Hi gang, Spring has sure sprung, hasn't it? The pots on the walkway in front of my apartment are full of flowers. I discovered that what I thought were strawberry plants that I'd harvested from my front beds were actually ALL fragaria x "lipstick" so I sure have lots of pretty pink blooms, but unfortunately I will be getting no tasty berries as I'd hoped. Did you know you can deadhead these to get more blooms? I'm microgardening... As for the plants, I sent most of my plants home with the Rader family, who I met on here - they move here from L.A. last year in the early summer and needed plants. I was happy to send them where I know they will be loved and taken care of well. They have all my garden supplies, too! I drove past my old house yesterday to see what was blooming. There was an iris in bloom that I've never seen before. I assume it came from one of you! It was beautiful, a translucent white with both pink and yellow tinges to it. I wish I'd taken that one, but they all pretty much look alike when dormant, lol. The bed that I thought was full of strawberries was busting out pink with fragaria x 'lipstick'. I thought that was funny, too. My new beds REALLY need a weeding - I guess the manure or leaf mulch had a lot of seeds in it. I didn't see anyone home so I couldn't tell anyone about it. Not sure when I'll get there again. Looks like there will be great crop of orange crocosmia around the mailbox. And the coral bells put up HUGE flower spikes (with tiny gray flowers, of course) at least 3 feet tall. Wow. I have a bunch of "mini blind plant labels" for you all have at the swap. And I have started a bunch of cuttings from the Alternathera "Black Knight" I was fortunate enough to receive at the Mid-TN swap at the river in October. It lived very happily on my desk all winter, and actually began to be the plant that ate Manhattan, so I trimmed it and will have lots of rooted starts for you! As for me, the semester has not gone as well as I'd hoped. I'm not sure what's going to happen to me in the summer as a result. I'd hoped to get out there and do my fieldwork but I don't know... Regina

Thanks to each of you for all the kind responses and prayers. I managed to get some food delivered to my aunt today (Amazing what unlimited long distance and a credit card can do!). It wasn't a lot, and it wasn't fancy, but she has some healthy, nutritious, easy to heat (or not) meals and water now, probably enough for 10 days. That should hold her until she can get transport into town. Some of the phones are out again, and nephew, and one brother are still without power. Niece had power long enough to check her house (rented) and give the kids hot showers. She sounded "refreshed." She received a delayed Christmas $ gift from me, and immediately gave it to her parents (the fire victims.) She's my good girl. DB and SIL couldn't get the fire report until this afternoon, (volunteer fire departments and the members' phones were out again). The Red Cross provided his nebulizer and her blood pressure meds and gave them a small amount of emergency cash, for which they are very thankful. They left messages with the insurance company. Their home was a mobile home, but they were insured. I don't know yet if the contents were covered. I'll be posting on the "Emergency Preparedness" thread when I have more wits about me. Thanks again for all the kind posts, and please keep my family, and all the still-suffering storm victims, in your prayers.

Quick plan update...to those who really really like kitchen windows. The brilliant, creative minds came forth to find a solution. The sink and range will be switched around. The range will go on the pantry side wall, we will put in a prep sink in the island, and perhaps relocate the fridge to the pantry side wall. Most of the cabinets over the sink will be removed, (I only have 2 upper cabinets in my current home, and new the pantry will be huge) This will allow nice sight lines. !! (: See examples below....

