Great week of quotes Lilo! I can't find a favorite in Saturday's quotes, except to say that I'd like to have all three sitting around my dinner table. Imagine the conversation!

Lee, Thanks so much for your input. I appreciate it so very much. Because the temperatures in my microclimate here very near the Red River drop so low thatpatchy frost is routine as late as May 3rd or 4th (every year since 2007, I think, except for 2012), I almost always have at least my tomato plants in the ground when we are getting late frosts at least once a week, so I am pretty used to the routine of planting and then watching the weather. The weather used to drive me totally insane here, and then I bought a 5000 square foot roll of Agri-bon floating row cover, and that has helped me dial down the weather panic a great deal. Since I have the row cover, my current plan is to put tomato plants in the ground Sunday unless the forecast worsens, and I am waiting until Sunday just to give the models a couple of days to drop the temperatures lower...so I have one more chance to back out of planting. Our local TV met scared me last night by dropping his forecast low for Marietta to 33 while the NWS was saying 38. I was in full panic mode for about 30 minutes. I could have run out and hastily thrown row cover over everything, and I almost did, but I really wasn't feeling like he was right. I sure was fearing he might be right though. So, what happened? Our Burneyville mesonet station recorded 33 degrees but at our house one outdoor thermometer dropped to 38 and the other one dropped to 37 and the plants look fine this morning. I wasn't really worried about much of anything other than that late frost or freezing temperatures might knock the blooms off my sugar snap peas. That wouldn't have been the worst thing that's ever happened here. So, all systems are 'go' for planting tomato plants soon, but I'll say I am 90% certain I'll plant Sunday afternoon and we'll see if the models worsen and make me back off from that plan. My real fear is that when the weather pattern changes, we'll go from the 30s at night to the 90s during the day all in the same week! Dawn

Rats: observations on the history and habitat of the city's most unwanted inhabitants - Robert Sullivan

Barbara Pym is a great favorite of mine - try Excellent Women. Her books are wonderful, and the characters are beautifully drawn and live very realistic lives without being raped and murdered. A fun YA novel that I discovered here at RP (thank you, whoever it was!) is Sorcery and Cecilia, or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer. There are three books in the series, if you like the first one. I can't remember the quote exactly, nor who said it (an artist, I believe) but to paraphrase - why is it only valid or artistic to evoke negative emotions or feelings? Why isn't happiness just as important? Why, as an artist, does one have to defend oneself for making people smile? I have thought of this nearly every day since I heard it. Go ahead and read happy books, draw pretty bright colored flowers, and don't be afraid of being thought shallow if you want to, at least occasionally, leave the darkness behind.