Chandra, It is too early in March to trust the weather forecast and it certainly is too early to set out any warm-season crops without the use of Wall-o-Waters or other plant protectors. I've only planted out this early once (on March 9th that year) and had my plants survive. Even as far south as I am--about 120 miles south of OKC--I won't even consider transplanting any warm season plants into the ground until March 20th at the earliest, and my average last freeze date is March 27th or 28th, depending on which data you use. At our house last night/early this morning, for example, the forecast low was supposed to be 39, and we went down to 35 degrees at our house with a medium frost and our OK Mesonet station at Burneyville went down to 28 degrees. If I'd had warm-season plants in the ground already, or even outdoors in pots, they would have frosted and would be either dead or severely frozen back this morning. I know the frost was on the ground for at least 3 hours and tomato plants can't take that, and neither can peppers and other warm season plants. Yesterday afternoon, I carried ten flats of tomato plants into the well-insulated garage well before sunset and closed the door to help hold in the heat, so the cold night didn't affect them. I left the flats of pea, nasturtium and strawberry plants in the uninsulated potting shed and they are fine but the nasturtiums looked the slightest bit sulky when I moved them outside to the shed's little front porch this morning. The peas are going into the ground today. I've been watching the calendar carefully because peas can freeze in the low 20s and I feel fairly confident that in my area, we will not go any lower than the mid-20s from this point forward. I still feel like we will have more frost and more freezing nights here in southern Oklahoma, and certainly y'all will have them there in central Oklahoma as well. One important thing to remember is that frost can occur at temperatures higher than 32 degrees. At our house, we often have frost even when the air temperature is in the upper 30s. I don't remember having that happen in Fort Worth, but in Ft. Worth we often went from cold to hot just like that and winter was over. Here, in the spring, the daytime highs indicate winter has ended and spring has arrived, but the nights stay winter-cold until almost April, and sometimes beyond. Your potatoes in the ground will be fine. Even if you have some dieback of above-ground potato foliage from freezing temps or frost, they'll often resprout and produce, although sometimes they are damaged so badly that production is lower than it otherwise would have been. When I start putting warm-season crops in the ground, I'll post here and say so. As far as I know, no one here in my county has put any warm-season plants or seed in the ground yet. Some folks in far eastern and southeastern OK likely can plant warm-season crops before I can because they have their last freeze and last frost a few days before we do here. In general, folks in central OK don't put warm-season crops into the ground until April. (Some will plant earlier if they have a warmer microclimate or can use plant protectors like low tunnels, buckets to cover up plants, Wall-O-Waters, etc.) My experience covering up tomato plants and pepper plants with 5-gallon buckets on cold nights is that is only works about 50% of the time, so I just hold my plants in their cups longer and don't risk losing them to frost or a freeze. Remember that in central OK, your last freeze date doesn't even occur until somewhere between April 1st - April 10th at the earliest, and the average date is the "50%" date, meaning on that date you still have a 50% chance of having a night cold enough to damage or kill plants. The conventional wisdom says that to be safe, you should wait and plant your tomato plants two weeks after your average last freeze date, and in a climate where the heat is slower to arrive, I agree with that. However, since we are in a tremendous race to get good fruitset before the temperatures get too high here, there are not a lot of us who wait until two weeks after our average last frost date to plant. We have a hard enough time restraining ourselves from planting two weeks before our average last frost date. My personal experience here indicates that in my specific location in our county, we will have a freeze after our "average last freeze date" about 9 years out of 10. I've learned that the hard way. On the attached link, click on the freeze data to see the maps that show average (50%) last freeze data. There's also maps for a 90%, 70%, 30% chance, etc. This data generally represents 30 year averages, so it is as reliable as anything else we have. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Last Frost Data from the OCS

