I'm glad to see that I can come here to get some motivation on the days that I am slacking! Walked 7 miles today -- cold, wind chill was the big issue, but the sun was out for most of the day -- the first day that I can remember in weeks! I had put on too much weight so far this year, and had really allowed myself to get deconditioned after a series of injuries (including broken toes followed by plantar fasciitis). I miss the feel-good of running but just couldn't seem to get myself up and out -- I guess fear of the foot pain returning had something to do with that. So I took vacation days this past week, set last Monday as the day, cut out grains, sugars, milk and legumes, and dusted off my "The Firm" exercise videos (plus a few others). So far so good -- I've alternated videos with walking, even jogged a few minutes, every day. It is back to work on Wednesday; hopefully I've far enough into the "reset" to keep my momentum after working 12 hour shifts.

I'm just beginning to exercise for real again after all the problems associated with my chemotherapy for the lymphoma diagnosed in July. Have my "ok" from the doctor and have an appointment next Wednesday for an evaluation at the fitness center. I'm anxious to start, but want to be careful not to aggravate any old injuries that have healed while I've been a couch potato. I've been walking the dog about 15 minutes twice a day for the last several days. Moni--please keep these posts going, I'm sure it will help my motivation as soon as I get started. :)

Jacob, That is very peculiar cat behavior. I've never seen cats that won't groom themselves, except occasionally a very old cat (late teens or older) that is getting old, tired and sort of sickly and just kinda does stop grooming when they are in the final months of their lives. I have one 18 or 19 year old cat that I have to bathe now because that's the stage in his life that he has arrived at. He is shrinking down to nothing....like very old humans do. Since he generally took care of his own grooming for almost his entire life, it takes two of us to bathe him---one to hold him so he doesn't escape and the other to bathe him in the tub or our deep farm sink in the kitchen. I hope your seeds from Victory Seeds do well for you. I have purchased tons of seeds from them over the years and have been very happy with them. They are extremely dedicated to preserving heirloom varieties. I am watching the weather closely. Y'all know I go on instincts that I jokingly refer to as the voice in my head. Well, the voice is my head is cautioning me to go slow and to not get in a big hurry to do anything, so I'm trying to comply. I just feel like we haven't had enough winter yet. Often, when we have a warm January, we have a bad March and April. Well, so far, January has been pretty warm overall. Right now it is almost 9 p.m. here and the outdoor temperature is 61. That seems so odd to me. We just aren't cooling down. I guess when the cold front gets here, our temperatures will fall like a rock. Megan, Trial and error gardening is true gardening...and the best kind of gardening....where nothing is guaranteed and anxiety levels build as you wonder if what you're doing is what the plant needs. So, I hope it works for you. I think back to my dad's generation (he was born in 1919) and to his dad's generation before him (born in the late 1880s I think) and I wonder how they farmed and did everything they did with....no internet, no gardening shows on TV or the radio, very primitive agricultural universities that did publish occasional ag bulletins, very few books available to dirt poor farmers, etc. Where did the know-how come from? I suppose it was handed down father to son, etc., but also bet there was a ton of trial and error involved. Nancy, I agree that it feels like we are waiting for someone to drop a bunch of bad weather on our heads. What if it doesn't happen? What if everything sort of fizzles out as it blows through? I suppose I wouldn't mind and I wouldn't complain, because it would be hard to be unhappy if we weren't as cold as expected or as rainy/snowy as expected or as windy as expected. At least it seems like this weather will race through here pretty quickly and won't linger here for days and days. It can only help that they have raised those overnight lows a lot higher over the last few days. Today was oddly warm. I don't know what to make of this weather. We hit 66 degrees, and had south wind and sunny skies until some clouds came in late in the day, and now it won't cool down. I am not complaining, just trying to understand why it doesn't want to cool down at night. Last night was pretty warm all night long as well. I guess that changes overnight sometime after midnight here. Megan, I am so happy for your friend. I can only imagine the