I don't have any damage yet, nothing burst at home (but pipe did burst at work in the back hall, fortunately not in my office). I should be able to leave work at a reasonable hour tomorrow (?), I'm thinking a good idea would be to shovel the patio -- not easy work since it's below grade (but definitely a good workout!), but if I could manage to get that cleared then all that melting snow wouldn't melt into the family room, and it would clear the drain to allow that to thaw. DH shoveled a bit of it by the door, but it's best to get it all out of there. Nothing I can do about the sump line. Nothing of value in the crawl - that's flooded before, a PITA but not damaging (floor is dirt covered with plastic sheeting, the water just gets absorbed), can do the bucket line with DH if have to. Greatplains - that sounds awful! Are you going to have to have the roof replaced?

York Rose, I'm afraid you might be right about the Chilli Thrips inevitably returning. Just wondering if anyone has any "inside scoop" on the issue. Jim, thanks for the well-wishes; as for Pandora's box, I guess we owe that one to international commerce and travel. Someone at our local Ag. extension told me they find out about multiple new invasive species of both insects and diseases pretty much every year. Generally, that's a very bad thing for the ecosystem. Every so often it's benign. For example, New Orleans is now full of many thousands of green parots that live in the local palm trees (palm trees also NOT native). No one knows for sure where they came from, but Many parts of Florida also have the same species (quaker parots). Luckily, it seems the quaker birds have an almost identical dietary need to the Carolina Parakeet that went extinct here a century or so ago. So the new birds fit right in. They're fun to watch, too. (Sorry, got off subject there) Mike

I've watered and covered my tomatoes and peppers. I'm not worried about anything else. I just don't want the tomatoes to be stunted by the cold. Oh, and I had a coleus plant overwinter in the greenhouse this year. It was a volunteer in my pot of sage and I figured it wouldn't make it through the winter, even in the greenhouse. Obviously, I was wrong! If we keep having winters like this, I'm going to look into more plants.

I sometimes slowly bake a pile of chillis in the oven on a low heat for a couple of hours. Then just store them like other dried herbs, and crush them into whatever I am cooking when ever I need them. If you blacken them a little it gives them a bonus flavour. I think some mexican cooking requires 'blackened' chillis.