TGIF!!! Suzanne, VFTW is "Vote for the Worst" a website dedicated to controlling who gets kicked off American Idol. Thousands of dedicated website devotees vote for the worst singer. It's worked. Apparently, they claim to have kept Taylor Hicks on board, but I really like his singing! QOD: Tonight is a "Ladies of Laughter" fund raiser to benefit scholarship programs for the non-profit I volunteer for. We thought we might sell about 100 tickets to this comedy show/tricky tray dinner, but we sold out...289 tickets! Yahooooo!!! Should be fun. My sister is driving up with my oldest niece and stepdaughters are going to. We are looking forward to having a great time, followed by a PJ party at my place tonight. Marci, hope you and your mom have a better weekend. [[[[[[[[[[Donna]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] Besh, I also struggled these last few days. Last night was a BYO place, and I had two glasses of wine with dinner. (Raeanne, it was the wine you sent along with my birthday package....excellent!). Chilled out fine and no headache this morning, but I don't need the calories. It's gettting very tough for me to just maintain. Life gets a bit more challenging once you turn the big five-oooo! Patti, hope you and Dave are feeling better. I did, in fact, drink that wine with my family on New Years' Eve. It was delish, thank you! Hope everyone has a relaxing and safe weekend. Take care, eat healthfully, and NEVER NEVER GIVE UP! DeeMarie

dcarch, that's fantastic...but i'm such a 'permy' i suppose that i like being out in the weather... using wood for fuel. Smoking mozzarella on the 4th will be a challenge at 80 temp, but the ice block worked last summer. mustangs, got ya beat on the temp collection...just mowed on over, then another i stuck in the smoker with the plastic sleeve still on, lol. (i should just buy the whole display rack of the cheap ones) I probably could win the 'useless-junk-kitchen-crap' contest...i just spring cleaned out the kitchen drawers and filled a box to go downstairs with all the previous years boxes... I did toy and play with the rubber lid things recently in a cooks supply...the texture is a bit creepy like my silpats and don't care for the microfiber cloths...DH wore one to work stuck on the inside back of his shirt...wiggled down to the, fortunately tucked-in, waistband like a muffin top. Find them inside folded sheets... Not many new purchases recently. Like that thermopop but i treated us to a thermopen for valentines day during their sale and bought red. It has a special spot and is not allowed outside for the grill unless with special care... So i would have to say my maple tree that nature took down over the winter... Many future cooking tools and fuel coming soon. This is just the top 1/3rd and is now safely on the ground-ish. The base 20 ft is still standing. Not at all sad as we have a large herd of them...would have cost a small fortune to have it pro cut so nature did the hard costly work. Designed a dining table a few years ago and now see it may be built finally.

Hi all. We met with our house designer today. The goods and the bads. Bonus - he was able to give me another foot on the fridge wall (yay) so that helps with the blind corner (I want to close it off to preserve drawers) and the pantry was also enlarged which will allow for my small chest freezer. The overall kitchen dimension is 9' x 15'. The 'it will have to do': pantry is still around the corner. I think it will be okay. It will keep my peeps out of the sink/stove area. They will access pantry for cereal and snacks and the fridge is right there out of my work zone. I could get creative and have the kitchen side cabs open to the pantry and put the cereal and most used items there - how fun would that be? Because that wall backs to pantry I can also recess the cabs and fridge if I need them deeper as well. The MW has to go on that wall...and they are deeper than 12". I am feeling much relieved as this last draft that he did for us (he already sent it because our changes were few and to other parts of the house) is 99% on. We are still studying it though. :) I will post this latest draft with a few questions and see what you all think. There are 2 main things I am contemplating. One is the cupboard pantry reach through (I think dh would think that is CRAZY) but I think it may be a perfect compromise. Would that be something that is super expensive to do? The other is still trying to fit in this sort of thing. It is Michelle16's and she has a fridge and pantry flanking whereas I'd have just the fridge to the right and a corner would be on the left. I have 4' to play with there from fridge to where corner would start. I will try to post the new layout tonight but it may not be until tomorrow! Thanks. Lisa