I should take a pic of the Polygonum perfoliatum fruit and post it for sale on Ebay. Some SFB would probably buy it. I hate that vine. Over the past 5 years it's taken over around here. I volunteer with a group that pulls invasive plants in the local parks. The vine looks so dainty but I come home looking like I was attacked. Honestly I wouldn't have a problem with that seller if they'd only disclose the invasive nature of the plant. If someone wants to spend their $$ on it that's their choice..... and I have a bridge.....

Christin, I grow Broad Beans every year. They are my all-time faves. They produce and produce and produce. My Snow Peas are sprouted, but am not making much head way with clearing my garden of weeds so I can get things planted, darn it!. My legs are so weak and my lower back is killing me. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ mandolls I have to get my spring veggie crops in NOW if I am going to have any at all. Here in the Southern Plains, it goes from erratic early spring (cold-hot-cold-hot) to a gorgeous blush of Spring so wonderful that you are glad to live here. But quickly, sometimes virtually overnight, it changes to HOTTEST hell.. Fall gardens might be good, except that the weather, as with our springs, is just too unpredictable to bother.. We might enjoy a long autumn of beautiful, pleasant weather, but often as not, just as my crops are looking great, we get a deep freeze or at least a hefty Hoar frost. I have extended some of my crops with covers and bales of hay as barriers, but it is so much work and I just can't cut the mustard any more. And then, we also have tornadoes - in the spring thru early summer and again in the fall. This is due to the moist Gulf Stream colliding with the drier Arctic Jet Stream over us all the time, but it is worse when the seasons change.. Just as my corn starts to tassel and the tomatoes have grown huge and starting to change colour....SWOOSH! You just have to garden by faith here. Take it or leave it. That's how it is. If I had my way, I'd go HOME to San Diego County in Southern California where I can garden nine months out of the year with beautiful tropicals, herbs, cacti (that I wouldn't have to drag inside every fall), and all manner of flowers, fruit, avocados, and citrus trees....and deal with the dense fog, droughts, the wildfires, the newcomers, and the earthquakes that I am accustomed to dealing with. (LOL) I ao miss the mountains and tall redwood trees, and trips to the Ocean, all just a few miles away in any direction. (dreaming ...) But we have to stay where the work is, so here we are! --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My spine has been disintegrating for the past fifteen years and I have arthritis so bad in other areas that excessive walking is just not going to happen anymore I literally collapse. I have worked too hard all my life and it is so difficult to let up and slack off. I have so many things I still WANT to do and many things I NEED to do, but my body has just had ENOUGH. ((grinning)). So, it is probably a good thing that I live where I do with limited pleasant gardening weather or else I would literally work myself to death! Still, it is the fact that I keep working that also keeps me going - crazy, but true. I have to get exercise or my joints lock up and I would get atrophy. Sucks, but them's the breaks! So, I deal with the pain and keep going while I can. I look a lot younger than I am, but I sure don't feel like it. But, I do alright. No complaints. It's just the way things are, I reckon. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It turned out to be another HOT day today - those weather men can't deal with the fact that the typical weather patterns no longer exist, so their forecasts are not always accurate anymore because those old weather patterns are changing...all the time. Still, it could turn nasty any time and I have to get with it if I am going to get my Spring veggies in the ground: i.e., cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, lettuces, radishes, carrots,. and onions. Next month - in April, : then the warm weather crops go into the ground, like tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, okra, beans, melons, corn, Herbs and etc. ~Annie ...digging in the Red Dirt of Central Oklahoma and dreaming of retiring back home near the coast.....where we will probably fall off into the ocean when the Big One HITS. :) I'm IRISH! Can't win for losing... (p.s - mandolls I didn't mean to sound like I was biting your head off...just 'splainin' the dilemma that we in the Southern Plains have to deal with. The thing is, just be happy with what you have and where you live. That's all any of can do, right? As you said, when the weather is right where you live, you can get out there and get after it! And we will be JEALOUS of your gardens..) This post was edited by sweetannie4u on Fri, Mar 15, 13 at 21:59

