Nancy, this was #2 son's boy, he's four and will have a little brother the end of summer. #1 son's girlfriend has 2 boys who we consider grand children and #4 son also married a woman with a boy who's about to become a teenager. I was at a baby shower today where there were lots of toddlers. None wanted to snuggle with a strange grandma. I am looking forward to baby snuggles.

H/J, were there ants in the bed with the aphids? Sometimes ants "herd" aphids. The ants might be moving them to new plants.

Rebecca, when did you winter sow peppers? When did they sprout? If you don't have room to start indoors don't WS till later, so they aren't exposed to the cold like normal WSing. I had fabulous California Wonders from winter sowing one year. It was the only time, probably had perfect weather that year, but they probably didn't sprout til April. (This was my first year, I didn't keep records then.)

Dawn, Tracy at Smashed Thumb is great. She pulled plants she didn't like out of six packs and replaced them with ones she thought were better. Granted, we know them, DH worked with her husband for many years, but I think she gives excellent service and I've never been unhappy with her plants. Sulking peppers and carrot divas, you have such a great way of describing things.

She does, doesn't she! Good point Amy. By the way, I've not yet heard the story of you in your polyester pants and suede shoes in the ring with 20 bulls. . . but have conjured up a mighty good picture in my mind! I also am a relatively strange grandma to some. My immediate surviving family before GDW was 1 son and DIL and 2 grandchildren. Now I almost have too many to remember! LOL But they have been ever so sweet to welcome me.

Nancy, that is basically the story. I'd been working there about a month. It was november, cold and windy and my boss wanted pictures of these bulls so he could sell them on the web site. There were no heifers anywhere close, so the bulls were pretty docile. He took pictures, I wrote down the order and ear tags, standing in the pen, in slacks and suede shoes freezing my behind off and wondering what the heck I had gotten myself into. It wasn't the last time I wondered that.

LOLOL. . .to bed, will respond tomorrow.

Hazel, My best guess on the lemon balm is that insects, bird or wind spreads the seeds around. I've had new lemon balm plants come up 30' from the mother plant. I weed out 99% of the lemon balm that sprouts because otherwise I think I'd have a garden of nothing but lemon balm.

With the aphids you're seeing on the ground, perhaps you have root aphids? Root aphids are more common in greenhouses, but can be brought into a garden via purchased plants or imported soil. They do seem to be spreading more into home gardens than they once did. Aphids don't care for something that is in banana peels, so one of the least toxic ways to get rid of aphids is to toss banana peels into the garden in areas infested with aphids.

Nancy, I make tons and tons of hot/sweet pickles. There are various safety-approved canning recipes out there to make them, or you can use the Mrs. Wage's pickling mixes. My favorite Mrs. Wage's mix for sweet/hot pickles (or peppers) is the Zesty Bread and Butter mix. You can find Mrs. Wage's mixes on the canning aisle of most stores or you can order them online. I go through at least 20 packages of Mrs. Wage's Zesty Bread and Butter mix per year year to make hot/sweet pickles. They are immensely popular with our friends. We give them to everyone at Christmas time along with a jar of Annie's Salsa. We give away about 400 jars of home-canned goodies each Christmas, and the standard gift bag for Tim's coworkers is 1 jar of Annie's Salsa plus 1 jar of Zesty Bread and Butter Pickles per gift bag, and about the same for all the folks at our VFD Christmas Party, though sometimes I make so much Habanero Gold jelly that everyone gets a jar of that too. Some years instead of pickles, they get candied jalapenos....which can be made using any Bread and Butter pickle recipe but substituting jalapeno peppers for the cucumbers. There's also recipes for spicy pickles that are not sweet, and of course, Mrs. Wage's has a mix for Spicy Pickles too. With our nieces and nephews---I give them 6 to 12 jars each at Christmas (depending on how many I made and how many I have left) of their favorite thing, so one person may get all Annie's Salsa and another may get all Candied Jalapenos, depending on what item they like the best.

The best time to buy your Mrs. Wage's mixes if you choose to go that route, is now. I usually just pick up a couple of packages each weekend throughout Spring so that by the time canning season rolls around, I have all I need on hand. Otherwise, canning supplies sell out fast in the stores here once the harvests are rolling in, and there's nothing worse than not being able to find what you need when you need it. The same is true of canning salt (buy it on the baking aisle in boxes similar to what rock salt comes in (but smaller) and not in smaller/fancier/more expensive packaging on the canning aisle, and the standard pickling spices as well---I stock up on all the pickling spices before harvest begins. Otherwise, it can be hard to find some staples like mixed pickling spices, peppercorns and turmeric in any stores once folks are making pickles. I usually find my favorite Mrs. Wage's mixes at the local Wal-Marts, but they have not stocked very many on the shelves yet this year, so I've been buying them at Atwood's, which luckily for us, sits right between the nearest Wal-Mart and Home Depot so we're always near at Atwood's at least once per weekend.

