Hi Deanne...here I am! I went for my usual day in town yesterday. I got up with a headache this morning. It may be because I ran out of my BP med a few days ago, and didn't get it refilled until yesterday. Honey, all those stinging insects are scary..espacially for someone who is allergic to them! Nolon was stung on the back of his arm the other day, but had no ill effects from it. He dug out a huge yellowjacket's nest out by the pond . He said he wasn't going to bother it, but they were getting too aggressive, so he poured a few drops of gasoline in the entrance, then dug it out when it was safe. The gasoline eliminates them pretty rapidly. Nolon collects hornet nests, and has some hanging in the storage shed. Sorry about the noisy activities near you. I am not too bothered by industrious sounds. It is the 'run-around' vehicles that annoy me. The 'fun' ones that aren't serving any useful purpose. Thanks for your thoughts about Tim and his friend,Marvin. I am pondering the sad situation constantly. I feel so badly for all concerned. Marvin and his wife Carol have a 13 year old son. They are the ones I visited with Tim in July, and went out for Chinese with them. Marvin had been feeling badly, but thought he had had heat stroke! I wish I had taken my camera and took pics of the very unusual house they built, and are living in. The outside looks 'normal' but the interior is made up of rooms that have a shop appearance. One room is a 'barber shop';another is a 'post office'; another a 'butcher shop'. The main room is filled with street items... a bench like in parks, a street lamp, a fire plug. A street light that actually is functional, hanging on a corner of the upstair's balcony. There is a very tall artificial Christmas tree in one corner. The lower kitchen is combined with a family area, with a pool table. It is entirely decorated with Coca Cola memorabilia. Some of the rooms are rented out. A spiral stairway goes up to the family's living area. It is more normally decorated, but has an L-shaped balcony that overlooks the main room down below. They also have several cabins, about a quarter of a mile from that house , that they rent out. The road in is a single-lane road, and is paved. It winds around through a wooded area. How sad that they are now facing such a terrible future. Taryn can identify with what all are going through. I wish Tim had a wife that could coordinate activities for them like she did for Bruce and Gigi. If the doctor is right, his time remaining is very limited. I do not believe that Tim is up to doing any of the things that she did. I am praying for him and them constantly. Hi V. I remember you...smile. I can imagine how lonely you will be for awhile. But you 'will' get over it. :-) Tim moved out when he was 17, but remained in the same town. That sure beats what my brother and my DH did. They both left home at 17, and went to California...my DB from Idaho, my DH from Arkansas. Tim just moved into a little rent house. He was making his own living. I was working as bookkeeper at a discount store at the time. It has started out very cloudy, but I don't think storms are in the forecast. It is nice and cool. Nolon has still found more to do with his wood...:-) I am still 'humping' around. I hope rain has reached Cindy's yard. Marian

A few days ago (when there was a break in the weather) I went and cleaned up the areabehind the shed. That is the messiest part of the yard where clippings, leaves, branches, and other yard debris get piled up. The shed rests on a large concrete slab. There is about six feet x twelve feet of concrete behind the shed that I plan to make into a little seating area/patio. I had a black box composter sitting there, so a few days ago I moved it to behind a cluster of trees that will hide it. I swept the area and put a couple of rustic containers in for colorful plants. Moved the little grill to this spot too. Next thing to get is one of those fire pits (metal ones you can buy at Lowes, etc) and a couple of chairs. This area faces part of the flower garden and the tiny veggie plot, which may be made into a flower garden in a couple of years (if the front veggie garden goes in and does well). CMK

Brenda, You can plant another tomato plant or two but the chances that most tomatoes planted now will set fruit anytime soon are pretty slim. Except for with bite-sized tomatoes, high temperatures impede pollination and pretty much bring fruit set on tomato plants to a halt. Some tomato varieties will set fruit under slightly higher temperatures. The temperatures that impede pollination vary a little--it isn't like the plants won't set fruit if the nighttime lows are 74 but will set fruit if the night time lows are 72--it is just a general range of temps. Generally, once daytime highs are hitting roughly 92 to 95 degrees consistently and nighttime lows are hitting roughly 72-75 consisently, you'll find many tomato varieties stop setting fruit until temps fall below those levels. There are a few tomato varieties that set well even at higher temperatures. Included in this