We had to put our green beans through the dryer on air one year. My inlaws grew them. They had a whole field of thistles next to the garden. We could not rinse the thistles off, so my father in law came up with the idea. Hey, it worked ! We just had to clean out the lint trap. Oh, you should hear the crazy things I hear. Folks blanching their corn in the dishwasher. Some try to can food in theirs, too ! At only 140 degrees.... Somedays I just shake my head, LOL !

Against my better judgement, I looked at the NWS forecast this morning, lol, and our chance for Monday precip has gone from 70% to 80%. I would love snow on any day but Monday. If we can just have the Christmas Parade in town that evening and have it safely, then it can snow every day after that and I won't complain. At the parade, we collect a lot of food and donations for our local food bank, so we need to have decent weather so we'll have a large turnout. I actually think a lighted parade, Santa's arrival and the lighting of the Christmas Tree on the courthouse lawn would be beautiful in snow (not sleet or freezing rain!) but the snow also could hurt the size of the crowd and/or make travel difficult. Jeanie, I know we all are ingrates. No matter what weather we have, we seem to want something else. I am dreading a long, cold winter like last year's and was hoping it wouldn't start up until January, but it looks like it is starting early. Actually, for the OK Panhandle and for Jay's part of Kansas, the cold weather already has brought them some snow. We're all stocked up on groceries now for winter. I keep the pantry really full because the nearest grocery store I like is 30 miles away. There's a small one in town, but I don't care much for it and won't go there if I can avoid it. I do need to start stockpiling deer corn and wild bird seed for the really cold weather because we feed a lot of 'visitors' in the cold months. Jeff, I know that early snowfall fits right in with everything else this crazy year. I was looking at the video footage of all the damage in California from the Santa Ana winds yesterday and thinking to myself "at least we don't have those here". Paula, I agree with you on the shaking and the quaking. I am sure it was felt much more strongly at your place than ours, but even though y'all have had a lot of quakes in central OK, I never, ever expected to feel one way down here and I don't like that feeling at all. My plan for the spring garden is to plant less cool season stuff because it takes up so much space for so long, and instead try to get warm-season crops in the ground as early as possible with the use of low tunnels of floating row covers. Then, if I can get the warm season crops to produce before the dreaded heat arrives, I'll be happy. I won't spend endless $$$$ watering all summer long either. I'll stop watering the big garden at the end of June, and then everything can sink or swim on its own. When we first moved here, an older gentleman I met had his own planting strategy, developed from long battles with the intense summers and late cold springs. He planted on April 1st. He stopped watering at the end of June. Then, in September, he planted spinach and other hardy winter crops. He didn't have to deal with the recurring freezes in spring. He didn't spend money on irrigation in July and August. He got pretty good harvests most years, and great ones some years when rain actually fell in adequate amounts in the summer, without letting the weather drive him crazy. The longer I live here, the more I see the genius in his plan. I know we are better gardeners for having experienced all the extremes, but I sure would like to have a nice, quiet year when the weather is mild and mellow. It's not likely to happen, is it? Dawn

OMG, I LOVED Laugh In; it was iconic during those years - everyone waited each week for the new episode. Different times, different mores, I guess. I didn't see myself, or the show, as racist or sexist (any more than the dominant culture was at the time) but looking back with eyes and minds that have grown and changed for 40+ years would be kind of shocking if I were to see it today, I would think. I recently saw a skit with Dean Martin and Goldie Hawn (from the show, I think) and it was a little cringe worthy, with her as the ditzy blonde, etc. But I also felt all warm and fuzzy remembering how much I loved her, the show (Dean Martin, not so much). I still, in my head, laugh out loud when I think of Arte Johnson on that tricycle and with Ruth Buzzi in the dirty old man skits, Lily Tomlin as Edith Ann as Ernestine, one ringey dingey. I guess it's the same fondness I have of my childhood memories of the Cowboy and Indian westerns, The Lone Ranger, etc. I would never approve now that I know how awful they were in promoting stereotypes and racist ideas. But the innocence of youth allowed me to love them. I had to look this up to remember some of the people who were on and found this list of celebrities (most of whom you probably never heard of). It is a virtual who's who of that decade and generation. Richard Nixon to Flip Wilson to Liberace and Zsa Zsa....and everyone in between. I couldn't help notice but the long list of writers didn't include one woman (that I could see). Also a reflection of the times. At the height of the women's lib movement! Credits for Laugh-In

Hi Cori Ann - I'm a big proponent of the "mulch and don't wait" school of enriching soil, but I start with decent soil in the first place. It's clay, but loamy clay, so once I can get past the rocks and whatever else was growing instead of roses (like, horrors, a LAWN), I have decent stuff to work with. I do the usual lasagne method over the top of the grass or whatever, since I am wayyyyy too lazy to double dig anything (once at my old house, and never again). When I have a new area I want to turn into a garden, I give myself maybe a day's lead time (but fine if not) to do the following: - lay down cardboard, paper bags and/or newspapers, and cover with organic stuff like leaves, compost, vegetable trimmings, or whatever - usually 3-5" thick at least - Add some cheater topsoil to jumpstart the breakdown process - maybe 1" - top with leaves as top mulch, not necessary to shred if you have something to hold them in place (too much like work) or mulch if you're not cheap like me. A good additional 3" or so of these will break down over the season to enrich the whole bed. - Go ahead and plant where I jolly well want to. Dig a hole through the lasagne layers into the crappy soil, and mix all of the above into the planting hole, chopping vigorously at the vicious little grubs as you find them (good for the soul as well as soil). I always add some extra manure and compost as well as alfalfa when I plant (even in established beds), mixed about 1/3 with the rest regular soil, so this prepares the hole a little extra. - Let the worms do your work for you, to even out the discrepancy between your Cadillac planting hole and Nova rest of the bed. You don't want to create a huge sink if you have super clay soil, where all the water pools in your good hole and rots your rose, so by conditioning the rest of the soil while you plant you get the best of both worlds. Not having to wait, but not really leaving the rest of the bed on its own either. - When some of your roses die (as half of them will in zone 5 for me), plant the new rose in a slightly different spot from the old one to expand the Cadillac-ness of the rest of the bed. - Keep everything mulched with leaves or other organic material indefinitely to keep feeding your soil for a minimum of work, and maximum benefit with minimum wait time. Make those worms WORK for their grub. I've done this dozens of times in soil that you couldn't get a pitchfork into without serious sweat, and ended up mid-season with soil good enough to flip with a hand tool. The copious amounts of organic material mixed in with some real soil does it for me, and I don't fuss with waiting at all. Of course that's my soil and yours may differ. Cynthia