-We've been downsizing our critter population - when we can find a dry day, which is perhaps twice a week. I have never seen such a gloomy, cloudy, rainy, muddy, yucky October. The last half of September wasn't much better. But instead of taking this as a sign of a long cold winter ahead, I prefer to think that November and December are going to be nicer than average - to make up for all this rain. LOL. An optimist, or at least I try hard to be one... We culled our remaining eight Speckled Sussex hens and made soup. Brian finished building the "Chiclet Box" as I like to call our new little chicken house and the Chiclets (Dominiques, just short of six months old) are installed there. They are laying really well, but we've had some unscheduled downsizing by our mystery predator. I started with a dozen day olds, 10 pullets and 2 cockerels. We lost one of the cockerels at about three weeks. And now two of our pullets have disappeared. All our losses to predators this year - several old hens, two young geese and these two pullets - have been of the "without a trace" variety. There are fishers about, coyotes and big hawks... so I don't know which is to blame. Our geese are doing well, the youngsters as big as their mamas now. I have a trio of Pilgrims, a Buff and five mutts, offspring of our horried gander. I managed to find a buyer for the five and he will collect them in about a month. I got $60 for them, not as much as I'd hoped, but I really was not looking forward to culling them myself. So we will only have the four to take through the winter and I hope they will raise lots of little Pilgrims next year. (The Buff will be a foster mom; when she goes broody I'll give her Pilgrim eggs. The rabbits are doing great. We put seven in the freezer last week and today we processed three of the adults, just keeping the best three breeders through the winter. (And our two indoor Angoras that popped up unexpectedly in one of the summer litters.) We have another five youngsters to do and nine more month-old babies running around in a large pen in the rabbit house (former chicken house). Very cute right now and thank goodness by the time they are big enough to eat (just before Christmas) they lose a lot of their baby bunny appeal. We've been really cutting back our spending on just about everything non-essential, but whatever we go short on this winter, it won't likely be meat or eggs. Not much left in the garden now, just some leeks and the perennial Egyptian onions. We didn't get much planted this spring due to opening the antiques shop (which is limping along, but is fortunately supplemented by sales on Ebay.) Well, that about sums it up here. Hope everyone is having a good autumn and that winter stays away for awhile yet.

Seeing your brugmansias, printmaster, I just remembered that my plumies are doing better now than in the extreme heat we've had this summer, when they were all shrivelled with all my watering. Now they're all plumped back up and the foliage looks better except for the biggest one that had some wind damage with Santa Ana winds. Meaning the leaves look like something chewed on them but we don't have any critters to chew so I figured out what happened: the leaves were hit repeatedly by smaller branches from the out-of-the-patio plants. Now I moved her closer to the other plants, in the middle of the patio. But they all look so much better, and pushing leaves out like crazy. :) Mima

