Hello everyone. I received my package from Serena. It included a sweet card and a story behind the raspberry canes she had included. She also added a gardening magazine, some herbal tea (not pictured, oops!) and two stickers. I can't wait to plant the raspberries! Thank you, Serena! Your box is on its way. Sorry it was a little late. I was trying to get the fig cuttings a little more established. Tracking is #9505514386937032017503

Amy, Same thing here with current prom pictures. No one back in our day (I was a senior in 1977) would have been allowed in the door with the exposed flesh I see nowadays. Sometimes I wonder what the parents are thinking, letting their daughters dress in such skimpy prom dresses. Waves of nostalgia can be fun. When I am visiting my mom at our childhood home, I am nostalgic for certain things....the roses Daddy used to grow along the backyard fence, the big mimosa tree we played beneath while hummingbirds and butterflies visited its flowers, the roses, peonies, zinnias, cosmos and cockscombs that mom and I (okay, mostly I) grew in my mom's flowerbed by the porch, the fruit trees in teh back yard and the veggie garden. All of those are gone, but I can close my ends and practically see them, and all of us out and about and near them, when I am at mom's house. Then I walk into the house and wonder how in the world my parents raised 4 kids in a small 3-bedroom house with only 1 bathroom and a tiny galley kitchen. The miracle is that no one died in the perpetual fight to get into the bathroom at peak periods. The house always seems smaller than I remember it being, but I guess that's the difference in looking at things as an adult versus how you thought they were when you were a kid. Melissa, The more I eat hot peppers, the more heat I can handle but I am mostly careful to avoid overdoing it. There's plenty of time to plant habaneros. They really thrive in warm soil and hot air so I never put them in the ground as early as the rest of the hot peppers. Bon, The only thing I don't like about potatoes is digging them, but the digging is a necessary evil that makes eating them possible. Jay, It is about time the snow is gone! I am glad you're getting to plant. We only had really good rainfall here in January, so it is long gone. Otherwise, our rain has been sporadic. It keeps missing us (uh oh, had summers like that before, haven't we, and you as well), going around us, just flat out not falling, etc. Our forecast highs also have consistently run 4 to 6 degrees above whatever the forecast says. Yesterday the forecast high was 80 and we hit 86. I'm starting to dread the summer weather since we are trending hotter and drier than forecast. Our back garden in the sandier soil does drain too quickly, but our front garden drains too slowly......if only I could take a gigantic mixing bowl and mix together the clay from the front with the sand from the back. Dawn

