Connie, If you are willing to stand there and chop up a snake with a hoe, you're braver than me! I had neighbors in Texas that used to do that when I was a kid, and these were ladies who screamed if they saw a spider! And, as far as the hoe being pricey, I have found that buying good-quality equipment pays off in the long run as it lasts far longer. Nowadays I buy all my rakes, hoes, shovels, etc. at Sears and get the Craftsman brand, because they come with a lifetime guarantee and Sears really does replace them if they break. I do the same thing with water hoses. Those big black heavy-duty water hoses from Sears have a lifetime guarantee, and Sears replaced one last year after my husband ran over it with the lawn tractor. :) And, Steffie, I ALWAYS watch my feet when I am working around the place. I've become more cautious over the years after almost stepping on rattlesnakes in the garden numerous times. During snake season, it never fails.....I'll be walking across a paved parking lot at someplace like a mall or a Wal-Mart and my husband will notice I'm watching my feet as I walk, you know, watching for snakes! It is a hard habit to break once established. I have rubber boots but I want some of the snakeproof boots and snakeproof pants I've seen at Cabella's. I have a neighbor who's lived here all his life and he wears snake chaps on his legs when he's working in brush or tall grass. Still, you know, all of us are more likely to be bitten on the hand or arm while gardening, statistically speaking. One of the reasons I mulch everything so heavily is that it cuts down on weeding and, presumably, on my chance of being bitten while weeding. I hate reaching into a shady mixed border of small trees, shrubs and ground covers in the summer months because you never know what will be in there! Alan, I can't believe you were trying to pick a fight with a water moc! We have lots of them in our four ponds and they are very aggressive, as you know. We leave them alone in the three big ponds, but if they get in the lily pond that sits between the house and the barn, we remove them. (In a nice way if possible, like with a rake or by firing a gun at them and not hitting them.) If they won't leave in a nice way, my DH shoots them. We walk by the pond dozens of times a day and all our animals like to hang out around it, so we can't put up with snakes that close to us and the house. To be fair to the snakes, most of the copperheads and rattlesnakes just want to get away from us as badly as we want to get away from them. One night my son, who was about 18 or 19 at the time, stepped out of his car after dark and stepped right on a copperhead. It startled him, but it didn't bite him. The cottonmouths are a whole different story, though, and we all steer clear of them. We got 3.5" of rain here and had some minor street flooding. Even my raised beds have been pretty wet, but might be dry enough in a day or two for me to work in them. They drain fairly fast. Dawn

Ronda, maybe your crocus will bloom yet, don't give up on them. It seems like one day you see green leaves, then a slight swelling, then a bud creeps out overnight! I should have taken another photo of those crocuses- they looks so frosty and cold (even though Dusty would be out weeding in her "it's 30º, it's a heatwave" T shirt! LOL) later on the sun came out and those babies popped right open, a lovely little sea of purple/lavender. Dusty, I spent 23 years in the confines of Minnesota. I know cold. The coldest temp I ever saw, not windchill, was -38º maybe lower and I'm just blocking it out-- and the windchill then was -75º. I went skiing once at -22, really tough to keep your nose and eyeballs thawed out. You have to be tough (aka stupid) to do that! My teenage car was about a 16 ton Pontiac Bonneville. One morning I went out to "warm it up" in really true bone- chilling cold well below zero. No cloth seats then: we had bubble plastic seat covers, colder than heck on the back side! I didn't realize quite how cold it was until I drove off some minutes later: the car tires had frozen flat where the weight of the car flattened out the tires parked overnight. So when I drove, it was thumpety thump, thumpety thump down the ice cold streets until the friction warmed them into round tires again! Ilsonshine- I have never kept a garden journal but one thing I tried "tried-" (meaning I remembered to do it for about a week) last year was log in bloom times of various perennials in various beds, ostensibly to plan better placement and remind myself of what I can count on to bloom, when. If I had a dime for every notebook or stray piece of paper with garden notes on it around this house I'd be retired and organized if I ever got them all in one place. I'm thinking my Circle Pal's file box might come in real handy to get garden notes organized too. Yippee: I picked up file dividers and note cards to fit that box the other day! Five weeks to Spring! Five weeks to Spring! Spread the word. Better get some of my 'winter' stuff done soon. (or it will wait til next winter) Poochella

It got up to a toasty 67 degrees today and the snakes clearly approved. That's the earliest in the year I have seen a copperhead here. I'll post some pictures of the snakes and habitat when I get a chance.

Wow....what an amazing list of people.... too many of them no longer with us or active here. It is nice to remember some of their names and their struggles that we shared. Thanks for the memories.