Hello all, We are still swimming here in Southern California. I got the pool up to 83 degrees last week with solar heating only and the kids were swimming very happily. We should have another small heat wave coming next week with temperatures in the eighties again. I have never looked at the weather report as much as the last few weeks since the pool was done. njfolks: The stone is called Red Mountain. Mostly grey with some beautiful rust colors here and there. All the stone (flag and stacked) is that same stone. I had them replace several pieces on the flag stone that was flaking badly - but the rest has been fine. As with any stone, there will be a few bad pieces here and there. Just make sure they don't install those pieces. I wish I could take credit for the design - but it was the builder's designer who made our smaller yard into all that entertainment space. Here are some nightime pictures of the fire pit:

I sat in court last week (haha, they issued a bench warrant for BM's arrest because she didn't show up for TWO hearings... the first for DCSS ~requesting an order that she seek work since she has not paid in over 6 months, the second ~ a contempt DH filed for her not paying her half of SD's medical bills) but being so close to Christmas... lots of the cases were about that. It was really pathetic to watch two people fight over how to split up the kids' Christmas day. One mom wants until noon, the dad wants them at 9am. I remember splitting it with my son's father & once, his wife came outside & assaulted me during the exchange... cops were called & of course nothing happened because she told them I hit her... they offered to take both of us to jail or do nothing. It was NOT the way any of the kids should have to spend the holiday... my son or the other five kids in the car that witnessed it. It is just so much better for the kids to spend the day with one parent & celebrate the holiday with the other parent on a different day. After the 'cops on Christmas' incident, that is what I did. and of course we had to get an order for every other year so we no longer split the holiday at all. We had to do the same for Thanksgiving but now that he's in his 20's, I look back and it was more harmful for HIM to split up his days. When the parents get along, I think it can work out fine.. but if they don't, it will ruin a kids holiday so what is the point of even getting them? I see many parents doing it for themselves, because THEY have an expectation of how they want their holiday to be. They are not thinking about what's best for the children. The sad thing is when one parent is going to see relatives for a holiday or vacation, that may be getting together from far away & they only have that one opportunity to see them but the other parent won't let them go.. it's the children that suffer. I see lots of that too. For that, there is no answer except that sometimes we have to sacrifice so the child isn't placed in a situation that makes it worse for them... and know that when they grow up, they will see through it. And there's no guarantee that they ever will see the truth. My son is almost 24 & is trying to plan part of his Christmas weekend with his dad, whom he hasn't spoken to since before he was deployed. We don't even know if he's incarcerated or not (he's been in & out of prison for many years) but my son has the hope that his dad will step up to be a dad to him & a grandpa to DGS. I had to talk to him when I was getting guardianship of DGS... he actually told me that he's fine with it as long as I allow him to see DGS when he wants. I said that's fine, anytime you want to see him just give me a call. That was several months ago.. not one call. (well, first he wanted me to agree to an every other weekend visitation schedule... and I said "you're going to come get him every other weekend?" and then he changed it to "let me see him when I want." I think he just wanted to see if he can engage me in a battle but when I refused to fight over it, he went away.) My stepmom always said, "kill 'em with kindness" because they thrive on conflict.