It is sad that the hardest time to find pickling supplies is during pickling season, but it is true. It is like the stores order a certain amount of inventory and no more than that and once it sells out they are slow to get more in. I've learned the hard way to buy early and stockpile stuff.

Tell GDW that cabbages head up here in May and June....and often in April if you plant 60-day varieties in mid-February. I've already harvested all of mine because I tend to plant varieties with 60 to 70 DTMs. Cool season crops here have to beat the heat, though I have found cabbage normally is more heat tolerant than many other brassicas. I've now got pole beans, bush beans and southern peas growing in the raised bed from which I harvested all the broccoli and cabbage last week.

Technically, for fresh eating, you can harvest onions at any age and stage, but waiting for the necks to soften (a stage appropriately referred to as soft neck stage) and the leaves to fully yellow means you'll get maximum sized onions based on the soil fertility/water they've received and they'll store better. Sometimes I get impatient because I want the space for something else and harvest some of the shortday or intermediate day onions earlier than I should, but I'm trying not to do that as much as I used to. With most of the onion varieties that readily grow here, those are only going to store for 2 to 4 months maximum depending on the variety. With storage onions (varieties selected deliberately for their ability to last 5 to 10 months in storage depending on variety) meant for eating in the fall, winter and next spring, you do need to let them mature fully before harvest or their ability to be long-keepers is compromised. So, I've got 6 regular varieties I can choose to harvest early if I want to put something else in that space, and 3 long-keeping varieties that I absolutely do not touch until they have fully matured in the ground. I would say that in at least 70% of the photos of onion harvests that people post, the onions have been harvested before they really hit the soft neck stage. I'm not sure if that's a deliberate choice to harvest early in order to get in a hot season succession planting of something else in the space formerly occupied by onions or if people just aren't patient enough to let the onions mature properly in the ground or if they don't know when onions should be harvested and are accidentally harvesting too soon.

Amy, We had a step-granddaughter for a few years, and we loved her and treated her as if she was our own grandchild, and I have no regrets about that. I mean we absolutely adored her. I was crushed when our son's marriage didn't work out, but he and his ex-wife have remained friendly (and we have remained friends with her and her daughter as well) so at least we get updates on how his ex-wife's daughter is doing. She's growing up so fast! I miss having her in our daily lives, but the years that we had her were so sweet and such a blessing. Maybe someday he'll remarry and have kids or stepkids (I'm not picky!) but until then our grandchildren are his tropical birds. I know you're going to enjoy having a new grandbaby to snuggle and cuddle. For the record, my grandbirds do not snuggle or cuddle and they like to bite, so they're not nearly as much fun as actual grandchildren. Tracy sounds like a real treasure and her customers are lucky to have her.

Nancy, You are so blessed. I have seen some cases where the kids and grandkids were not welcoming to grandpa or grandma's new spouse and I'm glad that's not the case with you and Garry's family. To be fully welcomed and embraced by them all is the best thing in the world!

Amy, That is closer than I'd ever get to a bull. When we see one out in the road, Tim hops right out of the car to try to herd it into its pasture if we know whose bull it is. I'm the chicken sitting in the car calling around to find the owner. In our neck of the woods, if livestock of any kind has escaped and is in the roadway it is considered standard practice to stop and try to get them out of the roadway before someone hits them. I don't mind herding heifers or even goats or sheep, but I'm not fond of bulls. One bull escaped from our friend's pasture and ran a couple of miles down the road once....he was determined to find himself some action. Well, the action he got was people on ATVs, in pickup trucks and (eventually) on horseback following him in hot pursuit and finally herding him into another person's pasture where he could calm down enough to eventually be taken back home. Who says country life is dull? It can be, at times, but it certainly isn't always quiet and peaceful. We've herded more livestock than I ever imagined we would, but you do what you need to do for your neighbors---who are liable for damage to vehicles, etc., if someone hits their livestock while they are out in the road.

If/when a vehicle hits livestock in the road, it almost always ends in death for the livestock and sometimes for the people as well---it is one of the most gruesome accident scenes you'll ever see.

I bet your job at the ranch never was dull either. Country life is amazing that way---every day has a little adventure built in somewhere.

