I belong to CRFG, so they are not a mystery to me. I have had maybe two Conadria figs ripen so far this season (there are hundreds on the tree). They are very prone to splitting here in San Diego. Last year was a cooler summer and they never did ripen. Most of the rest of my figs are done for the season, or very, very nearly so, but the Conadria is just beginning to think about it. Now, having said that, I have one fig tree (Vista) which is 20+ years old and has never, ever, ever, had a split fig. But a friend growing it back east has 80-90% splitting. So local climatic and cultural conditions play a part. I have 200+ varieties (though not all have fruited yet), and very few of them have splitting problems, but so far for me Conadria is more likely to split than all but two or three. Black Madeira is a fabulous fig, flavor wise, and just about as long a season as Conadria. Seedsavers does require membership, but it gives you access to thousand of heirloom seeds and such. The yearbook (February) is supposed to be similar to a giant seed catalog, though there are some things other than seeds.

Still chasing my tale at work so don't forget me. Hope you enjoy these. Thank goodness there's a name for this disorder. Somehow I feel better,even though I have it!! Recently, I was diagnosed with A.A.A.D.D. - Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder. This is how it manifests: I decide to water my garden. As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I look over at my car and decide it needs washing. As I start toward the garage, I notice mail on the porch table that I brought up from the mail box earlier. I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car. I lay my car keys on the table, put the junk mail in the garbage can under the table, and notice that the can is full. So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the garbage first. But then I think, since I'm going to be near the mailbox when I take out the garbage anyway, I may as well pay the bills first. I take my check book off the table, and see that there is only one check left. My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go inside the house to my desk where I find the can of Coke I'd been drinking. I'm going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the Coke aside so that I don't accidentally knock it over.. The Coke is getting warm, and I decide to put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold. As I head toward the kitchen with the Coke, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye--they need water. I put the Coke on the counter and discover my reading glasses that I've been searching for all morning. I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I'm going to water the flowers. I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote. Someone left it on the kitchen table. I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, I'll be looking for the remote, but I won't remember that it's on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, But first, I'll water the flowers. I pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on the floor. So, I set the remote back on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill. Then, I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do. At the end of the day: the car isn't washed the bills aren't paid there is a warm can of Coke sitting on the counter the flowers don't have enough water, there is still only 1 check in my check book, I can't find the remote, I can't find my glasses, and I don't remember what I did with the car keys. Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I'm really baffled because I know I was busy all day, and I'm really tired. I realize this is a serious problem, and I'll try to get some help for it, but first I'll check my e-mail.... Do me a favor. Forward this message to everyone you know, because I don't remember who I've sent it to. Don't laugh -- if this isn't you yet, your day is coming!! MAN I'M TIRED! A man was sick and tired of going to work every day while his wife stayed home. He wanted her to see what he went through so he prayed: 'Dear Lord: I go to work every day and put in 8 hours while my wife merely stays at home. I want her to know what I go through, so please allow her body to switch with mine for a day. Amen.' God, in his infinite wisdom, granted the man's wish.. The next morning, sure enough, the man awoke as a woman. He arose, cooked breakfast for his mate, Awakened the kids, Set out their school clothes, Fed them breakfast, Packed their lunches, Drove them to school, Came home and Picked up the dry cleaning, Took it to the cleaners and Stopped at the bank to make a deposit, Went grocery shopping, then drove home to put away the groceries, Paid the bills and balanced the check book. He cleaned the cat's litter box and bathed the dog. Then it was already 1PM And he hurried to make the beds, Do the laundry, vacuum, dust, and sweep and Mop the kitchen floor. Ran to the school to pick up the kids and Got into an argument with them on the way home. Set out milk and cookies and Got the kids organized to do their homework, Then set up the ironing board and Watched TV while he did the ironing. At 4:30 he began peeling potatoes and Washing vegetables for salad, breaded the chicken chops and Snapped fresh beans for supper. After supper, he cleaned the kitchen, Ran the dishwasher, Folded laundry, Bathed the kids, and put them to bed. At 9 P. M. He was exhausted and, though his daily chores weren't finished, He went to bed where he was expected to make love, which he managed to get through without complaint. The next morning, he awoke and immediately knelt by the bed and said: -'Lord, I don't know what I was thinking. I was so wrong to envy my Wife's' being able to stay home all day. Please, oh! Oh! Please, let us Trade back.' The Lord, in his infinite wisdom, replied: 'My son, I feel you have learned your lesson and I will be happy to change things back to the way they were. You'll just have to wait nine months though. You got pregnant last night.' Have a good weekend!

