There is certainly nothing wrong with using natives and/or other xerophytes, but they are no panacea. Poor watering practices waste more water than high water-needs plants. It makes no difference if you are growing Toyon instead of Holly, Hollyleaf Cherry instead of English Box and Clustered Field Sedge instead of Marathon Sod if you are going to water for five minutes every morning with half the water from your poorly installed/adjusted/plannned irrigation system spraying onto the sidewalk, driveway and street instead of your garden beds or lawn. Ryan

Game bird, This is the first year any of us have tried Candy Apple Red since it is the first year Dixondale has offered them, so I am curious to see how they do. Mine are about the same size as yours, but I haven't harvested yet, so they might get a bit larger. Of course, nothing in my garden is a good indicator this year because the 12" of rain that fell in one day at the end of April absolutely halted all apparent growth for 4 weeks or longer, so my entire garden is stunted compared to last year. Still, as long they they taste good, that's what matters. I intend to try them again next year and will hope for a more typical spring growing season so I'll know how they perform under "average" conditions. When Ruth Stout was trying to interest people in mulch gardening, she was sort of out there on her own. I sort of thought of her as "a lone voice crying in the wilderness". Now, of course, she looks positively phophetic During her time, the gardening fad was all the chemicals developed after WWII---chemical pesticides, chemical fertilizers, etc. She persevered and stuck to her guns about soil improvement and mulching, and she was right. I think Jay must have fantastic soil too, plus he works very, very hard. I cannot imagine trying to grow everything he grows in his semi-desert conditions. We are in our 11th year here and the areas that I've been improving and mulching for that time frame do not even look like the soil I started with, and that is despite repeated droughts that have baked the ground to a concrete-hard consistency over and over and over again. Except for the first 2 or 3 years when I amended heavily, all I've done is mulch, mulch, mulch. The difference in the soil is amazing. The formerly red clay that was so hard and sticky that you couldn't even break it up with a fork or mattock is now a milk chocolate brown colored sandy loam and has improved beyond my wildest dreams. Even in the pathways where I routinely mulch, the soil is so different from what we started with. Nowadays, I only improve soil by adding amendments the first year that I break up new ground. After that, it is all just stuff that's layered on top of the ground as mulch and time, Mother Nature and the earthworms do the rest. When we moved here, we had a tremendous issue with Cotton Root Rot, a soil-borne disease that affects thousands of different plants and folks who live here told me I'd never be able to overcome it and grow what I wanted to grow. After the first three years of soil amending, though, the CRR has never reared its ugly head again and I plant what I want in that soil, including many plants that you "cannot" grow if you have CRR. So, I think well-amended and well-enriched soil can overcome almost anything. Like you with the wood chips, I find that no matter how much mulch I put out, pile up and spread around, it is never enough and I always want more. We have to remember that "heat eats compost" and here in OK, it gobbles it up and breaks it down almost more quickly than we can add it. So, mulching is just a great way to keep replenishing what is being used up, and it keeps the soil so much cooler underneath the mulch which helps the plants too. Wheelbarrow time will build muscles and help give you a tan! Of course, the front end loaded was a mulch more efficient way to do it. Jay, I can relate! When the drought of 2005-2006 finally broke and we had a simply luscious summertime late afternoon thunderstorm, Tim and I sat out on the covered patio for 2 or 3 hours and watching it rain and listened to the thunder and watching the lightning. We also watched the frogs come out of "hiding" and play all over the yard and in the puddles. Later on, we spoke to several different neighbors and discovered they all were doing pretty much the same thing....watching the rain and the frogs. We all joked that it doesn't take much to entertain us here in Love County, but I'm telling you, we were so starved for rain at that point that nothing was more important than seeing that rain fall. I hope you get to enjoy every minute of the rain and hope it is falling at your mom's place too. I'm looking forward to hearing about your onion results. Except for being too dry, you've probably had the most "typical" or "average" weather of all of us. I don't know what the rain has done to everyone else's onions, but it almost killed mine. I was just looking at the garden earlier this week and marveling at how good it looks, considering that I thought the flooding rains might kill everything in it. I hope you're out playing or working in the rain, or at least spent some time sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee enjoying that strange phenomenon of liquid falling from the sky! Dawn

Well the good news is that the nest is only slightly damp around the edges. The wood inside the box is damp too. I think the Duck feathers shed the rain right to the sides of the nest. Smart Mom. The even better news is that it has only made it up to 68. Tomorrows forcast has been revised to inclued strong thundershowers but now only 84 as a high. Rain will end Sat with a high of 83. I am leaving the vents taped, 68 is a little cool but Mom is on the babies now and I am sure all will be fine. Karen, it should have stopped raining there by now...so I don't think we are going to have to try flinging crickets! LOL Donna, I think your babies will be fine ( I forgot are these TRES or Blues)? I thought I warned you earlier that just when you thought you made it through all your worries a whole new set would pop up! Lots of posts in April on "how do I keep my babies warm" now we are moving on to "how do I keep my babies cool" LOL There have been some very inovative things done from putting a big smiley umbrella over the box to covering the box in styrafoam. I take an ice pack and put ON TOP of the box (not in) and cover it with a towel during the hotest part of the day. Don't really know if it helps the birds but it helps *ME* Right now your Mom is taking care of temp controll. Go back and look at pages from last summer, I am sure you will get a kick out of some of the things we have done to our boxes!

Heard the rain, then the roar, headed for the basement, lost power, and just huddled down there for awhile... After it got quiet again, came back upstairs again to see emergency vehicles all over the place up and down the road. One came into our drive to see that I was okay.. bless his heart, he was the local VFD fire chief that Bob trained some years back.... This morning I can hear chain saws and see over on the north east ridge where trees are twisted together like spaghetti strands but standing. As far as I can tell, all is well here at our place.... a few branches down here and there is all. We were extremely blessed... The power company is phenominal... we were only out of power for about 6 hours before they got it back up and running... pretty darned good for a rural area like this. Carolyn