Jay, I've become more relaxed about planting dates too and it is because I've spent too much time the last three years covering up way too many plants on way too many nights to protect them from late freezes, and not always successfully. Having said that, this year feels more like the years in the early 2000s when winter was winter and spring was spring, and not like 2007, 2008 and 2009 when spring had winter days sprinkled throughout it deep into spring. I hope I'm right about that. I guess we're getting older and wiser and more experienced in terms of learning that earlier planting is not always best. It has taken me at least half a lifetime to learn that plants put into colder soil than they like just will not grow until the soil warms up to the level they prefer...so why do it? I also feel like you can push some limits....like planting plants closer than recommended if you wish...and others should not be ignored....like planting into soil that's too cold. My average last freeze date has now passed, so anything I plant now has, theortetically, a 50% chance of not freezing. The reality, though, is that I think we've had a freeze after our average last freeze date for at least 8 or 9 of the years we've been here, so I don't trust it. Dawn

Jay, I just looked at the radar to your west and I truly think it will rain on you. I'd say I am so certain the rain will hit y'all this time that "I'll eat my hat" (how's that for an old expression!) if it misses you, but I don't want to eat my hat. You need to be careful doing that one-legged rain dance. Such one-legged rain dances have been know to attract....laughter. Of course, if it rains tonight or tomorrow, you can take credit and tell everyone it was your one-legged dance that brought the rain to your area. I feel for the cattle raisers. It seems like it is one thing after another and I fear two consecutive years might mean serious trouble. Our cattle ranchers here barely held on through the 2005-2006 drought and then barely had time to recover enough to hang on again through the 2008-2009 drought. The cattle ranchers we know (family members of some friends here) down in south Texas have already been feeding their cattle cactus with the spines burned off since around Christmas and are importing hay from other states. We see 18-wheelers hauling hay south down I-35 at all hours of the day and night here, seven days a week. A rancher who lives very close to us overgrazed his pastures in 05-06 and again in 08-09, and so even though we have had plentiful rainfall and the properly-grazed and rotated pastures have made a nice recovery, his have not and he's having to buy hay to feed his cows right now. That, of course, is the price you pay for severe overgrazing, but desperate times sometimes force a rancher to let his cows overgraze the land. I hope it is raining there tonight. The ranchers (and your veggies) need some relief. And, if your one-legged rain dance didn't make it rain, then what is it going to take? Dawn

Carol, That Cluster Goliath looks amazing. It makes me tempted to go to Totally Tomatoes and order the whole Goliath line. It's been 6 or 7 years since I've grown a lot of Goliaths (one row of them will give you all the tomatoes you need). I grew regular Goliath and Bush Goliath as early tomatoes this spring, but gave them away to a friend when I ran out of space for them. I gave them to our friends still in 5-gallon pots (they needed to be potted up or transplanted and all my larger pots were full and so was my garden) and covered with fruit and they were harvesting tomatoes a couple of weeks later. They harvested the first one before it broke color (lol) because they were so excited to have fruit. They have sandy soil with nematodes and had just about given up on growing tomatoes so I may have 'converted' them into container growers with those Goliaths. You tomato addicts (OK, we tomato addicts) are now becoming addicted to peppers. One fun thing we could do next year for the swap is that everyone could pick a favorite variety or two to grow in quantity for the swap. Then everyone could bring 'their' chosen variety or varieties to the swap and trade with everyone else. Of course, everyone could bring other extra peppers too, but we'd know Carol was growing Variety A, and Lynn was growing Variety B, and so forth. Someone would have to be the Pepper Coordinator and keep a list of who was bringing what, but wouldn't it be fun? On another note, like tomatoes, peppers are perennial. I have a couple of plants that are now in their third year because I overwinter them in containers in the garage. We went down to about 6 degrees on a couple of nights, but I know the garage stayed somewhat warmer...maybe it briefly went down to 15 or 20 degees on those 6 degrees nights. Anyway, the Red Sweet Bell Pepper I overwintered from last year starting blooming in Jan. or Feb. and set a couple of early bell peppers that I harvested in April. Then it set more in March or April. Those peppers are now a gorgeous red and ready to pick. This is despite the fact that the overwintered plant lost its leaves and some tips of some branches froze several times on cold nights although it never completely froze and died. This fall, when pepper production drops, I'm going to dig up and pot a few and try overwintering them again in an effort to get an earlier pepper harvest. It works with hots, sweets and ornamentals....the ornamentals were the first ones I ever overwintered. Finally, if y'all want 'pepper trees' to go along with my tomato trees, you'd need to start them in January for a late April swap. They grow a lot slower than tomato plants. Carol, I've held peppers in cups forever some years waiting for the weather to warm up and they always take off just fine when they're finally in the ground even if they were root-bound in the pots. This year a lot of my peppers (both sweets and hots) had flowers and tiny fruit when I set them out into the garden, and I'm harvesting those peppers this week. It seems like this year the peppers grew faster than usual once I got them into the ground. It likely can be attributed to the July-like temperatures that arrived in southern OK in the last half of May. I'll be canning something.....likely hot peppers and plums (not together!) tomorrow, and maybe salsa by the end of the week. When the harvest starts rolling in, it sure gets busy around here. Dawn

Wow it must take you weeks or longer to plant all of your non-hardy stuff! I second that agave, it looks massive. It is strange how some trachys will occcasionally put out 360 degree leaves like that. I have one that did for a while, and now it's back to 180 or less. Speaking of elephant ears coming back, neither of my big thai giants made it, but apparently they both produced small babies at their roots, and now I have four from the original two. The larger ones rotted.