no ice, so it does! Happy drinking and bathing, birds! And now it’s time to get out there and fill up ALL of the feeders so they can eat to their heart’s content! I sure wish it had stayed “too hot” out there so I could have finished it all “comfortably” and “in a leisurely way,” and much more quickly than what actually transpired—but it DID all eventually get done—and that makes me really happy! And I’m all toasty warm again! Life is good! Skybird