afternoon all. We got a wonderful 2-1/2 inches of rain from the last system, but it is back up to 94° now and with the humidity, very uncomfortable. My yard greened up so much that I had to mow the entire thing today, but hadn't mowed in a couple of weeks so it was pretty deep in spots. Then came in and finished off the peaches and am pooped! We toured the farm yesterday with our DD and GD and was really surprised how the blasted weeds had grown in the drought. We are going to need to get the tractor out again and some fields to clip more thistles and ragweed and thorn trees. These seem to be the worst offenders. I can't remember if I told everyone about my two heifers calving early and we kept one and are letting her raise the babies. Not sure how that is going to work out. They don't seem to have filled out like I think they should. I am going to try to start graining them and see if that will help. The little heifer is limping and I haven't got her up to check it yet. Sure looks like a Holstein should be able to support two babies, even with just her hind quarters....remains to be seen. Our bank had a dinner last night, good food and a music show . The music was better than the food! Really enjoyed it. Miss Kitty, glad you found a home for the quad. I guess there are rescue homes for everything! Interesting. Broodyjen, we have a woman in our area who is a bit "unhinged" when it comes to her horses. She has a very professional ring and barn with very fancy fences. Her close neighbor says she spends a fortune on them.....must be nice. However, I was just in the daylily forum and they are talking about spending $1,000's for a single daylily....now that is what I call insane! Of course, if money is no issue, then I guess anything goes, doesn't it. To each his own. Enough trivia. Resting the rest of the day, gld

"Full spectrum" doesn't necessarily mean a lot when it comes to fluorescent bulbs. Some bulbs advertised as "full spectrum" aren't much different than "normal" bulbs. I use a combination of 4100K and 5000K bulbs, and get pretty close to an ideal spectrum for my seed-growing needs at a reasonable price. 12" is a pretty large gap unless you are using strong, high-density lighting. I have my fluorescents hanging so that they can be easily adjusted from 0" to 10" from the plants. Some of my benches have a larger range for larger plants. It is a good idea to give plants a few hours of dark. They need to rest too. I typically set timers for 16 hours on / 8 hours off.

Well, if the inside of your house is dry, then yes. Try placing a humidity gauge in the frog's tank and act accordingly.

Whew, you all are making me glad that our cloudy winters mean cooler summers! We don't have AC and until we lost some trees around the house, never needed it but for maybe 2 days out of the year when temps were above 90 for several days running. Today I think it was 95 but we keep the curtains drawn all day long and open up when the sun starts going down (around 9pm) and leave some windows open all night. All we need is a couple of fans. I do have an AC unit for the master bedroom-but didn't even set that up this year. So that said, we don't ever get notices from our electric co about curtailing days. We do get a lot of incentives from them for lowering our wattage and we can choose a 'green' power source if we want (costs are a little higher). Since our power is based on hydropower we have a good, clean supply. Regardless, I'm all for reducing our energy footprint so we keep lights off all day. We have a skylight in the main bathroom (interior) so there is not even a need to turn it on during the day. At night I have a light on in the hall and one over the stove. We do keep our LED post light on all night. I don't think in the 10 years we've lived in our house that our energy bill has gone up $10-must be doing something right! However, I did tell DH I really want to upgrade our furnace system and put in an AC. We currently use a pellet stove to heat our home because the existing furnace is ancient and I won't use it. So if we do that, I bet our energy costs continue to lower by keeping consistent temps year round. (our furnace is natural gas).