We're getting a fine misty rain this morning. Supposed to be some severe thunderstorms tonight. We've had more rain already this year than we had in total in the past two years. It is a La Nina year for us, so that usually means more Pacific West rain coming in from Mexico and Gulf rains from Texas with cooler summer temps. I am so READY! Of course, that also means more bad storms. Can't win for losing, I swear. Looking out my window now, there are dozens of colorful birds at the feeder I hung in the weeping willow tree. I just took one of my sling plant hangers and set a large metal farm pan in it for the seeds. It is deep and has a good lip around the top, so accommodates a lot of birds at once. It works much better than those expensive but cheaply made plastic things you buy, and a heck of a lot sturdier. II also hung a Finch sock out there and it is covered with Golden Finches - their colors are changing from their winter drab to the vivid yellow. Each day they have more and more yellow feathers. Birds at the feeder or running up and down the tree are: Golden Finches, Purple(Scarlet) Finches, Flickers, Red-headed Woodpecker, Redwing Blackbirds, Cardinals, Eastern Blue Jays, Tufted Titmouse, Black-capped Chickadees, Snow Buntings, Black and White Warblers (Nuthatch), & Downy Woodpeckers. There is quite a lot of activity out there and fighting. I so enjoy watching the circus! Yesterday there were Robins darting about in the back garden, pulling up worms and paying no heed to me while I was watering. One Robin came right over to me to get a drink. She wasn't a bit afraid of me. I laid the hose down by the Wisteria tree and she hopped right over and took a good long drink. So cute! This morning, the Weeping Willow popped out with tiny green leaves. So pretty and welcome to see. I better go out and put out more seeds before the Chickadees tear up the Finch socks. Thank you all for the lovely comments. Nice to have all my hard work appreciated. Hope you have a good day. And thank you all for dropping by! Please drop by again. ~Annie

Hi Rafed, This year, I will add a multi graft sweet cherry, a Hosui Pear, a Seckel Pear, Moonglo & Sunglo Apricots,and a 10 X 24 greenhouse. I am looking for grapes, but have to prepare a spot for them. Then, I will enlarge the veggie garden to 100 x 50, and create an asparagus bed. After that, I will build a new fig storage room in the basement of the barn. It will have to be insulated and big enough to hold all the trees for the dormant time. Next, I will add a very tall fence to block the North winds between my house and the barn. This will form a sunny and windfree courtyard to place the fig trees into, for good fruit ripening heat. This is going to solve my wind problems. And I always want more fig varieties to fill it. ;) So I am very happy about all this and wish it was Spring already. Eve, Buffalo NY 5-6