Dawn

LOL, Dawn, keep in mind, I was a city girl. I was pretty freaked out about being in that pen with those bulls. I would have been more freaked out after I'd been there longer and seen more. I was trying real hard to keep the job in spite of being terrified. Looking back at it, he was kind of a jerk to ask me to do it. I was in my car at that office when I first started and a flatbed truck pulled up and a guy got out. Boots with spurs, leather chaps, long sleeved western shirt, vest, silk scarf, cowboy hat and handle bar moustache. I thought "50 years in Oklahoma and I've finally seen a real one." The receptionist in the office building wouldn't let the cowboys walk on the carpet. So when I heard spurs jingle I would go to the front door to find out what they needed.

I would be careful of a bull on a mission, too. Or a crazy cow with a calf to protect. That's what one of the cowboys used to say "she's crazy". I almost got run over by a calf that didn't want to be castrated. I saw my boss tuck and roll over a fence once to get away from a pissed off cow. One thing cowboys have in common is how many bones they've had broken or teeth kicked out.

I became Memaw because my son was dating a girl with a new baby (not his). The child had 2 sets of grandparents, so I needed a different name. I resisted falling in love with him, not wanting to be too invested if it didn't work out. I adored him and then my son and the girl broke up. Under the circumstances I didn't see him again. You might have noticed a theme here...boys, they are all boys.

What to do today? I dreamed the chickens got out last night. We go to Bartlesville tonight for Mother's day dinner, so I need to keep my nails clean.

I got this new toy for Mother's day. More things to play with.

Just showing off what the garden is doing today. Shamelessly

You're ahead of me Rebecca! Looking good! Have a great day.

Well, after all the talk of replacing the stunted peppers, they look way better today than yesterday. Guess they figured it was time to get their acts together. It looks to me that the hot-ish peppers aren't as pouty as the bell peppers. I have a Joe E. Parker that's super happy, as well as a cayenne and an Anaheim. There's even a WS Charleston Belle that's doing well. Maybe those were more sheltered from the cold or something. Anyhow, there were lots of pepper starts (hot and sweet) at Cherry Street this morning, so maybe next year I'll buy mine. Was hoping for some early tomatoes, but most of the vendors say it'll be another 2 weeks or so.

Lots of them had green garlic. If I bought some, how should I cure it?

I planted a few things this morning - all WS. Basil, hollyhock, tall zinnias, dwarf sunflowers, celosia, gallardia, and cosmos. Also staked the tall sunflowers and tied up the sugar snaps. I have more to do, but had to get done what I could while I was up in the cool air. I liberated a handful of 2-ish gallon pots from the freebie pile at Stringers yesterday, which I'm going to use for pollinator attracting flowers in the back yard. Which means I need more potting mix. And mulch, because the yard guy finally got into the back yard to mow. Which means I need to get the plastic out to start solarizing the area I want to plant next year. And start more basil, summer lettuce, and sunflowers. And cucumbers. More to do.

Is there any reason not to tuck a few green beans in around the potted tomatoes, other than water usage?

Beautiful Rebecca.

I have been mostly sick this week. I need someone to come finish my planting lol. It is terrible to not be able to work and I don't get paid for sick days. Although I did sell $136 in plants. Yay!!!! Grocery money. I am going to rest awhile but I will have to force myself to get out there.

Kim, so sorry you've been sick! If you were closer you know you'd have plenty of help.

Take it easy, Kim. I'm sorry you're feeling bad.

Nice, Rebecca!

Amy, there are ants in that bed--little black ones. I just checked and didn't see aphids as of right now. These are the lime green aphids. Or were. That's great to know about banana peels, Dawn. I buy a bunch of bananas every week at Natural Grocer and usually throw the peel in the compost. I can just as easily throw it in the garden.

Dress, shoes, jewelry, nail polish , and Spanx are now purchased. And a large pot of red geraniums (for my Mom). That was fast shopping. Now, just to figure out my hair. It's so wild. Wild like my garden.

Hope everyone enjoys the lovely weather. I so wish to spend the day outside instead of taming my hair.

Have fun H/J.

Make someone take a photo of you all refined and ladylike and share! And. . . I loved your hair just the way it was at the SF!

Kim, I am hating that you're sick. I so hope you hurry up and feel better. :( As HJ says, wish were closer so we could help.

Rebecca! Woo-hoo! What a nice variety of flowers to get put in! Who was it, Jennifer? You? Too lazy to scroll back. . . had to laugh--the ONE little flower I love, nasturtiums--I totally forgot to plant some!! What the! I don't even have any seeds. Well I can see I will have to remedy that. AND cosmos!! GRRR AND celosia--but I remembered that I forgot that so picked up a few when I visited the nursery a couple weeks ago.

