Bill: It's always bad. They're always raising water prices and restricting us of usage, but this year is BAD. Hopefully the rest of this month and march pans out. After that, we get very, very little rain traditionally. All of SoCal is actually considered desert. We have to import the majority of our water. I'll get by --- you can have your 3 feet of snow and subzero temps. :P Alex: I usually start them at the beginning of the year. But, between a major toothache, contemplation over the drought to do anything at all, and overall procrastination, I just started a few days ago. Looking for the little tails peeking through paper towels daily. Overlap? Sometimes, not always. I'm usually pulling plants late Dec/Early Jan, but even the little frost we've had didn't do in 3 of my chinenses that still had tons of pods. This year I pulled all my annuums and chinenses that were podless when it got cold(anticipation) and they were just slowing for the winter. I should have let them be, but if a plant is going to sit around for 4 months not producing, it not worth my effort(watering, pest control, etc). Thanks All. Kevin

Goodmorning Everybody ! :) I heard from my swappers last night...:))) Mariann I have a couple of surprizes for you...We love putting surprizes in our boxes Regina started it.. Chell you are so creative and your writing is so much fun to read... I bet the boys loved playing pirate.. I can see their smiling faces now...What a great idea to make a hideout.. They will always remeber their hideout mom made for them... Norma I havent traded with you but I am sure you went way above in sending her nice cuttings..I seen pics of what you send...They are awesome boxes..:)) Please dont be sad..:)) Regina howdy :) I am so sorry about Mark having to have surgery and the heart condition would just send me into heaven.. Wow I am so glad to read it all went well...Shooo My heart sank for a minute...He will be all healed for college this fall..:)) You empty nester dont go through what I went through...Stay busy and call them alot... I miss my kids so much it hurts sometimes... Dogs are okay but they cant replace our true babies...I love reading about chell and her boys... It makes me smile so much... Frances lol You poor gardener..ahhah You need a break from mother nature..Really..:)) Oh big snakes yucky... I would be screaming... I love chippies...They are so cute...Havent had many around with a cat now...Kiki has brought home two gardener snakes...He was very proud of himself... Yesterday I was getting ready to go out and play in the dirt...The crows or blackbirds were screaming...It just like a scene in the movie the "birds"... It creeped me out really bad...I couldnt see what they were yelling at.. I watched tv...Than got bored and went coleus shopping..lol The master gardener sale for the next county over is tommorow... I cant wait to see what they are going to be offering..I have never been to this one...Oh I almost forgot..I heard from the master gardener I met...Looks like we are building another gh..lol She wants to do it closer to fall since everyone is busy with their gardens...I am glad we could help her..They are a pain to build.. well I gabbed enough lol must be the strong coffee and I got a lot of sleep...:)) Have a good day everybody..Barb

Moni, I have nights like that a lot, especially if I go to bed early. It is like my body decides it has slept enough and is done with sleep for the night, but my brain always is saying "No.....let me sleep!" I always think I'll make up for the missed sleep by taking an afternoon nap, but then I rarely do. Congrats on demolishing the shed. That's a lot of work! I bet gardening will be more fun with that eyesore of a shed gone. I hope you enjoy your camping in the rain. I like camping in the rain as long as there is a place to retreat to in order to stay warm and dry---even if that place is just a little tent. Larry, It sounds like you have a good solid plan in place. Isn't it amazing what a pain in the neck that tall okra plants can be? I don't want any plant so tall that it makes harvesting difficult. Amy, I am so sorry for the loss of Ron's sister. My deepest sympathy to you all. I hate hearing the news about his other sister's cancer already being end-stage before y'all even found out about it. While I respect a person's right to reveal their own health information as they see fit, I don't understand it when people don't even tell their immediate family members that they have a terminal illness. I totally understand why you wouldn't want to go to NJ given the current state of your mother's health. There are days I don't want to adult either. There's not much new to report here except maybe the snake in my garden. This week I have cautiously entered the garden and done a bit of clean-up work virtually every day. Even if it isn't much work completed in one day, it does add up over the course of a week. I have been careful and watched for snakes. Yesterday I was in the garden only long enough to pull up a few morning glories and moonflower vines sprouting near my tomatoes---mainly because I went out there to check on the tomatoes and then just noticed the vines accidentally. They were trying to climb the tomato plants, so I ruthlessly yanked out every one of them. I still don't know if my fall tomatoes will have time to mature, but the fruit wouldn't stand a chance of doing so if I let the vines climb the plants and cut off their sunlight. So, I never saw or heard a snake while in the garden, but..... While walking down to the mailbox very late in the day, I glanced over at the garden fence as I walked by and there was a shed snake skin woven through the fence about 5' from the entry arbor. I suppose the snake threaded itself through the woven wire fence and rubbed itself against the wire to help remove the skin. I am pretty sure that snake skin wasn't there when I was in the garden because it was right at eye level and there's no way I wouldn't have noticed it. I don't necessarily think it was a venomous snake. Based on the shed snake skin's size, appearance and location, I think it was from a Rough Green Tree Snake because they love to hang out on the coral honeysuckle and cannas there in that immediate area. Still, I'm never happy when snakes send me an "I am here" message in the garden. I think I'll stay out of the garden today. I keep waiting for cooler weather to arrive and make snake activity during the daylight hours more rare, but it just isn't happening yet. Maybe next week. It was a lovely and hot summer day here yesterday, which probably is a gift in October. The girls played in the wading pool for close to 3 hours while I sat in the shade, watching them and supplying an outdoor picnic lunch eaten beside their little wading pool. They'd already had lunch before we went out to the pool, but worked up a big enough appetite to eat a second lunch a couple of hours after the first one. I told Chris when he picked them up in late afternoon that they had an extra lunch in the afternoon and might not be hungry for dinner. It is possible that they crammed in a second lunch in order to avoid dinner because Chris was going to cook a fish "with eyes still on it", in Lillie's words, for dinner and the girls were uneasy about having to eat a fish that looks like a fish. We were joined by lots of butterflies and dragonflies lurking near the water the girls splashed out of the pool. I do not believe I saw or heard a single hummingbird all day. Maybe the last one has headed south. We had a lot of wind yesterday and it kept the mosquitoes off of us for the most part. We'd have a little skeeter trouble when the wind temporarily died down for a few minutes here and there. The mosquitoes? We have the usual ones in great profusion ever since rain started falling in significant amounts again, and 2 or 3 days ago the large gallynippers showed up. Ugh. If it is possible to hate mosquitoes more than I already hated them, then I really, really hate those gallynippers. Dawn

