Rebecca, I've harvested 6 green tomatoes and 2 ripe ones so far. And pretty much all of my seedlings are DOA. I have about a dozen still hanging on, so I'm hoping for fall tomatoes, but they're all still barely large enough to plant out. I know tomatoes can sulk, but they need to grow up already!

Monday i came home to husband telling me he ate lunch late so plan for a late dinner. So out to the garden I go, and wound up "weeding" a 6ft x 4ft area between my garden and fence. Oops! Now I need to plant more goodies! Is it too late to plant peppers or tomatoes? I know the OSU guide says I can put plants in now, but what about starting some short DTM ones? Or what seeds are yall starting right now? Need some ideas.

HazelJen and JL, I think it'll be time to put in fall potatoes, in a couple weeks. Root crops also start in early August - carrots, beets, turnips, rutabagas. I just started new summer squash plants, too.

Why, I think that makes perfect sense, Rebecca. Uhh

And Mary, it seems as thought you are feeling much better? I mean, I can't believe how much you are getting done! And glad you got rid of the Warfarin. Hope your leg arteries are okay, too. I can't fathom how you got all this stuff planted!

I look at all the stuff so many of you produce, and I just can't even imagine knowing what I'd do with it all. Onions, potatoes, garlic and herbs, peppers, tomatoes--huge quantities of those--those are my main priorities. I planted 5 too many cucumbers; I'm sure two will be plenty--the rest are backup--but I thought if a few are producing heavily, I'll just pull the others out. The tomatoes in the everything bed and neighboring one are beginning to produce quite a few (Abu Rawan, Illini and cherry) any my expectation is that they'll mosey along and then produce more Sept and Oct. Both the Illini and Abu Rawan are medium-sized. And I will confess that in a weak moment I bought two Bonnie Cherokee purple, since they were there. Dumb, but we'll at least maybe get a sampling of them this fall before I do hard core purple ones next spring. (Hated getting Bonnie ones, though.) The little eggplants are good, and it will be interesting to fix some. With a big garden I'd of course like to grow more stuff, but the space is just not there! I'll be happy to have the additional room net year, though. I guess I'll pick some baby eggplants tomorrow or the next day--that will be a fun experiment, Kim. Meanwhile I don't have much to talk about in the food department. Herbs are all doing just what I'd want them to be.

I was beside myself this evening to see that I have a dozen or so Brugmansia calyxes. i was so hoping it would bloom its first year since I read that often they don't. As big as it is, I was thinking surely it would. YAY!! So appreciate learning about them here. Love the datura and am looking forward to getting some double purples next year. Garry's new favorites are the Mexican sunflowers--they ARE fun, and a couple tower over me, being about 8 feet tall and in the raised planter to boot. No way to deadhead them at the top! They've been our biggest laugh this summer, Dawn. I believe I will be culling the flower beds next year and being a little more selective about what will be growing, based on the things that obviously are doing really well. And the smell on the deck--to die for in the evenings. The fan by the edge of the deck is blowing the smell right into the table where I'm sitting.

And the "endless summer" hydrangeas are putting on another round! That's a first. They're smaller blooms than the first go-round, but this is the first time I've ever had them rebloom--here OR in MN. Yeah, okay, I know they most of the time don't work in OK, but they have apparently put their stamp of approval on where I quite accidentally happened to put them.

I don't know when this conscientious mower will work up courage to mow the lawn. . . could be days. Maybe a 3-day job coming up. That's when I know when hot weather's here. Fall planting? Nah. The veggie beds are full with the cucumbers, sweet potatoes and potatoes, so I guess I'm done until Garry and I get the beds enlarged.

I was looking at my overgrown yard on my way to the chicken coop this morning and realized if I had no crab grass the yard would be a manageable height. The white Dutch clover is short. So is the weed I suspect I should NOT be glad about. Even the bermuda is shorter than the crab grass. My daughter was asking me how to get rid of weeds in her yard today. Really, you grew up here, did we ever do anything to weeds? Yes, we had geese that ate dandelions.

Rebecca, I appreciate the car wash! I might actually benefit, though I'm not holding my breath.

Mary, I'm glad you're off warfarin, that stuff always scared me! I'm glad you're doing better!

Oh, H/J. I can relate. DH put up our existing shed in July years ago. I'm sure the neighbors cringed at the cursing, as they did yesterday when he was cursing the new chainsaw. It would be worse if I was out there with him. I am glad your son is back in the states. It means he's close, and you can breath a sigh of relief he will be home soon.

Buckwheat matures in 30 days. Winter cover, Austrian winter peas mixed with annual rye grass... after the buckwheat. Or cowpeas untill fall. Or vetch. All of those things should be available at the local feed store, I got mine at Holman's, and though Atwoods won't have seed, some local place should.

I know Red Slew in far SE OK has an alligator. I have birded there. All those years with binoculars pointed UP, it is a miracle I didn't have snake encounters. OK has a remarkable diversity in climate.