Jennifer, The first time I saw a BP truck at our Wal-mart, which was just last week, it was only delivering wooden shipping crates of BP onions, but then it was back this week delivering a few cool-season herbs and veggies. I'm thinking of those poor little plants right now because our OK Mesonet station is showing a current temperature of 20 degrees and that's pretty much borderline too cold for some of the plants I saw yesterday, especially given how small they are and the fact they are in small containers and not in the ground where soil temperatures could help insulate them from some of the effects of the cold. I hope the garden center employees covered up those plants last night or moved them indoors. While the very early transplant arrivals often do not freeze or have damage at 20 degrees, sometimes they do....and sometimes the damage is invisible and can result in later problems like early bolting or buttonheading of brassicas....and no one links that bolting or buttonheading in March or April to the fact that the plants were exposed to excessively cold temperatures while on the garden center shelves in late January or early February. I'm sorry your mom has the flu and wish her a speedy recovery. I hope whatever you're fighting is not the flu and that you can successfully repel those germs. I carry hand sanitizer in my purse, not that I am obsessive about it, but I hate touching anything in a grocery store at this time of the year for fear that flu and cold germs are lingering everywhere. I wash my hands constantly, and I do not understand how/why people would use a public restroom facility and not wash their hands. I just don't get it. Rebecca, Well, spinach is really cold hardy. Perhaps dew and/or frost have left enough moisture behind to induce germination. We're in severe drought, are awfully dry and have tons of tiny little green things sprouting everywhere now. In fact, the OK Mesonet's Relative Greenness for our county went from 11% last week to 21% this week, which surprised me, but then when I looked at the ground closely, I could see all the tiny green sprouts popping up in fields, and clearly the program (satellite? radar?) that calculates Relative Greenness for each county is 'seeing' that greenup as well. Are any of y'all allergic to cedar (which actually is juniper, but I cannot win that battle on getting people to correctly label it)? Because it is pollinating down here already and everyone who is allergic to it is having allergy symptoms already, including Tim and I. Just yesterday I was looking at cedars in our neighborhood and commenting to Tim how heavily they're covered in pollen, and Fran and I noticed the same thing while out at wildfires in northern Love County a few days ago. A lot of folks who recovered from the flu now thing they are having a relapse or have caught a cold or whatever, and I just wonder if what's actually happening is they are allergic to the cedar pollen. Nancy, We all are so proud of Amber. She's just an awesome person and her students are so lucky to have a teacher who loves them and works so hard to teach them. Everything she does is always for them and about them, so when she was named Teacher of the Year, she was totally surprised because she doesn't think about stuff like that---her focus is completely on her kids. The riding mower is dead.....or dying. It is around 16 or 17 years old and gets used a lot since we mow about 2 acres regularly. I think it really needed to be retired 3-5 years ago, but Tim is a cheapskate who doesn't want to spend the money to buy another one, so he keeps fixing it and keeps it limping along and just barely working. I just kinda wish he'd go ahead and buy a new one and have something reliable. Weekends are too short as it is and he doesn't get much mowing done if half the weekend is spent chasing down parts and fixing the mower. Jen, I bet it was a nice day to go to the dog park. Our dogs spent a lot more time outdoors today in their dog yard than they usually do in the winter, and they were so thrilled that it was mild, sunny and warm. They were exhausted by the end of the day which I always think is a good thing as it does cut down on how energetic they are in the evening. I think Tigger is the perfect name for a dog! I assume the planters you're planting are your winter sowing? Have fun finishing it up. Nancy, That bermuda grass is such a nuisance, and it creeps into the east end of my garden every year in late summer once it is too snaky for me to hand-weed it out. Johnson grass does the same, and it essentially is bermuda grass on steriods. Since I don't use chemical herbicides and since the presence of the rattlesnakes and copperheads makes weeding too risky after a certain point, that sort of invasion just cannot be avoided. It drives me mad. Even if I could hand-remove it, I'm willing to bet that at some point the summer weather would get too hot and I'd decide I wasn't going to spend all that time out in the heat removing it. I'll be removing all of it this week (I hope) that I can as long as the wind stays down and I am able to spend more time at home in the garden instead of being away at fires. I think