Johnny, I know you will hate having to use a chemical fertilizer this year, but sometimes it is a necesary evil and growing crops for the food banks is more important that staying 100% organic in every instance. Then, next spring, after your green manure crops have grown and have been incorporated in the soil, it will be in much better shape. I was hoping the orchard had been there more recently so you had a chance of having more organic matter in the soil. I love the jar soil test too. I recommend it here about 2 times a month probably, and even more as planting season approaches and new gardeners join the forum. My dad's family dry-land farmed as sharecroppers in Montague County, TX, just catty-corner from the western end of Love County, OK, in the 19-teens through the start of World War II, including the Dust Bowl years. They nearly starved to death in the Dust Bowl years and my dad and his brothers often said that WWII saved their lives by getting them off the farm. At least once they joined the military, they got 3 good meals a day and put some meat on their bones. If you've never read the outstanding book, "The Worst Hard Time", by Timothy Egan, I highly recommend it. It is about the Dust Bowl years, including the role that land speculators and wheat prices paid in the whole plowing-up-the-Great-Plains and leaving it fallow debacle, as well as the unproven-but-highly-touted-at-the-time belief that dust mulch would hold moisture and prevent erosion (we see how that theory failed). I read this book at least once a year, usually during the worst of the hot, dry, summer months, to help me keep our hot, droughty summers in perspective because, no matter how hot and dry a summer, nothing we endure here comes close to what the folks in this part of the country endured during the Dust Bowl years. While Timothy Egan won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting done on another topic, I certainly thought "The Worst Hard TIme" was also worth of a Pulitzer. He did receive a well-deserved National Book Award for "The Worst Hard Time". A friend of mine who grew up on land adjacent to ours was not born until after The Dust Bowl Years, but her mother remembered those years and she has shared with me her mother's memories of what the Dust Bowl was like for those who lived here in our part of OK, a bit east of the true Dust Bowl region, and those memories are of a very harsh time. I cannot imagine living through all of that. Just the amount of effort it took to try to keep all the dust out of their homes is staggering to think about, as is the number of lives taken by Dust pneumonia. After reading this book shortly after it was published, I became much more diligent about both mulching and cover cropping. There is not a bare inch of soil in either my front or back garden right now---the front garden is mulched and the back garden has a cover crop sown/sprouted in the fall by Mother Nature. I would have planted a cover crop back there this fall if she hadn't. It may be a weedy cover crop, but it covers every inch of the back garden except for the thickly mulched pathway that cuts through the center of the garden. And, I have no idea what "they" are thinking, but they need to read "The Worst Hard Time" before they make some errors that lead to another Dust Bowl. You know, we had some mini Dust Bowl like flare-ups here in OK during the drought of 2011, and we don't need any more of that! When we first moved here and broke ground for the garden, our neighborhood crowd of old farmers and ranchers told me about how lovely the soil used to be at our place, back before the Dust Bowl carried it all away. Our wicked red clay is, of course, the subsoil that was left after all the topsoil blew away. All those guys, except for Fred, are gone now and I miss them. There's nothing like hearing the history of your own place from the folks who grew up here, even if parts of the history are hard to bear. When I discovered cotton root rot in our soil during our first or second year here, it was the old farmer crowd who told me about how our land once was used to grow cotton. I don't know who was more surprised---they were shocked I figured out the cotton root rot on my own (but we had it in Texas, so I knew it from plant symptoms as soon as the plants began dying) and I was shocked to learn our grassland pastures once grew cotton. Those guys also regaled me with fun stories of how they'd come over here to swim in our pond after working hard all day and other stories of floods that would bring water from our creek up over the roadway, effectively giving them a day off from school because the school bus wouldn't cross the bridge when water was running over it. They also were the ones who didn't laugh and tell me I was imagining things when I told them I was hearing cougars from a distance and assumed the cougars were down in the river bottom lands. Instead, they shared their cougar stories with me and, once they knew I was hearing cougars, they cautioned me pretty much daily to be careful and to never go into the woodland unarmed. I didn't heed that advice as well as I should have until I encountered a cougar near my garden. Since then, I am better about keeping a gun nearby at all times, though occasionally I still forget to carry it with me. One of those guys, who came here in 1903 and who grew up on land very close to where we now live, would tell me how they had to take the horse and wagon down to the Red River to cut wood to haul home for firewood when he was a child because there were no trees anywhere else. Standing with him in my garden right beside a woodland of mature trees that were easily 50, 60 or 70 years old, it amazed me to hear about the time when this place was treeless. I kept asking him if he was sure there were no trees, and I think that made him mad, but it just was almost impossible for me to imagine a time when our huge woodland trees were not here. Everyone told me our first year here that I should hire someone to clear an acre of woodland for me so I could plant a garden there and have great garden soil from the start, but I'd never sacrifice decades of woodland growth for a garden plot. Tim and I have such a great appreciation for all our trees that to this day we won't hardly cut down a tree unless it is dying and is a threat to fall on a building or on the garden or something similar. Our only exception is cedar trees and we have cut down hundreds of them since moving here and have to relentlessly fight them still or they'd take over every square inch of our land. I spend part of every winter going into the woodland and cutting down all the cedar trees that sprout nonstop. Dawn