group are these: Arkansas Traveler, Traveler 76, Burgundy Traveler, Black Plum and the many heat set types like Sunmaster, Sun Leaper, Heat Wave, Phoenix, etc. Porter and Porter Improved always set at high temps for me but they are very small tomatoes--slightly bigger than cherries. Usually Jaune Flammee sets fruit well at high temps and so does Fourth of July, up to a point. Many varieties that produce bite-sized tomatoes will set at higher temperatures than the varieties that produce very large tomatoes, and often some paste-type tomatoes set at high temps for much of the summer. It isn't just the heat either, but also the humidity. In an exceptional drought year when the summer time humidity was in the single-digits many afternoon, I had great fruit set in August, during high temps of 107-112 and low temps in the 80s, from Big Boy and Better Boy. If we'd had high humidity with those high temps, the BB tomatoes wouldn't have set a single fruit. High humidity makes the pollen sticky so it doesn't move around inside the flower and fertilize. Sometimes you can get your tomatoes to continue setting fruit in higher heat and humidity by thumping the flowers to shake up that sticky pollen. Last year, in temperatures that stayed over 90 for, I think, a hundred and something days, and over 100 for sixty or seventy-something days, SunGold, Matt's Wild Cherry and Jaune Flammee kept setting fruit all summer long, even after I stopped watering and when precious little rain was falling. Those specific varieties haven't done that for me in previous years that had high heat with high humidity. Another one that normally sets fruit for me in the hottest July and August temperatures is Early Girl. So far this year our one Early Girl tomato plant has produced over 50 ripe tomatoes. I hope she survives the heat and the onslaught of pests and diseases and produces all summer long. If you could find a heat-setting type or another Early Girl to replace the one that died, it would be worth giving it a shot. You might get lucky and get fruit all summer from it. When I plant tomatoes, I put all my best heat producing types in one bed separate from the larger planting of earlier producers. Then, if it is incredibly dry and I decide to stop spending money watering the whole garden, I can make the decision to continue irrigating that bed. My drip irrigation lines are set up in different zones with on/off valves so I can water different sections without watering the whole thing. That way I can cut off the water and let it die section by section if I choose. Even the so-called heat-setting types like Heat Wave and Sun Master, or whatever they are called nowadays, only set fruit at slightly higher temps than standard tomatoes and I am not convinced they're worth growing. When you eat the fruit from them, it is clear that they were bred for heat setting and not necessarily for flavor. Still, they taste better than grocery store tomatoes. I have a kitchen full of tomatoes and will spend today and tomorrow dehydrating some and canning others. Canning season has arrived early this year, but that's okay. I'm happy to have enough to can. Last year's heat impacted production very strongly so I didn't can or dehydrate much of anything at all, although I got some stuff put up in the freezer. I deliberately overplanted everything heavily this year so that I'd have a good chance of getting a lot of food put up via freezing, dehydrating and canning before the heat brings a halt to production. So far that strategy is paying off. Today is a good day to be inside processing food because it is very humid and sticky outside today. I have been putting off going out and picking squash today, but I need to get it done before those zucchinis reach baseball bat size. Dawn

I'm working my way backwards from bottom to top today because my brain is tired and only wants to remember what it read most recently. In general, the reason you're seeing so many wasps, Nancy, probably is because we have had tons and tons of caterpillars all season, and the wasps feed on the cats. I have seen a lot of blue thread-waisted wasps carrying various caterpillars out of the garden this year. They take them back to their nests to feed their young, stashing them away, paralyzed, so that their young can feed on them. In years with significant fewer cats, we see significantly fewer wasps. Like everything else in nature, the level of the predator population rises and falls with the level of the prey population. Butterfly-lovers don't like seeing caterpillars carried away but it is the ecosystem and food web in action and I don't interfere with it. We always have a lot of bees here, perhaps because pesticide usage is fairly low out here in the sticks. There's plentiful butterflies pretty much every year, though it seemed like their numbers fell through the floor during the horrific drought of 2011. The population rebounded though when better weather conditions returned. We have had dogs that have chased the deer, but after Honey and Jersey ran off into the woods to do that once and became