Coyotes are everywhere. I've even seen photos taken of them roaming the streets of New York City and Chicago. They are an excellent example of a type of wildlife that can adapt to almost any environment. I've seen a lot of them dead beside the roads and highways lately, likely struck by vehicles as they were attempting to cross roads in the darkness. T he coyote population here in our area is huge this year. The problem with having a large population is that during the winter they start to run out of food, becoming increasingly desperate and increasingly bold. Yesterday morning I couldn't let our chickens out to free-range until well after 9 a.m. because I could hear coyotes howling from fairly close by. I usually let them out around 7:30 or 8:00 a.m. in the winter. The coyotes probably weren't on our property but likely were on the property just west of us that separates us from the Red River, and we have roughly 1000' feet between our house and our west property line, so it isn't that I thought they'd come dashing out of the woods and grab a chicken, but I just wanted to be careful in case they decided to come back east again. I don't know if I've ever heard them yipping and howling like that well after sunrise on a winter's day. However, sometimes we see them hunting in the middle of the day in winter, though they normally are nocturnal. All the bunnies long ago disappeared, which also is common in years when the coyote population is at a high point. Hazel, I love what you would do with your lottery winnings. Whenever we go back to Texas to visit family, I'm shocked by how rapidly the beautiful rural countryside between us and them is being transformed into housing subdivisions and shopping centers. I always complain to Tim that the developers won't be happy until they've paved over every square inch of the once-rural countryside. One reason we came so far north when we were looking for land to buy in a rural area is that we wanted to get far enough away from the D-FW metro area that the development couldn't catch up with us. I think eventually it still will, but I think our specific neighborhood will stay largely rural for another decade or two. The difference in Slug-Go and Slug-Go Plus is that Slug-Go contains the active ingredient iron phosphate, which is what kills the slugs and snails. Many of us who used it quickly learned it also killed pill bugs and sow bugs. Because there was widespread online discussion about using Slug-Go to kill pill bugs and sow bugs, the folks who make Slug-Go then came up with an improved product that they believed would be even more effective on pills, sow bugs and cutworms as well as on snails and slugs. They did it by adding Spinosad to the iron phosphate, giving us Slug-Go Plus. Both products work well for me. I do think Slug-Go Plus might be a little more effective, but when I can't find it, I'm perfectly happy with the original Slug-Go. *Edited to add this: I understand your frustration with the utility room. It is frustrating when you can't get things done that are on your To Do list. It also is very irritating when new cabinets arrive broken already. We have been trying forever to add cabinets to our utility room (repurposed old kitchen cabinets painted to match the new kitchen cabinets). This past weekend we were certain we'd get it done. And we would have, except.....President Trump signed that Executive Order about immigration. Chaos broke out at airports. Tim got called in to work on Saturday afternoon because of the protests (peaceful ones) and worked for about 15 or 16 hours running the command post at DFW Airport. Once he got home Sunday morning, he needed to sleep. When he woke up, he would have gone straight to work on installing those cabinets, but he'd only slept for maybe 4 hours and I wanted him to take it easy for the rest of the day. So, this coming Saturday, we'll try again. One of these weekends we'll get it done. His new workload is impossibly heavy and I don't see that ever changing until he retires. He's got three trips scheduled in February, so I feel like anything that's on our To Do list that absolutely, positively must be done needs to be done this coming weekend, or postponed until at least March. While he's traveling so much, I'll be focusing on planting the cool-season crops, so at least I won't be trying to cram planting season/household DIY projects into the same time frame. I long ago gave up on the concept of having pretty flower beds around the house. Between the deer, the rabbits and the free-ranging chickens, nothing but the toughest shrubs survive. So, any flowers I want to grow have to be within the fenced vegetable garden spaces. I'm not happy about it, but even if we didn't have free-ranging chickens, the rabbits and deer would eat everything anyway. I learned that the hard way our first few years here.

