Yes Sarajill, I guess I got spoiled from the Brugmansia forum. The people there have posted so much that they have actually become friends. - Oh well, you can't have everything. Ingrid

DH went through the same thing when his long time barber passed away. He decided to stay with the same barber shop, mainly because they were clean and sanitary in his experience. He chose another barber in that shop and "suggested" how to cut his hair. It worked, and DH is happy. I can't imagine DH going to a stylist, he know what he wants.

You can grow all the stone fruit (peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines and even almonds which are a stone fruit harvested for their seed) and, if you're not in an area heavily wooded with cedar, you can grow apples. You will not necessarily get fruit from the stone fruit trees every year because sometimes they bloom too early and either the blooms or the young fruit are knocked off the trees by late frosts, but in the years when they do produce, they produce really well. I don't grow apples because our property is surrounded on four sides, or at least 3.5 sides, by property heavily wooded with cedar, making the risk of cedar apple rust high on our property. (One day I may break down and plant apple trees just to see if I could do it.) Because it takes both cedar trees and apple trees for cedar apple rust to complete its life cycle, you'd likely have to spray your trees with Immunox or something similar if you try to grow apples within a mile or two of cedars. Cherries have a tendency to bloom early as peaches do, but you'll get a crop some years. You do have to net the trees to keep the birds out. Figs grow very well here. Sometimes they'll freeze back to the ground but they come back pretty quickly and generally produce every year. If you choose your tree varieties carefully and select a mix of early, mid-season and late-season fruit varieties, you can harvest fruit for a long period of time. There are peaches, for example, that produce ripe fruit as early as early- to mid-June in my part of Oklahoma (southcentral OK) and as late as late July or early August. Not many folks here grow the really late ones that produce in August or September and probably that's because of the problems with drought and high temperatures and more pests later in the season. It does seem like the better quality fruit comes from the varieties that ripen in June and July. Pests are a bigger issue on those that ripen later but I don't have a pest problem at all on those that ripen earlier. Don't forget the other kinds of fruits---the berries! Blackberries are easy to grow and produce well, and strawberries produce well if you give them fertile soil, and can keep the pests under control. I don't have issues with strawberry diseases here in southcentral OK because we're usually hot and dry, but folks in more humid areas might have more disease issues for which fungicides would need to be used. For years I didn't bother with strawberries because the sow bugs and pill bugs would destroy the fruit before it ripened. However, now that we have Slug-Go Plus and similar organic pesticides, I can keep the sow bugs and pill bugs from bothering the strawberries. You might have success with raspberries if you're in NE OK and have good soil. If you have or can create acidic soil, blueberries grow and produce well here. Don't forget some of the less well-know fruit like fruiting mulberries, bush cherries and bush plums, elderberries, etc. You can grow banana trees here but it is rare to get ripened bananas from in-ground trees here because our growing season isn't quite long enough. I had a friend who got ripe bananas in Fort Worth in a year when the last spring frost was really early and the first fall frost was really late, but I don't know if you could do that here. We have native persimmons on our property but we have to fight the coyotes for every single fruit (they eat them green) and the persimmons are too astringent until after they've been frosted a time or too. You also could grow some of the annual fruits. Check the website of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds for seeds of some annual fruits. If you have a greenhouse or a place inside to overwinter citrus trees in pots, you can grow lemon, lime and a few other citrus fruits in large containers that are carried inside in winter. Grapes are high-maintenance and proper pruning is essential in order to avoid disease and get a good crop, but they grow well here. I've linked a fact sheet from OSU on growing peaches for you. If you look at the list of peach varieties, you'll see how planting different varieties can lengthen the harvest season substantially, but sometimes it is hard to find some of those varieties. Even though I removed approximately 95% of the young fruit from my fruit trees last year at the proper fruit thinning time, they still over-produced and we harvested about 340 lbs. of fruit from 2 plum trees and 1 peach tree. (That broke down to about 260 lbs or so of plums and about 80 lbs. of peaches).) So, you do need to have a plan for what you'll do with all that fruit in a good year because you cannot eat it all fresh. In our case, we made jam, jelly, juice, flavored syrups, and fruit butters; we froze fruit;, we dried fruit; we gave fruit away; and we ate as much fresh fruit a day as we could. Without a plan to preserve the harvest, a lot of your fruit will be wasted, so have a good plan as the years go by and the trees grow and mature and reach their maximum productive capacity. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Apple and Peach Varieties for Oklahoma

Hey Sharon and all! Thanks for checking in on me and this crazy weather....AGAIN. LOL I've had some challenges with my router and internet connection so I'm just now able to get back on line. That would be after several hours of frustration trying to get it and my network working again with help from a friend via the phone. Yes, I'm high tech challenged in a big way! Doing okay here for the most part. We lucked out here in my area and didn't get as much ice as they did west of here. Still some ice but no major power problems for the most part. I think we received about 1/4 inch of ice. I know there about 65,000 without power west and south of us last night. Much better than the 07 strom when we had 650,000 plus homes without power. Right now it is snowing like crazy. We were only suppose to get a couple of inches but now they say anywhere from 4 to 8 inches. I just measured and we have a good six inches on the ground(on top of the ice/sleet) and it suppose to keep up for several more hours. Trixie, I sure hope you keep your power on for the rest of the weekend. Alexa, hope your family down in OKC are doing okay. For those of you east of me I hope y'all are doing okay too. I know there is Tracey in TN and Teresa in NC and it's headed your way. Who else??? Check in here and let us know how you are doing. Thanks again for checking on me! I may be moving farther south if we keep getting winters like this. LOL Time to go knock snow of my shrubs, bushes, and the pine trees. They are really weighted down with snow. Daivd