One thing bad thing about having a deck that only has a crawl space under half of it, and having the space under the deck generally inaccessible for all practical purposes is that it's not possible to get under it and remove dead critters who have begun to STINK!!! Hope it's a couple voles.

Amy, fun hearing about your "office job" and the cowboys!

Well, I tied some twine up for the pole beans to climb. Had a talk with the Korean squash about climbing the trellis instead of choking the garlic. Pulled weeds out of several beds. Watered stuff in the greenhouse. DH made dirt, so I can plant the last of my dwarf tomatoes tomorrow. Something is or has been eating the cabbage. More BT tomorrow, but they're not doing well. The Happy Rich sprouting broccoli has made sprouts, one Blue Wind has made a decent head. I will get to taste both of those.

Nancy, I always had a tank of frozen bull semen in my office. That was a conversation starter (or ender).

I've decided to blow up the thread a bit with pictures. I try to take them at least once a month but things are growing so fast now that I need to do it once a week.

This area was all just front yard and in general not much to look at except for the grape hyacinths that keep coming back even though they've been mowed over several times throughout the season and never watered.

I'll show some of the individual pictures I took and then step back a bit to get the bigger picture. We mixed up this front yard with annual, perennials, and vegetables. I'm not very good at making things look "proper". If I can crowd things in and keep the weeds down it makes me feel good. We've set up a half hour each day where all the kids help with the weeding. For the smaller guys they get a certain section to weed or else they'll just sit there and dilly dally for a 1/2 hour till they can get up to play. This will help us tremendously with keeping the weeds down.

After a 1/2 hour of weeding they head out to do a 1/2 hour of practicing showing goats. We have a goat show coming up at the end of this next week.

There is a picture of cosmos. I looked around for something general to use for size comparison as I've never grown cosmos this big. I used one of my Dollar General solar lights.

Ok, I'm done blowing up the thread and showing off our hard work :-)

I've never seen cosmos that big either! Do you remember the variety?

And Grandpa Ott is my favorite morning glory color ever.

Excellent photos, Denise, and, great flowers and BEAUTIFUL space!!! Love it all. . . LOOK at all the plants! I'm spending the evening putting together a bunch of pictures into maybe a Mac Keynote presentation to send to my SIL in Buffalo Wy to show my 95-yr old Mom tomorrow.

We'll, I got the cosmos seed from a lady on here who offers her seed regularly for free. I think her name is Heidi. The variety was listed as Cranberry.

Heidi is part of GW but not the Oklahoma thread.

Nancy, I'm sure your mom will LOVE them if she was any type of gardener at all. I never tire of seeing pictures of other people's gardens.

My new artillery works darned good in weed combat and transplanting. Whoopee! Can hardly wait til next month so I can order the long-handled hoe and my garden fork and maybe a garden spade.

She had a family of six to feed. She took part in the planting our gigantic veggie garden--it was a fun family affair, although Dad was the real gardener. But Dad and we four kids did most of the maintenance and we worked in tandem harvesting stuff. But boy did she work hard come canning time! And then the "men" disappeared, so that was mostly Mom and I. Little sis was still too little to help a lot. So she WILL indeed appreciate the photos, and we (my wonderful sister-in-law, Mom and I) will all love that 70-80% of the plants I put in this year were because my older brother David (who died a little over a year ago) had me come get his grow cart because he was finished with it. Sure miss him; he'd sure enjoy either coming down to visit from Wyoming to see stuff or love seeing pictures of what I grew thanks to him. What a wonderful bright and unique man, who had a never-ending curiousity about life and learning; loved his plants and cacti and other succulents, loved fun and quirky flowers and plants (as he was fun and quirky himself) and we were each other's great champions and supporters.

NIce pictures and garden, Denise. I Like your picket fence a lot too. That's what I want for my garden.

Nancy, nice tools You can get some real work done with those. I'll come back with a pic of me tonight. IT's not the best pic and my son...well, that's another story. It was semi-formal and as you'll see, he was anything but semi-formal. But we got into an argument at Kohls, It's really not worth the fight. I'm all about people being who they are and I really don't give a care about how he dresses EXCEPT sometimes certain clothes are expected and respectful of the event--proms, weddings, banquets, graduations...And, yes, he likes his hair like that. The sides are shaved and it's long at the top and front. And, yes, he likes to roll his pants like that.

and you and me are free to be you and me.

Amy. . . you're tempting me. . . don't even get me started on the "life-on-the-ranch" stories! Oh MY. Another time. :) There were some whoppin' good ones too and it could get wild and wooly and kinda dicey sometimes! That time of my life ranching was heaven on earth to me.