entrapped and surrounded by coyotes determined to engage them in battle, we stopped letting the dogs run freely and keep them confined to the fenced dog yard for their own safety now. I never want to hear the sounds of dogs and coyotes engaged in battle ever again, and I don't want to see our dogs with the hair/flesh pulled out of their hips by the attacking coyotes either. Our dogs suffered only mild plucking like that, but we've had friends whose dogs have come home with their rear haunches looking like raw hamburger meat. Y'all probably don't have coyotes in abundance there like we have them along the river here, so Titan probably isn't in the same danger if he runs off a bit. I enjoy seeing the possums, but not the coons because they will prey on chickens. I'm not crazy about seeing skunks either, especially in the daylight hours, but they're part of the ecosystem too. I don't mind seeing the foxes and bobcats as long as they aren't after our poultry. There's an endless array of wildlife to see here and I like that, but some days there's too much of it too close to our pets. It is crazy y'all still cannot use the boat, but that rain just keeps falling in parts of NE OK, and it has to run off somewhere. Our lake and river levels have been back to normal since probably June but the heavy rainfall stopped here long ago. Since so much of our river water comes from SW OK and they are in drought, there's not a lot of water flowing downstream now and huge sandbars continue to emerge from the river. It is not yet so dry that you can walk across the river without having to wade through some water, so there's still more water in the river this August than in most years. Some years I freeze summer squash. Of course, as with everything else, it changes the texture, but the squash still can be used in squash casserole, which is my favorite way to cook it (other than frying it, and we don't eat a lot of fried food any more). You can make squash pickles or squash relish though. Our school system in Marietta has dealt with the school supply issue by supplying all those school supplies for each child themselves these last few years. I think that is pretty wonderful even though I know they are making budgetary sacrifices elsewhere in order to be able to provide the supplies. Our community in Marietta has been really good about supporting bond elections to improve the schools since at least the early 2000s, so it seems like one building or another (or one athletic facility or another) always is in the process of being improved, built, replaced or whatever is appropriate in each given case. Thackerville has not had the same success, and saw bond elections fail for probably a solid decade before finally getting one to pass so they could build a new elementary school. Here there is a lot of support for the schools, but still the tax dollars can only be stretched so far. Larry, I have some family members who will not work either and it frustrates me because they are capable of working. Instead, they have learned every-which-way to work the system and get stuff free. I love them but this sort of behavior is not how my parents raised us and I don't care for it myself. When they plead poverty, I ignore them because I know they are capable of working and supporting themselves. If they want to have more cash to spend, they should work. I'd better shut up now before I say too much about them. They were taught how to work, they know how to work, but they'd rather not do it. Ooops. Gotta get off my soapbox. The deer were crazy yesterday. I cut up some cucumber and tossed them on the compost pile for them and they acted like it was Christmas. Then they stalked me the rest of the day every time I went outdoors, so I won't do that again for a while because I don't want them expecting such things every day. No wonder I never get much compost out of that back compost pile--the deer eat things before they can decompose. Some days the deer stand in our neighbors' woodland, right on the edge, and just watch me all day. I know they are wishing I'd leave the garden gate open so they could wander into the garden and eat. Well, I'm not going to do that, but sometimes they startle me because I'm not expecting to have one standing nearby, perhaps under a tree or two, staring at me. It gets sort of creepy after a while. Jennifer, We have watered so long and hard around all our concrete slabs, using soaker hoses, trying to prevent cracking in dry summers, but when all the land around you is cracking badly, you really cannot prevent it. It is very frustrating. I hope your slab in the coop doesn't crack too badly. Rain before September sounds great but I don't see anything in the long-range forecast that makes me think it is likely to happen. In some years when we let the chickens hatch their eggs, we'd get about 80% roosters. It doesn't make any sense to me, but it happens, and that is why we do not often let them hatch out eggs---we don't need more roosters! We've always let our babies run with the adults once they are about half-grown. The adults