I guess it depends on what you consider the better view and the prime location? I have a window with a great view above my prep area which I only look out when I need to pause for a quick break from chopping or to figure out my next step. I don't like to talk much or gaze at views much while prepping after I almost lost the tip of a finer once while doing that. My brain can't handle visiting while prepping because then I either leave out ingredients or just plain keep forgetting where I'm at. It takes 2-3 times as long for me to prep if I'm visiting or window-gazing. I'd rather focus on the prep and get it done. Family knows to limit interactions with me while prepping beyond quick statements. That's simply not a good time for me to chat. If we're entertaining, I choose menus that don't require last minute prep/cooking just to avoid having to prep and visit at the same time. And, like cpartist, I prefer to wash, slide food to prep, then slide food to cook. I don't like carrying prepped food across the floor either Someday, my clean-up sink will be on my peninsula facing my dining table. This was the best place for me to be able to keep my DW open while cooking. Since I tend to plop things in when done with it while prepping and cooking, most dirty items will already be in the DW before sitting down to a meal. After eating, I'll be able to stand at the dining table and just pick up plates, turn and place them next to the clean-up sink without walking anywhere. Quick and easy. Then dishes will immediately be scraped and put in the DW. If the DW is full, it will be a quick scrape before setting them in my 32" wide, 9" deep sink. I figure this will hide them pretty well from any visitors until the DW is free. And I can scrape and load while visiting without losing a finger or trying to remember what needs to be done next. Clean-up is pretty much an auto-pilot activity. Prep is not. At least not for me. So I totally get what cpartist is saying and tend to agree with her. I also recognize that this is an YMMV thing.

Thanks everyone for the kind words. It was a fun endeavor although next year I think I'll start editing a day or two sooner. It took longer than I thought. I love lists. Reading them and composing them. And they ARE composed, the order is not random. Creating them is a no different task then creating say, a short story or a poem. A list has to be short enough so not to bore but long enough to have weight. Seriousness enough for importance but funny enough for laughs. Ordered enough for sub themes, but random enough to keep interest. Light enough to poke fun but heavy enough to teach. Now that I think about it, there's the makings of a list right there!....hmm... Ok, all seriousness aside.....already gathering for next year. And thanks to everyone for all the great material!!

Hi everybody! Just thought I'd follow up with what I've done so far. Thanks for all of the advice & inspiration. I did decide to try a different lamp and I like it a lot! I pulled out a globe that I had in the attic (thought I didn't have anywhere to put it... duh!) Added a photo to the side table Finished up my gallery ledge. Accidentally hung it higher than I intended... I'm still looking for a drink table or small, geometric table for by the chaise. I hung the white wood blinds that are in every other room of the house instead of curtains. It was meant to be a temporary fix, but I think I like it without curtains? The sheepskin is outside airing out, but I will bring it back in until the weather warms up. Something about snuggling on the couch with my husband, toes in the rug, fireplace roaring... ♡ Still need decor on the small table Still looking for the perfect pillows. Found designs I like, but not the right shape/size. Thanks again!