Dawn. . . tell me about it. Blessed beyond anything comprehensible to me. With the new kids and life now. Not that it's easy or that we finally hit "Easy" Street, but because I could not have imagined such joy. It's mind-blowing (and fabulous) how little money we need to get by; wonderful that neither of us enjoys being away from the place or socializing (I guess this is my socializing) to make small talk or shopping; if course the hard part is not seeing my kids in Minneapolis--that's a BIG ouch. . .

and thanks so much for the tips on the pickles!!! I'm drooling and guess what, I'd better get those cukes in SOON!! In fact, I've almost decided to forego the sweet potatoes this year and put in lots of cukes! And a couple watermelon. That'll be it, I think, for the warm weather stuff.

I got so much done in the yard today! Lots of odds and ends stuff, lots of weeding. Several plants moved to better locations. . . that kind of stuff. That little hand hoe is fabulous for fine-tuned weeding in the flower beds, VERY cool; and shaves a lot of time off for me, as I'd hoped. The hori hori was amazing for moving smaller plants from here to there. And I got to use the Root Assassin shovel to move a stubborn red Scotch broom to a new location. Thumbs up. Caveat with that one is not to use it as a crowbar on heavy stuff.

Hopefully the dead body under the deck will be eaten or decompose sooner rather than later! AND GDW spotted another bigger garter snake in the tiered rock beds today. GO snakes! We even googled to see if one could order garter snakes or black snakes for a garden. . . who would have ever thought! LOLOL

Okay . . . outta here for now.

What's everyone else up to, and Kim, been thinking of you and praying for excellent health quickly!!

HJ--he's a cutie and YOU are adorable!!! Laughing about his uniform and hair and all. . . brings back memories. My oldest, Russ. When he was a junior, he was going to be inducted into Nat'l Honor Society in the fall. I of course was so proud of him. So he came trotting out ready to go. He was wearing gray slacks with a white shirt. So far so good. But to put the polishing touch on, he was wearing red suspenders, and the shoes. The shoes. He'd found this pair of white leather sports shoes of some sort in the lost and found box at school, they were weathered, to put it nicely, and had holes in the toes. With red shoelaces in case anyone had missed seeing them. So Russ. I said, "You are ridiculous. If THOSE are the shoes you're wearing, I'm not going." He just laughed and said, "I'll miss you, Mom. . ." and laughed so hard. Little %^&*. Of course I just rolled my eyes and went. He was someone very special, and I bet your little cutie is, too!

PS--Love your hair!

Amy, We have a MeMaw and a PePaw here in our own community who aren't our own family, technically speaking, but they adopted us and made us family the minute we met them here.....and we are so blessed to have them in our lives. They are very precious to us, and I appreciate that their children (who are our age), grandchildren and great-grandchildren are willing to share them with us.

It is very hard to get attached to the child of someone your own child is dating and then lose that connection when they break up...but it does happen.

Clean nails? That's probably the absolute hardest thing for a gardener to achieve in springtime!

Rebecca, Maybe your temperatures have leveled out enough that the peppers are ready to take off and grow. Y'all had some pretty cool nights recurring for a while there in the midst of all that rain. Maybe the plants were just waiting for enough sunlight and heat.

Green garlic? Do you mean garlic greens and scapes cut off the plants, or that they have harvested their garlic bulbs early and green? If so, I don't understand why they do that and I don't know how to cure it. I don't think that garlic harvested green will have a long shelf life just like sweet onions harvested too early have a very short shelf life. So, I assume people buying green garlic bulbs are going to use them up quickly.

Green beans probably would grow fine beneath tomatoes. I'm in the county, though, where spider mites invade quickly from fields and they love both green beans and tomato plants. So, to protect the tomato plants from spider mites a bit longer, I grow green beans on the edges of the garden to take the first hit from the spider mites (hopefully stopping them there for a while), sort of using them as a trap plant to halt the forward motion of the spider mites. Eventually the mites will hit the tomato plants which are growing more in the interior of the garden, but by the time they do, the plants should be large enough to tolerate them pretty well.

Denise, Your garden is lovely.

Nancy, I'm sorry you lost your brother, and I believe he is watching over you and your garden from Heaven, and is taking great delight in watching you garden. I feel closest to all my gardening relatives and friends who already have crossed over to the other side precisely when I'm in my garden because it makes me think of their gardens over many years and how much it meant to me to watch them and enjoy them and learn from them. So, I'm never really alone in the garden....I carry the memories of my long-gone relatives and friends with me.