Pam, In Oklahoma, our middle name is "bad weather". I think that tornadoes are my least favorite form of bad weather, although hail storms rank a close second. At least with hurricanes, y'all know it is coming and you even have a pretty reasonable idea a day or two beforehand where it will make landfall. You have wind speed estimations, elaborate storm surge maps and forecasts, etc. Up to a point, you know what to expect and about when to expect it. With tornadoes, it is their very speed and randomness, as well as their unpredictable nature, that makes them so scary. I think I could handle living in a hurricane-prone area better than living in a tornado-prone area. Much remains to be learned about tornadoes. I think the NWS does an outstanding job of telling us when the conditions exist for tornado development, but it must be our job to pay attention, heed the warnings, and be alert and aware and ready to seek shelter, because no one can predict the precise location where all those conditions will come together at any given moment and form a tornado---or a dozen tornadoes---or a hundred tornadoes. No one can predict if any specific tornado that forms will be a pretty mild EF-0 or a severely horrific Ef-4 or EF-5. No one can predict how long they will last, although the NWS does warn us of days when long-track tornadoes are more likely to occur. I am glad you and yours were safe when the tornado hit your village, and I know your husband and his chainsaw were greatly appreciated. Looking at the damage I'm guessing it likely was an F-2 or a very low-end F-3? It is wonderful y'all were able to help. A couple of years ago, a small community in the county adjacent to ours was hit by an F-4 tornado in February. It was the worst damage I've ever seen from a tornado because the county I live in doesn't have nearly as many tornadoes as other parts of Oklahoma, and when we have them, they tend to be small and fairly weak. Of course, we have only lived here 14 years, so maybe we just haven't lived here long enough to see a big one here. My DH was one of the dozens of emergency responders who spent the next 24 hours on search and rescue efforts, assisting the storm victims in any way possible. It warms my heart to see how many people respond and help, and every bit of that help is needed. Oklahoma City is hit by more tornadoes than any other city in the United States. Since records began being kept, there's been over 140 hit the OKC area, according to info on the NWS Norman Weather Office's website. The records date back to the late 1800s. We moved here in 1999, just a couple of months before the horrific 1999 tornadoes hit OKC-Moore and other communities. Prior to that, in our head, tornadoes hit people "out there" in tornado alley but I don't think my DH and I had thought they'd ever be a threat to us. After we saw the magnitude of the damage in the OKC area, which is a little over 100 miles north of us, we had a tornado shelter put in before spring of 2000 rolled around. Have we used it? Oh yes, several times a year. Have we had tornadoes near us? Yes, within our county and in the adjacent counties, but so far not any on the ground within maybe 20 miles of us. We've been lucky. Oklahoma weather drives us gardeners nearly crazy. It doesn't matter how beautiful your yard and landscape may be, how lush, beautiful and productive your veggie garden might be, or how heavily loaded with fruit, your fruit trees, brambles or berry plants might be---the OK weather can wipe it out in the blink of an eye. While tornadoes are a huge threat, we also often have very destructive severe thunderstorms, usuallly accompanied by high winds and often by hail in very large sizes that demolishes everything. We have derecho winds that blow through and flatten plants to the ground. We don't often have a lot of snow storms that cause damage, but very destructive ice storms are fairly common. I'd take a heavy snow storm over a light ice storm any day of the week, but we don't get to chose which one we get. Rain often comes in two forms here--either almost none at all for long periods of time, or inches and inches at once, often resulting in flash flooding. Gardening in Oklahoma is not for sissies! Earthquakes have always occurred in Oklahoma, but many of them are too small to be felt. We had a big one (big for us, but I bet folks from California would laugh at us because it was not big at all compared to theirs) last year that was felt as far away as Dallas. It was the first one I ever had felt here. Then, a couple of weeks later, I felt another one. Once was enough for me, and twice was too many. I'll be alright if I never feel the ground shake like that again. Bon, I don't know how many earthquakes Oklahoma normally has in one year, but over 1,000 were recorded in 2010. Of those, only 103 were reported as being "felt" by humans. The rest were just recorded seismically. I haven't seen 2011's numbers. I've linked a webpage with lots of OK earthquake data on it, including recent earthquakes. I cannot help thinking that the fracking procedures being used with oil/gas wells are contributing to our more frequently-felt earthquakes. Down in the D-FW metro area where fracking has gone on at a tremendous rate for about 10 years or so, they are having fairly frequent small quakes. I grew up there and never heard of an earthquake there, not even one from long ago, until they started fracking the wells. The weather here is supposed to be just absolutely gorgeous this week, and I am looking forward to accomplishing much in the yard and garden, but we never, ever can let our guard down. You cannot be a gardener in Oklahoma without being weather-aware and, in fact, every resident of Oklahoma needs to be very aware of the weather around them at all times, not just the gardeners. It isn't that we have more weather than anyone else, but I think it changes incredibly rapidly here and it can turn violent in so many ways...and does so with great regularity. It keeps life interesting anyway. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Recent Earthquakes in Oklahoma

Hello Wi!!! I have followed some of your posts on the bathroom forum....almost said "bathroom floor.".....and am glad you worked your way to this side of the road. We do have some fascinating properties, and now it will be fun to play house with YOURS TOO. If I saw nothing else, I could identify a picture as being yours by that unique front door. Fantastic shape. And with a construction date of 1938, you are very pre-war, unlike my stucco cottage dated 1950, and my DH's Cape dated 1948. Some of the others around here are farmhouses from the turn of the last century. And then there are a couple of Sears Kit Homes now. And a California bungalow. And some manufactured homes. And an Aussie half way across the world. We are all friendly neighbors too. Looks like your redo plans are very professional. I hope your contractor will perform as expected and give you a real dream home. Glad to have you with us.