I'd try Aunt Ruby's German Green, I like it much better than Green Giant. White Queen has a much more acidic taste than most of the other whites in my opinion and it's been on my "grow again" list for at least 5 years now.I agree that most whites are plain tasting. I've grown carbon for several years now and never been impressed with it yet. Southern Night is a great and weird shaped black tomato though. I'm putting it on my grow again list. Boat shaped, or kidney bean shaped and very prolific.Black Krim still my fave, but for a smaller tomato, black prince is pretty darned good too. Ping pong ball size. Hillbilly is a good one in the bicolor catagory I've not seen on your list yet.Big and yellow/pink. Kellogg's Breakfast is a great orange one. Large and good. Ildi yellow grape is a must have. Great flavor and doesn't crack. It will sometimes turn pear shaped if it doesn't get enough rain. They are very prolific. Agree with you on Black Cherry! they're great. I also like snow white cherry. Sometimes they crack but they taste great and look wonderful with the black cherry, and make a great contrast. I loved Pink Peach, Garden Peach, and Furry Red Boar this year for fuzzy tomatoes. Wasn't impressed with Angora red fuzzy cherry, except I liked the leaves. Didn't like Elberta Peach either. Those two weren't productive enough. Pork Chop was a great yellow tomato, kind of striped. It's on my grow again list for sure, kind of a salty flavored one. Bocek Italian is the only paste/oxheart type I've been really thrilled with. It's been on the grow again list for five years now. Russian 117 is good and large, but kind of a skimpy producer for me.Will try it one more year. Really liked amish salad this year, didn't crack and kept me loaded with tomatoes all season. Larger than a cherry, and it takes about 10 to fill a pint for the farmers market.Looks like a giant pinkish red grape tomato with that consistancy, kind of hard and good taste a little on the sweet side. About 2.5 inches X 1". Best all season producer this year; Celebrity bush (hybrid). I'd imagine the non-compact would be good too. I had the first tomato on those early,and I still have green ones ripening now that I picked before first frost. Customers with those in containers liked them too,and this was a terrible year for container tomatoes around here this year, too hot and dry. I'd bet they really would like them in a decent year.

Annie, I realized this weekend that I do a lot of squatting while I help the kids. This motivates me to do even more. Bpathome, I am going to start planks this week! Strolling is still exercise. ANY movement, no matter how small, counts. It all counts. Sounds like a really fun walk! Lizbeth, I am sorry you needed surgery! It's OK if you missed some time-- what is always important is that you are back. To me, this is a learning process. I know what you mean about mornings. I try to go on automatic and just get it up and do it without thinking. Gibby, woo hoo!!! How did the weekend go? Amj, glad you are feeling better. What a great support your DH will be! My husband has no interest in exercise. Blfenton, I love how you incorporate exercise so regularly. I definitely see this as investment, as you said. I think, for a long time, I thought of it as vanity, or someone bossing me around about what I "should" be doing, but being 40, I see what a long road lies ahead (or short one!) if I don't take care of little problems NOW. Gscience, that's great that you already have a routine! RE: the fruit/veg, I am trying to get more in by eating some every other time I eat. Are you going to be done soon with the school yr, or teach during the summer term, too?

