It was gorgeous here. Our mesonet station hit 81 degrees but we only made it to 78 at our house. Still, 78 degrees in January is pretty wonderful. I don't think we had good steady sunshine until the afternoon, but even a partly sunny day is a nice day. The wind has been pretty bad and sure has spread grass fires today at various places around the state. With the heat and the way the wind was blowing, I was wondering if we were going to skip February and go straight to March. Sadly, the good times are all done and now we'll watch the temperatures fall and the rain roll in. This early heat is giving my fruit trees and roses the wrong idea, so I want for the colder temperatures to hurry up and get here and bring those plants back to their senses. Dawn

The clouds are coming in this morning and we will be getting some rain today, but it is still holding off for a bit and we actually had two nice days in the garden in a row so it was a very nice break! I hope everyone got a break from the rain and hail and so that you could actually spend some quality time out in garden instead of sadly looking out at the results of the latest storm. I did have to spend some time both days this weekend pumping water out of my backyard - got the "lake" down to a few puddles that were too shallow for me to pump out - but I also managed to mow the lawn, except for parts of the way-too-wet backyard, get a bunch of my houseplants outside for the summer, hill up my potatoes (again,) and actually found places so that I could plant all 5 varieties of squash. Most of them were bush types as opposed to vining types so I found room in my raised gardens for all but one. I put that one - which is supposed to get 15' long vines - gulp - in my front yard where it can spread out. It's a winter squash called "Pink Banana;" I've never grown it before and admit that I am hoping it won't get quite that big! Only one hill of each type (3 summer, 2 winter,) but I am happy, and I imagine that will be plenty of squash! Next project will be to find places to tuck in some cucumbers - I am thinking that these may go into containers so I don't have to deal with the soggy soil. All of the beans I planted last week have germinated, many even have their first true leaves on them, the peas are starting to form pods, and I might have a couple of (little)tomatoes that will be ripe enough to eat later this week. The tomatoes and peppers probably need to be fertilized again - the "good stuff" is pretty well washed out of the soil after 1 1/2 months of rain - but at least everything has survived. (A different story for some of my perennials... :-( ) All in all, a good weekend; I hope everyone got to enjoy it. Holly

Chi, we had blistering temps all last week, since the end of June. Horrible. With the humidex, feeling like the mid 40'sC. Back to normal today with 28-29C and no humidity. Still warm in the sun, so walking in the shade of the trees was welcoming.

Kathy, I think you mean my Weeping Blue Atlas Cedar. I've been training it for many years. I made a PVC arbor and attach it with Velcro tapes, it actually has reached the end of the arbor. It's had a tough life as rutting deer almost killed it years ago. The bark has healed and it is growing well. The scar from the deer is right on the end of the bend. Here it is closer up. I tried to move the tape further up to let it move around more freely and beef up the branch. The tape just fell apart so I have some very loose hemp twine just as a safety in rough weather. I don't want to have it snap after all this time. My plan was to keep extending the arbor and have it high enough to walk under by just spreading the hanging branches. How cool would that entrance be? In reality I don't think I'm going to live long enough. - Jon