in my area when plants go in teh ground it is highly recommends by everyone from the fruit stand guy to teh extension service that you lay the plant on it's side and bury at least 3/4 of the length that was above ground in the pot. it produces a stronger plant. so burying most of the plant may be ok in your case. i put about 100 plants a year in the ground, all of them i lay on their side with just the upp 2-3 sets of leaves sticking out. only rarely do i have any problems. now, on to watering them. go to wally world and pick up a kid's swimming pool. set your trays inthe pool and fill it with water enough to wick up and bottom water the pots. you may want to set the pots on something in the pool so you can put more water in it. i have had to do this before and it works fine for several day absences.

Lake Lavon looked very similar to that a couple summers ago. There was a road that was exposed that hasn't been seen since the lake area was flooded back in the 1940's. There was also lots of green stuff growing on the lake bed and even farmers allowed cattle out to graze. The land was dry and cracked and there was absolutely no water under the two bridges that went over Lake Lavon. Then last year it rained a lot and it filled back up. Hopefully you will soon start to see rain or you will be rationing water like we here in Collin County. I won't even get into the fact that Dallas County just south of us wasn't on water restrictions and we had to allow water out of Lavon to replenish their water supply from Lake Ray Hubbard that serves Dallas County. That came to a halt when we went into stage three restrictions - watering only on our garbage pick-up day and not between 10 am or 6 pm - but what decent minded gardener would water at those hours anyway?

There are a lot of good foods you can add to your dog's diet without having to spend a lot of time cooking that are an improvement over plain kibble. Honest Kichen makes a variety of foods that are raw and dehydrated. The ingredient list is very good. Some of their foods are complete meals and some of them need to be supplemented with meat. There are decent canned dog foods you can use for this that are 95% meat like Evangers and Wellness. Evangers has more exotic types like buffalo, pheasant, and rabbit, too. Another good supplemental food is Sojo's Europa, which is a dried vegetable mix. You can also give them leftover vegetables from your meals, canned salmon, eggs, leftover chicken or turkey, beef, yogurt, and fresh fruit. The main thing to do is not vary too much from day to day so his stomach doesn't become upset and make all changes very slowly. Have a basic diet for everyday and add the supplements in small amounts. For example, my dogs get kibble and Europa everyday, the meat type varies every couple of days and other extras are given in small amounts. They get yogurt every morning as a snack. They handle this amount of daily change without a problem. I did initially add each new thing one at a time and over a period of about a week before adding anything else. Also, you should do a little research on foods that are toxic to dogs before adding human foods to his diet. Some of these are chocolate, macadamia nuts, onions, grapes and raisins, and also you should avoid tomatoes and citrus fruits. Of course, a lot of people now are using a raw meat diet, but I never have so I can't advise on that.

We've got rain, that beautiful wet stuff falling from the sky, sometimes heavy, sometimes light, with a few dry breaks in between, this has been going on for several days now. This is the first significant rain since March, I'll never complain about the rain again, well at least not for awhile :). Never in all my years have seen a summer like the one we've just had, I'd never have thought I would so be looking to fall and winter. The unprecedented heat almost did me in. I just hope we have enough dry spells to put the garden to bed for the winter. Annette