Jeff, I miss your beautiful flowers and photos!!!! I keep checking back at the Rose Gallery for your latest, but can't find you alas! I want to stalk again, hee-hee! maryl, I had to laugh, because I too am a midnight owl person, yet still! dragged myself out of bed at 6:00 a.m. in the morning with only 3 hours of sleep, but by 7:45 a.m. I had to stop working in the garden because it was getting to be way too muggy even then! So I crawled back to bed to take a brief snooze...By the time I woke up again, I felt as though I had been hit by a train. I was so groggy and tired. And I still tortured myself with 5 minutes-at-a-time deadheading and checking out my flowers leaves and herbs, then racing back to the shelter of my house...Poor Eluane, she's got long fur, but because she is a busy-body sheepherding Border Collie, she always wants to check up on what I'm doing...she's even more of a masochist than her Mama! and will follow me faithfully out to the garden Every Single Time. And for the rest of our week it will be: 98, 97, 96,97,95 and hurray, a breakthrough turning point of ...91 on Sunday...But I'm sure 91 is nothing compared to the 100s of late July that I'm expecting.

Marilyn, Send me some of those Esperanza seeds, please! I like yellow flowers and that may the only thing that will survive if this drought continues. There is a "cold front" moving down into the state this afternoon. May drop w-a-y d-o-w-n into the mid-90s! Say! I'll take it. There is also a 70% chance of thunderstorms tonight and tomorrow and maybe some more into the weekend. Wouldn't that be dandy? Dayle Ann, we have had the same thing happening here - when it rains, it doesn't cool down like it used to do. Just gets hotter and very steamy. Weird. In this area (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana) we will need six months of good soaker, frequent rainfalls just get the drought to stop, then another year of it to get the lakes and ponds and rivers back up to their normal levels. The governor issued heat and fire alerts again today. The fire ban continues state wide except in two counties. I am in the process of moving all my shrub roses out of my once beautiful rose garden. They will die if I don't. I am making beds for them by the patio out back so they can be watered more often. It is in the shade in the morning until 11, and then gets evening shade from the house around 4 P.M., so they will do much better there. The soil is alot more fertile and deeper. I have fought with that blasted sandy soil in the rose garden for six years. It is so dry and barren now that even the purple coneflowers are wilted and sickly. Well, by gum, enough is enough! I can set the sprinkler and water almost everything at once, thereby conserving water. It will save me having to drag 100 feet of water hose out there too. Ugh! I have 5 more roses to dig up and transplant. I was hoping to get them all moved before this rain came. I hate having become an old crippled up woman! I'm too young to have suddenly been plagued with such an old body! Pooh! Well, anyway, I will get them moved, one way or another, you can bet on that! "Inch by inch, row by row..." Take care people, and be thankful for what you may have and whatever circumstances you may find yourself. It could be worse. ~SweetAnnie4u

Ilene, Since you're thinking it would be OK if the onions bolted, they'll probably be stubborn and refuse to bolt! (That's the kind of luck I always have, anyway.) I like your rainfall collection tank. I've wanted something like that ever since we visited the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin where they have a massive rainfwater collection/cistern system that is incorporated into all their buildings and is simply amazing. We have 5 ponds, 3 of which we put in here after we built the house, but they haven't had water in them in months. They do catch a lot of rainfall when it actually does rain, but I leave the water in 4 of them for the wild things and the fifth one is "mine" to use to water the veggie garden if needed. That fifth pond is on the northeast corner of my veggie garden and I can pump water out with a small sump pump or can scoop it out with a watering can. This pond is fairly small and holds maybe a thosand gallons so the water doesn't last as long as you'd think. If I had it to do over again, I would have had Elvis (our backhoe guy--you gotta love the name) dig a quarter-acre pond and I would have had him dig it deeper. It is going to be 75 or so here today, so I suspect we'll have fires again like we have the last two days, although maybe we'll get lucky and have calm winds and no fires. I'm not ready for the cold to return. All the fruit tree buds are swelling--even the Mexican plum which tends to be a bit later than the others. I guess the cold will be a good thing because it will slow them down, but I'd still rather be warm. The plum tree that's been in full bloom for days now probably won't set any fruit, or will set it and lose it to the cold, but I'm hoping the other trees will make up for that one. I looked back at my temperature records and noticed that when Feb. is warm, we always have a cold spell around the first week in March, so this cold front that's coming in is right on schedule. Carol, that is a very smart cat. In the afternoon our cats "collect" on the back porch where the greenhouse plastic and the afternoon sun keep the temp about 10-20 degrees higher than it is out in the open. I guess sitting or sleeping in 70-90 degrees on a winter afternoon is pretty appealing to the cats. That porch almost feels "too hot" to me at times. Sometimes I open the french doors that connect that back porch to the breakfast room and let some of the porch's collected hot air flow into the house. Dawn

I made all of my son's baby food, and will do the same thing with his little brother (due Christmas). It's not hard, but I didn't can it--I froze it. Mostly, it's just pureeing basic grown-up foods. The Super Baby Food book by Ruth Yaron has good information. She recommends freezing in ice cube trays, then popping the cubes out. That gives a serving size. I did that for new foods, then once I found out my son liked it, I'd just freeze the purees into those small round rubbermaid take-along containers. He's in daycare, so those were more convenient for me than the cubes. I bought or grew organic veggies, cooked them and then pureed with my hand blender. I could make enough for several weeks at a time, pop it into the freezer and then thaw in the fridge or microwave when needed. FOr meats, I just cooked until very tender and then pureed with water or broth. I found the chicken left from making stock was perfect! Sorry to go on so much about this, but I found it easy and satisfying to make his food. When I was uninspired, I'd look at some of the combinations the commercial baby food companies put together, and go from there. Oh, I did can applesauce for him! Much cheaper than buying the no-sugar-added stuff! Leigh