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

"I'll never be like that because I can stop anytime I want". They always say the first sign of addiction is denial. I remember when a friend whose garden was growing in size said the same thing. A few years later when I still had some control myself I reminded them of what they said. And was told to read her lips. And she said I said anytime I want and I don't want too. That is my boat now. My family and even friends wonder why I spend so much time gardening but also appreciate the produce they get. Of course this year my sister is beginning to wonder when the tomatoes will start coming. Another sign is when you can't wait to check the mailbox to see if a new catalog has arrived. But when someone says something about you receiving so many you say I can't figure out how I got on all of those lists. But just let them throw away one of the 20 plus and you'll notice it before you turn in to sleep. And the seed companies are like the people selling Christmas goodies. Start earlier every year. Now we can blame them for keeping our addiction growing. And then when they why weren't you at the wedding you were invited too and you say oh I didn't feel like going. When the truth is you wanted to take advantage of the nice fall day and spend it in the garden. And then when they say you were seen in the garden you reply I just went out to check on it and time got away. It is nice to be around a bunch of fellow addicts. Because we all need company and a non addict can never understand. Jay

Rick, very nice pretty flower, any chance of seeing a photo of the whole plant? Is it my imagination or has it got more petals trying to grow in the throat?... Double or triple??? :)

Thank you everyone - My DH and I are "standing on the shoulders" as they say, of 3 prior generations of gardeners in his family (the original German couple who came from Germany in the 1870s, whose son married a lady of German descent who also loved the garden, and whose son (my FIL) was a landscape gardener after he retired from the family printing business - all of them were excellent gardeners, who built our garden from scratch, and then maintained it for 85 years before we took it over. Most of the beds and paths are from them. The big change we did lately was to remove 2 gigantic shrubs - each was 12 ft high, 15 ft wide, and 25 ft deep - one was a barberry which had iron hard thorns 2-3 inches long which could pierce the tires of a car - not lamented at all! My DH used to get into the bed of his pick-up truck to prune it away from the driveway, so the cuttings could fall directly into the truck bed and be taken to the dump. They were replaced by him with my "New Garden", and he built a metal fence all around it, so it is deer proof! I filled that one with roses, and am working on rooting more cuttings for it from roses we had to take down off of the house. The best part is that all of the windows in our bedroom, living room, and even one end of our front porch look down on the garden, so I can see it from inside of the house. I feel so very lucky every day - Jackie