I'm in central Indiana, and we had a bad drought also. I planted my usual Waltham Butternut squash and watered them every 2-3 days. I ended up with about 13-14 squash, 5 of which rotted early. I only have about 5 quarts of the squash in the freezer. Its very disappointing. Last year I had 40 squash. We can only hope next year will be better. (Fortunately, it seemed to be a banner year for tomatoes and cucumbers, but I had to water them every other day). Sure will miss that squash in the winter though.

For quite a while after my first husband and I married, he kept telling me "Jenny didn't make it that way", etc. Jenny was his step-mother. Well, I finally wrote to Jenny to ask her what to do. Her response was to write and tell him to stop saying that because we were two different people and there were different ways to fix things. The remarks stopped after that. The second time around came almost 40 years ago when I married my second husband and the only thing he has ever said was he'd sure like some fried apple pies like his mother used to make. I don't feel bad about it because all the females who knew his mother said they tried and couldn't do it. I haven't tried - yet. When I made Apple Pie Jam, he said that it would make a fried apple pie filling like his mother used to make, so I might try it.

Those are very nice Ed. The one out of Witches Wink should be a good one in particular I would guess.... I think there is a market for small flowered daylilies. It's just finding the customers; much like minature roses. You have to let people know you have miniatures as opposed to just bumbling into them in a general catalog. One successful rose nursery has a separate catalog just for mini roses alone. However you cut it, small flowered daylilies have a place in the garden........Maryl

The wheat family saga, and why all-purpose flour isn't the "right" flour for all-purposes..... REALLY, it's NOT! The following is in part from classes I teach on grains and home milling. -Grainlady ***The bottom line....you can make pasta and noodles with any kind of flour (including non-wheat varieties, low-gluten, and gluten-free varieties, bean flours, etc., but not all wheat flours are the optimum choice for making pasta and noodles. There are 6 wheat varieties (both red wheat and white wheat, hard and soft, as well as spring and winter wheat). Each variety has different characteristics when considering the type of food you want to make. There are varieties that have bread-making characteristics - "strong" wheat, or hard wheat. Wheat with a high protein (gluten) content. (t. aestivum) There are wheat varieties that have characteristics best used when you don't want/need a lot of gluten formation - "weak" wheat, or soft wheat. (t. aestivum, t. compactum) As a quick note, up until the 1880's, the only type of wheat that was readily available in the U.S. for making flour was soft wheat. Bread making was a completely different process than what we use today because of the type of wheat grown throughout the United States. There weren't tall lofty loaves like we get today. If you can find some of the heritage wheat varieties, they are also best used with the long, slow, bread making processes from the early 1800's. What about "gluten"? The protein group we refer to as "gluten" is predominantly glutenins and gliadins. For both hard and soft wheat the dominant protein is glutenin. All-purpose flour is a mixture of hard and soft wheat, making it strong enough to make yeast bread, weak enough for most cakes, cookies, quick breads, pastry, but it's not the optimal choice for anything, except maybe soft dinner rolls. Cake flour is milled from soft wheat. Enter the 6th variety of wheat - durum (t. durum) - the best choice for pasta and noodles. Durum wheat came to the United States from south Russia in the late 19th century, as did the hard red winter wheat varieties that are the granddaddy to today's bread flour. Durum represents only 5% of the wheat crop in the U.S. It is the hardest of all U.S. wheats with a high protein content, but unlike hard wheat (which also has a high protein content), the dominant protein of the protein group in durum wheat is gliadin, which makes it the best wheat variety for pasta and noodles. Durum comes in three subclasses which are according to the color. Hard amber durum, amber durum, and durum. Hard amber durum contains sufficient glutenins to make good bread and produce tall, slightly yellow loaves. Another characteristic of bread made with hard amber durum, the baked loaves keep better. Durum flour also improves the texture of bread made with hard wheat flour. As an aside, I've never been able to find/purchase hard amber durum, just amber durum and durum wheat, and I milled my own flour for pasta and noodles from durum wheat. "Durum - from the Latin word for hard - is an appropriate name for the firmest of all wheats. Durum's hardness makes it the wheat of choice for producing pasta. When most wheats are milled, the endosperm, or heart of the wheat kernel, breaks down into a fine, powdery flour, but the endosperm of durum is hard enough to hold together. The result is a granular product called semolina. Durum kernels are amber-colored and larger than those of other wheat classes. Also unique to durum is the fact that its endosperm is not creamy white, but yellow, which gives pasta its pleasing yellow hue." The better the durum, the better the pasta. When regular wheat flour is mixed with durum flour for making pasta, it's considered an inferior product in the industry. You can mill durum fine to coarse. Semolina is milled from the endosperm of durum wheat (the bran and germ are removed), while whole wheat pasta is milled from whole durum grain with the bran and germ, as well as the endosperm. When making pasta (for extruding), use a coarse grind. When making noodles (flat and cut), choose a fine grind. The ancient version of durum wheat is Kamut, and it is also a good choice for making pasta and noodles. -Grainlady