So, fire pagers went off for a horrific wreck on the interstaten a few minutes ago, and my heart breaks for the families of those involved. I expect Tim will be out there for a few hours. Since we don't take Fire Rehab drinks/food to wrecks on the interstate....but I'm wide awake after Tim got up and left for the fire station.....I figured I might as well be here. Maybe now, in the quiet house in the very early morning hours, I can catch up. My dream would be to do so and then to fall back asleep, but falling back asleep is not something I'm good at doing. Jennifer, Thanks, and I was sleeping well until suddenly I wasn't. Still I actually do feel rested. Don't worry about the potatoes going in a tad late. You're doing fine. We can be so hard on ourselves when sometimes we ought to just celebrate the fact that we're managing to get the garden planted. Congrats on getting all your cool-season greens and brassicas in the ground. I planted some of mine last week, but have a lot more to do this week before I can claim victory and say I'm done. I 'think' the ground finally will be dry enough to plant them Monday or Tuesday, but only if we don't get a lot of rain today/tonight (and we shouldn't). I used a trowel to turn over the soil at first, and then a shovel to get deeper soil flipped over to the surface so the excessively wet mud can dry out some. Since we had a few very windy very warm days, that soil has dried out a lot the last 3 or 4 days. It is about time. Now, just watch for anything that wants to dine on your fresh green plants. Wild birds often attack my young lettuce seedlings with a vengeance, and in rainy springs, the pill bugs and sow bugs prowling the mulched beds require the use of Sluggo or Sluggo Plus to keep those little crustaceans from eating the brassicas and greens. Sowing definitely is a word....... Artichokes are gorgeous plants and each one is like a piece of sculpture in the garden. When I grow them, I like to put them in the northwestern corner of my garden where they are in morning sun until noon or 1 pm and then in dappled shade the rest of the day. They take up a huge amount of space, so plant accordingly. Since we have such a long growing season, I prefer to space most artichoke varieties 4-5' apart. Does yours have a variety name or was it just labeled generically as an artichoke? Rebecca, I do really like David's Garden Seeds. I always try to support small businesses in our region because regional seed suppliers have become so rare and we're lucky when we find one who carries the right varieties for our part of the country. I believe David's now has a brick-and-mortar store in San Antonio too. You did get a lot done! That's terrific. I'm just like your mom with spinach. I like it so much that no matter how much I plant and grow, it never is enough. Amy, Congrats on the front door opening and everything! : ) I can relate to not being able to take DH into a grocery store. Yesterday we stopped in at Central Market to get 2 things--Dr. Bronner's lavender soap and some fresh fruit for Lillie. I really just wanted her to see their amazing produce session (which did impress her with its huge variety, though she pronounced some fruit, like the Sumo oranges, too ugly to buy and eat). So, I was aiming for a quick walk-through. It didn't really happen. Our cart wasn't quite full (we had one of the small mini carts) but we bought a lot that wasn't on my mental list when we went into the store. Our downfall was the bakery area, which impressed Lillie even more than the produce section. Somehow we left the store with Lemon Ricotta cookies (blame that one on me), a loaf of sourdough bread, a cherry pie (Tim) and a Maine wild blueberry pie (Lillie). We consulted one another and decided that as long as they baked goods contained fruit, we were 'eating healthy', (grin) This always happens. If I run into a store alone with a list, I usually can come out with only what's on the list. I hoard cardboard too and everyone in this family, except the cats, know to leave my cardboard stash alone. Chris, being a great gardening enabler, often saves up his cardboard and brings it to me. I might be the only mom in American who is thrilled when her son brings her empty cardboard boxes. Rebecca, My back doesn't like 50-lb bags of anything. It really doesn't even tolerate 40-lb bags well any more. I've been hauling a lot of wheelbarrow loads of compost and mulch lately and my body really feels it. At this time of the year, I just cannot find a way around doing things that makes my body hurt, and know that I am not alone in this. I don't know what you can do to keep squirrels away. I don't remember if you tried sprinkling red cayenne pepper on the soil in your containers to keep them from digging in the soil last year. If not, that is worth a try. Did you try spraying your fruiting plants with Hot Pepper Wax? I would hope that would deter the squirrels but am not sure if it will. A smallish yappy dog like a rat terrier can help some people keep their garden free of small animals like squirrels and rats (and aren't squirrels really just rats with big fluffy tails?). However, with your Teenage Mutant Ninja Squirrels, I'm a bit worried they'd terrorize a smallish dog and possibly take it hostage and carry it away. For extra nitrogen, have you considered blood meal? It might attract buzzards (it does here) but it is a nice high-nitrogen organic product. For something with a significantly higher N amount, you'd have to get one of the pelleted, slow-release lawn fertilizers that is nitrogen only. Eileen, Collards are an old-fashioned southern staple that's certainly having their moment lately on cooking shows. I grow a lot of them some years, and less in other years. This year I have a lot. Jennifer, Ever since I saw that news story on the light ballast fire, I turn off our grow lights when we leave the house. It probably slows down the growth of the seedlings, but I don't care. It gives me peace of mind. Honestly, I don't think ballast fires are that common, but they do occasionally happen. Jacob, I hope you're having a nice visit with your grandparents. Our neighborhood was so very quiet when we moved here....still had a dirt road, not many neighbors, and a bridge north of us was being taken out and rebuilt so we had very little traffic for a couple of years. So, flash forward almost 20 years and now we have a barely-paved road (basically loads of gravel and tar poured on top of dirt road), a perfect bridge, a few more neighbors and tons, tons and tons of more traffic than I ever thought we'd have here on our roadway. We tried to move far enough out into the boondocks that growth wouldn't catch up with us, but it has. We aren't moving again. At least all our closest neighbors live on acreage, so new folks who move in still aren't too close to any of us. I'm not opposed to people, per se, but just prefer a quieter lifestyle. Livestock (cows, horses, goats, chickens, etc.) still drastically outnumber the people here, but there's a lot more human beings around here than there used to be. I'll try to ID the weeds on a separate post. This one is getting long and I don't want for it to suddenly disappear mysteriously, which sometimes happens on my computer. I don't know if it is the computer or GW, but I'd hate to lose this and have to start all over. Dawn

Love that hidden chest freezer. I will look into that. It might fit under the peninsula or I could build a wood frame around it by the window and put a piece of counter hinged on top. It would just look like a matching cabinet. Coat hooks will be good for the living room side, but on the kitchen side, I think I can squeeze in an upper. Becky, sorry I missed your comments above with the link to L. Liess's old kitchen. I remember when she did that. I think I had an avocado green one at the time and was tempted. Boy she's come a long way. I will look at IKEA's pantries. I was just at our local Habitat and they had a perfect one with beautiful pull out shelves, but it was super heavy and it seemed a bit early to commit. Ispo, I'm not sure what you mean by "a workstation sink of around 42" for a large portion of the budget. That way you can move the ". . . water, stone, fire" functions to one spot". I thought we had water, stone, fire (ice is a bit out of the loop, but we can live with that). Could you draw a diagram? We've looked at many, many options to try to get around replacing the wood panelling, but I think it is just time to bite the bullet and do it. The new cabs will definitely not be new. I'm pretty good at finding bargain cabs - just wish I had a truck to haul them in :)