Hazel, Hang in there with the coop. It is the heat that is making the work on the coop feel like it is taking forever. Could you get your neighbors to the east to 'board' your chickens with theirs while y'all go away on a trip next weekend so that y'all can get a little bit of a break? That way you won't have to give up the chickens permanently, but they'd be in good hands and perhaps slightly safer while you're away. It is hard to get anything done in July when you're hot, especially if you're trying to work on your projects after putting in a full week at work. Tim and I have reached the point in our lives where we just aren't going to kill ourselves working in the heat in July. Being kind to yourselves and giving yourselves a break in the heat seems essential in July. When I was much younger (and not all that long ago....maybe when I was in my 40s), I could work all day from sunup to sunset outdoors even in the heat, day after day, and it was at least tolerable if not exactly enjoyable. Those days are long gone as Tim and I approach 60 (he turns 60 in December), and we've learned to pace ourselves better. Nowadays, if whatever needs to be done in the heat cannot be done between about 6:30 and 9:30 a.m., it can just wait until whenever.....maybe until infinity and beyond.

I hope getting a fancy car wash brings you rain. I am so glad Ethan is back in the USA. Of course parents worry when their kids are out of the country, and rightfully so. Our niece was on a mission trip to Malawi a few years ago (a trip she made every summer with her church youth group) when violence broke out at the airport (while they were at the airport itself). Her dad was a wreck and, even though her group made it home safely, that was her last trip to Malawi. I don't believe she'll ever go back because the violence was so frightening and I don't blame her.

For a cover crop that can be sown in July in the middle of drought, I'd probably sow some form of southern peas. They are more heat tolerant and need less water than the standard overwintering type cover crops that can be sown in late August or September. Buckwheat makes a nice short crop that can be rototilled into the soil, but I've never tried planting it this late in summer and am not sure how it would do if sown in July in drought.

Jen, You can go ahead and plant more peppers and tomatoes from transplants now if you wish. be prepared to water the young transplants a lot more than you have to do in Spring. Getting new plants going in July, especially in drought, can be a bit difficult. It is too late to start tomatoes or peppers from seed. Using transplants means the plants will be well-established and ready to bloom and produce as soon as the temperatures drop back into the right range, which sometimes can happen before the end of August. Plants started from seed now would only be 6 weeks old by the end of August and wouldn't be large enough to produce much before fall. When I want to grow summer tomatoes from seed I start the seeds around June 1st so that I have transplants ready to go into the ground no later than mid-August and I am further south than you. In fall, with daylength steadily decreasing each day, it takes tomatoes and peppers longer to size up and mature so getting a good fall harvest is iffy and largely depends on when the weather cools off and on how quickly/slowly the real cold arrives. We had our first freeze on September 30th our first year here, and the tomato plants, which were loaded in fruit, and I were not amused, though I managed to cover them up with a hastily constructed hoop house and saved most of the plants. I don't think we've had a first freeze that early since then....but the thought remains in my mind that we certainly could.

Here's the OSU Fall Garden guide. Please pay special attention to the fact that the dates are reversed in fall, so when a range of dates is shown....say it says to plant carrots from July 15 - August 15, then that means folks in northern parts of the state, which cool down first in fall, should be planting July 15th and folks in southern parts of the state, which cool down last in fall, should be planting August 15th and folks in between should be planting in the middle of that range. It is exactly the opposite of the spring planting dates, which have southern OK planting first since it warms up first. Sometimes people misunderstand the dates and think that they can plant anytime within the whole range, but that's not how the range of dates is meant to be used in order to get the best results.

Fall Gardening

Nancy, It is never a bad idea to buy Cherokee Purple tomato plants.

You're in the part of OK where hydrangeas ought to do well. Even in OKC, if in morning sun and then shade thereafter most hydrangeas will do well, including Endless Summer. For anyone south of OKC and especially if west of I-35, growing hydrangeas becomes very difficult due to our hot, dry summers and highly alkaline soil.....we have Endless Heat here and they don't much care for that. I love the fragrance of the garden plants in the evening too, but since we're often still in the 90s until well after dark, we do not spend much time out there on July evenings. Between the snakes and the heat, it is just too risky. Usually around mid-August the evenings start improving temperature-wise though not snake-wise.

Amy, We do have a remarkably diverse climate in OK and it is a great place to be a bird watcher or a wildlife watcher. We've certainly had more wildlife on our property than I ever expected to see here---including the ring-tailed cats, cougars, beavers and spotted skunks. I'd never seen spotted skunks in the wild until we moved here, although more often than not we have the striped ones. I supposed I didn't really expect to have feral hogs either, though I'm never happy to see (or hear) them. Some years we see quite a few unusual birds. This year we have several types of hummingbirds that are rarely seen in OK, along with the usual ones.

I need to get off this computer and get outdoors now before it gets too hot. Yesterday the cats went right out with me at about this same time and then by 8:15 or so they had declared that it already was too hot and had come back indoors. I like the way they are thinking these days.

Dawn

Aw, Dawn, I would love to see your hummingbirds! Nancy had quite a crowd of them when we visited her. Red Slew has birds not seen in the rest of the state, and so does the panhandle around Black Mesa. I never really got to explore south western OK, I did go to Palo Duro canyon in Texas. I get vertigo if I tilt my head back to look up, so I haven't birded much recently.

I got 3 of 4 seed orders yesterday. Still need SESE.

It is cool, if humid, out. There are storms to the north and east of us, but I doubt I will actually see rain.

