Helen, It is good to hear that you are OK. So often, these afternoon/evening thunderstorm lines cross OK into AR and cause trouble. I'm glad y'all didn't get hit by any of them last night. Carol, I am watching live footage shot from a helicopter above Lone Grove and the destruction is stunning. If you look at the KXII website later, they may have it up in the video section. The ground is bare. No grass. No weeds. No shrubs. Many trees, especially Eastern Red Cedars remain standing. A lot of the taller, older deciduous trees lost tons of limbs, though, even if they are still standing. It looks like someone took a vacuum cleaner and sucked up all the plants out of the ground. All you see is brown soil for as far as you can see as the helicopter's camera pans the area. I think I saw the granddaughter on the Today Show. She was still emotionally devastated and perhaps a little in shock, speaking of how everything familiar is "just gone". DH just came in, exhausted after 8 hours of search-and-rescue in heavy firefighter bunker gear. He says the destruction is widespread. The trailer park he searched may be the one you're thinking of--it had about 60 trailers and every single one of them is gone. They did not locate any further survivors or victims there. DH is not an expert, but thinks it was most likely an F-3 and possibly an F-4. Time will tell. We did have good warning last night. KXII, the local CBS affiliate, had a storm spotted named Doug Drace on the ground in Lone Grove BEFORE the tornado hit, as it was making its way from Montague County, TX, across the Red River at the Tayovayas (sp?) Bridge at Leon/Courtney, over Courtney and Orr with a brief touchdown perhaps in Orr where two homes were destroyed. When the tornado was coming down to the ground, Doug Drace was telling us live...it is descending....it is on the ground....Lone Grove take cover now. He did a great job, and anyone listening knew it was serious and knew to seek shelter. Based on what we were hearing on TV and on the fire radios, I believe most people had 15-20 minutes advance warning to seek shelter. The NWS had issued watches and then warnings in advance of the tornado, the weather radios sounded, the fire and police pagers sounded, the media tracked it and publicized it. If you didn't know it was coming, you just weren't paying attention! The official death toll remains 8 with 14 seriously injured, and two of them airlifted to Parkland Memorial in Dallas. I believe the two that were airlifted were related to the elderly man who died in his home last night. I don't remember his name, but I have seen footage of his family members searching through the rubble of his home and they seem completely shellshocked and stunned. Now watching live press conference with Gov. Henry. Here's what they are saying: Path of tornado through Lone Grove about 4 to 5 miles long and at times up to a half-mile wide. Devastation is "just incredible, it takes your breath away" according to Gov. Henry. Gov. Henry says only 8 fatalities and only 2 are still on the "missing" list and no one knows if they have left the area or if they are truly missing. Gov. Henry asked that everyone pray for all those impacted as they have been through a devastating time. Carol, After seeing the aerial footage, all I can say is that you and your family have been blessed, truly, truly blessed. For you to have had that many family members survive this horrific weather event is truly amazing and a reminder of the Good Lord's grace. I know Lone Grove faces a long, slow recovery but the support and assistance are pouring in and I am sure this strong community will rebound and will rebuild and will take this opportunity to pull together, love one another and help one another. It is a beautiful, sunny afternoon here in southern OK and the clean-up has already begun. I am watching John, the furniture store owner on Fox News live from Lone Grove, and he's holding up very well, considering the devastating loss he has suffered. He's had a lot of volunteers (many of who he does not even know, they said) show up to help him salvage what he can. He is devastated, though, and I saw him wipe away a couple of tears as he spoke. My heart and prayers go out to him and to all affected persons. Dawn