great joy she is feeling now. My wish for her is a smooth pregnancy, an easy delivery (well, it never is easy, but you know what I mean) and a healthy baby. I cannot think of a single way to include tomato seed packets in a shower theme. Nancy, You need to be distracted by other things so you won't fixate on gardening during this hostile weather time of the year. Here is how I distracted myself today....the thing that I did to push my focus to something other than gardening and then, in parentheses, the thoughts that were running around in my brain so you can decide if the distractions worked. Lillie came over to spend the day because it was a school holiday for her. (We have a whole day.....we could work in the garden together.....her name is also the name of a flower. Still, it is foggy and cloudy and chilly, so not a day to garden with Lillie.) We went to Frisco TX to CarVana to pick up the new Acadia SUV. On the way down, we discussed everything among the four of us (Tim, Chris, Lillie and I) from school to work to vehicles to friends and pets....you name it, we discussed it. We did not discuss gardening at all. (This is what it is like to be in a car with three non-gardeners. Boo hoo. Not one word about gardening. I was dying.) Lillie and I were the least bit interested in talking to the car guys, test driving the vehicle, discussing the extended warranty, etc. because as long as Tim was happy with it, we were going to be happy, so we got the guys to drop us off at the nearby IKEA, which is our happy place. What did they have? Oh wow, some new Boho type patterns on pillows and some lamp shades and fabrics. (Boho? Flowered prints and paisley. Bright colors. I was in heaven.) Then we walked through a bunch of furniture (who cares) but spotted some lovely new vases (for cut flowers, of course, I said to myself). When we got closer to the Marketplace, they had fake indoor plants, plant stands, hanging planters, vases, self-watering pots, watering cans, more plant stands, a ladder that leans against the wall with little pots hanging from it (would be perfect for succulents....I want one), etc. There was outdoor furniture, outdoor storage units, etc. (Gardening! IKEA is into gardening now. Spring is here. My life is complete! I am so happy.) Ring....ring....ring.....all too quickly, my phone was ringing and it was the guys to say they were headed our way with Chris in his vehicle and Tim in our new one. I mean, it was in the blink of an eye. Lillie and I weren't even a quarter of the way through the store yet. Panic time. With hope in my voice I asked if they wanted to come inside and meet us there or if they wanted us to come out. They suggested we come out so we all could see the new SUV, figure out what all the buttons and dials and crap do, etc. etc. etc. Since that was the purpose of the trip, I agreed to come out the same door through which we had entered less than a half-hour before, and Lillie and I rushed our way through the infernal maze that is IKEA because I know all the shortcuts. (I was lamenting the fact I hadn't grabbed a cart and thrown all the gardening stuff in it as we looked at things, because I honestly want a lot of it......). Outside I called them and asked what row they were in. They said halfway between I and J. (I? Ice plant. J? Jasmine.......now I've got plants on the brain......it is not my fault. I blame IKEA for having such a lovely selection of garden enabling stuff.) The SUV was beautiful and gorgeous, leather seats and all sort of fancy stuff that Tim and Chris love.....heated seats (in case I get cold while hauling home bags of mulch in early Spring). I wasn't thinking about the vehicle. I was thinking about how much gardening stuff I could cram into it. (Hmmm. Fold down the back row of seats and we can fit anything in there....a new wheelbarrow.....bags of mulch.....how many bags of mulch? Maybe 12? Fold down the middle seats and we can probably get 16 bags in there.....or more. Hmm. How many flats of plants can we carry to the Spring Fling with the second and third rows of seat folded down? That is the sort of vehicle-related thoughts that were running through my mind.) We went to On The Border and ate lunch. (On the Border. Border? I like borders. I love flowering borders on all four sides of the garden filled with flowers and herbs for the wild things. Borders are nice. Food, wait, food? You guys want me to stop daydreaming about flower borders and order lunch? Okay. Fine. Be that way. Clearly you all are fuddy duddies who only want to discuss vehicles and the football playoffs when, clearly, people in a restaurant called On the Border should be discussing flowering garden borders. Whatever. I do not fit in with you people---I am from a different tribe. Where is my tribe????) We ate lunch. (Restaurant