DH left the gate ajar yesterday. This morning the dogs discovered they were free. The old dog took off down the street, and Honey came to the front door asking to come in!

I think I will go put out some fertilizer just in case.

Amy, even if we don't get rain, this cloud cover is nice. I'm getting some things done because it's not as hot. I have 4 tomatoes in their containers, caged, and mulched. I have some duplicates, and I may not plant them. That would leave planting just 2 or 3 more, I think. We'll see. My 5 tomato plants in the garden are eaten up with spider mites. I don't even know if I can save a couple of them. They have fruit on them, but the vines are so brown that I don't know if they'll hold up much longer. I have not done anything for the tomatoes back there this year, other than put epsom salt, tomato tone, and black kow around them. I haven't sprayed them or dusted them. I may try to save a couple with something. My armenian cucumbers are climbing and blooming, and something is starting to pick at them. They are gonna get some help from chemicals, I'm afraid. Same with the okra. I'm not letting the bugs have what I worked so hard to put in.

Oh...all that talk about snakes and gators the last couple of days; I got a little scare this morning. I brought in a tomato transplant in a red solo cup, to water it well before I took it out front to plant it. I set it in the sink and watered it. When I came back, something jumped up at me and nearly gave me a heart attack...it was a frog! It had hitched a ride in the tomato cup....I'm laughing. I got him and put him in a big flower pot full of impatiens on the back patio. Then when I went to get behind those shrubs to turn on the water, another frog jumped! I'm just grateful it wasn't a snake.

It's raining! Yeah!

The Tomato Man's Daughter opens for fall plant sales July 19.

That's a good idea, Dawn, about "boarding" my chicks with the neighbors. Tom just told me that he thinks I should stay here and he will go see his sisters without me. I think that's what we will do. He is still going to try to get as much done on the coop as possible, so, if nothing else, I can put them in the new pen during the day and bring them into the brooder at night to sleep, even though it's getting a bit snug.

Nancy, I love that you're loving your life. It seems like you and Garry have the best time just living life.

Congratulations to those who got rain. I'm not even jealous because it's never raining again here. I've come to peace with it. In a year or so, it will be a dessert, then I'll have to try hydroponics or something.

Thanks Amy, Rebecca, and Dawn for the "cover crop" ideas.

@#$%^ Racklefratz rain, HJ!! It kinda rained here today for an hour . . . kinda--maybe it was just the humidity in bigger drops. Yes, I hope Tom can get enough of the coop done to have them out during the day, at LEAST! And thank you, yes we ARE loving it. And I'm happy that Ethan made it back to the states--is he home tonight?

Dawn you talked about pacing yourself now. Good idea. I WILL say that the first two years down here, I went pretty much full bore. And to be honest with you, after 30 . years of working in an office, and then the last five years of that not doing ANY gardening, pretty much all I did was go to work for 10-11 hours a day and veg out watching TV all evening. Not good. I was horribly out of shape. So kinda the reverse of what happens to most 66-yr olds. Now, however, at 69, and Garry at 71, we BOTH are pacing ourselves this summer, for sure. True that while I can mow the yard in 2 hours without breaking a sweat March-June, by the end of July I really DO take 3 days to mow it. I'm thrilled to death that most of my garden work is done right now. Not even tons of weeding to do. So I feel just fine sitting up here on the deck with the fans blowing, and am even a tiny bit disciplined with getting some stuff done inside.

Honey is a good good puppy, coming to the door to get in! THAT's FABULOUS! Yay, Honey! I love the idea of teaching Ron to can, Amy!!! Brilliant! AND I cannot believe you find it necessary to buy seeds!!!!

Mary, got a kick out of your frog story--I'd have had the same reaction, I'm sure. And just how many folks do you have to FEED! LOL . You are awesome!

Amy, we do have a cute little herd of hummingbirds, but to be honest, not like the previous two years, and Garry says even the past two years, they weren't in the numbers they were the previous four years. Last year, we guessed there were 3 dozen. . . this year maybe 20 or so. On the other hand, we see more out on the flowers, too. GDW says he has mixed feelings about that! LOL

Amy, We had dogs in the mid-1980s that were escape artists, but one did the digging to go under the fence and run wildly around the neighborhood celebrating his freedom (his name was Sam) while the other one, Lady, would follow him under the fence and then come bark at the front door to let me know that he was out. I'd open the door, she'd run indoors and then I'd go find him and bring him home. He never went very far but I was so afraid a car would hit him. We stopped the digging by putting up a single strand of a dog-type electric fence. It shocked him once and then we turned it off and never even used it again. It always made him nervous to see me weeding flower beds near the fence and he'd come get me and try to drag me away from the electric fence, so we took it down and put it in the shed. He never dug under the fence again. Lady was always so proud that she alerted us to his escape. We had a dog door and she could have come in the dog door barking to let us know he was out, but I guess that wasn't the choice she made---she got the thrill of escaping with him but also got to be the good girl who came to the front door and ratted him out.

I haven't even ordered any seeds for fall. I think about doing it, but then I don't. I spent yesterday canning so at least I am going into the weekend with only one pile of produce left to process---a bunch of okra that I'll blanch and freeze today. It feels liberating to not have tomatoes piled up everywhere---at least for today. I need to harvest tomatoes, squash and green beans today so then the produce piled up on the breakfast room counter will return. I'd like some sign that the drought will abate a bit before I commit to planting much for fall.

