No.. sad to say I haven't driven the 25 miles to go get any of my "old" fish. I have just the one that I couldn't find last fall. Might be cheaper to go to the local pond store and buy a couple of new ones. Many plants are still in pots, but I have this week off so I've been extremely busy hacking out the over-whelming bittersweet, sumac, grape vines, raspberry bushes and assorted weeds to make room for the plants. The weather has been so beautiful this week. We have the pool open (last year it was not open) so it is so much fun to work on the weeds, jump in the pool to cool off, then get back to work. LOVE IT!!!! Then I make a martini and go sit by the pond and feed my one lonely fish. I can get so lost in time just sitting there. It's not big, but it provides whatever my soul needs to re-charge. Only found one tick today and that was still mobile, so I brushed it off and got out of the area. I'll check carefully tonight to make sure none have anchored themselves to my cushy body!!! hahahaha they have plenty of space to do that. I will hate to see vacation come to an end on Monday. I am "practicing for retirement"!!!!

Ernie I am bad to the bone but do not tell any one. Wackyweeder I wish you were here working your weeding magic on my weeds. OH My. Ernie you have me pegged for loving purple. Turquoise too. Yes I am doing The mannequin Thelma and have a couple more in my attic/loft to do. And two more I already did. I am going to have a houseful of Mannequins. I had to have cataract surgery last summer so had to put Thelma aside while waiting for my eyes to settle down after surgery. In the mean time I worked on other projects that were not so visually demanding. And there Thelma sits waiting in my dinning room. With no table. LOL. I really need to finish some thing before going onto the next thing and I am winding things up now. I want to finish my hallway wall and making a gazillion grape leaves and also need to cut probably the same number of grape vine pieces. This is so boring. I am mounting the green leaf glass onto mirror bits. Nothing artistic about it just boring. I also need to compete the arbor sections to install on the wall then build my grape vine. Then get some sort of lighting and I hope to no longer have a long dark hallway. Then I will move back to Thelma. I need to lay her all the way across my worktable and cutting table and need to clear room to do this. I am sure when you are ready you will start on your mannequin. they are fo fun to do and develop such a personality. In the mean time hubby has cancer so I do not want to get too tied up in a project while needing to tend to him. There is just so much do to all the time. Holding down the fort. The out come will be grim. :'( Soldering on............. I am glad I have my art and animals to turn to.

I hit the jackpot on Craig's List several years ago. Someone was cleaning out an old dilapidated house and advertised canning jars. Pints, Quarts, Half's. 5, 10, 25 cents each. I sent them a note and told them I'd take all they had no matter how many there were. When they said there were more at the house, I offered to meet them there and they were afraid I'd get hurt so they declined that. They put a bunch in wood crates, fruit boxes, any other cardboard they could find. I think I ended up with over 1000 total for about $145. I gave them $160 for the effort and the wood crates that I didn't expect, and just because... And so they didn't have to give me change. It was so worth it. There are several charity thrift stores locally that sometimes sell them for 25 or 50 cents each. I've quit buying pints and quarts unless they're wide mouth. But I'll buy 4, 8, or 12 ounce for 50 cents or less. There are sometimes Classico jars or actual canning jars at the recycling stations that I'll collect if they're not too busy. Sometimes they have lids. I have also washed jars in the back yard a number of times before running them through the dish washer inside. Rather not have all that dirt end up in my septic tank. I used to not think about that until I started thinking about that. That dirt/mud does not go anywhere once it ends up there. I wash big dirt off of veggies outside as well. Chris

Amy ,here's a Dawn thread about keeping early tomatoes warm: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/3587435/tomato-varieties-dawn It's further down in the thread: "In addition to using floating row cover, you can use Walls O Water, homemade devices similar to WOWs, or even two-liter bottles or cat litter buckets filled with water to help keep the plants warm on a late cold night. In a year when the spring weather stedfastly refuses to warm up as quickly as I like, I put a cat litter bucket filled with water on the north side of each tomato plant. The water in the bucket heats up during the day as the water absorbs heat from the sunlight and the buckets keep the plants warm at night by releasing heat as the water cools. Using a combination of the buckets of water and heavy-duty frost blankets, I haven't lost a tomato plant to frost or freezing temperatures in the springtime since probably 2008 (the years are starting to run together in my memory, lol). It might have been 2007. Either way, the forecast low that year on the night my plants froze was 50 and the actual low at our house hit 32 on an early May night and I hadn't done anything to cover up the plants or protect them because, honestly, by early May, who thinks that a freezing night is still possible, especially when the forecast says "50"? That was the last time I flat out trusted the forecast low and the last time I lost plants. Now I watch my weather carefully and cover up the plants if I think they will need it, no matter what the forecast says. In the years when I set up the cat litter buckets of water (I didn't use them last year, but some years I just know that I need to set them up at planting time and so I do), I leave them in place until around May 5th -7th (because we've never frozen after May 5th-7th). For me, whatever work I have to do to get the tomatoes planted early is worth it because my yields can be 2 to 4 times higher from an early March planting than from a mid- to late-April planting. It is all about getting the most fruit set possible before the heat arrives. I cannot tell you when the heat arrives" Here's another one: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/2065568/possible-frost-save-tomatoes Here's what we did last April late freeze. with 5 gal buckets over the tomato plants inside the tunnels Don't remember what the temps were then but the tomatoes survived. Here's what we did spring 2020 for another late freeze in the spring: And another: https://www.houzz.com/discussions/2100369/fiber-row-cover-really-work-in-ok-tomato from the " Book of Dawn" Rick.