tomatoes. Ugh. I want real home-grown tomatoes.) Chris headed off the bird seed store and Tim, Lillie and I headed for CostCo. We hurried through it, since we have shopping there down to a science. There was all sorts of gardening stuff there now, but I didn't even stop and look because we had a long To Do list of places to stop and shop on the way home and I just wanted to get it done and get headed north out of the DFW metroplex before rush hour traffic began. (Don't worry, I consoled myself, you'll be back here in 2 or 3 weeks and they'll have more gardening stuff in stock and you won't be in such a hurry. You can buy what you want that day.) We stopped at Sam's Club to pick up two items (specific brands we like) that CostCo doesn't carry. It was a very quick in-and-out, but guess what I saw. Gardening stuff. (Hmmmm. Roses. I wouldn't plant those until February. Packaged perennials. I need to buy those now before they sit in the plastic bags too long and rot. I got a great bag of lilies here last year for Lillie. Bags of soil-less mix. Oooh, I always need some of that. Planters. Tools. Raised bed kits. I am in hog heaven. I hope it takes Tim a while to find the Cat Litter. Darn it. He is back already. What is the rush....) and out of the store we went, all too soon. On to Gainesville on the endless trip home. I did the only thing a smart woman could do when making a trip to the feed store. I said "We'll just sit here in the car and try to figure out what all these buttons do" (I did this on purpose because I didn't want to buy potatoes, onion, seeds, etc. with a big winter storm bearing down on us. See, I use the brain God gave me sometimes. I am not totally garden obsessed. Not really. Not too much. Not much at all. Hmm. This vehicle's back door can be opened with the remote.....I can have a flat full of plants and still open it, virtually hands free, and put the plants in the area behind the back row of seats. Cool! No. I. am. not. gardening.obsessed. Why do you ask?) Home again. Driving past the garden. Looking at all the green. Thinking how it might not be green by Sunday evening. Proud of myself that I hardly spoke about gardening on this trip.....not to Tim, not to Chris and not to Lillie. (Whew! What a relief. I didn't torment the three non-gardeners with lots of garden talk. See there. Distraction worked. We didn't discuss gardening at all. I didn't even buy a gardening magazine and Sam's Club had 2 or 3 of them on the magazine rack. I am so proud of myself. Nobody but me knows that my mind wandered away from the conversations we were having and thought of nothing but gardening no matter where we went. I have concluded I can be externally distracted from gardening stuff, but internally.....that is where my mind goes. Is this normal? It is normal for me. Is it normal to carry on an entire conversation about non-gardening things with other people while you are carrying on a gardening conversation with only yourself inside your own head? And those other people have no idea your mind is fixated on gardening? Am I nuts? (Hmmm. Nuts. We grow nuts here. Pecans. Hickories. Black walnuts. Ooops. Sorry. My mind 'went there' for just a minute.) See there, Nancy, if you just get out of the house and go do other things, you can make it through the entire day without buying one single thing related to gardening and without saying one word aloud about gardening. You won't order seeds or plants. You won't pick up a few things while you're in the store. Why, you'll hardly have gardening on your mind at all. I know this because I did it! Those random garden thoughts that roll through our minds? Nobody can control those and I don't even try. I'll try to think of other things to distract us tomorrow because I fear the weather will pin us down indoors, merely because none of us like to have frostbitten nosies and toesies. The wind chill is supposed to be brutal. Remember, y'all, wind chill only applies to fauna and not to florals.......so our plants only have to endure the wind and the cold temperatures, but aren't, technically speaking, affected by wind chill itself. Is is Spring yet? I cannot remember if I already asked that question today. Oh, and the answer is no, it is not. Luckily for us, we can start planting in late winter.......Crazy? No, I am not crazy. Dawn