Mary, I get startled by frogs and toads in the garden a lot in Spring, but by July the snakes have devoured them and the only thing startling me in the garden then is snakes.

Good luck with saving the tomato plants. I saw your photos in your post about them and they look pretty sad.

Nancy, One thing I don't like about morning glories is the way they reseed everywhere, and those volunteers sprout all summer long. I yank them out of every bed in my garden, even the beds far from where the morning glories grow on the fence. Even when they look bad, I leave them alone and let them grow on the fence. The flowers make up for any holes being eaten in the foliage. Right now the Grandpa Ott's MGs are blooming and they are so pretty.

H/J, There's times I feel that way here too. Remember the children's song that says "it ain't gonna rain no more, no more, it ain't gonna rain no more".....well, that is the soundtrack of summer here. Sometimes when the rain misses us, Tim and I use look at each other and shrug and say "we should have know the weathermen were wrong because it doesn't rain here". lol lol lol Of course it eventually rains but often not in July or in August when it is most needed. I hope y'all get some rain. I hope we all get some rain, but I know the odds for about 2/3s of the state most often are slim to none in the summertime.

We used to have a big half-acre farm pond here. It apparently was spring-fed, full of fish, etc. Men who were of a rather advanced age when we moved here would tell us stories of swimming in that pond when they were young---I'm guessing, based on their ages, that may have been in the 1940s and 1950s. Well, repeated droughts (2000, 2001, 20003, 2005, 2006, etc.) dried up the spring and the pond ceased to exist. We now have a dock with no pond, no fish, etc. and trees are growing where the pond once was. That makes me sad. We also had a swamp once upon a time in a different location, and the same thing happened. It dried up gradually over a period of about a decade and the drought of 2011 finished it off. We still have two small springs that run, but they don't run much and the water from them just runs downhill to the mostly dry creekbed. We have a neighbor whose spring-fed creek always had water in it, and mostly still does, but I think that spring is drying up because the pond has started going dry in summer and it never used to do that. Even in 2011, it had water long after everyone else's ponds were empty, though it did eventually dry up that year too. It is so odd to see the water on your property change like that. When we bought this place, I never would have imagined the springs would stop running. People who've moved here in the last decade who hired someone to drill the wells haven't hit water either, and it is very frustrating to spend thousands of dollars and end up with nothing but dry wells. Things are changing here, in terms of ground water, right in our own neighborhood and it isn't a good thing to see it happening.

Dawn

We have been getting rain off and on all morning. It is a slow rain, last I looked about 3/8 inch. Thank you Rebecca for washing your car! Hope you get some benefit. It's a long narrow band of storms that just happens to be hitting us. South and east looks like a bigger swath of storms, and the tail looks like it MIGHT be hitting Dawn. We did nothing outdoors yesterday, planning to work today. At least I put Garden tone out before the rain. I shouldn't have to water it in now.

We went out to dinner with the kids last night to celebrate DH's birthday. For Tulsa people, my new favorite restaurant is Margaret's in the Farm. They take reservations, which a lot of places don't, there are no TVs on the walls or ridiculously loud music and I didn't freeze. The food is wonderful. The entrees come with a fabulous goulash soup that is all you really need. And German chocolate cake she makes herself. We picked my grandson up from the sitter and met his parents at the restaurant. He told us he was having grilled cheese with applesauce and he couldn't wait to sing happy birthday to PopPop. His mom is due with #2 8/21. Poor thing is a tiny woman and such a big baby bump.

Y'all, I didn't NEED seeds, well except for the Armenian cucumber I used up. But that's what you do for the new season, right? I'm a sucker for Johnny's sale stuff, and new kale or collards or any kind of green. And if you buy one thing, you might as well find a few more to make it worth shipping charges, right? DH asked why we were getting seeds this time of year. Oops.

I like the look of morning glories, at someone elses house. They are too much like bindweed for me now. If I grow vines on the fence they get tangled in the weeds from the other side. I tried to grow trumpet vine once. It some how kept getting weed wacked.

We've had a number of escape artist dogs. The first beagle climbed the fence like a cat. My son's dog, who lived with us for a while, is not allowed outside unsupervised because he'll find a hole, or dig one, then the other dogs follow him out. The dog that recently passed used to get through the fence as a puppy and play with a husky behind us. Our current old lady has a habit of finding the dog catcher as soon as she gets out. She would just roll over on her back and wag her tail.

I have been so lazy lately.

Amy,

The rain hit us all right--it rained for at least two hours and we have a whopping 0.05" in our rain gauge. We had what we call a 4' rain here---4' in between each rain drop. Oh well, it has kept us cooler. So far we've only made it up to 89 degrees which, for us, is awfully cool for a July afternoon. I expect we'll get a few degrees hotter. I doubt we'll have more rain, though the NWS left a 20% chance in our forecast for this afternoon and tonight.

It sounds like y'all had a lovely birthday dinner out, and I bet having the grandson sing for PopPop was the best part.

I understand the difference between needing and wanting seeds. Sometimes if you want them badly enough, they become a need. Right? Well, they become a need for the sake of your mental health. I say that if people can take days off from work for mental health, then we gardeners can order mental health seeds.