protect them and teach them to protect themselves from all the wild things. I've never seen bagworms here. I suspect they might be on cedar trees on our neighbors' place across the property line from my garden, but we've always done our best to cut down the cedars that appear on our property so we don't have to deal with bag worms. It seems odd they just popped up on your apple trees, but then so many things are odd this year. With regards to poverty, there's always going to be some people looking for a free ride---always has been, always will be. I have no pity for those who want the rest of society to support them, especially if they have high expectations and expect to be given fancy shoes, for example. There's a difference between true poverty that a family cannot overcome and choosing to be poor and dependent on others because one is lazy and shiftless and we all know that. I just hate seeing children being brought up that way---if a child is taught by example how to obtain housing vouchers, WIC, SNAP, free cell phones, food from the food bank to supplement what they get from WIC and SNAP, free school supplies at those big back-to-school events and free gifts at Christmas, then what are they being taught? They're being taught how to depend on others to give you things instead of being taught how to work, earn your living and be responsible for yourself. That is the part that is so unfortunate. To change society, we have to teach those children who grow up that way that there is a different way to live or the cycle perpetuates itself. To me, changing mindsets like that is the real challenge. To me, there's a difference between people who make a career out of being dependent on social programs and charities and people who temporarily fall on hard times and truly need help until they get back on their feet. I see it in my own extended family---and we have bailed out those kids once or twice but won't do it again because they won't work to support themselves. When I grew up we were taught you'd better get an education and be able to support yourself because "TANSTAAFL", i.e. There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. It was just a given that people grow up and support themselves and their families. Nowadays the problem is that there is such a thing as a free lunch, and more, and it has given us a lot of people who expect a free ride. I'm grateful we had parents who taught us to work for what we want, though not all my siblings are willing to do that work. I could tell you stories....but I won't. Sigh...... The kids here started school yesterday so my FB feed was full of bright, shining faces in new school outfits carrying brand new backpacks. The kids seem excited to be back in school, and the parents are possibly even more excited to have them back in the normal routine again. Our own granddaughters looked pretty adorable. Lillie started 5th grade, which means middle school is next year. Oh wow. None of us are ready for that! Aurora started four-year-old pre-K and was so very excited. She wore an outfit we let her pick out herself when we took her school clothes shopping---thankfully she chose a skirt and a top that actually coordinated well with each other. (grin) We are going to have a good-bad weekend. At least one of the granddaughters is coming to spend the weekend, and we might have both. It depends on whether she goes to her dad's house as expected, which is iffy, because so often they don't even hear from him when it is supposed to be his weekend. So, if she doesn't go to his house, we'll have both of the girls. That's the good part of the weekend. The bad part is we're going down to Fort Worth tomorrow to finish cleaning out mom's stuff so we can list the house with a realtor. I think that the work itself won't be too hard---our niece already has bagged up and gotten rid a lot of the smaller, personal items like clothing and shoes, and we're going to sit there and equitably divide old photos and stuff. Then we'll load up various appliances and furniture items that will be going home with some of my siblings and nieces and nephews. We don't plan to bring back anything like furniture here as our house is fully furnished and so is Chris'. My brother, who is the executor of mom's estate, expects the house to sell pretty quickly---it is on a lot-and-a-half on a street corner directly across from the local park in a very family-friendly neighborhood and houses like that usually sell fairly fast in that neighborhood. So, the hardest thing about tomorrow is that it may be the last time we're all together at mom's house while it still is mom's house. This house has been in our family since the 1940s and it is hard to think of it no longer being ours. I need to get out to the garden to harvest and water, and I'm sure there's feral cats, deer and wild birds waiting for breakfast. Sometimes I wonder how the chickens ever gain any weight because they seem to share their daily hen scratch with everybody, including squirrels. Have a great day everyone. I think it is going to be another hot one. Dawn