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

So, I'm reading backwards and trying to catch up. Nancy, Sophie's Choice is a fine early tomato and I've noticed in some drought years that it is amazingly drought tolerant as well. I've grown it in maybe 8 or 10 years, as it has been available via seed retailers since around the mid 1990s. If you like old-fashioned tomato flavor that leans more towards being a bit tangy or acidic, you'll like this one. If you prefer sweeter fruit, this might not be a variety you'd like. Most years, the fruit on mine tend to stay on the smallish side, but that's not really uncommon with early varieties. It is great for containers as the plant itself is very compact. It does not always produce as well late in the season as some other early varieties do, so if I had limited space and had to choose between it and Early Girl, I'd choose EG over SC every time because you get more fruit per plant from the EG and season-long production. Chris and his girlfriend are blissfully happy, so I think she's the one, and I'm going to be patient and not push them because I just want for both of them to be happy----and if it is true love (and I believe it is, and I believe they both believe that too), then it is just a matter of time. We had a fun, casual and very relaxed Christmas lunch and we kept it simple---salad, lasagna, garlic bread, green beans and a simple desert (cupcakes and cookies). Chris took home leftovers for them to have at the house and also for him to take to work tomorrow (which is unusual, because the firefighters usually cook their lunch and dinner at the station, but maybe he doesn't really like what is on tomorrow's menu). The girls wore beautiful dark blue velveteen Christmas dresses but the rest of us were in jeans or sweats.....a three year old in a pretty dress wolfing down lasagna like a starving wolf was quite a sight to see...and she only had lasagna on her forehead, cheeks, chin, nose and mouth by the time she was done. I do think she managed to eat some of her lunch, but her face was wearing quite a lot of it too. She loves lasagna and ate very enthusiastically. I agree that you cannot go wrong with mac and cheese. I don't know anyone who doesn't like it. When we were planning our Christmas meal, I told Chris I could provide alternate food for the girls if they don't like lasagna, and he assured me that they both loved it (and both ate it just fine), so this was the simplest meal with no one requiring anything special or different. Tim and I ate more wheat in one meal than we normally eat in a week, but it was worth it. This lasagna is his mom's recipe, and what surprises me the most is that we've had this same recipe card, in her handwriting, for almost 40 years....well, I think about 37 years and Tim thinks 40. Either way, it is a miracle we haven't lost the recipe card in all this time. The card is getting pretty creased and worn, so we're going to scan it into the computer while it is still legible. Oh, and Tim must be the chef when his mom's lasagna is being made (and who am I to argue?) so the hardest thing I did today was make a salad and cook green beans--easy peasy. Kim, I hope all your journeys this season are safe ones and that you arrive home rested and ready to move on to the next stage of your professional gardening life. A little down time is always a good thing to refresh one's spirit. Rebecca, Your food sounds yummy and I hope the kind wasn't on the attack too much. It sounds like y'all had a really relaxing pleasant time together and I think that is how the holidays ought to be. Do y'all remember the Norman Rockwell image of the perfect family gathered around the table for Thanksgiving with the nice tablecloth and perfect place settings of the good dishes and the good silver and such? Of course there is the huge turkey on the platter and Grandpa is getting ready to carve it. I think it is entitled "Freedom From Want". Well, we had holidays like that in the 1980s and well into the 1990s, but things are so much more relaxed now, and I like this sort of celebration better. The food tastes just as good without all the fuss, and who needs china, silver and crystal? If we get any more relaxed and casual with our family, we'll be sitting cross-legged on the floor eating pizza. And, that would be okay because what matters is just being together. Jennifer, I am jealous of your snow. No matter how little you got, it was more than we got. They keep throwing some sort of wintery precipitation into our forecast---sometimes for 2 or 3 days per week, but as those days approach, it falls out of our forecast and we get nothing. I love snow, but I'm okay if it doesn't fall too because when we get snow down here, it more often is only sleet or freezing rain or a wintery mix and the roads get treacherous and it takes Tim and Chris three or four hours to get to or from work. We rarely get something that looks like actual white snow flakes. Sometimes we just get graupel. For chickens who need to roam more, there's always chicken tractors available, and some of them are fairly small and compact. You can buy them or make your own, and some of them are lightweight enough that one person can easily move them around the yard. Or, if you want to put the chickens in new areas that you can periodically change up (but this will not include overhead protection from predatory birds) there's portable, electrified poultry netting that runs off fence energizers. Some of it, at least, comes already attached to poles you can stick easily into the ground, so you can move it around periodically. For anybody not familiar with electrified poultry netting, you can see examples of some of those products here: Electrified Poultry Netting at Premier 1 Supplies Don't worry. The day will roll around again when there will be little ones in your home (at least visiting for Christmas) and you'll find yourself putting out cookies and milk for Santa and food for the raindeer once again. Our almost 9-year-old future granddaughter reported breathlessly and with great joy to us today that Santa ate 2 of the 3 cookies she left out for him and took one bite from the third. He drank all the milk. She was impressed and decided he must have been really full from eating cookies from all over the world and he loved their cookies so started in on the third one but just couldn't finish it. I think that pleased her more than the fact he ate the other two cookies. It made me smile to listen to her tale as our son and her mom looked on, as I remember when our son was the young child thrilled that Santa ate the cookies. At least we all understand why Santa Claus is a little bit rotund....after a solid month of eating too many treats between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I know our family is going to try hard now to return to more healthy eating, and much less junk. It was such a lovely, if cold, day today and I sort of hate to see Christmas end. It probably is a good thing it comes but once a year. So, now we start looking ahead to the good bowl games that really matter. I hope the Oklahoma teams do well in their bowl games this year. For me, the bowl games are the bridge that carry us from Christmas into the new year. Dawn