Jen, I bet is has been a crazy week with extra furbabies underfoot. I hope it was a fun one. Nancy, Thanks for the photo of the rain. I've just about forgotten what rain looks like. We're hoping to get some on Sunday or Monday although the amount the 7-day QPF is forecasting for us keeps dropping, choking out hope of getting good rain with each update. Last night's/this morning's rain went both north and south of us (naturally) but we got a few drops.....8' rain....one raindrop every 8 feet. This so-called rain fell for a couple of hours (in theory, because we did have wind, thunder and lightning for the entire time) but the ground still looked dry when it was done, and the rain gauge had less than 1/100th of an inch in it...so we called it a "trace" of rain. It is probable rain fell from the clouds higher above but evaporated as it came through the drier air layer down near the ground because it looked like it was raining, but we literally were not feeling it or seeing it at the ground level. Virga. That's the story of our lives lately. That is so terrible about the ping pong ball sized hail. Hail that size can do a lot of damage. The worst hail I've been in personally myself was baseball to softball sized, and experiencing that once in a lifetime was one time too many. Larry, I'm sorry for all your troubles with the incompetent medical folks who have wasted three months of your time. I know that sort of thing is very frustrating. Jennifer, I am doing my best to hang in there, thinking that if only rain...real rain, not evaporating rain, not rain that falls 3 miles north or 1/2 mile south, but actual real rain that falls on our land and wets everything down....if only.....if only it will fall in the next few days, than maybe I can keep watering and keep the blooms going for the birds, bees, butterflies, etc. We're still hitting 100 every day (105 Thursday at our house, 103 yesterday, 101 today) and not getting the rain, so the garden just roasts and roasts in this heat and dryness. We were out at a fire again yesterday...a really bad one....a 6,000 s.f. barn with animals temporarily trapped by the flames. That big metal barn was like an oven and the firefighters suffered tremendously while fighting that fire. They are tough and never quit, but a person can only take so much heat. For the second day in a row, they already had a firefighter in the ambulance by the time we arrived on the scene with water, Gatorade and more....and we were not that slow to arrive either. The heat is just that bad. I had cooked fire food (still had some in the oven when the pagers went off) all morning long, and spent the whole afternoon at the fire, so never stepped foot in my garden yesterday. I finally went in there around 7:30 or 8:00 pm tonight just to water tomatoes in containers. That is all I could manage to do today. I couldn't go to today's fire (because, of course, there was one....but Tim went) because we have the 3 year old granddaughter this weekend. Instead of playing in the dirt, I've been playing with Play Dough and Softee Dough. I know you all are jealous. Megan, If every weather guy in the state stood on their head and swore that August would be more mild....I still wouldn't believe it. Not for us. Being this far south, we rarely get the cool-downs that hit points further north, so I don't expect much relief. We usually go anywhere from 2 to 5 degrees higher than forecast anyway, so even if they forecast cooler weather, we do not necessarily see it happen. Tomorrow is supposed to be our last 100+ degree day for a week or so, and I hope they are right. Even the low 90s would feel good compared to what we've been having. They just don't seem to do a very good job forecast our high temperatures down here. We also get a lot of compressional heating as fronts pass or are approaching or whatever, and inevitably the compressional heating pushes us to higher temperatures than what was forecast. I didn't even known what compressional heating was when we moved here, but I sure do know what it is now. Y'all know how much trouble I have with venomous snakes slithering out of the woods and into the garden to eat frogs and toads and whatever.....well, yesterday, at the fire, towards the end when the firefighters were doing overhaul, they brought out a charred crispy snake, burned and blackened so badly that you couldn't tell what sort of snake it had been, but it had the pointed head......so, I felt right at home with...the snake of the day. See there, I don't even have to step foot into the garden to see snakes. We ate lunch early today at Caddo Street BBQ in Ardmore, which is a really new place. I think it opened for business on July 4th. It was amazing---the food all tasted home-made, and I do mean home-made, not like the restaurant version of home-made but like true grandma-cooked-it-in-the-kitchen home-made. They're only open from 10:30 a.m. until approximately 2:30 p.m. (closing earlier if the meat sells out early, but staying open later if they still have meat available) and we were there early to guarantee we would get fed before the place turned into a standing-room-only situation. So, if you're in line ordering your food at 10:30 a.m., I guess it is brunch more than breakfast or lunch. I would gladly eat our first meal of the day there each Saturday for the rest of our lives. It all was so good, and Saturday seems to be the one day that Tim, Chris, Jana and I all can get together. We met the owner who seems like a fine person (and he sure knows how to smoke meat) and Chris won a free t-shirt for being the first customer in line this morning (which surprised and thrilled him---he will wear that shirt with pride). So, my weekend hasn't been about gardening at all, really, and I don't care. I need a break. Whether I want a break or not is a moot point---the daily fires (which I knew were coming at some point due to the drought) will ensure I pretty much stay out of the garden for a while, I guess. I do hope I can get back into some sort of gardening schedule on Monday and at least manage to harvest daily. I think that all that is really waiting to be harvested now is a few watermelons and some okra. Thankfully, I'm growing Stewart's Zeebest---and you can let it can really long and it doesn't get woody right away like some other okra varieties do. I'll try to start the weekly thread on time in the morning because the three year old usually sleeps in late and that should give me some computer time. I hope you all get whatever wonderful weather is in your forecast....rain, cooler temperatures....all of the above. Dawn