Robert,
I am glad you came through the surgery so well. Now, take it easy and let your body heal! I know the boredom will drive you crazy, but you don't want to hurt your shoulder worse by not letting it heal properly. I cannot tolerate pain pills either. I took them for 3 days after my cancer surgery many years ago and never took another one. They make me throw up, and I don't like that coma-like sleep they induce either.

I'm not ready for spring yet. My garden partially froze back during the last cold front, with taller plants freezing and dying but shorter plants interplanted in the rows with them surviving, so we have flowers and herbs that still look good, and are enjoying the 80-degree weather today. After this week's cold front hits, all of them will be gone and then I'll clean up the garden. I have partially cleaned out, taking out a lot of the plants that froze.

I have dug up pepper plants and potted them up to put into the greenhouse before, and they looked bad for a while but eventually bounced back. I don't heat my greenhouse, though, so the peppers grew at a very slow rate. Still, we had fresh peppers all winter even though they were smaller than usual.

I saw grasshoppers in the yard and garden this morning. They have been more sluggish, but they still are eating big holes in everything that still is green. I cackled like an evil witch when I saw them and told them to enjoy eating my plants today because this week those darned grasshoppers finally are going to die, die, die. I'm so excited about that.

While it is warm and gorgeous, albeit far too windy, today, this is our last good day, and then we are looking at 1-2 weeks of very cold weather. I'm trying to enjoy the heck out of today before the nice weather ends.

Dawn

Take care of yourself after surgery, and be religious about physical therapy. I'm already sick of cold weather. I guess I'm sick of the work it makes me do if I want to keep growing. I want the things in my unheated green house to survive. Picked all the KY Wonder pods today and my broccoli. I will be sad to see my petunias and marigolds go. Now I need to do all the house cleaning I didn't do all summer because I was in the garden. Makes me think of my grandma, she had a big garden, pretty flowers, chickens, but her house was dusty and cluttered. Of course now I know why. ;)

I don't like winter either, as I think it causes me to be depressed. Though right now I am unable able to do any work in the garden or anything else for that matter. I still don't look forward to winter. I have all of my seed that I intend to plant next spring and am hoping that I will be able to plant it when the time comes. I don't buy plants as it is just not the same as watching the seed that you plant sprout and grow into wonderful plants that produce vegetables. I don't have a green house so my plants are usually late but I don't mind that, as I know how they have been taken care of during the time from seed to plant. I have so much that needs to be done and look forward to getting it all finished by spring.

Robert, Please take the pain meds if needed. I don't like pain medication either, but there is a time and place for about everything. The night after my cancer surgery I started shaking and jerking ( I would not use my pain pump)
That caused damage that I still live with. When I had the Delta Reverse joint installed in my right shoulder I had my first therapy the next day. I started therapy 3 days a week the very next week. I had to have pain meds before therapy to get the range of motion that the DR. and Therapist wanted. Follow the advice of your Dr. and Therapist. My wife had to drive me to therapy for a while because I was told not to drive if I had taken any pain meds. My shoulder is not as good as the one God designed, but it is much better than the one I had before surgery.

There are many things I would like to do to the garden but there are too many other things I have to do first. I am not looking forward to the cold weather because it seems to make all the joints hurt more, but I have many thing to be thankful for.

Good luck on your therapy, it will do wonders for your shoulder.

Larry

Larry,
I'll definitely take the pain meds if needed. But I can guarantee it will not be before therapy. I'm telling you they would not be able to keep me awake for it. 5 minutes and I am out cold for at least 2-3 hours.

I have some exercises I started the day after, I can't get the range of motion by myself. So I do what I can.

I may have to take some meds after therapy for the pain.

My elbow surgery was way more painful compared to this one.

I did go out to the greenhouse today and wage war on some ants. I moved a few muscadine vines outside so they would go dormant. I really plan on working to get more vines growing next year. The last few years I was always working somewhere and didn't have time to devote to them.

Plus I have some blueberry plants planted also. I Did lose some this summer but I couldn't monitor the moisture like they needed.

Here you are ready for spring, and winter weather is rolling in. Why can't our weather do what we want when we want it?

So, from your comments, I guess you're through working in the oil fields?

Tim was able to avoid shoulder surgery by going to physical therapy for about 3 months, and they hurt him. He needed pain pills by the time they had put him through his PT sessions, but he was so happy to avoid the surgery and recuperation. He was in his 40s then. If he hurts his shoulder again (shoulder injuries seem to run through his family), he probably won't be able to avoid surgery.

I hope you won the ant war. We haven't had an issue with them in the greenhouse this fall, but after the last big rainfall (2" and I guess it was last week or the week before), big fire ant mounds popped up all over the place. I haven't done anything about them yet because I think the cold that is due to arrive here any minute now will send them right back beneath the surface of the soil.

Dawn,

As far as I know, I'm through with the oil field work. I never was interested in any of it anyway. It was an experience is all I have to say about it.