Hazel, You and your son look great and I am glad you let him be free to be himself. It is important. Once, our son went through a phase in high school where he wanted to dye his hair blue. Half of me was appalled at the idea...Okay, truthfully, 90% of me was horrified, but the rest of me said to just let him do it, be himself and express himself. He was a straight-A student, on the student council, never gave us one bit of trouble, etc. so who was I to deny him blue hair? That phase lasted a few months, he got over it, we all survived it, and he still never gave us any trouble.....and he turns 33 this year and probably doesn't even remember his blue hair phase. Was it hard to be seen in public in a small Oklahoma town in the early 2000s with a child with blue hair? Heck yeah, but I held up my head proudly as if the blue hair was all my idea...because that was my boy and I was proud of him, whether his hair was its natural blonde color, or blue, purple or orange. (Thankfully, he skipped the purple and orange stage!)

Nancy, If I was going to look for a snake to order and buy, I'd buy a gopher snake. Of course, they probably are not readily available for any price (unfortunately).

Kim, I hope you're feeling better. Don't push too hard to get back out there in the garden too soon. It is more important to get well.

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers, grandmothers, and....anyone who ever has filled a maternal role in any child's life.

Dawn

Good morning and happy Mothers Day.

Denise, wonderful pics. I really like your garden!

Nancy, I'm starting to envy that little hand hoe. It looks really sharp, I'm afraid some klutz would injure herself with it. DD came out to the garden yesterday and said You're bleeding! Hmmm wonder how I did that. Probably chicken wire. I'm really sorry about the under deck death. A mouse died in a file cabinet we have. The smell never went away. The file cabinet lives in the garage now, but at the time I went crazy trying to find the source of the smell. We found it when we moved...crushed to the back side of a drawer. Some day we will get together and swap ranch stories. I expect a Montana ranch would be rougher.

H/J, I love the pic. You both look great. I really love your dress. You look like a proud mama.

Dawn, DD dyed her hair with temporary blue over spring break and we couldn't get it out. The school had rules they couldn't do blue. There is something about blonds that make them want to change their hair color. My older boys always hated their blond hair. And half the world is dying their hair blond...

The last of the tomatoes are planted. Most of the plants I bought at the greenhouse are in the ground. I bought this weeder, Nancy, so we can compare notes.

Yes! And Moni and who else?? (HJ maybe?) and Moni swears by it. . . I suspect any of those sharp pointy things will work. Let's just not cut our fingers off. . . :)

Hj it is all about being us isn't it. My oldest son is jeans and tshirts and with his fiance she convinces him to wear dress shirt at weddings. My daughter has so much color in hair and tats I never notice her clothes lol my youngest has come a loooong way from shaggy hair and saggy pants thankfully. Cherish every second it goes by so quick. :)

Denise those pictures are so pretty. I love getting to see the fruits of our labors. And we do labor but definitely in love.

Amy since you have all yours planted and probably bored mosey on over.

I did push myself to plant and then went down for round 2. I can not take time to be sick.

My son's girl did not like his shed (insert smirk)

So guess who got it memememe!

Yes I drove the truck and trailer while my son followed last night thankfully it came in one piece. I am going to clean paint it and put my tools in it. It's about 10x10

I can not tell you what a huge time saver this will be. From my shop and tool storage to the garden is 200 steps or more and uphill 30 ft. coming out of the garden. Now I can keep all garden related stuff in the shed. In the garden pit. It will be so handy and I won't be tempted to leave stuff in the sun and rain when I am too tired to drag it up the hill.

Hope yall have a great mothers day and get to do something you want to do.

Oh--I think it's called the Cobra, right?

ROTFL, Kim! That is SO something I'd say!!! "mememe!" That's a very HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!

Yeah, take it easy, do not get any sicker!

Lol yes. I almost jumped. But I definitely restrained myself there.

I had to pull my better boy with some funky something going on. Not taking any chances. I have too many tomatoes to risk it. Planted basil in its place so I wouldn't waste a dripper. I am already tired of this second hot day. I have to rearrange my schedule now to 6-1 out, 1-5 inside and 5-dark out. I can not do too much in the heat. I have seen quite a few people on fb showing they pulled all their onions and to me they did look half finished. I feel bad if they think they were done.

My weeder is a Japanese sickle. I looked at the cobra. For whatever reason, the sickle just attracted me.

Shed sounds like a great mothers day present, Kim. How did you get it OFF the trailer? I would come help you if I was closer, but getting down to your garden would do me in. I've decided half an hour is my limit, then I come in for a drink and a rest. Oh, and I have all my tomatoes planted. I still have peppers, herbs and flowers in the green house.

I wondered about pulling onions now. I was checking mine today. They're not ready.

