Ok, don't lob a snowball at my head but for some reason this year I am not in the whiney pre-spring stage. This winter has seemed to go by fast and while I am of course looking forward to spring, I am not in the least unhappy with winter. We're going through some of our coldest temperatures right now as usual, with overnights well below zero - but I'm ok. What I am most happy about is that suddenly the days seem appreciably longer. I love being able to watch the sunset through the bare trees *from home!* instead of seeing a bit of it as I drive my 40 minute commute home and then have it be darkening as I pull in the drive. Still, a pot of mini roses to fuss with wouldn't be a bad thing at all. I've done that before and ended up with as many as 5 nice little plants that went outdoors in spring to become a pretty border to my front flower bed. Hmmm...I'll have to go shopping after work today. :-)

Dorothy, That's one reason I don't try really hard with off-season container tomatoes or with tomatoes grown indoors--the decline in the flavor is awful, and after October has ended, they grow and ripen at a snail's pace. Some years I've kept them alive by dragging them into the garage on cold nights, and leaving them in there on cold days. They do flower and set fruit, but the tomatoes that set in November-January took twice as long as usual to ripen and their flavor still was lacking and their size was as much as 1/4 the usual size. I think that if I used a heater to keep the greenhouse at daytime and nighttime temperatures like we typically have in May or early June, the winter tomatoes would taste better and maybe grow faster and size up better, but it isn't worth what it would cost to keep the greenhouse that warm. When I was removing row covers this morning, I noticed that some of the row covers a very thick and heavy layer of frost on them and others had a lighter patchier frost. Regardless, everything that was covered survived unscathed, except for three leaves on the Seminole squash. They were blackened and withered. They had been covered, but I suspect there was a rip in the row cover over them and the frost came in through that tear in the cover. As for the plants I left uncovered, most of them were fine overall but the upper foliage was damaged while the lower foliage and, in the case of the peppers, the fruit beneath the upper foliage, were not damaged. The plant that looks the worst? The big pecan tree. Its upper foliage is definitely frost-bitten or frozen. Everything underneath the upper foliage is fine. The four o'clocks were fine, but most of them get some protection from surrounding trees. All the container plants that we dragged into the garage on Friday are fine, and definitely were happy to be back outside in natural light this morning instead of indoors under fluorescent lighting. The last time I looked, they had raised our forecast low for tonight to 50 so I feel a little bit better about that than the 46 degrees forecast earlier. However, for those of you who are new to the forum and haven't heard me say this 500 times in the last 5 years, in one spring we had a forecast high of 50 and I didn't cover up my plants (it was early May) and the temperature dropped to 32 and almost everything froze back to the ground. So, even at 50 I feel a little nervous about the temperatures, and likely always will, but not nervous enough that I'll cover up everything again tonight. It is sunny, clear and perfectly gorgeous outside right now with a current temperature of 62 degrees. I hope the rest of this month is like today, but not like last night. Larry, I only found lady bugs and green lacewings on the plants underneath the floating row covers as I uncovered them this morning, but I had grasshoppers sitting on top of the row covers. I assume they were trying to find a way to get to the plants or they were just sunning themselves and waiting for me to uncover the plants. I went to the garden shed and got my spray bottle of Take-Down spray and hit each grasshopper with several squirts from that bottle. I doubt those hoppers are still alive or will give me any more trouble. Dawn

Oh, yes!!! I've got a Yellow-naped Amazon, Mr. Coqui, and he is the King of the Universe (just ask him, he'll tell you!) He'll also tell you when it's breakfast time, when it's dinner time, when it's time to come out to play, when the coffee machine beeps it's swan song, tell the dogs to stop barking, tell the dogs to stop when they're playing too roughly, etc. He's a riot, and a much loved member of the family, but he does take a lot of work and attention (as do my two dogs and two cats - really, I joke about having to work just to buy pet food and toys and then spend the rest my time feeding and playing with them!) Finches are a good bird to start with if you're interested in birds, because they are very self-sufficient as long as they've got room to fly, nest and amuse themselves. A flight cage is ideal. I've had birds most of my adult life, and highly second the suggestion to find a bird store locally and talk with them - it's not a high income profession, so the people that own bird stores do it for love of the species and have a wealth of knowledge and advice.

I make a lot of jams and jellies and about half of the crop gets either frozen or dehydrated. The garden is one acre big and even with that much space in cultivation I don't get bumper crops ripe at one time (except maybe blueberries). In order to make a serious amount of jam I have to freeze the berries as they become ripe. There are times when I race home from work and start picking blueberries at 5pm and pick until dark around 8pm, everyday, for a month. Growing food is one thing, harvesting food is a completely other thing.