Busyone, I feel the same way you do about an early first freeze or frost--it seems like we are way, way overdue for one. I don't know that it is too early for the cole family plants from seed.....at this point with regards to the fall garden it is sort of a gamble and playing the odds no matter what you do. Some years I plant earlier and some years later and most years it works either way. I try to 'read' the weather and figure out what it is doing and then plant accordingly. We do seem to be having unusually strong cold fronts for summer and that reinforces my thinking that it might be an early fall. Mitch, After all the whacked-out spring weather, it is an accomplishment to have surviving tomato plants at all. If you can just baby yours a bit and get them through August, they should produce fine in the fall's cooler temperatures. I never plant Early Girl for flavor--only for earliness, by the way. Do you have clay or rocky soil? If so, your watermelons probably are pouting and sulking a little because they prefer deep, loose soil. Other than that, they tend to stall sometimes in the face of environmental stress. It could be the heat, it could be that they got a little too dry. If your soil is heavy and compacted, it would have greatly restricted your watermelon root growth and that would give you stunted plants, poor productivity and delayed maturity of any fruit that set. If you have very sandy soil that drains very fast, the plants might be hungry or thirsty. I agree with you on the weeds, although to be fair, I was gardening in a 40-year-old yard in Texas so it just didn't have the weed seeds you'd expect to find in a fallow farm pasture in Oklahoma. Isn't this your first year there? If so, the weeds are not unexpected. Just breaking the soil exposes millions of weed seeds to light and induces germination. As you continue to build the soil and mulch heavily, you should see fewer weeds every year. We've only recently begun harvesting cantaloupes and muskmelons and I am fairly sure you and I planted ours around the same time, so I bet you get melons soon. Our melons seemed to just sit there forever and then--voila!--all started to ripen at once. We're having an "Ambrosia" melon with dinner tonight and it smells so fragrant sitting there on the counter that I almost hate to cut into it. I hope you'll get some ripe ones soon. Game bird, Watermelons seem to have a mind of their own. They can stunt and stall if the soil or air temps get too cold (very unlikely here unless they are planted in the ground way too early), or if the soil or air temps get too hot (common here), or if the soil is too compacted and their roots can't grow as extensively as they like (common in clay), or if they are too crowded (common in home gardens). Texas A&M recommends 24 square feet of growing space for full-sized melon plants and 18 square feet for plants that produce the smaller refrigerator-sized melons. Giving them too little space can lead to less productive plants. If I had to guess this year, though, I'd bet all the melons just became extemely unhappy and their growth stalled when we had that horrible stretch of hot weather with high temps over 100 and very high heat index numbers as well. Billstickers, Lettuce is a good crop--when it does well, it does very well, and a mixed bag of results sounds normal for this year. Debra, There's nothing wrong with a tiny garden and I bet it is just as important to you as my large garden is to me. I hope you thoroughly enjoy that first ripe tomato when it is ready in a few days! My only real complaint about our garden is that the late cold and wet weather pushed me into planting everything late and at about the same time, so everything is maturing at once which is making it very hard to stay current on harvesting and putting up the crops. I gave myself a day off from the garden today and went shopping, ate out and ran errands, but tomorrow I will be roasting tomatoes and then saucing them, dehydrating bite-sized tomatoes, making pickled peppers and jalapeno jelly, and getting the onions into the cellar in their storage bags. I also need to dig potatoes, and harvest more peppers, okra and melons, but I don't know if I can squeeze all of that into one day. I'm going to try though because if I get too far behind on the harvest, I can't catch up. Dawn

Huge business this data-mining. The funny thing is I read about it in a novel, I think either Dean Koontz or David Baldacci, most likely the latter but I can't be for sure. These people, if they wish, can destroy not only your credit, but your life itself....implenting you into many illegal enterprises.....kiddo porn, etc. that you have had nothing to do with, but when they can access your computer info they can inject whatever they want to implicate you. Very scary stuff and enough to make you want to escape to a cabin in the middle of nowhere. Of course at that point they may make you into the new 'unibomber' and screw up that persona. Okay, most of this is total paranoia.....the likelihood it could happen to you, as a normal citizen is slight....but it could happen. This is a crazy age we live in. I really think the old days were better and I suppose every generation says that....but the days of yore were simpler and I really sometimes wish we never had computers, cell phones, etc. We need more people-to-people contact. Enough said. Duane

Saw photos online of huge crowds in Wrigleyville in Chicago for a large St. Patrick's Day pub crawl. We had tickets for a sold out club concert last night that we received multiple emails and social media posts that it was not canceled. We saw this band last year, and it was so packed it was hard to move around. This year we had barstool seats on the upper level so at least not shoulder to shoulder with people. We decided not to go, but the show went on. Average age of attendees probably 40's and 50's and I'm sure quite a few with chronic disease. I realize an independent club and the band are in a precarious position not to postpone a sold out show, especially not knowing when they could rebook. The band was not in a tour bus but flew in just for this show. I wonder how many other people no-showed? Maybe 10%? Still, that leaves ~550 people in attendance. We were under a recommendation to avoid gatherings of 100 people or more, but now the governor has made it a mandate. Not sure how well they will enforce these things.

Wishing your girl WELL! Hoping the fatigue will lift soon. Eat, even if that means just small bites throughout the day. Eat *anything*; this is no time for dieting! Breathe like an opera singer -- from the diaphram, not raising shoulders. Fill your lungs, then take a few more 'sips' of air before exhaling. Regarding the asthma...what kind of inhaler are you talking about? A 'rescue' inhaler is albuterol, not intended for extensive use. Does she have a routine maitenance inhaler (like Advair)? I have a home nebulizer to help clear lungs.