Bizy, are you sure it's gophers? There's a vole that digs into my yard sometimes. I think he's looking for grubs. According to what I've read, they don't eat plants, they just uproot them. This year I've put down some Milky Spore Disease in an effort to kill Japanese Beetle grubs. Hopefully this will solve my vole problem too. Kelly, if I wanted to just shade out things so that I could plant veggies later, I'd plant a cover crop. One year I needed some "green manure" so I just threw handfuls of black-eyed beans that I had in the kitchen out in the new raised bed. There's also alfalfa that's mighty good for the soil. You could also mulch heavily. I got some bales of old hay from a friend this spring. She used to keep cattle on her place but has gotten too frail in the last several years to do it. She probably weighs 100 pounds soaking wet and she used to throw bales of hay around like a man. But anyway her barn has quite a few bales left in it. Some of the wires have broken so it was hard to get it into the truck bed, but I got probably 6 bales. The hay comes apart in layers and you can peel off a layer that is thick enough to lay over the top of the bed and it stays put, even will hold down a good thick layer of leaves. It will shade out most things. This year I'm trying to grow potatoes in mulch, which is what I got the hay bales for. I had a terrible problem with weeds and bermuda in my raised beds till I started mulching. Grass clippings do a good job too, but fresh grass clippings generate a lot of heat. This can be good and bad. Now I only get bermuda in the corners of the beds and I can keep that pulled out fairly easily. I did have to give up trying to grow strawberries, though.

I would like a small start of orange mint, please, Tigerdawn!!! And Kelly, if Chandra "forgets" (although I just can't see that happening), I've got some growing and we can dig you up some. Mine is on the outside of the garden...to lure away some unwanted insects so let's try to get it out of Chandra's bed first but I've gotcha covered if not. Also, we have a PLETHORA of Chickasaw (wild) plums. Tigerdawn, you took some home last year, how did they do? I've got about 6 or 7 that have insisted on coming up in the OG (Original Garden)...and I'm determined to dig them out once and for all this year. We've also got them coming up in other areas that we just mow down. They have a really pretty bark in the winter months. If time permits, I'll pot some of those up too if anyone is interested. I took a huge tub of starts to Ilene (who once was a member here) last September and I'm very happy to report that many survived the winter in Bartlesville! We're close to needing to start another thread. If someone gets there before I do, please name it "2011 Spring Fling Thread II"...or something like that so we can find it later. Oh mercy...I'm listening to the 10 o'clock weather and looks like some of us may need to replace some things due to a freeze tonite. This "Fling" might turn out to be quite active!

Even after I posted, I continued to think of other things. All except 3 of the tomato plants in my garden were planted from seed. One came from Chandra and I think the other two were Dawn's. I didn't really need tomato plants but everyone seemed to be finished with their selection at the Fling, and I saw a few I had never grown, and I brought a couple of them home. Since I lived in Greece for 2 1/2 years, I am always interested in Greek things, and Lynn gave me some Greek tomato seed to try. There isn't much info about it online so I am really anxious for it to produce. It has 6 or 8 fruit on it already. I have no idea how many of my plants came from seed I received from Jay, but it is a lot. Of course, it was a lot last year too. Dawn has sent me oodles of veggie seed. I have seeds from Lisa and from Sandy that I will plant as soon as I can put together another bed for a butterfly garden. But...I had to chuckle today when I opened one of my tool cabinets to get a rake and there was my bag of rabbit poo from Dody. LOL I had put it away before the monsoons hit, and had forgotten about it. I planted three very late paste tomato plants today. There were in pots about 8x8x8 and totally rootbound, but I decided to plant them anyway. I said I wasn't going to plant container tomatoes this year, but I couldn't stand to throw them away. So tomorrow they are going to get a large dose of rabbit poo and a covering of pine bark. They could use a heavy shot of fertilizer because they are tall and lanky from neglect. Just as a matter of information, I planted some of last years potatoes (Yukon Gold) that had sprouted big long sprouts that were 8 or 10 inches long. I had no idea if they would work, but I had a huge pot so decided to try. It got watered with rain and earlier by a leaky hose connection that happened to be convenient to leave in that tub when I had the hose stretched out to water the chickens. I didn't hill them at all but did throw a bucket of leaves in there to keep the soil covered. Well, it was no big potato crop, but it did produce a couple gallons of new potatoes. At least it is now a few meals from something that was headed for the compost pile. Just one of those experiments that worked.