Thinking about planting a moonflower vine next to my morning glories, that way there will always be something blooming along that stair railing. Will moonflowers handle full afternoon sun in July and August, though? I have so many more flowers to plant...

Moonflowers just sound enchanting, Rebecca.

Thanks, y'all. Yes, it's better to be you. You do you, and I'll do me. For the most part, of course.

I watered the garden this afternoon. Everything was dry. The tomatoes and peppers are doing so well. Recovering from that awful wind and going crazy. The onions...well, it won't be long. Same with the potatoes. Tons of peas still. Half of the broccoli will (probably) make it. The cabbage is chewed on, but looking good still.

But...guess what has found my garden already?

Yep. The squash bug. Why?! WHY?! WHY???

They are on the volunteer pumpkins.

Y'all, I ate the first SunGold. You know, you forget what a real tomato tastes like over the winter months. Oh My. YUMmy! The six SunGolds are loaded with fruit. CanNOT wait.

Rebecca, full sun? Do your morning glories take full sun? If they do, the moonflower vines should too. Mine don't. They melt. I had mine climbing up my deck lattices in probably 3 hours of morning sun, and they performed beautifully--those I tried in full sun melted (as do my sweet potato vines.) And the morning glories also grew decently with only about an hour of sun in the morning on the shadier end of the deck. I got moonflower vines in this year, in a couple places mixed in with the morning glories. I'm curious to find out if your morning glories do okay in full sun! (It's not the sun, it's the HEAT! In MN we used to say, "it's not the heat, it's the humidity." LOL Here, it's the heat!)

Tomatoes--we do have many small ones. Went digging through leaves and saw many. How do you FIND those guys under all that foliage!?

Kim, GDW and I were just visiting about the onions today and laughing--no way are we pulling those rascals until we KNOW they are done growing! :)

Nancy, they will be in full sun in the afternoon. The hot part of the day. That's the part that worries me.

Well, you can try. Doesn't work for me--anyone else?

I started the new Week 3 thread for this week, but had to come here to the Week 2 thread to catch up on everything I missed yesterday.

Amy, That is too funny about blondes....and so true.

I'm really bad about hurting myself with very sharp tools, so I have to make a conscious effort to remember to be careful when handling them. I almost cut off a finger once with some really sharp loping shears, and the only stitches I've ever had to get in my life followed an accident in the garden caused by my own klutizness. I don't seem to be getting any less accident-prone as I get older either.

Kim, Congrats on the shed! I know it will be a big time saver. I have a shed, but have stedfastly refused to use it the last couple of years. A neighbor tore down a very old country home (unoccupied for decades) on their property a few years ago and apparently the wild things that had been living in it moved into my potting shed. After too many rat and snake encounters, I fled from the shed and it sits there unused. It is about 25 years old and is falling apart, so we're planning to build a new one this summer or autumn and we will build it as rodent-proof and as snake-proof as possible. I loved my shed, but it is old and rickety, it leaks and it has places where critters can get in...even after you've found those spots, patched them and think you've solved the problem. I hope your shed is in better shape than mine. I'm looking forward to building the new one because I do get tired of lugging tools back and forth.

About 6 weeks ago we bought one of those brown plastic deck storage boxes that are meant to sit on your deck and hold stuff. Mine now sits in the garden and holds tools and stuff, but since our two fenced garden areas are about 300' apart, it never fails that I continue to lug tools back and forth from one garden to the other even if they spend their storage time at night in the deck box. Still, I'd rather have it than not have it.

I totally and completely agree with you about the onion harvest photos on FB. I am totally appalled every time someone posts photos of their onion harvest and the onions don't even have soft necks yet! I just bite my tongue and don't say anything because I don't want to offend them by asking, in a horrified tone, "Are you pulling them half-grown on purpose?" I suspect they have no idea they are harvesting too early, and maybe someone ought to tell them that they are, but I don't want to embarass anyone either. I figure we can wait until they complain that their onions are either rotting or sprouting very quickly, and then we can tell them that they harvested too early. They'll learn from that experience anyway. I'm seeing the same thing with potatoes. Some folks are harvesting pretty small potatoes and I cannot help thinking that if they'd wait a bit longer, they'd have a lot larger harvest. And, of course, some of us have plenty of space and can let our onions and potatoes fully mature, but other folks are incredibly space challenged and may be harvesting early on purpose so that they can put in a succession crop. That's certainly an option when one has limited gardening space.

What was going on with the tomato plant you pulled? Did it look like one of the common fungal or bacterial things we tend to see as the hot weather is arriving, or did it look worse....maybe like Tomato Spotted Wilt?