I do have bindweeds come up in the morning glories. I do my best to weed them out until it gets too snakey, and then after that....well, anything goes. It looks like last summer, when we were remodeling the kitchen, bindweed grew everywhere with wild abandon and dropped seeds in every single bed and every single pathway. I'll be weeding them out for the next ten years (but not during snake season).

Escape artist dogs don't both me as much as they did when we lived in town. Ours usually stay on the property if not in the immediate yard area when they escape. Our problem with dogs escaping is tiny compared to the big problems some of our neighbors have with escaping cows, horses and goats. When someone's livestock gets out, it is all hands on deck here to help them round them up and put them up. If livestock gets in the road and somebody in a vehicle hits the livestock, it is the livestock owner who is liable for the damage to the vehicle---so everyone here looks out for one another and tries to keep escaped livestock (or dogs) out of the road.

One of our neighbors took in a couple of little cockapoos that just showed up on some land they own out west of town. Those two little dogs are escape artists, but usually they come straight up the road to our house and up to the garden where I'm working, and I find them and try to pen them up or return them. The last time, as soon as they saw me walking down the driveway towards them, they turned, ran home, scooted underneath the gate and put themselves back in the yard. I guess they knew I was going to return them to their owners, so they returned themselves. It was pretty comical. They don't escape as much as they used to.

Dogs disappear often here in the country and never are seen again. I think they probably run off chasing wildlife and either get lost or start living wild along the river with other now-feral dogs. It is hard to see someone searching for weeks and even months for dogs that never come back. I always try to remember who's missing their dogs and what kind of dogs they are in case I spot any dogs at large. I'm sure some of the escaped dogs don't survive encounters with some of the larger predators here, and I know they often form packs that run together and kill young livestock....and that doesn't end well for the dogs if the rancher can find them.

It is hot and muggy, even though cooler so far than yesterday. Summer is halfway over, summer is halfway over......things will get better in about 6 more weeks. I just keep repeating that to myself as often as needed.

I've done nothing in the garden. We were having our excrutiatingly slow rainfall when I normally would have been harvesting, and now I'm not in the mood to be out in the heat. So, it is sort of a wasted day, garden-wise, and I don't care. I think I need a nap.

Dawn

This is funny. So, it's thundering loudly and there are dark rain clouds all around us--seriously, on all sides. However, we are right in the middle (like a donut hole) with blue skies and sunshine. LOL My mom just called and said it's pouring at her house. She's about 17 minutes from us.

Hope everyone is having a productive or restful day (whichever you prefer).

Third time I've tried to post. Sigh.

We did have a really nice dinner. I am always pleased to see that my adult children get along so well. They fought like cats and dogs as kids, but they're great now. My adopted daughter came, too. She is one of my BFF's girls. We reminisced about me loading my 4 and Candy's 2 in the minivan to run errands around town. Some times the kid behind us came too. If you wonder why I'm a bit weird, now you know.

We took Honey to Atwoods and Lowes. She pooped in Lowes. Wore her out.

Dawn, I'm sorry you didn't get more rain. H/J., there are no words. You need to get an expensive car wash. DH says the new one they built here is $10 or 15 and it's already broken down.

Tomorrow I promised to take the 4 grandsons to Woolaroc. Youngest 4, oldest 13. I had hoped DH could go, but it's not going to happen. Daughter is supposed to go. Hope I'm not to old for this!

Got the last seed order today, so seed starting Monday. PLUS, I have just over a month to crochet a baby blanket. Puppy should make that interesting.

Here's a trick for when you really need rain: leave the windows down on your 4 month old car.

We scored an inch and a quarter. And cooler temperatures.

Yay, Rebecca!

Oh, H/J, I'm sorry for your car, but yay for the rain!

Yay Rebecca!!

We won't talk about the other 3 I lost...

It was worth it, amy. The rain. The cool weather. We got the dividing wall up in the coop/shed and no one was getting a divorce tonight. (I'm being dramatic)

Ethan is home.

i feel like a mini Dawn, with tomatoes on the counters and buckets of them all over the house. But, Rebecca, I've been where you are too--2 and 3 years ago. It's frustrating. Having too many is slightly stressful but no where equal to the frustration of getting so few. I did notice a few bites out of a couple of mine. I think it's tiny birds that I've seen hanging out in my garden.

Hazel, Sorry about the open windows but so delighted to hear you got rain. Woo hoo!

Too many tomatoes can be stressful. That's why, when I get tired of canning, dehydrating and freezing them, I pull almost all the plants and just keep a couple of plants to keep us in fresh tomatoes for eating...not for preserving. I could keep the plants going all summer, but since I plant a huge number for canning and can only can for so long, it doesn't make sense to spend all that time harvesting them only to turn around and give all of them away. It is too hot to spend any more time in the garden now than is absolutely necessary.

Congrats on getting that wall up in the coop/shed and I'm glad to hear there will be no divorce. (Not that I really thought there would be one....)

Rebecca, A win is a win is a win, and you won with that one tomato. It doesn't make up for the 3 lost, but at least you'll get to eat the one.