on Mon and Tues, the wind will be low enough that I'll be home in the garden. I'm not so sure about Wed and Thurs because the stronger winds are expected to return then. I have been watching for snakes this week on the warmer days because last January they came out here in southern OK on the warm winter days. A little girl in the Austin, TX area was bitten by a rattlesnake at Longhorn Caverns State Park a few days ago on a warm, sunny day when the family was excited to get outdoors and have fun after being cooped up by cold weather, and that certainly caught my attention. Undoubtedly it generally is warmer in Austin than it is up here at this time of the year, but not necessarily that much warmer, so I took her mom's warning about snakes being out to be a serious one. I think your soil will be fine whether the stuff is broken down enough or not. We have gazillions of things that sprout and grow just fine in some pretty awful dense, red clay.....although I'd never expect my precious garden plants to survive and perform well in that stuff. It is merely that as the soil gets better via amending, the plant performance improves year after year. I've always been in it for the long haul---not expecting to totally turn around the soil in 3, 5 or even 10 years, but just dedicated to continually improving it slowly over time. There's places in my garden that probably never get as much compost as I'd like, but the plants grow well there anyway. I do look at the improved soil now and have trouble remembering how truly awful it was in the beginning---but all I have to do is dig down maybe a foot to get beneath the area of improved soil and there's my reminder of the awful red clay we started out with. We only eat out about once a week, something made easier by the fact that it is pretty much too long of a drive to go anywhere that we'd really like to eat, and eating out usually is restricted to the weekend anyway since Tim's long commute makes his day incredibly long as it is. By the time he walks in the door at night, he's been gone 13 or 14 hours and going out to eat is not on his list of things he wants to do....and I don't blame him. I am hoping for a better week this week than last week when we had fires virtually every day. Having said that, we're off to a bad start, with the fire pagers going off for a vehicle in the roadway on fire about a mile from our house around 4 a.m. this morning. I am sure there's tons and tons I do not understand about motor vehicles, but I just do not understand how you're driving up the road at 4 a.m. and all of a sudden your car or truck bursts into flames. That must be a terrifying moment when you realize you're in a vehicle that is on fire. So, now that I am up and wide awake, there's no way I can fall back asleep. Tim, by contrast, can crawl back into bed after something like that and be asleep and snoring in 5 minutes. I wish I could fall back asleep like that, but it just doesn't happen---once I'm awake, I'm awake to stay. This is useful in summer because I just go outdoors at the break of day to get into the garden early and beat the heat, but not so useful in winter when it is cold outdoors. Dawn

Airborne viruses mutate at an astounding rate, so it is unrealistic to expect a vaccine to work 100% However, look at it this way, covid only had an initial .4% rate of spread, which is four times that of the flu, (that's around .1% and even then many folks die from that, which makes any little bit the flu vaccine can do to help something on the plus side). Look how many people died around the world with even 4 tenths of a percent rate of infection. So if they vaccine is even 60% effective, it is preventing thousands of people from getting sick. This is statistical math, which I guess most people aren't familiar with, they want 100% fool proof math, which is not how natural systems work, they are so varied and complex. Lots of people owe their existence to birth control that was 99% effective . . . small percentage multiplied over large, large numbers over time, time, time still has considerable effect. It's complex and variable math, which is why it seems awfully sophomoric to me to criticize "experts" who can't give you immediate, fool proof advice all the time no matter what. You don't even want to listen to the long set of "maybe" or "ifs" that they would couch there advice in, it's called confusing. Or who knows, I know it gets your post erased on here. But we have to make decisions like this on a whole host of important issues every day. I think the only reason I have avoided Covid is I have not returned to work, which like GS, was teaching which would expose me to considerable risk every day, no matter what. I used to get the flu every year too when I was teaching. Have enjoyed not having that to deal with, even though I miss teaching a lot. The other thing I have avoided is airline, bus or train travel . . . sigh. Edited to add that covid is one reason many teachers are deciding to retire early, they are getting on in years and just don't want the constant health challenges. And of course fewer and fewer young people are choosing teaching or nursing as career paths . . .