Lettuce is something I've always wanted to try in the garden. I like your idea Tiffy....using the styro cups. Now I know what I can use those clementine boxes I've been holding on to! I've started saving 2L pop bottles and plan on asking some co-workers to help me out if I don't get enough. I almost stopped today and pulled a big plastic lettuce container out of someone's recycle...but I didn't quite have the nerve. :-) Tiffy, you mentioned you live on the NS coast. I'm headed to Truro this Sunday to visit my parents for a week. I've got my Dad interested in WSing too....so I'll be passing on some adice....from this forum of couse, since this will be my first year. We'll be able to compare notes next year. My Dad has a nice big garden....fenced off against the deer and rabbits. He is excited to save a few dollars by sowing from seed...more variety to choose from too.

Marcia, Please help me find out what kind of snake I came across today. While I was at the local dog park (near Orlando) I came across a yellow with black stripes snake. It looked to be between 3.5-4 feet long and did not appear at first glance (that was all I gave it out of fear) to be shiny. I was about 3 feet from it and didn't know it until my dog almost stepped on it. She obviously didn't see it either. The snake seemed a pit peeved about the whole thing but it decided not to attack and to slowly slither towards ME to get away from my dog. Needless to say, I took off in a different direction real quick and hollered for my dog to follow. I am not like you or others on this site. I am not a fan of snakes and am extremely afraid of them. Although, I don't mind the black racers that seem to have taken up permanent residence in MY back yard and they love to procreate often (or so it seems). I have seen a lot less field rats since the racers moved in and that makes me very happy. Anyway, can you help me figure out what this snake was? I have spent hours and hours online tonight trying to find it and just can't seem to find anything that looks like it. I am guessing that it is not dangerous to me or my dogs??? I am scared to take my dogs back through those woods that they so dearly love. As soon as I told them, "No more woods until the snakes are gone again," they "told" me to find it if it was dangerous or not and if it isn't that they want to go back again. So that is mostly why I am asking you for your help. We all love the walks but I am afraid of the snakes. Please help me feel safer about going back. Thanks in advance for your help.

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Amy, Tim and I were joking that the single red branch might be turning red because it is dying. I don't think we're right about that, but I have pondered why only one branch has leaves that have changed color. I do see quite a bit of red poison ivy in the trees along fence lines when I walk the dogs. I don't care if it is poison ivy (not our property, not our problem), I love seeing the red foliage. Seriously, though, on trees whose leaves turn red, those trees need the specific combination of cool nights and bright sunny days to make red leaves, and some years we don't get that combination so we don't get much red foliage. When one branch or one part of a tree turns red and the rest doesn't, scientists believe that the part turning red first just happens to have the perfect microclimate. I am not sure I buy that explanation. Why one limb on a tree that's 30' or 40' tall? Why not 2 or 3 limbs or 6 or 10? (sigh) Mother Nature has many mysteries we really do not understand. Today we went to the CostCo in Southlake, TX, because I wanted to go to Central Market just up the road a bit after that. I'd forgotten how gorgeous that specific CostCo's landscaping is. You can tell their landscape architect must have specified trees that have good autumn color because most of the trees planted in the parking lot medians have great autumn color already---mostly Chinese pistache is what is red there right now, but also some sort of cypress trees, sweetgum and maybe some Shumard red oaks (that aren't red yet) along the perimeter. I was looking at the pistache trees today and loving their foliage and red berries. Why haven't I planted Chinese pistache here? I'm going to plant 2 or 3 next spring. Amy, I still have a lot of Red Creoles that haven't sprouted yet. Also, Copra, Highlander and Red River. Those are the Dixondale varieties that store the longest for me. That's how I get in trouble, by the way, with planting too many---picking all those long keeping varieties means I have a lot to plant in order to have a lot to store---and then we have more than we can eat fresh even after I've made tons of salsa and chopped/frozen tons more. I need to have more discipline and pick just one long keeping type each year instead of several. I think Nelson is getting scarce because a lot of places sold out of it in 2017. I think Jung still had it the last time I was looking at seeds on their webpage. Who knows if the sellers that sold out in 2017 will have it again for 2018. It could be that there was a crop failure at the seed production level since many of the USA retailers all buy their seed through the same big wholesalers, who in turn buy their seed from overseas producers. Nancy, George (MacMex) lives near Tahlequah and he posted a photo on his FB page of a cabbage covered in frost (cabbage is fine) this morning and said the low there was 25 degrees, so he must have gotten some of your cold if your garden escaped relatively undamaged. Maybe the cold didn't make it quite to your place last night. We're supposed to be about 5 degrees warmer tonight that we were last night. We'll see. Rebecca, My garden is toast. It is okay, but I will miss the Lima beans our big lush plants would have been producing for about another month. I thought about covering them up, but the trellis is 6' tall and about 25' long and I didn't want to wrestle with getting row cover over that trellis and weighed down along the egdes in yesterday's wind. I hope giving your back some extra rest today is helping it, and the fact that OSU won couldn't hurt any. We had the game on the radio while we were out running errands and doing grocery shopping. You're like me. No matter how many seeds and containers you have, you always need more. It is a peculiar affliction we gardeners have, of always "needing" more. lol. I'll tell you what makes me feel old---my nephew has a 14 year old stepdaughter!!!! Yikes. I am not sure how that happened. I believe her mom was very young when she had her, but still......it seems like the nieces and nephews themselves were graduating from high school just a few years ago (been more than a decade though, even for the youngest one) and now one of them has a stepdaughter in high school this year. That sort of freaks me out. However, the rest of my nieces and nephews' kids range from newborn to about 10 years old, so they're all ages. Still, I do feel old age creeping up on me. Jacob, That pepper plant really is a champ, or is in a perfect microclimate. I miss the green already. Everything here has gone the color of wheat except for the tree foliage. I cannot believe the difference in how everything looks now compared to just a few days ago. Rebecca, There you go, you enabler you! Go, girl, go! If you and I are going to have far too many seeds (and you know that we do, and probably Amy too), then everyone else needs to have far too many seeds as well. Perversely, not that my garden is frozen, I want to plant something. I probably won't though. Maybe I'll sow some lettuce seeds indoors. It was nice today to walk wherever I wanted and to not have to watch out for snakes beneath my feet. If we have any days that go back up into the 70s/80s, I will have to watch. They don't necessarily go down for the count after the first freeze, and will continue to be out now and then either hunting for food or capturing heat by lying on concrete until we get good and cold and stay there. I'm watching TCU play Iowa State right now, and TCU has not had the lead yet in this game. I'm wondering if ISU is going to pull off another upset and beat the #4 team in the country. It could happen. I hope it doesn't. Dawn