Hello, sorry you have had probs with your plants, and I agree the terrarium did look lovely. I can see several problems however. One problem lies with the fact that some of the plants need different conditions, the Venus Fly Trap for instance. Also lack of light has made #1 & #5 very etiolated. As I don't grow many c&s (I concentrate on Crassulas aka Jades) I'm sure someone with greater knowledge will soon be here to help more ;) The spaghnum moss topping is a mistake as cacti need good drainage and if this was wet/moist it could have rotted the stems (ok for the Fly trap though) The Ph of the soil may be wrong as again Fly traps like an acidic soil and rain water with moist conditions and can even sit in a dish of water. Cacti/succs like fast draining soils and hate to sit in water or have moisture around them. The bowl also has no drainage holes despite a drainage layer at the bottom. It is such a shame when retailers sell collections of non compatible plants in the wrong type of container, but I guess it's just a ploy to get a sale. The individual plants would have been just fine if taken out and planted individually in their own specific mix and given the right conditions to thrive. I think the others will be salvageable, as I said just wait for some more answers. Gill UK This post was edited by greenclaws on Wed, Jan 21, 15 at 8:03

I am so far behind on this week's news that I feel like I cannot catch up. First, the mudroom report. Knocking out the north wall so we could expand into former sunroom space was very hard. Amy, if you'd been sitting and watching, I believe you would have heard a curse word here and there. Apparently when Tim and Chris sectioned off the mudroom from the sunroom about 4 years ago, they built that wall to last forever. It had a gazillion nails and screws to hold it all in place forever, and there was a thick wall there. From the mudroom side, we had to remove the following materials in the order listed: beadboard wainscotting, drywall, 1/2 inch plywood, insulation and then, on the sunroom side, more drywall....and all the framing to which all of that was attached. Tim started demo while I was cooking a big breakfast of bacon, eggs and grain-free pancakes (made with almond meal and I think I like them better than regular pancakes, too). After we ate breakfast, he continued demo while I cleaned up the kitchen, did laundry, etc. I think the demo alone took until a little after 12 noon. Oh, and he removed the flooring from the part of the sunroom that is becoming part of the enlarged mudroom. Then, in the afternoon, we built the new west wall of the mudroom, getting the framing up, the internal window put in (it will allow the sunlight from the sunroom to enter the mudroom and help keep it light in there), the drywall put up on the sunroom side of the wall, and a new light fixture installed. I love the new light----it is a gooseneck style barn light. Then the fire pagers went off (for three grass fires) and that was it for Saturday's mudroom work. On Sunday, we put up the insulation and the drywall on the mudroom side of the wall and framed in the closet and cubbie storage area at the north end of the new mudroom area. We tried to intermittently watch part of the Dallas Cowboys game---we had the TV on in the living room so we could walk into the house and check on the game periodically. After the Cowboys seemingly gave up in the second half, we quit trying to watch the game and just tried to work on the room. We stopped for dinner around 5 pm after cleaning up all our construction mess, and put the mudroom furniture back into the mudroom so the room is functional, though nowhere close to being done and it is a good thing we did because about as soon as we had finished eating, our fire pagers went off for back-to-back wrecks on the interstate. I was hoping the mudroom would be a 2 or 3 weekend project, but based on how busy the fire pagers are all of a sudden, I fear it may be a 4 or 5 weekend project. That's okay. We'll get it done in October and will have a much more useful space. Part of the storage area is a garden closet where I can store my seed box, which doesn't really have its own spot inside the house so it tends to float from room to room, and my garden tool bucket, which I tend to leave in the mudroom year round. At least now I'll be able to hide it away behind a closet door. Nancy, We have gazillions of deer here along the river. They come to the compost pile daily to eat whatever I've tossed on it that they find edible. I probably see 8 or 10 visit at a time, multiple times daily (not necessarily the same ones in the afternoon or evening as we had in the morning). They often cruise along the fencelines of the two enclosed gardens and eat bean vines and such growing on the outside of the fence. However, they don't like to go inside an enclosed area if they cannot see what is inside of it, so they tend to not step foot in the garden at this time of year, even if I leave the gate open, because they cannot see beyond the plants growing on the garden fences. They'll go into the garden as soon as frost (or lack of rain) kills the plants growing on the garden fences. I put out deer corn and other goodies for them in winter, and every day/night of the year, they scarf up any hen scratch or sunflower seeds that the wild birds and chickens don't devour during the course of the day. During canning season (they know exactly when canning season is) they often stand out by the compost pile waiting for me to bring my compost bucket out to empty out all the waste product so they can gobble i t up, I have to yell at them to go away just so I can walk out to the compost pile safely, It is a wonder I get any compost at all because the deer and other wild critters love to feast on stuff that I think I am going to compost. One reason we moved here was that we wanted to live surrounded by wildlife, and we have almost everything imaginable here---whitetail deer, cottontail rabbits, skunks (striped and spotted), possums, raccoons, armadillos, snakes, turtles, frogs, skinks, lizards, coyotes, beaver, bobcats, ringtail cats, ferrets, feral hogs, squirrels, moles, voles, field mice, pack rats, all kinds of birds--including eagles (which is the coolest thing!), and an occasional cougar (they stalk the garden a lot when they are around), and more. I think we got more wildlife than we bargained for, but you learn to coexist with them and to avoid the dangerous ones. Occasionally there is an alligator spotted in the area, usually in a farm pond when the Red River is low during drought, but we've never had one on our property, as far as we know, The nearest one we know of was in a farm pond about a half-mile from us. We don't have ground hogs this far south or bears either, though they've been seen this year as close to us as Pontotoc County. which is closer than usual. Kim, I am sorry for all your troubles and especially for your poor head. I hope you don't have a concussion. Take care of yourself. Your tomatoes would be growing fine here as we have abundant sunshine and mostly a lack of moisture. Yesterday was hot, today is supposed to be even hotter, and then I think we cool down again, though the heavy rainfall in the forecast this week is expected to miss us for the most part. I think we might get a half-inch or inch. We'll see. I'd say the autumn fire season started up here this past weekend, despite most areas getting close to an inch of rain last week. Sadly, an inch of rain is not much when you have waist-high dried, cured grasses filling pastures---the August rainfall caused rampant growth of grasses and brush, but the almost total lack of rain in the month of September allowed everything to dry out and become fuel for fires. Tomatoes, peppers and beans are exceptionally happy thought. My squash plants died suddenly over the weekend---not sure if it is SVBs (I'll look for signs of them next time I step foot into the garden) or if disease hit them along with last week's rain. Amy, I hope you can just take it easy this week and recover from the draining effects of your mom's surgery last week. Dealing with aging and ill parents can be so exhausting, and I think the strain is every bit as much mental/psychological as it is physical too. You just need some down time to chill and relax and not feel so stressed and worried. Nancy, When sweet potatoes fail to form tubers, there can be several different reasons. One is that the soil is too rich and they plow all their growth into foliage. Similarly, too much fertilizer can cause the same issue even in poor soil. Another is too much shade. It also can be a variety thing---there's a few varieties that need really, really long growing seasons, but in my garden, even those will produce tubers by October if I planted them in May. Sometimes if you let the long runners root into the ground, that can prevent you from getting large tubers---I believe it diverts the energy from forming tubers and keeps the plants overly vegetative. One way to prevent that is to use a stick or garden tool to move around the rambling foliage every few days so it does not root into the ground all over the place. Rebecca, Where Tim is from in Pennsylvania, those brown marmorated stink bugs have been invading homes in the autumn for years now, and they show up by the hundreds and by the thousands. (I hopt that is not what you are starting to see up there now.) They do sell traps with scent baits to draw them in so that people can (hopefully) trap them outdoors before they find a way indoors. Kim, Roselles usually bloom most heavily in October here (sometimes they start blooming in late September) but it can depend on exactly which type you have. Some bloom later than others, and all the ones I've grown have been daylength sensitive. I seem to have more blooms from the ones I grow at the shady west end of the garden as the afternoon shade may trick them into thinking daylength is shortening a bit more than it actually is. Some years, when I have had tons and tons of calyxes on the plants in October or early November as the first frost approaches, I have had to cut off the limbs (the plants are too huge and too deeply rooted to pull up) and take them into the garage or the house to keep them from freezing. Then, as the calyxes dry out a bit indoors and the blossoms fall, I can harvest and use the calyxes. If frost threatens before you can harvest enough roselles, since you don't have a lot of indoor storage space, you might be able to cover the plants with frost blankets or even regular blankets to keep them alive long enough for you to harvest an ample supply of calyxes. Not only are the great for tea but they also make a wonderful jelly---I like it better than any other fruity jelly I've ever made. The rat snake in the camper is horrifying. It is that time of the year when they are looking for places to den up for winter, and also looking for food to gobble up before they hibernate. I am so very careful in October to not leave a garage or shed door open because I don't want unwelcome residents. I do leave the greenhouse doors open so that cool nights will push snakes out of the greenhouse just in case they are thinking of overwintering there...poor Ryder! His daddy played such a mean trick on him. Nancy, To fill up raised beds, use anything and everything you can get your hands on---logs (preferably partially rotted ones, a la hugelkulture style), chopped/shredded autumn leaves, twigs, grass clippings, animal manure (local farms or rabbit raisers often offer it on Craig's List or Freecycle), hay, straw, wood bark, mushroom compost from eastern OK, etc. If you fill up the beds with all that stuff from now throughout winter, then by Spring you'll have a surprising amount of decomposition and it will be ready for planting. I have built our garden bed soil the same way the woodland builds its own soil----by piling up organic matter of all kinds and just letting it decay in place. I raked up and used lots of leaf mold from our woodland in the early years here because it is so good for the soil, but I can only collect stuff in the woods after we've had several very hard freezes. Otherwise, I have snake encounters even in winter (I learned that years ago with a pygmy rattler encounter during what should have been the snake-free season). You can add layers of cardboard to attract earthworms. Earthworms love cardboard. They'll come to eat it and stick around to devour everything else. I have to go now---Jet is demanding his morning walk whether I'm ready to go now or not. Dawn