Rebecca, I do not believe it is your yard. I think it is this year. The early heat let a lot of pests, and in particular cucumber beetles, get off to an early start---both cucumber beetles and squash bugs, which have been around in huge populations this year, spread tons and tons of diseases. The only thing I can add is that sometimes container plants are a magnet for pests and it can become a vicious cycle. Here's how it most often happens here with container plantings: Container plants need more frequent feeding, as we often discuss here, because of the way irrigation and rainfall wash away the nutrients. More frequent feeding tends to give plants a burst of nitrogen here and there following a feeding. Excess nitrogen (and I am not saying you are feeding them excess nitrogen on purpose---it is hard to balance it just right in containers) causes plants to make more carbs. More carbs attract more pest insects. Pest insects carry diseases. Diseased plants look bad. You cut off diseased leaves and feed the plant to push new growth and recovery. Right? Right. I'd do exactly the same thing. Plants recover, make new growth, and pests hit again. There's your vicious cycle. It is worse in very dry and very wet years than in a more normal year. So, don't blame yourself. Blame the crazy insane weather that gave us drought, early heat, extreme cold, early pest outbreaks, snakes out in winter, rain, and floods....and that was just in January-March. It isn't like the weather has changed much. It has been nuts all year. It started crazy. It has stayed crazy. Jacob, The Oklahoma Climatological Survey says Nov. 7th for us, but based on the 19 years we've been here, I'd say our average first freeze tends to be around November 20th. We have been having a long-term trend since at least 2003 of warmer and warmer weather, so our old 30 year averages probably will change a bit when they redo the new averages at the end of this decade. Our average last freeze of Spring is, officially, March 29th, I think, but some years it has happened as early as the end of February. However, for 7 or 8 years, we kept having a late freeze every year around May 3rd. It was maddening. Rather than push planting later and later, I bought DeWitt Ultimate Frost Blanket Row Cover that gives 10 degrees of cold protection. Now, I plant when I want, usually around March 10-17 for tomatoes, and cover up the plants if cold weather threatens. This issue never has been our soil temperatures---our soil down here doesn't get that cold and it warms up quickly this far south, but our air temperatures are all over the place every year. So, nowadays, and I've done this for about 8 or 10 years now, I plant whenever I feel like the soil temperatures are stable and when the 10-day forecast looks pretty good, and then I can cover up the plants with frost blanket type row covers if cold threatens. Some years I end up covering up the plants about once a week for a couple of months. Other years I only cover up the plants once or twice in that first couple of months. It is incredible how well they grow if I can just protect them from that occasional late cold night. We have to push hard down here to beat the heat, and row covers as needed do that for me. That makes my main tomato harvest run from late May through late July usually, but our earliest tomatoes from in-ground plants usually are ripe in April from an early March planting (from plants that had blooms on them when planted), and this year we had our first ripe tomato in March, from a plant grown indoors in a large pot in a sunny south-facing window. I bought the plant at a Wal-Mart around the second week of January and its sole job was to give us tomatoes as early in the year as possible. Think about---we were harvesting and eating those tomatoes when most folks in our neighborhood didn't have plants purchased yet, and at about the same time I was putting our home-grown plants in the ground. It was awesome. Did it taste like a summer tomato? Nope. Tomatoes grown indoors in winter don't get enough heat or strong enough sunlight to develop full, rich in-season tomato flavor, but it still was much better than a grocery store tomato. In case no one else has mentioned this, I'll say it: I am a tomato maniac. Mary, It is the weather. There's not much we can do about it. I hate all the diseases this year. It is what it is. Surely next year will be better. (And, if you can steam clean things inside your house, why oh why isn't this steamy hot weather killing these plants diseases instead of making them worse?????) Rebecca, No, but it would be better than nothing. I've had butternuts run 20-30' when they are happy....sometimes I let them climb the 8' fence, cascade down the other side and then take off into the trees. Maybe in the future, you might want to grow some of the ones bred for containers. I've grown