Take the pain meds. and lay back and sleep. They make me sick if I try to stay up but if I go lay down and take a nap it helps some. The only way I can sleep at night is to take the pain pills other wise there is no way I can go to sleep. I seem to start hurting just before dark and it gets worse the later it gets. There is just no way to get easy with out them. I used to wait until I couldn't stand it before I would take one but now I take a half of one early and the other at bed time. Hope you get better.

Robert, Tim worked in the Pennsylvania oilfields as a summer job when he was in college. It was hard work and dangerous as well, and not his choice of a career. Nowadays, a lot of the oilfield workers work such long hours and without many days off. I guess the money is good, but you're too worn out to spend it.

I'm glad you'll be able to spend more time on ranching and farming and selling at the Farmer's Market.

Half my garden was still alive today when I was out there in it, and the bees and butterflies (and those grasshoppers) were in there with me. After tonight's hard, killing freeze, virtually all the beautiful green will be gone and I'll miss it. Right now, spring seems 1000 days away. If you take enough pain pills, maybe the time will fly right by. (grin)

I intend to spend the next few cold days inside with a stack of garden catalogs, making choices about what I'll be planting next year. Once the temperatures warm up a little bit either next week or the week after, I hope to finish cleaning out the garden and piling on tons of chopped leaves to mulch the beds thoroughly so winter weeds won't sprout everywhere. Then I'll be more or less ready for spring.

While cleaning up some garden stuff this week, we found a container with tiny lettuce seedlings in it that had sprouted from the spring plants that went to seed in June. I never got around to planting lettuce for fall as the almost year-long drought just drags on and on here, so I was excited to find the lettuce seedlings. They are in the greenhouse now where they ought to be able to survive and grow so that we can eat them. At least we'll have that little bit of green all winter.

Dawn

I didn't get any fall crops. We planted quite a bit of cool season stuff but the grasshoppers devoured whatever sprouted.

Then as soon as I decided I was leaving my job and having surgery, I had acres and acres to brush hog before I was laid up. Had 2 weeks to get 3 months worth of work done. I managed to get the worst of it done.

I piddled around in the greenhouse today mainly to enjoy the warmth and stay out of the wind at the same time.

I rarely get over a few hours sleep at a time so I set up and surf the internet at all hours of the day and night.

Robert, I think you will be up and going soon. I have also been doing brush hogging when I have time. Both tractors have power steering and I can drive with my left arm and let the right arm hang down to operate the lift on the tractor ( the land I am trying to clean up has been neglected for years and is very rough). You will learn different ways to do things if needed, but having you shoulder repaired while there is still something to work with is a smart move. I guess I am one of the lucky ones, the pain meds I take really don't bother me, but I still don't like taking them. I don't take any meds because of my shoulder, they are for all the other joints that have not been repaired. I have been out of meds for a good while and I am doing fine.

One of the best things I have done was to buy a small tractor. It is only 21 HP, but it is surprising how much work an old man can do with a little tractor with a loader on it.

Larry

A year ago I made up an herbal tea that was supposed to help cold symptoms . The knee I had replaced was stiff and sore that day. I drank the tea, and about an hour later I suddenly realized my knee didn't hurt any more . The tea was made with a tablespoon of frozen ginger root, a tablespoon of dried turmeric, a pinch of red pepper flakes, a cup of hot water and honey, cause it really doesn't taste good. Ginger and turmeric are anti-inflamatory, hot pepper can help with pain, too, but it was in this concoction to clear the sinuses. My daughter, who dropped a motorcycle on her ankle 3 years ago and has since had bone spurs removed and still has a lot of trouble with it, now takes a ginger casule and a turmeric capsule every day. It is helping her cope without narcotics or NSAIDs since she is prone to ulcers. There are no side effects, except that turmeric stains and may make teeth yellow. There Is a study looking at turmeric for alziemers, so I consider that a possible bonus. I have made this with a bagged ginger tea. No doubt it would be better with all fresh ingredients, I know fresh turmeric is not as bitter as dried. We get the capsules at Walmart.

Amy, thanks for posting. I want to try your concoction, even if I don't feel it helps it is still worth a try. I have been battling a bone spur for months. A cortisone shot helped but the problem has not gone away.

Larry

I feel for you Larry. I had spurs on one of the hips I had replaced. My daughter had hers removed and is doing better. You can get capsules, but honestly, I don't notice the same effect as I did with tea. I hope it helps!

Ginger and turmeric are anti-inflamatory and are also blood thinners. I think you will find that once your blood thins, it gets to places that it wont if your blood was thicker. Add in the anti-inflamatory property and you have a great cobmo. I always have a stash of ginger in the house. Usually about once a month I will go and shave a bunch and freeze them in little packets that can be taken out of the freezer and added to boiling water to make a ginger tea.

Since autumn seems to have been cancelled this year, I am going to put my 2c worth in and predict we are all going to be more than a little bit ready for spring soon and its going to seem like a longer than normal winter.