The heat was dreadful yesterday. It hit 90 degrees here, so I imagine it was even worse at your place. I'm not really ready for it, but it is here. Hopefully the rain in the forecast for later in the week won't miss us again. We sure could use the rainfall, and the cooler air temperatures would be a nice break from the 90s. I'm never happy when the 90s show up in mid-May.....don't they know they we are supposed to stay in the 80s in May? June is soon enough for the 90s.

Rebecca, In the years when I have grown moonflowers, I've always grown them in full sun, even in full sun in very bad soil in drought in our earliest years here, and they did just fine. They won't bloom until late July or early August, but once they start blooming, you'll want to run outdoors at the right time every evening so you can watch the big white flowers unfurl virtually in unison. It is the most amazing thing. I've seen it hundreds of times and never tire of watching it.

When I grow moonflowers and morning glories together in the same area, the moonflower vines tend to aggressively outgrow the morning glory vines (which really says something because morning glories are pretty aggressive themselves), so I usually grow the moon flowers on one garden fence (the southern fenceline) and the morning glories on the eastern fence line, which faces the road. A fence covered with Heavenly Blue morning glories in bloom with stop traffic in the summer time, or people see the morning glories, honk their horn and wave as they go by or give the morning glories and I a thumbs up. I vary the fence-climbing flowers from year to year so that I don't get stuck in a rut. This year, I've pulled all the morning glory volunteers that sprout (which is a lot) and planted moonflowers along the fenceline after we put up the new fence on the southern edge of the garden. I feel bad about weeding out all the morning glories, but I want a solid wall of moonflowers on the new fence. I'm toying with planting either Grandpa Ott's or Heavenly Blue morning glories along the eastern fence line. I'd rather grow southern peas on that fence line, and that has been my plan all along, but I could grow the Red Ripper and Yellow Ripper peas on the northern fence line and let the eastern fence have some pretty flowers. I need to make a decision this week and get them all planted somewhere. I've been waiting for rain, and I think this week we might actually finally get some rainfall down here. Our typical May rainfall is a little over 5", and our official rainfall for May so far is 0.38". All the green is shading towards brown already.

Squash bugs are there already, Hazel, because they likely overwintered in some sort of garden debris---mulch, a brush pile, a nearby woodland, a compost pile, etc. The only way to keep them from establishing a permanent population on your property is to kill every single one you see. I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to find and kill them all every summer, but it is essential. If you kill them all, they won't show up as early the next year because they'll have to migrate in from elsewhere. The further away other gardens and/or farms that grow cucurbits are from you and your garden, the later in summer it will be when the squash bugs show up. May is usually when they do show up, so I'm not surprised you're seeing them. I'm kinda surprised I haven't seen any yet, but I am not complaining. I do check the plants for them daily as my only chance of controlling them is to go all ballistic and kill, kill, kill them from the first moment I see them. Nothing gives me more pleasure than finding squash bug eggs and destroying them before they even hatch because that's just that many fewer bugs to deal with later on.

Congrats on the SunGolds! Aren't they the best? Once you taste fully ripened SunGolds it is easy to understand why their flavor is legendary.

Nancy, I'm surprised that morning glories and moonflower vines don't handle full sun there. They tolerate it here, even tolerating high temperatures as high as 110-112 as long as the plants are well-watered and well-mulched. Perhaps it is your humidity there. Normally, we are dry in summer in our county, so high humidity and the diseases that often accompany it are not an issue here in summer. I've never grown moonflower vines or morning glories in part shade, largely because until recent years, we haven't had shade except at the west end of the garden.....and I don't want to make the shade problem worse by growing vines on the west fence.

As long as the tomatoes you're growing are not the green-when-ripe type, you'll find them as they mature because their colors will become more apparent as they ripen. When dense foliage can make it hard to find green tomatoes, I don't care. I know the green tomatoes are there even if I don't see them all, and the foliage keeps our wickedly intense sunlight from sunscalding the fruit. Even with the green-when-ripe varieties, they don't stay solid green as they mature. Most of them develop an amber or yellow color on a least a portion of the fruit, so they're not as hard to spot as one would think they might be.

I grow as much as possible in full sun, and am working to keep the shade out of my garden....if moonflowers and morning glories couldn't tolerate full sun in our climate, I wouldn't even grow them. They love it. If y'all are having trouble with them in full sun, it likely is not the heat or the light---it is the humidity and the plant diseases that accompany high humidity.

Dawn

Dawn or was splotches brown and yellow. At first I thought it was from soil splash since that area didn't have as much mulch but then it went from a few leaves to the whole plant rapidly. I may be pulling the other one from same place. It looks suspicious. I have too many backups that are blooming. I will try to take pictures and come back to nite.