Good Morning, Y'all. We only dropped to 28 degrees so, surprisingly, many flowering plants survived and look half-decent. When I looked at the garden around 7:45 a.m., I still could see flowers that looked fine on the Cape honeysuckle, begonias, lantanas, marigolds, some of the Texas hummingbird sage plants, mealy cup sage, autumn sage and the globe amaranth plants. The remaining herbs (rosemary, sage, chives, parsley and basil) also looked fine. Even some of the remaining zinnias looked good. Everything else probably is gone though. If the butterflies that were flitting around the garden yesterday survived the cold night, and it is likely they did, then at least they still have some flowers for nectar. Jennifer, I need to give our dogs a bath. Maybe on Monday. I have one grandchild here for the weekend, so just don't want to mess with bathing dogs while she is here. Larry, Mud has us at a standstill here as well. I'd say that I'm hoping we'll dry up in this cold, dry air, but more rain (and snow) are in the Monday forecast so I guess we'll just have more mud. You're quite a bit colder than us this morning, but then you're quite a bit further north. Our Mesonet station went to 26 but at our house the Min-Max only shows 26, and it still was at 30 when I got up at 4:40 a.m., so we really weren't at 28 degrees for more than a very few hours. A mole has tunneled across our driveway, from the neighbor's pasture to our yard. I hope he or she isn't planning on sticking around. When moles show up here, the cats usually take care of them so they normally aren't a problem for us. I kinda felt sorry for the mole having to tunnel through all the mud. Some people that I know dig up their regular potatoes with some sort of attachment they pull behind their tractors. I don't know if it is some sort of mechanical digger or what, but it merely turns over the soil and then they can easily find the potatoes. I wonder if such a thing would work with sweet potatoes? George, I bet y'all were cozy and warm with that fire going. Jen, That's a lot of dogs. Are you dog sitting? Jennifer, If you know what caused the injuries to the dog, I'd just explain it to the vet. I suppose if the vet questions why you didn't bring in the dog you could just explain you used your own holistic methods to heal the wounds? Lots of folks here that have lots of animals do a lot of the routine day-to-day doctoring of their animals (not just cows, horses and such, but farm dogs and cow dogs as well) and don't take their pets in for every injury--not if they can heal it themselves. Wherever the hair is not regrowing there probably is scar tissue. We've had that with snakebitten cats---the hair did not grow back in the snakebite area. Our cat, Shady, is 18 or 19 years old and still has a circular scar that is white flesh with no hair growing there in the same spot where he broke out in a copper-colored rash after a copperhead bit him in the abdominal/groin area when he was only a couple of years old. I just think of it as his copperhead bite scar. In the early years I did think that hair eventually would grow back there, but then it never did. Today is sunny and bright and it looks so nice outdoors, but it still is very chilly. Looks can be deceiving, I guess. The leaves on the red oaks look a brighter red this morning, so at least there's that. Everything that had yellow or golden leaves left on the trees has lost them over the last couple of days. I expect the red oaks will lose the rest of their leaves soon, although some of the red oaks have foliage that still is 95% green. It is odd how some trees are so slow to change color and lose leaves this year. There's not much consistency. The post oaks are still green too, but usually are about the last trees to lose their leaves here and some of them will hang onto their leaves all winter long before dropping them in early Spring so new leaves can emerge. We had a lot of hungry deer waiting for deer corn this morning. They remind me of cows standing near a fence waiting for the rancher to show up with cattle feed. I don't go back there and put out food for them until they've all moved far enough away from the feeding area that I feel safe. Generally, I feel safe if they've jumped the fence into the adjacent pasture and moved at least 30 to 50' away from where I feed them. Deer that are too friendly can turn dangerous in the blink of an eye, especially bucks during the rutting season, so I'm always extremely careful. I hope everyone has a good day. Dawn