This thread is so entertaining! I need to stop on this side more often. Each one of you has a fun and unique point of view. I agree with everyone else about #5! Then I read #6 and laughed my butt off. Then came #7. I am just sitting here chuckling. Because I'm guilty, guilty, guilty lol. And good to see you again Sherri, been wonderin' why I hadn't seen you post lately. Luna I noticed you where gone too, but I'm new and just getting to know y'all, not trying to be nosey, no explanations needed, just missed ya :-) and Jeanne, I'm like you, when I have time to sit down and do what I like to do, it's usually check emails, local paper, then over to GardenJunkers. that's my kind of a break, just like going junking around town is my idea of fun. Hey ... I'm very picky about my junk LOL. OK I'll shuddit ... ~tenderlee

Betty, Most of my tomatoes made it through the summer, but I'll qualify that by saying the weather here in southern OK often is very different from the weather in central and NE OK. We didn't have rain at all when the OKC area had flooding rains, but then we had 5" of rain in July followed by a very dry August and then 13" of rain in September. I feel like having the rain in July saved my garden from the June drought and then the rain in Sept. revived it after a brutally hot and dry August. A few of the tomatoes that "took a lickin' and kept on tickin" in my garden this year, producing virtually all season (some are still producing now) included: Sun Gold, Black Cherry, Heinz 1439, Santa Clara Canner, Ildi (a yellow grape type tomato), Tess's Land Race Currant, Heidi (a red paste tomato), Black Brandywine, Sweet Million, Nebraska Wedding, Red Brandymaster, Pink Brandymaster (both Brandymaster types seem to run out of steam in late June but then rebounded nicely in late July after we received some rain in July), Husky Red Cherry, Better Bush, Bush Goliath, J. D.'s Special C-Tex, Dana's Dusky Rose, Red Defender, and Indian Stripe. Some varieties that didn't set fruit well in May and June due to unseasonably early high heat/high humidity did rebound well and set fruit in September, although I am not sure if they'll have a chance to ripen before frost. Two varieties that were new to me and which I grew both in containers and in the ground were Tumbling Tom Red and Tumbling Tom Yellow. They both produced oodles and oodles of red or yellow cherry tomatoes and they produced them really early. There wasn't necessarily anything special about the flavor to me, but DS took them to work and the guys at the fire station happily ate them and thought they tasted just fine. They likely would be producing still, but the hordes of grasshoppers that hit us so hard here in July stripped them of their foliage, and compulsively ate each leaf that tried to leaf out after the plants had been stripped. So, I guess we could say that Tumbling Tom Red and Tumbling Tom Yellow won the Grasshopper Taste Test. I had many other varieties that produced great in May and June and July, but petered out after that. Hope this info helps a bit. Dawn

My Dad taught me a lot of things. He was a walking encyclopedia. He also made us learn by experience - some things good and somethings bad. LOL Like sniffing horseradish would clear your stuffy nose. LOL We always had a jar on hand just for that purpose. Every night at the dinner table he quizzed us on all kinds of things - some of them were riddles to make our brains work. My Mom taught me about baking. I also learned a lot from my older siblings. Again, some not so good things like sticking your tongue on icey cold metal. LOL I tell you I was tortured by my brothers at times. LOL My Scottish Grandma taught me how to knit and embroider and cross stitch. You rarely saw her without knitting needles in her hands making argyle socks for her "boys" and hats, mittens and sweaters for us kids. She made the most beautiful hand embroidered pillow cases and table cloths without a pattern. When she was too old to hold a sewing needle in her hand she gave me all her floss and hoops that were in a metal Scottish shortbread cookie tin. I still have it. My Dad's French stepmother, my Grandma H. taught me how to crochet. She made some wonderful lacey tableclothes and bed spreads and those pot holders that looked like dresses. I have all of her tiny metal crochet hooks somewhere in this house. My Scottish Grandfather taught me his love of fine things. Any time anyone came into his house he would take you over to my Grandma's china cabinet and show off the Royal Doulton character figurines, the toby jugs, the china tea cups and saucers, the crystal, He didn't have 2 cents to rub together and he was a drunk but he was proud that his wife through hard work could afford to buy beautiful things and he loved to show them off. Patti, speaking of metal ice cube trays, they bring back good memories. My Grandpa would make grape juice ice cubes and when we came to visit he would hand each of us kids a large purple cube wrapped in a napkin or paper towel to suck on. They were the best. My Grandma H would make pink "Junket" in hers. Anne

Thanks so much for the info on these amazing beneficial herbs Strawberry Hill, I will definitely plant all of them for my cat friends. I will cover the catnip with a small cage contraption so that they'll only be able to get to the new growth... :-) That is such great news - that after so much rain still no BS on your potted roses. We also had mega liters of constant rain for 2 days and I decided not to use the corn flour dusting, and there is not one BS leaf on any rose....just as you said, the soil is the key....I also gave the BS prone roses an extra teaspoon of Gypsum as you advised (along with the Potassium Sulfate) ...just before the rain started falling. I watered in in very quickly with alkaline tap water, the rain did the rest. I think that's another great idea - to keep feeding them Gypsum and Potassium Sulfate to keep them BS-free during winter - until our next spring. many thanks :-) I won't give any Nitrogen either, seeing that they stop blooming anyway during winter. Carol, maybe you can try wrapping just a tiny piece of any citrus fruit peel around the area where the aphids are worst? I did that over here and the aphids jumped of like flies... but the Hydrogen Peroxide sounds like a great treatment for the aphids plus it adds oxygen, I think that is the best solution, as advised by Strawberry Hill...I will also try that...I think clay can do with some oxygen.... thanks for liking the Nguni cows, yes they are so beautiful...and quite docile... we have another breed here called 'Afrikaner'-cattle...they are quite strong as well but not so docile...used in the beef industry. They are also much bigger than Nguni's. I hope you enjoy your snowy winter wonderlands, I hope you, Jim, and Strawberry Hill will post winter photo's. Today it is 96.8 F and a strong warm berg (mountain)- wind is blowing. really magical. I decided to look up the definition of a berg wind: Berg wind (from Afrikaans berg "mountain" + wind "wind", i.e. a mountain wind) is the South African name for a katabatic wind: a hot dry wind blowing down the Great Escarpment from the high central plateau to the coast. When the air that has been heated on the extensive central plateau flows down the escarpment to the coast it undergoes further warming by adiabatic processes. This accounts for the hot and dry properties of these off-shore winds, wherever they occur along South Africa's coastline.[1][2] Although berg winds are often called a Föhn winds, this is probably a misnomer, as Föhn winds are rain shadow winds that result from air moving over a mountain range, resulting in precipitation on the windward side. This releases latent heat into the atmosphere which is then warmed still further as the air descends on the leeward side (e.g., the Chinook or the original Föhn).[2][3] Berg winds do not originate in precipitation, but in the mostly dry, often arid central plateau of Southern Africa. On the other hand, katabatic winds are technically drainage winds, that carry high density, usually cold air from a high elevation down a slope under the force of gravity.[3] These are thus "fall winds", which occur most typically down the coastal ice slopes of Antarctica and Greenland. Berg winds blow off the African escarpment in response to large scale weather systems in the South Atlantic Ocean, the African interior, and the Southern Indian Ocean.