I get weed seeds and grass seeds via water flowing downhill from the higher ground to our south and via the wind. Out here in the country, those seeds get around quite easily, so I don't worry about dumping them in the garden via grass clippings because they are going to find their way into the garden anyway. If you want to, you can put down a layer of cardboard or newspaper beneath the grass clippings and that layer usually keeps them from sprouting....or it keeps the roots shallow (above the newspaper and/or cardboard) and the weeds are easy to pull out when young. Most of the time, we manage to mow before the grass sets seed anyway, and sometimes if I notice that we mowed too late and there's tons of seedheads, we just don't collect that batch of clippings. This is one reason I prefer winter rye grass---it doesn't go to seed until the weather is really heating up in late spring, and by that time we have collected clippings from it for months, making it an effective off-season source of nitrogen for the garden beds or compost piles. In late winter, spring and early summer, I spend a huge amount of time weeding. I do that for a reason----not just to keep the beds clean and weed-free, but also because I know I cannot do that sort of weeding once venomous snakes are roaming freely. You just learn to go with whatever works for you in your location with your conditions. I find that in my conditions that I experience routinely (including the snake issues) what works for me is to mulch early and often with everything I can get my hands on prior to the onset of snake-i-ness in the garden. The thicker the layers of mulch, the less weed seeds sprout overall. The less weeds overall, the better I can see snakes. The better I can see the snakes, the later in the spring/summer I can pull out weeds. It is a cycle I understand well, but I also know that at some point every year we just get too snakey for weeding and then it becomes even more important to pour the grass clippings on top of the existing mulch layers weekly because dumping grass clippings on the beds is safer (snake-wise) than pulling weeds. I haven't weeded since I stopped watering and that means the garden is almost too snakey to step foot in at this point, but I can go out there on a really cool morning (assuming the night also was very cool, and not just that a cold front rolled through around sunrise) and harvest early before snakes are out and about. My garden generally is not really snake-free until we've had several freezing nights, and so far we haven't had any. If you are concerned about weed and grass seeds sprouting, use them in compost piles in the fall, layered with autumn leaves and spent garden plants so you have a good mix of greens and browns. In the fall, I can build a compost pile 5-8' tall by alternating layers of autumn leaves/spent garden plants with fresh grass clippings (usually rye) and it will decompose into beautiful compost to add to the garden beds by mid-spring to late-spring, depending on what the winter weather was like. The heat from a hot compost pile will make the weed and grass seeds sterile and they won't sprout. There are perennial weeds and annual weeds, both broadleaf and grassy. After about a decade of rigorously weeding and mulching and doing everything I could to keep weed seeds out of the garden (and being pretty successful at doing so), along came the exceptionally rainy year of 2007, which dumped not just weed seeds in my garden but up to 4" of sandy soil washed downhill from the neighbor's property next door. I had 4" of sand, silt, plant debris, sticks, rocks, weed seeds, etc. sitting on top of 4-6" of mulch which was sitting on top of relatively weed-free soil. That's what happens when a river of rainoff runs through your garden, and I was back to square one in terms of eradicating the weeds/weed seeds from the garden. I've come to accept that despite my best efforts, I'll never have a garden that is weed-free. Mother Nature is going to do what she does, and she not only spreads weed seeds via wind and rain runoff, but via insects, birds, small mammals, large mammals (deer plant persimmons all over our place all the time), etc. Thus, I don't fret about keeping out all the weed seeds because I've learned that Mother Nature bats last and she generally wins. I just do the best I can each year to keep the weeds as under control as possible. Perhaps in a more urban or suburban location, Mother Nature is not such a hard taskmaster, but out here in the sticks, you might as well learn to work with her because you won't defeat her. I've had to let go of my dream of relatively clean, weed-free garden beds. Here's a list of Oklahoma's noxious weeds: Noxious Weeds Here's a list of wildflowers that bloom by month. Just click on each month to see the list of wildflowers, bearing in mind that much of what we consider weeds in our garden are just broadleaf wildflowers that have chosen to grow where we did not plant them. Under each month, you can click on each listed wildflower/weed to see what it looks like. Wildflower Bloom By Month/Date On this webpage you can see common weeds of Oklahoma (but there's many more than is shown on this list): Weeds of Oklahoma Yes, there are plenty of weeds that will regrow from only a small portion of a root or runner left behind. I had to dig down 9-12" deep or even deeper in my garden repeatedly over many years to get out some of the more persistent plant roots, like those of ragweed and greenbrier, and they still try mightily to reinvade the garden every so often. While gardeners tend to have the mindset that all weeds are bad, some of my favorite plants are weeds. Henbit is a good example. I have no special affection for it personally and used to yank out every single henbit plant that sprouted. Over the years, though, I noticed how much the winter/early spring butterflies and bees rely on henbit for their survival at a time when little to nothing else is blooming for them, so nowadays when I see henbit springing up, I leave enough of it around the yard to feed the bees and the butterflies. I'd prefer a more weed-free garden, but not at the expense of the survival of the bees and butterflies. I have had to adjust my thinking in that manner a LOT since moving here. If I want to live in/garden in an ecosystem filled with lots of little beneficial insects, I have to let the plants grow that they need, and there are times when their needs supercede my desire to keep the weeds out of my beds. Dawn

Stupidlazydog, I wouldn't worry about your trees being out in the rain. In fact, it's great for them. I love the fact mines get flooded. It cleans all the crap out of the soil mix from tap water and fertilizer deposits. They love the fresh rain. That is when mines perform their best and send out all kinds of new growth. Ladylotus, wow. Do you spend time in there during the winter? maybe read a book or set a chair there? Very nice. Do you ever worry about Mealy Bugs with that many plants? Bugs at all? That would put a dent in things, but if not, such a relief! Beautiful and great job. Do you treat them to prevent pests at all before they come in? Matt, sounds a little warmer than my temps although it has been very warm this year for a change. How are your plants faring today? You have quite a good collection there) Mike