Despite the original posters overly extensive post, with certain questionable content, the central point is still quite vaild. We as a nation spend more money on grass than on any other crop. That by itself should be reason enough. Read up on the history of lawns and you'll find that they were orginally created as a means of demonstrating wealth (aka, I have this big area and I can afford to do nothing with it except grow grass I can't eat) Regarding the comments of junegem13 and zachslc, you might want to read up on the legal history of this movement. As it turns out, most weed laws (ones based on hight, not on noxious weeds) are unconstitutional. Nonetheless, if you are in a city or subdivision and decide to do a wildflower meadow where there is not an reasonable ordinance, then you should notify your neighbors and the city about why you are doing and the legal preceedants. The EPA has all this information. Regarding property values, that was the original complaint neighbors made against one landowner when she converted her lawn into meadow. When they were unable to demonstrate an actual decrease in property values, the city ordinance was ruled unconstitutional. Afterwards, the neighbors decided if they couldn't beat her that they'd join her and replace their own yards with meadows. Property values in that one neighborhood are now some of the highest in the city (Specific names and places, are available if you want them). Time and time again, lawn alternatives done correctly have shown to raise values, not lower them. In Charlottesville, VA local government is working on an ammendment to exclude native meadows from our weed ordinance. Other cities are doing the same very quicky, especially since the weed ordinance as written by many localites constitutes a legal liability to local governments.

The whole growing under glass was a major trend in the mid/late 1800's, both in the northeast US and in northern Europe. For peaches the extra heat afforded in the summer under glass helped ripening times, same for grapes and citrus. It was a rich persons hobby apparently, along with race horses etc. As far as (re)-learning old lessons from these books, that one cuts both ways. There is a ton of knowledge that got lost over the years so there is a lot we can (re)-learn from them, but on the other hand they had some significant misconceptions, for example they talk on and on about this supposed disease called "peach yellows" which is now believed to just be nutritional. Re: the late summer pruning I also believe the old authors have that one right. I should pull out a few of these old books and re-read them, I was reading many of them 4-5 years ago but have not done too much lately. Check out Wright's Fruit Grower's Guide, thats one of my favorites. Fruitnut, you would enjoy reading the long sections on growing fruit under glass. I also learned a lot from their pruning descriptions, it is surprising how advanced their pruning methods were 150 years ago. Scott

Jennifer, Could the dog have been bitten by a snake she was trying to bite? If you can look at the hard knot in her mouth, do you see any fang marks? When we have a dog with swelling around the mouth/nose/snout area, it usually is a copperhead bite. No treatment required except maybe Benadryl for swelling. The only time we've had a dog stung by a bee or hornet wasn't in the mouth---was in the facial area and there were knots at the sting sites and swelling. Benadyl was the solution. With the onions that got wet, it probably just means they'll need a longer drying period. Watch them for mold though. Amy, When Houzz changes things, I just roll on and work around whatever they've changed. I ignore notifications, FAQs, etc. in the gardening season because I don't have time for that stuff. I just come here to chat with y'all. I'm just grateful they saved GardenWeb when it looked like it was going to go away and disappear into the realm of used-to-be's. Someday it will go away and all we'll have left to help us stay in touch is the OK Gardening-related FB pages. I think it is just a matter of time. I'm surprised your Red Rivers are done. When I've grown them they're usually about the last ones to mature, and it often is late June or sometime in July. This has been a weird year, and my onions are weirder than anything else. Half the 1015Ys fell over and I harvested them. The rest remain strong and upright and still growing. Normally they're done by now. One Candy has fallen over. None of the others have. Copra? Nothing yet and I wouldn't expect it. Either last year or the year before they were the last ones to mature and it took them forever. This has been such a weird weather year that I guess nothing should surprise us at this point. Some of my tomato plants have great fruit set. Some do not. It appears directly related to how early I did or did not plant them. The ones planted in late March (I only planted 7 that early) have had a huge fruit set, and we've already harvested most of that fruit----dozens and dozens of tomatoes. The rest, the ones that were planted about 10-14 days later, have set maybe 1/5th as much fruit. Some have not set fruit at all. We went from too cold to too hot literally overnight here and the plants just sat there forever, shellshocked and doing nothing. It probably doesn't help that the rain mostly keeps missing us. For as bad as I think they look compared to most years, at leaste they are relatively healthy. We may be too hot now for them to ever set fruit and I'm not going to baby them through the whole entire summer, so if they want to stick around, they'd better get busy setting fruit. Next year I'll probably plant them all as early as possible and cover them, instead of planting in stages. Rebecca, We don't have JBs down here. I guess they haven't yet made it this far west and south. We might see 1 or 2 stray ones each summer. Dorothy (Mulberryknob) lives in Adair County and I'm almost positive she mentioned buying and using some type of Japanese Beetle traps from someplace like Home Depot in previous years. I've never seen those traps down here, but it seems like they worked pretty well for her. Larry, I'm sorry about the hail. I hope the damage wasn't too bad, We don't get much rain here in the summer months, and I do try to grow dryland style as much as possible, but I still have to irrigate quite a bit. I wish I didn't. It is a grandchildren weekend so I didn't step foot in the garden today and probably won't step foot it it tomorrow either. I'm okay with that. After working in it all week in the heat, as much as I do love it, I need a break and weekends are a good time to take a break and spend the time with family and friends. Dawn

