Joellen, The things most gardeners are planting here now (or should be) are the true heatlovers like sweet potatoes, melons, winter squash or succession plantings of summer squash, black-eyed peas and other southern peas, okra and succession plantings of green beans. For almost everything else it is getting pretty hot. You still could transplant tomatoes and peppers now but may not harvest much from them until fall....it just depends. Last summer we had sporadic cooler-than-average and wetter-than-average rainy spells every week or two and in weather like that you can do a lot of succession plantings of any warm-season crop. To me, this summer already feels hotter and drier than last summer, so I think the trend is going to be back towards a hot, dry summer, at least in my part of OK, which is southcentral OK. Hi OKPrairie, Long time no see. I hope things are going well there. I'm in agreement with you that many stores seem to be yanking their seed stock earlier and earlier. A lot of the ones here in southern OK get their seed stock out of the store around mid-May. I was at Wal-Mart this morning and noticed the big seed displays were gone, although a small seed rack was sitting on the aisle with the canning supplies. Susan, Do you think Jess gets her hardheadedness about bed rest from her dad? (Cause I'd never say she got it from her mom!) I hope she behaves herself and takes care of herself now in this heat because heat is even hard on healthy pregnant women, and she's had so many complications all along. Have the miagraines stopped? I know what you mean about the heat and humidity today. It felt awful when I was out harvesting broccoli this morning....and that was around 9 a.m. It's pretty bad when you feel 'too hot' that early in the day. Our clay is cracking here too. We just took the dogs down to "the big pond" to swim so they could cool off and they couldn't swim....the water was barely up to the low part of their chests so they just waded. Many of you have had a lot of rain the last 7-10 days but all that recent rain missed us. The 'd' word (drought) is dancing around in my head, and I'd love to be wrong. I always eat the first few peas in the garden too. And, really, on the first few days when there's only a few, you might as well eat them outside because there's not really enough to cook in a batch. Every time I eat a home-grown fruit or veggie, they are so good that I swear I'll never eat store-bought produce again....but then, even with as much as I do grow, I can't grow everything, so I can't stick to that pledge. I wish I could grow all we could eat of everything we like! It is odd....last week our pastures around here looked lovely and lush and green because of the rain that fell earlier in the month. Now, after a little over a week with no rain, everything is drying out and browning quickly and looks completely different. We sure did go from lush and lovely to dry and brown almost overnight. It doesn't help that our average temps this last week have been about 10 degrees above average. There's tons of stuff in bloom, but the pests are showing up in great numbers, including small grasshoppers (so I've been out spreading Semaspore for their dining pleasure), squash bugs, cucumber beetles, etc. Oh, and chiggers and skeeters. Dawn

per jeff, from his blog OKAY LISTEN UP: Because of NCAA basketball on CBS, our schedule will change a bit over the next 3 weeks. Here it is: March 19 (next week): We are NOT on at all! (Bummmmer, I know.) March 25: We are on WEDNESDAY NIGHT with a really cool "never before scenes" special. There are some great scenes that will crack you up, including Coach conducting. It's really good stuff. I know a lot of you guys hate this episode so we worked especially hard to make it rock! One of our best producers Daren sweated night and day for weeks to find stuff worthy of your time. Give it a shot if you're around. Thursday, April 2: WE ARE BACK! I've just seen the episode. It's fantastic. You're gonna love the rest of this season. Here is a link that might be useful: jeff's survivor weekly episode recap blog

I didn't have a problem with the way Russell plays so much. It's always been how my dh has said he would play the game. Russell does have a legitimate strategy. However, the one thing he hasn't realized yet is that at the final tribal council, he has to get votes in order to win. I think he has offended too many people along the way to win. I don't like Russell personality wise because of his sore loser attitude after last season's game. He thinks he just got a bad jury last season, but he didn't. The jury doesn't have a set of rules they are required to use to vote. Strategically, he has had some brilliant plays, but he also hacked off anyone able to vote for him along the way. If they hate him too much to vote for him, then he legitimately loses. I don't think Russell's looks are really what is holding him back. I believe that good looking people who do bad things in real life are sometimes hated more than ordinary people. Russell's strike against him is that he actually looks like a troll so he is easy to categorize when people want to make fun of him. Rupert isn't physically attractive either. His first move was one that everyone loved so no one made fun of him. He was considered the lovable giant.

If anyone ever reads the recap that sushipup always links to, the guy is a great writer. Very entertaining. He explained it perfectly. You can't let emotions in or you will lose. Brenda cut her own throat when she won the family love reward challenge. It's a two sided sword. If you win and keep it, everyone hates you for getting the reward. If you win and give it to everyone else, you are a target because you're so nice. I would be willing to bet that if Brenda had kept the reward for herself and Dawn, she would not have gone home that night. It would have been Eddie. It's a fine line. Brenda was very sweet and nice this time around, and that's what did her in. I don't want crybaby or facelift to win. But I really don't want Eddie to win either. He has been cocky and so full of himself, judgmental about the "geeks" and not so beautiful people, ugh, I don't want him to win. Cochran is my absolute first vote. Erik second.