Amy, It is a good thing Honey is so lovable. We had a couple of dogs who were perfectly fine indoors in our house. They went outside every time and never had an accident in the house. Take them to the vet though? They'd panic and pee or poop on the floor every time because vet visits made them nervous. They never had an accident anywhere else.

Have fun at Woolaroc. I hope y'all have a really nice time and pleasant weather.

Like you, I always had a carload of kids back in the day, and it is a wonder I survived it all. We always had cousins, friends, neighbors....just whoever around....and our lives now are so blissfully quiet by comparison nowadays. Well, most of the time. Back then it was just go, go, go all the time. I get tired just thinking about it, but we did have some wonderful times back then.

I don't even want to think about a fall garden, except for the fall tomato plants that already are in the garden, until I know if it is going to rain real rainfall again this month. It is too hard to get young plants established in high heat with no rainfall and borderline drought conditions. It doesn't take many days in the mid-90s with no rainfall for the garden to go downhill and start looking really bad really quickly.

I really don't have to plant any warm-season plants for the fall---already have the fall tomatoes, and then rest of the warm-season stuff (cucumbers, peppers, okra, summer and winter squash, southern peas, lima beans, pole beans, watermelons, several kinds of other melons.....they will just keep on keeping on until either the heat exhausts them or I get tired of harvesting them). Since I can plant cool-season stuff pretty late here, I don't really have to make any big decisions yet about planting cool-season crops for fall. Maybe I'll just grow easy volunteers for fall--Johnson grass, bindweed, pigweed and lambsquarters---since they require no help from me.

Dawn

Hahaha, Dawn! Loved your fall-planting ideas! Today I began pulling tomato plants out of the raised beds. There are still six outside in beds. . . I don't care that have started to come back. Do not need another paste tomato! And have decided I am a sissy gardener. I'm glad I have no squash and peas and beans and melons right now. The peppers and sweet potatoes, cucumbers (if they begin producing, and I trust they will), the added potatoes, okra and eggplants and remaining tomatoes will be good. No more this year. It has been a grand journey with with the help of all of you, and I will enjoy planting things at the right time next year to be in about the same position I am now; that is to say, with not much to do in the gardens. We have lots of work to do in the fall as it is, with adding more soil to existing beds and enlarging current beds, mulching vast numbers of oak leaves, cleaning up beds around the yard.

My tomato sauce machine got delayed in shipping, so won't be here until Monday. The freezer is full of tomatoes. Tomato sauce day is Tuesday. BLTs for dinner tonight. I think I was in heaven.

Note to self for next year: label, label, label the plants. I know I do not need 7 jalapeno pepper plants or 9 paste tomato plants or even TWO cherry tomatoes. All those guys are prolific. I do need more potatoes and more and bigger onions! Excited for Dixondale. And I'm so glad I gave 9 tomato plants or how many ever it ended up being to my neighbor up the road who has so many she's happy to unload them onto me. :) Pretty good trick, huh! lol

I've decided that the heat sucks the energy out of one. Duh. I can't even muster energy to move my fingers on keyboard.

HJ, I was rolling on the floor laughing in delight at your rain. ("Never ever gonna rain here again.") . Thank you GOD for giving HJ rain! Oh. Wasn't REALLY laughing about your car windows being down, but will keep that in mind next time we're in drought (like we were last year). I bet it was worth it, wasn't it? Dawn and others, a tip for all of you, too.

Beautiful tomato, Rebecca, and I bet it was the more precious because you've had such rotten luck. Fingers crossed for more more more.

I was telling HJ last night that I have to go to Wyoming in 10 days or so. Garry's going to stay here and hold down the fort and the garden and Titan and Daff. We are realizing that our idea of moving Mom down here almost certainly is not going to work, because of her physical AND mental fragility (she's experiencing more confusion more often). So I'm going to go up and stay for as long as I'm comfortable with and is necessary (probably a couple weeks). I have many places where I'd be welcome to stay, with close close friends or my sisters-in-law. So no problem there. It's a drive--15 hours. But I'd drive any day before flying (which could be close to 15 hours from here to there anyway because of security and wait lines and times between flights. I drove 12 hours from Mpls to Buffalo Wy, at least twice a year sometimes as many as four, for family stuff. And then when I had enough money, flew some times. Flying might shave 2 hours off the 12-hour trip. But it was torture.)

Perfect timing. Too hot to be doing a lot in the yard and gardens,

Amy, I laughed so hard at Honey pooping in Lowe's. GDW and I were in a motel/hotel in Buffalo WY last year for a great week--they allowed pets. One day we were leaving to go somewhere and this guy was coming down the stairs with his lab mix, and the dog (not puppy) suddenly squatted at the bottom of the stairs and it was not good. We laughed SO hard and laughed to him, "It's all about timing, right?" He groaned and laughed with us.

Finally, Amy, I never once wondered why you were weird. Loved ya no matter why. LOLOLOL

PS: While my heart is very heavy, realizing the situation with my mother and being so sad that I can't just be there, or have her here, this is life. It is what happens to every living thing. My best prayers and blessings to you all.