No transition, no leaf color.

We have been robbed blind by that typhoon. Our most pleasant season was abruptly and prematurely cut short this year. I'm whining because this is usually my favorite time of the year and all the endless Christmas commercials on TV aren't helping.

Is anyone worrying about plants going into shock over the sudden drop from summer-like weather to arctic winter overnight? OKC is covered in freeze dried green leaves from most of the trees which hadn't even thought of going dormant yet.

I am worried about some plants, but not excesively so. However, we'd already had a hard freeze here a couple of weeks ago that hit plants fairly hard so I didn't have much left in the ground, except lantanas, that were likely to shock. The lantanas were protected from the previous hard freeze by adjacent plants that were taller and very dense and which protected them so they still looked great, after I removed all the plants that had fallen over on top of them after that hard freeze hit them. They still had green foliage and were in full bloom until a couple of days ago. Today they look pretty bad. Our soil is heavy in clay content and doesn't drain well, so some years the lantana overwinter fine here and some years they die. I always dig up my Texas lantana, put it in a pot, and overwinter it in the unheated greenhouse, but the rest of the lantanas have to sink or swim on their own.

A lot of our trees here still had green leaves as of Monday. Some still have green leaves now. A lot of those would have had nice color, but now I expect the leaves will turn brown and fall off the trees. We were just starting to see some reds in the red oaks and ornamental pears, and lots of yellows in the elms and other trees that turn yellow in fall. I think it would have been a gorgeous and colorful autumn, albeit a late one, if this big, wicked cold spell hadn't hit the trees before the color could fully develop.

I still have hollyhocks, Malva zebrina 'sylvestris' and a few other plants that aren't frozen yet, but we're expected to hit the low 20s tonight, so they all may be brown and crispy tomorrow. We just lost the comfrey plants two days ago, but they are pretty cold hardy and will come back from the roots.

The native grasses and forbs that still had any green or any flowers whatsoever now are wheat colored.

With existing plants in your area, I think if they are several years old, y'all might not see much of a long-lasting type of damage on them, but I never like seeing plants freeze when they weren't already sliding into dormancy. Newer and younger plants always seem to have the most damage from sudden cold spells before dormancy hits. We are in a low-lying microclimate and tend to freeze before anyone around us does, since they're on higher ground, and I rarely lose any zone 7 plants at a time like that, though sometimes we lose some of the current year's growth. With any zone 8 plants that I've tried to sneak into zone 7b and grow, this is exactly the kind of sudden cold spell that kills them after they've grown well here for 2, 3 or 4 years.

Well, I dug my last sweet potatoes yesterday, wearing gloves and insulated overalls. But the soil and black plastic mulch seem to have prevented damage to the roots. We had, probably 400 lb of harvest and I feel rich!

This morning I realized that I'm already looking forward to planting... sweet potatoes ;) , and, of course our other crops. Every year I find that I appreciate our produce more and have a greater appreciation of the garden itself. I also find that I treasure our milk production. It used to be, when the goats stopped producing, that I was relieved. Now I "milk" every bit of production, out of them, that I can, and I look forward to kidding, so we can rev things up again.

My main challenge is time, time to do it all. And, I suppose finding the energy to keep up. Last night I was so tired I felt I couldn't spit and hit the ground.

George
Tahlequah, OK

Robert, I didn't plant anything new for fall, specifically because the drought was so bad (conditions have greatly improved, and yet we still remain in drought) and because I knew the huge hordes of grasshoppers that had plagued us all summer were likely to devour anything that sprouted. A lot of the summer plants rebounded and produced well into fall---so much so that I had a hard time keeping up with the harvesting and canning, which usually is a problem in June-August, but not afterwards.

Now that the real cold has set in, almost all the garden is blackened or browned except for a few stubborn, cold-hardy perennial flowers, so I can start planning and dreaming for 2015.

The last bit of the post-harvest work----curing the sweet potatoes (in TIm's office, much to his dismay I am sure) and the last harvested pumpkins is underway. I'll do the garden clean-up after we get back up above freezing again for more than an hour or two.

I'm already making plans for 2015 that involve planting fewer veggies and fruits that require canning, dehydrating and freezing and more flowers and herbs for fun. The last few years, I have been a slave to the harvest kitchen and I need a bit of a break.

George, I'm glad you got the sweet potatoes dug and also that y'all have such a bountiful harvest. Having lots of food from the garden put away for future meals is just so awesome, and it makes me feel rich in a way that dollars in the bank never will.

The days after a killing freeze are awful----the garden so frozen and looking so bare, but my mind quickly moves ahead to the next year----because we all know that next year's garden is going to be the best ever, at least in our minds.

Dawn

Tex, I hear ya. Disappointing to see green leaves on the ground.

George, thats alotta sweet taters!

Turmeric concoction cured my husband's antibiotic resistant bout of blood poisoning. Overnight. Never seen anything like it. I put it in nearly all my chicken dishes, especially soups.