several and they still get fairly big but they are much more controlled/less rampant than regular butternuts. Nancy, I hear you on the big city stuff you don't need. I grew up in Fort Worth when it was considerably smaller than it was now...and so was Dallas....and the whole metroplex. Eventually it got to where it was getting too big and we moved here and found the rural living we desired. Then, Fort Worth-Dallas began undergoing phenomenal growth that is mind-blowing (the DFW metro area now has a population of 7.1 million compared to the roughly 5 million it had when we moved here in 1999). Other than having family there, and occasionally shopping there, I can't handle it any more. Everything is all concrete and endless development and growth and huge highways. There is nowhere down there I want to visit badly enough to get on a 14 lane highway.....who needs 7 lanes each way, even if only briefly, before they drop down to 6 lanes each way? I just need to stay home and wait for them to build a CostCo in Denton or Gainesville. Tim says he does get home more quickly now that the DFW Connector Project (multi-highway, including the 14-lane thing we were on yesterday) is done, but I wonder how long that big highway project lasts before continuing growth makes it obsolete and they build some 18- or 20-lane highway? Hopefully Tim will be retired by then and won't have to deal with that mess. The computer stuff is frustrating. I think they all can give you trouble from time to time, and getting someone to troubleshoot them and fix them is just as aggravating as can be. Good luck finding a nice back-up that is reliable and dependable. Amy, Augustus used to poop on the steps and patio, but I scold him and wash it right off when he does and he is (despite the general perception that turkeys are dumb) smart enough to know he shouldn't do it there. Now he seems to go out of his way to poop in the driveway, where you see big giant blobs of it there. I don't know why the driveway and not the yard, but I also don't care why. I'm glad Honey had a play date. Seems like it left her feeling more content to chill a bit more than usual afterwards. Hmmm. Maybe Honey needs her own puppy to play with. (Go ahead and pelt me with produce for saying that, but please, no rotten tomatoes.) I saw the first Harlequin bug of the year last week, about 5 months later than usual. I killed it and I just hope there aren't any more. I'm sure there are, but I haven't seen them. It has been too hot to do anything. I have seedlings to plant but I don't want to go out into the heat and plant them. I'm waiting until Wednesday, when our high is supposed to be in the 80s instead of the upper 90s. Enough of the side/back yard and dog yard are mowed that we can walk through those areas with no fear of not being able to see a snake. Mowing the front yard is on the agenda, probably for right after dinner this evening, when the sun is far enough west that temperatures are falling but when there also is still daylight. That's dependent on fire calls---we've only had 1 today and I hope our good luck holds. Dawn

Amy, Are y'all of Greek descent? It must be a tradition for the Greek churches to have festivals in the fall, because when we lived in Fort Worth they did the same thing, and I think it always was in October too. It sounds like y'all had fun and the weather sounds lovely. We still have tons of grasshoppers---take a step in the grass, and a cloud of grasshoppers arises from it. Usually they are gone by now, but we are so hot that I guess they just keep on keeping on. These are newish ones that hatched after the July and August rains. We didn't have many until after the rain finally fell. Nancy, I think animals know so much more than they can communicate to us and they'd teach us what they knew if only they could make us understand. When we have a pet die, we always let the remaining animals see the deceased one, sniff it, etc. We do that so they will understand where their beloved animal companion went instead of thinking it just disappeared into thin air. I also think the animals often know when one of their animal family members is sick because I've often seen the other animals snuggle and cuddle up closer than usual to the dying animal, as if to comfort it. I absolutely think that the remaining pets grieve for a deceased one after it passes away. When our beloved dog, Biscuit, was dying, he took me down to the 'graveyard' where we had buried his much-loved companion, Sheila, a couple of years earlier. He loved on the rocks that covered her grave, he walked circles around it, he looked me in the eyes and laid down there. My heart sank. In all the time she'd been gone, he'd never done that, and he had been in a slow, steady, recent decline, so I felt like he was telling me that it was time and he was ready to go. I told him no, that I couldn't