Well, the report from drowned land. I finally got dried out enough to actually dig one row of potatoes. Five or six were rotting in the ground from all the wet but most were still solid. I only planted 3.5lbs every two rows because I only had a few bucks cash on me when I seen the seed potatoes at the local grocer. I hate to write a check for something small. I trimmed them babys down and some of the seed pieces were about like a walnut but had lots of eyes. So the row I dug only had about 1.75 lbs of seed in that row and I got 37lbs back so I am happy and did alright even with some being rotten in the ground. I got 7 qts shoved in jars and did a canner load. The rest are curing. 3 more rows to go in this stinking humidity. I never in my life remember digging these things this late and the stalks were still green. I have two rows of whites that are still not dying back even now. I think I will go ahead and dig them and the other row too while I got the chance before they all rot me.

Crazy lady at the antique store where I found the old jars and bought all she had must have raided half the neighborhoods root cellars between here and Kansas. She now has about 75 more piled up. Lol. Some of them are older than dirt and some even have the old zinc lids. Those things are worth more than the jar to people who like that sort of thing. But of course now the jars are 2-3 dollars each. Too funny. I bought a few more of the cheaper ones as its a half off booth and filled them today.

I lost 6 watermelons from the wet ground also this week. The blossom end just starts rotting like a tomatoe from all the dampness I presume. I still have about 15-20 and its actually a good thing that they got thinned a little as now the other survivors might get a little bigger and I could never bring myself to thin watermelons for some strange reason. Ha.

Tomatoes are goners and all the fruit is ripening at once now so I am way behind dealing with those and cucumbers. Those seven plants have really cranked out the cukes. I have made about every kind of pickle I know how and even a few I never tried. Im down to the giving away stage with those and propably have 8-9 lbs taking up halt the crisper right now. Mrs Wages luuu...uuves me.

The lawn was so high I burnt the belt clean off the old Cub Cadet in the high damp grass with the Kolher pulling pretty hard. Darn belt finally gave up with about 15 sq ft to finish so now I got a stupid high patch in the middle of the yard now waiting for the belt to arrive. My backup push mower left me earier in the year. They did not have such an ancient sized belt as I still mow with an old 1982 model. That thing has been one tough hombre and still going strong . Thing has axels and a punkin rear end like a car. Shes been a tank.

Finally drying out some. Whipporwill peas are taking over the garden and now climbing a trellis I made a row over for snow peas earlier. They are loaded but I did not plant as many as I usually do. Green beans are winding down except the pole beans, they need picked every other day it seems. The butter beans have plenty of pods but they sure seem to take their time filling out for shell beans. Been a while since I grew those and I have to keep telling my self they are over 100 days stuff.

Other than me wanting to choke my idiot boss at work down on an almost daily basis every thing is good and I can;t complain. Just trying to catch up on everything and finish things up garden wise.

I got plenty and no room for more. Might scale back a might for a fall garden. Mebbe a lil cabbage or collards and might try some corn. And if I could ever grow a darn carrot worth a dang I would try those. I hate even trying to seed the scrawny little things much less trying to see the weasly little sprouts in the early weed and grass sprouts. Oh and plant them a 1/4 inch. Ha, right when the dirt clod beside it is the size of a golfball lol.

AND, now I am going to call foul. I asked for some advice on how to grow garlic. Do you plant it in the fall? What do you do? I want to grow some but have never tried. Not one person chimed in on garlic..... hep a brotha.

Chins up fellas, here comes August. Month of the red deer. We get through that alive and then its smoooth sailin. Knock on wood.

And Nancy, sorry to hear bout your mom. I lost mine many. many years ago. I still think of her often and wish she was still around.

Nancy, I'm very sorry to hear about your mom. I know it's hard. My thoughts are with you.

Nancy, I am sorry you will not be able to move your mom down here, and glad you are going to go up there to spend some time with her. I hope you have a safe trip on the road and I also hope you have ample time to see all your friends and family members up there too. It is a good time to leave the garden and I am sure Garry will stay on top of the chores while you're gone.

Just because your mom is in the twilight years of her life and it does happen to every living thing (assuming we are lucky enough to live such a long life) doesn't mean it is not a difficult situation to experience. I'll be thinking of you while you're up there and hoping you are having as good of a visit with her as possible given her frail health.

Jerry, Garlic is easy. I usually plant in October or November. I believe the standard recommendation is to plant maybe 6-8 weeks before the first frost, but sometimes my soil stays way too hot and too dry well into late in autumn so I just wait until the soil has cooled down quite a bit even if that means I'm only putting garlic in the ground a couple of weeks before the first frost. I've even planted it as late as December or January with good results, but it probably is better to plant it in October or November. Break apart your bulbs into individual cloves and plant the cloves about 4-6" apart and a couple of inches deep. Plant in soil that drains well (ha ha, I know I do not have to tell you that). I grow mine in beds raised 6-8" above grade level because I have red clay, and the soil in the raised beds has been amended for many years so that it drains well in all but the wettest of years). Garlic prefers a pH between about 6.5 to 7, but I grow it in soil with a pH slightly higher than that with no problems. As long as your soil drains well, diseases are uncommon and not many pests bother it. I tend to plant it, mulch the green leaves after they sprout and start growing, and then leave it alone until harvest time. It really isn't picky or persnickety about much.

I'm glad you were able to get a good potato harvest despite the heavy rainfall. It sounds like your garden has produced bountifully and that always is a blessing, especially when you are having adverse conditions like too much moisture. I think I'd rather deal with too little rain than too much. You can always water if no rain is falling but it is impossible to remain excess soil moisture when it rains too much.