Jay, I am married to a former Pennsylvanian and he still has relatives there who garden and every summer I envy their cool temperatures (you know, they think 85 degrees is hot) and their usually abundant rainfall. When we go there to visit in summertime, everything is so lush and lovely that it blows my mind, especially compared to how roasting hot and tired everything looks in this part of the country at the same time. On the other hand, Late Blight seems to be on a tear there the last few years, so their beaufiful crops can fail suddenly. Marcy, That's a great list from the Kerr Center. Thanks for linking it. Susan, I think each of us adds/drops varieties for many reasons. After growing tomatoes for 25 years on my own and for at least 15 years with my dad prior to that, I'm just through with the massive experimentation. The truth is that out of every 20 or 25 new (to me) varieties that I try, maybe one or two is worth putting into the permanent growing rotation. So, rather than constantly looking for something new, I'm trying to refine the grow list and weed out those that perform least well in a broad range of conditions. I've reached the conclusion that there really aren't many, or maybe not any, incredible undiscovered varieties out there that taste/perform significantly better than what I've already tried....so I've stopped looking. I had high hopes for the Brandymaster series, likely because it is so tempting to believe there could be anything that could match Brandywine's flavor. They've performed so poorly here that I doubt I'd see a better performance next year or the year after. While many of you may be seeing significantly hotter or drier weather this year than in your average year, for us here in southcentral OK, our rainfall has been exactly 'average' for the year to date and so have our temperatures. If anything we've had slightly lower temperatures, in general, in Love County than we usually have although higher than average heat indices. So, for me, this is a pretty typical year except the real heat arrived in mid-May instead of late June so we got hot earlier, but not necessarily hotter than average...just earlier than average. A tomato variety that didn't perform well in what was a fairly typical year here at our place this year likely wouldn't perform any differently next year. In Oklahoma we have a wide range of average annual rainfall....some folks may average 15" of rainfall per year in western OK while others in eastern OK may average 50-60" or more. Humidity varies widely as does soil type and pH. So, what grows well for someone in highly alkaline soil and water in western OK may not grow nearly as well for someone in eastern OK with entirely different weather and soil. I enjoy looking at everybody's lists and hearing how different tomatoes perform for different people but I know that works well in areas drastically different from mine may not work well here. Growing in containers is much more complicated. First of all, nothing that I grow performs as well in containers as in the ground. Heat and pests hit container-grown plants much harder every year than those in the ground. The grasshoppers have completely stripped my container tomatoes of every leaf and fruit, but have only done sporadic damage to in-ground plants. It is the same thing with spider mites....only the container plants have had issues with them this summer. For me, container-grown tomatoes are great from Jan. or Feb. through the end of June or early July. After that, I might as well yank out those plants and toss them on the compost pile because they're toast. Last year, the tomatoes in containers did somewhat better than they usually do....but we had much higher than average rainfall and much more rain/clouds/cool weather than we see in an average summer. I'm looking for plants that perform best in the worst of conditions, not the best ones, because more often than not, we get the worst conditions every July and August. In containers, I plant tomatoes that can tolerate the heat and the restriction of their root growth and still perform. That means I often grow tomatoes in containers that I don't consider 'good enough' to plant into the ground....stuff like Better Bush and Husky Red Cherry. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm just at the point that I want what produces best for us here, and I don't want to keep looking for something 'better' because I don't think there is anything out there that's really that much better than our tried and true varieties that make our grow list most years. For a long time, I gardened for fun....trying any and every thing that interested me. We ate all we wanted fresh and gave tons away and didn't care if we put up much for the non-gardening season or not. In recent years, though, I've developed a deeper appreciation for the truly superior flavor of anything/everything that's grown locally and picked/prepared/preserved at its peak of perfection. Thus, I give away little and try to raise as much of our annual food supply as possible. In a good year I fill up three freezers, a root cellar and manage to can 2 or 3 or 4 hundred jars of 'stuff'. Since that is what is important to me now, I want plants that produce well, that provide tasty food we like and that are not prima donnas requiring a lot of pampering. Thus, I'm less inclined to experiment and more inclined to plant what produces really well with little fuss. In a lot of ways, the 'experimentation years' were a lot more fun, but the farm-garden-preserving years have been much more productive. Now my family is spoiled and I must produce as much home-grown food as possible because they don't like grocery store stuff as much as they used to. Even DS's firestation co-workers prefer fresh, home-grown and I'm going to try to plant a lot more for them next year so I can send them all the tomatoes, peppers and other yuummy things they're craving. There just isn't room, or enough improved soil, to experiment with varieties now as there used to be. I don't mind that, really, because as long as what I'm growing is producing well, I've gotten over thinking there are incredible varieties out there just waiting for me to find them. Megan, Black Plum grew very well for me for a long time and then for 2 or 3 years it didn't and I dropped it. It is odd how that happens....and I loved Coyote too. If my garden were twice as large as it is, I'd bring it back to the grow list. So many varieties, so little time (and improved soil). The tomatoes I grow from seed invariably outperform storebought ones and I don't know why, but I've seen it enough years to know it is true. Dawn

Your garden looks great, keep us posted on how everything does. I am especially interested in how the S. palmetto seedlings do unprotected in your location. Speaking of the growing season, It looks like it came to a decisive close last night over most of north Florida. The low this morning in Tallahassee was 23F, ouch, thought it was a tad early for lower 20s, even in the interior panhandle. This obviously nuked the annuals and seasonal tropicals. Does this also fry the leaves off the deciduous trees which are not yet bare? Saw this happen to some of the trees in Atlanta years back after an early November night into the upper teens. The low this morning at the Orlando Executive Arpt., on the other hand, was 51F.