hairmetal4ever, I posted this on another post but I'll put it here too. Yesterday my 21-year-old son said, "This is the most bi-polar weather I have seen in my life." and I told him it's the most bi-polar weather I've seen in my life too. (I'm half a century now). I didn't actually measure but it looked like 6" on my car yesterday. A few years ago we did get snow on May 1st, but never got this cold. We broke a lot of records for cold this year. So on the bright side it's a good indication of what trees are bud hardy. Keepers: Pipestone plum, Saturn, NJ 252, and O'Henry peach (all of them still have some good buds or are blooming now). Hoyt Montrose apricot also made it through last night which went down to 22F officially. Then there's this volunteer peach that looks as if it was not affected at all; it's loaded with blooms. I will see if they are worth eating this summer. I'm rethinking my zone denial issues but also trying to come up with a good solution so next spring I don't face this problem.

The tree cutters came and picked up all the debris. They did a good job, but got our neighbor angry because they came through their driveway to get to the vacant lot next door. They had cut an enormous limb that had fallen over there. They left some ruts in the yard, so I had to do some tall apologizing, etc. Our pest control man came this afternoon and identified the flying demons as metallic beetles. They were all over the trees, and he said they were after the sap that was oozing after having the branches trimmed. They were dive-bombing me while he was here. I had to wear a hat today to keep them out of my hair. He'll be back next week to spray for them. This post disappeared this morning, but I see it is back on the forum again. I hope I don't have any more problems with Photobucket. Nancy

Kathy, The frog and turtle bed should be easy. Ours is a lily pond in the ground, NOT surrounded by stone. (To me, a whole lot of stonework popping up in the middle of the grassy prairie where we have NO native stone visible just seemed too fake, and I am into having a landscape that fits in with our native prairie....up to a point.) Maybe someday I'll get tired of weedeating back the bermuda to keep it out of the sedges at the water's edge, and maybe then I'll replace it with stonework. Our pond is earth-bottomed so the frogs can dig into the mud to hibernate. It has water lilies, which gives them pads to sit on....and they DO sit on them! (I can divide the water lilies in the spring and bring some to the plant swap in April if your water feature will have room for lilies.) It has tall spiky plants (pickerel rush, horsetail reed, cattails (have them and wish we didn't) for the dragon flies to perch upon. The pond has a log in it for the turtles to climb on for sunning purposes. One end of the log rests on the foot of the 2' deep pond and the other end rests on the pond bank. Several turtles can sun on it at one time. Native prairie sedges planted themselves in the soil at the edge of the pond and the bermuda grass runs right up to the sedges. The sedges give frogs and turtles on land some taller vegetation for protection, because the chickens eat frogs (oh, yes they do!) and so do a couple of the cats (or, at least, they try to). In a bed several feet away from the pond, I have lots of plants to give the frogs and turtles a safe place to hang out on land when they wish to--away from the pesky cats and chickens. This bed has fairly low-growing junipers (a couple of feet tall, but with room underneath for both turtles and frogs), a chaste tree (vitex agnus-castus), a chinaberry tree (we had one when I was a kid and I love it even though it is not the highest quality tree), roses, swamp mallows, and various annual and perennial flowers. I let the growth here stay pretty thick to give the little critters protective cover. I also have cannas and the giant green elephant ears nearby to give the pond area a sort-of tropical look, and to give the frogs something to sit on. They like to sit on the big broad leaves. The turtles like to dig into sandy soil to lay their eggs, so a patch of sandy soil that can be dug up is handy, but they will lay their eggs wherever they choose. We have all kinds of frogs and turtles and, needless to say, all we had to do was dig a hole in the ground (Elvis, the guy who put in our tornado shelter dug the hole with his backhoe the same day he put in the tornado shelter) and the frogs and toads and turtles magically appeared. Our 'water feature' is more or less round--I didn't want it to look too perfectly round--and about 15' across. It is two feet deep, more or less, and has sloped sides so any small animal or child that falls in can crawl out. There is not a filter or pump, just Mother Nature, and the water is clear most of the time although we get an occasional algae bloom after a big rainfall in hot weather. We have a few mosquito fish and goldfish in the pond to keep mosquito larvae under control. A frog or turtle bed sounds like fun. I bet you could find stepping stones in a turtle shape if you like that short of ornamental thing in the garden. Of all the various landscape features we have, it is always the lily pond with its frogs and turtles and dragon flies and toads and fish that gets EVERYONE'S attention. People just want to sit and stare at it. I guess there's a little kid inside of each of us, and that kid loves the fogs, turtles and other creatures. The only wild things not welcome in our pond are the great blue herons who swoop in to stand in the pond and eat every now and then. The guineas always tell us when the herons have invaded the pond by gathering nearby and squawking their heads off. Then, the dogs and I walk out the door about 15' from the pond, and the heron flies away. Then, Honey, our little blonde terrier mix, chases the heron for as long as she can--usually until it's flown several hundred feet away, and then she returns to us, all proud and excited that she has protected us from the dreaded Great Blue Heron. (Yes, it is ALWAYS a zoo here no matter what.) I also like to have a lot of night-blooming flowers (daturas, brugmansias, four o'clocks, moonflower vine, etc.) nearby so we can enjoy looking at them and also enjoy their lovely nighttime fragrance while sitting out by the pond in the evenings. And, too, I keep several tropical plants in large pots near the pond because the smaller tree frogs love to hide in their foliage. (Not all frogs, after all, are water lovers! The tree frogs are one of my favorite local creatures.) Dawn

We have a funeral this afternoon. It's a graveside service and it's been raining all morning. I hope the preacher is not long winded. We had a new farm building built last winter and they are pouring concrete in it right now. The cement trucks have been rolling in for the past hour. I didn't realize the amount of cement it would take. OK Dave Ramsey, beans and rice, rice and beans. lolol