My uncle grew blueberries just fine southeast of me in Texas---mostly east and only a little south and about 160 miles from here. His plants were growing in acidic soil, in an area with a higher water table (very close to the lake but not lakefront as there was one lot between their place and the lake) and tons of huge tall pines, so his blueberries were true understory plants growing in humid dappled shade, no full sun, and they were very happy. They produced well there because he had the specific microcIimate and soil they needed. I suspect the heavily dappled shade kept them quite a bit cooler than they would have been in full sun or even in morning sun and afternoon shade. He grew the rabbiteye types and grew multiple varieties to spread out the harvest. His plants were huge and produced heavily. They put up tons of blueberries in the deep freezes every year. Anyone and everyone I know in Oklahoma who has attempted to grow blueberries here eventually has lost the war to keep them alive, usually between about year 4 and year 7. I think it is the exceptionally hot and exceptionally dry year that will get them even after they are established for a few years and producing well enough to please whoever is growing them. I think people in the northeastern quadrant of the state likely have the best chance of growing blueberries successfully. Amy, The blueberries need a very specific soil pH that most of us here in OK do not have naturally and they need perfectly draining soil but then it also has to be able to hold enough moisture in the hotter weather. I suspect the Smart Pots with the drip irrigation system are to allow for great drainage and also to make regular irrigation easier to manage. It also is easier to provide the soil-less mix they need in Smart Pots than in the ground or in raised beds that include native soil, especially if a person has clay. Blueberries are a total impossibility here where I live because we have not only high pH soil but very high pH water. If I ever say I am going to try to grow blueberries here in hot, dry, high pH southern OK, y'all should tell me I need to have my head examined. Patti, Well now you've gone and done it. Here is is after midnight, the grandkids are having a slumber party in the living room, and I now am craving a fried pie. I doubt I could go into the kitchen and make a fried pie of any sort without waking up the children, so I guess I won't have a pie right now. (grin) Thorneless blackberries do not seem as resilient to me as the ones with thorns. I don't know why that is. Voles eat my blackberry roots (but don't touch the wild dewberry roots) so I've given up trying to grow them here. I'd have a much bigger and better garden if the voles would just leave my plants alone. That's never going to happen though. Rebecca, Williamson County is further than I would drive even if they have tomato plants. Anyhow, they will have them in the DFW metroplex soon enough if I have the urge to get a couple of early plants, and so far I don't have the urge. Some years they have them down there around the end of January and other years not until mid-February. I still feel like this cold weather is going to hang on and hang on for weeks yet and I'm not going to get in a big hurry with anything. Amy, Aww, poor Honey. If y'all decide not to keep her, I hope you can find her a nice home. All of our dogs that were diggers eventually outgrew the digging, but it took a few years. Jersey always has been such a wild runner, an escape artist and a digger. She finally has settled down, and that almost makes me sad because it is old age that has settled her down. She is about to turn 12 years old and not only is her whole face going white but so are her paws and legs. She used to be almost solid brown. Now she is brown, gray and white. Why is it that by the time a high-energy dog finally calms down to a reasonable level, he or she has one foot in the grave? Aurora still tells me almost daily that she misses Jet, and asks why he had to die. She wasn't even that attached to him because he was sort of a grumpy old dog. She adores Jersey and Jersey adores her and she hangs all over Jersey all the time. I cannot imagine what it will do to that child when Jersey crosses the Rainbow Bridge someday. Jen, Underplanting really does rock. I love being able to squeeze 3 crops into the space of 1. Well, there was nothing garden related for me today or even yesterday. Here is my non-gardening Saturday with the grandkids: breakfast, grocery store, feed store, home for lunch, playing and watching TV, off to the park to play on the playground, ice cream at DQ (it is across the road from the park in Gainesville), a late afternoon movie (The Kid Who Would Be King), home for dinner, more playing, TV and then bedtime. This includes Jersey practically sitting on top of the girls so they will give her their total attention. Where would I have squeezed in any time to even contemplate gardening? Heck, Wal-mart or TSC could have had tomato plants and I wouldn't even have noticed because I was doing my best to not lose the grandchildren while at the stores. Tim is always the most worn out on the weekends we have the girls and he always goes to bed first. It is exhausting keeping up with them so I totally get it. Dawn