leave him out there. So, he got up and relocated to the shade of a cedar tree about 15 or 20' away, scratched out a place beneath it, and laid down there in the shade. I let him lay there a couple of hours because he refused to come up to the house with me. As twilight approached, I went and got him and told him he had to come up to the house with me. I knew he was lying down there to die, and I was afraid that if he died slowly, the coyotes would get him that night while he still was alive. I couldn't bear the thought of that. I called Tim and told him that Biscuit was ready to go and explained it all. When Tim got home, we fed Biscuit his final meal, and we gave him 2 cans of canned cat food (because he loved stealing cat food out of the cat dish) and we knew he'd love being fed cat food on purpose. He did. He wolfed down that cat food enthusiastically like the treat that it was, then laid his front paws over the dish and laid his head down on his paws to signal he was done. Tim carried him up the stairs to our bedroom to sleep, and the next morning we made the final trip to the vet. It was so hard to let him go (his photo all these years later still is the wallpaper on Tim's cell phone) but he told us as clearly as he could that it was his time, he was ready and we needed to get with the program. The vet agreed. We buried him right beside Sheila of course. So smart, wasn't he, to know he needed to tell us it was okay for him to go? Then, several years later, when our Honey developed a brain tumor, she kept taking me to the doggie graveyard where Sheila and Biscuit were buried, and I kept telling her no, no, no. I wasn't ready to let her go, and the vet wasn't sure it was a brain tumor. He thought it might be canine vestibular disorder and suggested we take our time and treat her for it. If he/we were wrong and it wasn't CVD, she'd get progressively worse and we could decide then what to do next. When it became clear it was not CVD and was a brain tumor and we knew we had to let her go, I walked her down there and told her it was okay and that we could let her go because we didn't want for her to suffer (she had just had her first seizure as the brain tumor grew). We took her to the vet the next day. She now rests beside Sheila and Biscuit. I still am in awe of those two dogs, their ability to know it was their time, and their method of communicating to us that they were going to depart and we needed to prepare ourselves for it. When Honey's son, Duke, developed heart trouble and his end was near, he let us know---he stopped going for our daily walks--he'd always loved to walk, walk, walk, and just decided he was done, probably because his heart was weakening. I guess he couldn't do it any more. A couple of weeks later, we buried him beside his mama. It sounds like a lot of deceased dogs, but all of them were old and had been our pets (and they had been one another's family) for many years. That's how we went from 8 dogs to 4 dogs over a period of several years and it was hard to lose another dog every couple of years, but they don't live forever. I think Sheila lived the longest--about 18 years and Honey the shortest--about 8 or 9 years. Jet is Honey's sole surviving child and he is 12 years old and really gray-haired now---not just his muzzle and face, but his paws, chest, etc. I wonder how much longer he'll be with us. Jersey is 10.5 years old and she was our 'baby' for so long, but she is now white haired, having skipped going gray and going straight to white. One more thing about pets. When Princess and Ace showed up together, I told Tim I was worried that we were about to lose two dogs. He asked why and I told him that God always brings us a stray dog or two, or a cat or two, right before some of the old ones die. Sure enough, shortly after Princess and Ace showed up we lost Sam, who was about 15 years old, I guess, and then Honey, only a few months apart. No new dogs or cats have shown up lately, so maybe the pets we have currently will be with us a good long while yet. Shortly after Pumpkin showed up three years ago, we lost Spotty the cat, who was 15 or 16 at the time. It is almost eerie, but it reminds me that the universe works in ways we mere humans do not always comprehend or understand. If Titan is like our dogs, he'll grieve for his lost companion too, but also will be accepting of a new animal companion. I think our dogs warm up to a new cat even more quickly that our cats do, as odd as that sounds. I know you'll miss Daff forever, but what a blessing she was to all of you while you had her. Dawn

Bunnies are the worst. I literally gave them a buffet at a house we used to have in Bowling Green. After that one, we lived in the country and that's when we got cats. Never had a bunny problem. Not even a deer. I think reality is going to hit this spring here at the new house. Lol