Jennifer, I am glad the rain reached you. I hope y'all got a significant and useful amount. We look so much greener already, although some of the tired, hot, worn-out zinnias that have been blooming since late May or early June just didn't perk up enough. I think they are really worn out. Luckily, the zinnias I planted as succession crops later are making up for the tired ones and the rain did perk the younger plants up like crazy. With cooler weather in the forecast all week, I hope to really get out into the garden next week and do a lot of cleanup as long as I'm able to avoid the venomous snakes, and they haven't seemed too bad lately. Or, if they are there, I'm not seeing them, so I just hope they aren't out there. I kept the chickens in their coop yesterday because they were so stressed from the dog incident the day before, but they free-ranged as normal today and no dogs visited. I do think the chickens spent more time sort of hiding underneath the chaste tree near the back of the house today than they normally do---it is one of the places they go to when they feel threatened by something. We were out at the pool a lot so we were right there anyway, and that may be one reason they stuck around so close. I do not mind the neighbors' dogs visiting at all as long as they don't bother the chickens. If they bother the chickens, then that's going to be a problem. I know one of these dogs killed their owner's chickens when he lived somewhere else before he moved here, and I appreciate him telling me that because at least I know which dog to keep a close eye on. Even a dog that has killed chickens in the past can be reformed with some training, so I certainly don't think this dog necessarily will be a problem---she's sweet and she's smart and I think she now knows (because I yelled at her and locked her in my mudroom) she isn't supposed to chase the chickens here. She did look longingly at the chicken coop as we were leading her to her owner's vehicle, but she didn't break away and try to go to the coop either, so she gets points for that. Jen, It is hard to have pets and plants co-exist inside the house, so I understand your need to create a cat room and a plant room. Our dogs and cats are the reason I don't have plants indoors, except for seedlings on the light shelf in late winter/spring, and I keep the pets out of the room with light shelf. Oh, and in winter I usually have the Christmas cactus and a few potted amaryllis and paperwhites indoors, but for whatever reason the cats don't bother those, and I have the plants high enough out of reach that the dogs can't reach them. Nancy, I feel the same way about the oleander aphids, but what I noticed this year is that all I needed to do was basically ignore them. They never seemed to hurt the plants, so I'm not going to worry about them in the future. With hundreds and, dare I say it, even thousands of native milkweed plants in the pastures all around us (a few pastures whose owners don't maintain them well have more milkweeds most years than grass) for miles around us, it is a pipe dream to think our garden milkweed won't have the oleander aphids on them, so I am just going to pretend I don't see them. Even if I hose them off the plants twice a day every day, they come right back, so what's the point? Really, with all the native milkweed around, I could skip growing it in the garden except that I worry about those really awful drought years when the milkweed plants in the pastures all wither and dry up and go dormant months early, so that's why I try to keep a few milkweed plants going in the garden. All the fields here are full of everything possible in bloom thanks to the August rain and now the more recent late September rain will keep those plants looking lovely, so at least the migrating monarchs will have plenty of flowers in bloom in our county for nectaring as they journey southward. We had lovely weather today although it was a bit humid, and we just watched lower-level moisture-laden clouds fly over us headed north all day long. Wherever that moisture ends up, I think someone will get some great rainfall out of it. There's still big standing puddles in our yard today, though some of them are not as deep as they were yesterday, so you can tell the rain is soaking into the ground. The newish cracks in the yard that had appeared recently are all closed up and I'm grateful for that. A great side effect of the rain is that the feral mama cat moved her three kittens into our garage to escape the deluge and they are so happy in there that they've even let me see them a few times, though they still are inclined to hide when a human appears. I'm happy that they are in a dry location, and one that keeps them safe from the wild varmints at night. I hope to tame them and save them from living the feral life. It is especially hard to tame feral kittens who do not grow up around humans, but we tamed Yellow Cat after he had roamed our neighborhood for at least a decade, so you never know---sometimes kindness, love and food win over even the wildest little feline. I almost bought a pot or two of mums today. I really wanted to do it, but I still am inclined to not quite trust the cooler weather to stick around just yet. Maybe in another week or two. We'll see. If we heat right back up into the 90s, I'll know it was smart to wait. I'm already seeing mums in the garden centers that bloomed too early and are browning out even before someone has bought them and taken them home. You can't really blame the wholesale growers for that---they grow on the same time schedule each year so they can deliver the plants to the stores when the stores want them, and it is beyond their control if the heat sticks around for longer than usual. Ugh. Today we noticed that Wal-Mart is pushing the indoor garden center merchandise into a smaller and smaller area and replacing it with Christmas trees and such. I am SO not ready to see Christmas stuff in the stores, though it has been in Hobby Lobby for months and in HD and Lowe's for a few weeks already. I hate the way they rush the seasons. I'm not ready for all the gardening merchandise to disappear from the stores already when we still have another 2 months, more or less, of warm growing season left. Dawn