My husband gives me a hard time when mowers, string trimmers, etc. break while I am using them and I can sympathize with the way your equipment has acted up this week. I always tell Tim that stuff breaks because I am using it when it clearly would prefer to sit in the garage unused. If we'd just give up mowing and weed-eating (clearly not an option), then we wouldn't have to worry about stuff breaking. It never seems to fail that the taller the grass and the greater the need to mow, the greater the likelihood that something will break and we'll be waiting for parts for days. You know it is the same with all the big tractors and stuff that our ranching neighbors use---the minute they start trying to cut and bale, something on the tractor, the baler or one of the mowing or raking attachments breaks and there they sit waiting for parts. It happens every time.

Uggh. I was looking at the forecast for the next week and it looks horrible. There's no reason to think the week after that will be any better. I hate the dog days of summer.

If any of you have some spare squash vine borers sitting around, feel free to send them down here to us. I am sick of squash. Not a single plant has died, no one in my family wants to eat any more, and I have all I want/need in the freezer. I've mostly just been harvesting it and slicing it up and putting it on the compost pile for the deer lately. They are loving it, but I'm tired of dealing with it and ready to start yanking out some of the plants just so I can stop picking squash every day. I think I will start yanking out the plants tomorrow and then add some compost to the squash beds to get them ready for fall planting. I won't be planting any summer squash. We don't need it.

I need to get off this computer and get outdoors while it still is relatively cool. I doubt the morning coolness will last long.

Dawn

Dawn I wish I could come get your squash to help you out. I am making chips for market and I don't have enough squash. Most people I know use chemicals.

Well, I got most of the fall crop babies outside hardening off. They are outgrowing their containers, so I had to do something. Some of the purple broccoli, violet cauliflower, butternut and acorn squash, and some collards, got potted up into larger containers. I'd lagged behind on a few things, not starting the winter squash until July 4, but they are getting big for their age! I'd given them a very small dose of Garret Juice about a week ago, so that's probably why. I over planted some things, but I'm gonna share some of them...so it'll work out.

It's gonna be a hot one today, but I have to run a few errands. I think I'm gonna come home and start some lettuce, chard, and kale. I know most folks just seed the chard in the garden, but the weeds and grass would have them choked off before they could get up good. So, I'm gonna start them indoors. I am going to try to start some carrots in 10 gallon fabric pots. I've got several different colors/varieties, and I'm excited because I've never grown carrots before.

As much as I hate it, I'm going to TRY to get a couple of places in the garden tilled this evening. Turn under the beans, etc. I've got to have a home for the fall plantings.

Well, everyone enjoy their Sunday, and don't work too hard out in this heat!

Kim, It would be an awfully long drive just for squash! I am feeding two spotted fawns whose mama brings them to the compost pile to eat squash every evening. They're the only reason I haven't already yanked the plants out of the ground. I'm gonna yank the yellow squash plants tonight as the sun starts to go down because I cannot stand to look at, harvest or slice them any more. I think I can harvest enough squash tonight as I yank out the plants to keep the fawns fed for the rest of the week and then they'll have to scavenge food scraps off the compost pile like the rest of the deer do. Maybe by the time the current yellow squash runs out, I'll be tired of zucchini and can start feeding that to the deer. Or pattypans. They are in the back garden and not very productive anyway so are a waste of water at this point.

In another week or two I should be harvesting Armenian cucumbers, which I grow mostly for the chickens and the deer....although, in some past years when the heat was too hard on the regular cucumbers, I did make pickles from young Armenian cukes and those pickles weren't bad.

I'm on the verge of ripping out half the front garden so there's less to irrigate and I can focus the irrigation on what is left, which under the current plan would be fall tomatoes, peppers, southern peas, melons and the perennials. I planted too much squash, figuring disease would take out a lot, SVBs would take out a lot, but we'd still have a lot. Well, disease and pests haven't done their share of the workload so the garden is overrun with squash. If I was only watering half the front garden and all the back garden, I might be able to keep watering a couple more weeks.....at least until the July water bill arrives in the first week in August. Then I'll likely be horrified by how high it is and I'll cut back on the watering even more. I used to fight harder to keep the garden going in the heat, but there's just a point where it doesn't make sense to keep watering so I can keep canning/freezing if I've already done enough canning/freezing to meet all my goals---and I'm getting close to that now. We had such a huge onion harvest that I had to freeze tons of them (chopped) for cooking. I have about a 3 year supply in the big chest freezer and still have plenty for long-term dry storage. I always plant too much of everything, and this year was no exception. Next year I need to downsize my veggie plantings. I think I'll plant more flowers instead. I did a little of that this year, but I need to do a lot more.

Mary, Don't overdo it in this heat. I've been in and out, but mostly in, and intend to stay in now.

Dawn

Me tired. lol Got the rest of the reds dug this morning. final verdict on the red potatoes 89lbs. Im almost glad the white ones are not ready. Not bad considering 3.5 lbs o seed taters and the gully washer rains.

new potatoes anyone? Those and the ones I harpooned with a fork. Yer think I'm crazy No? Nope, these babies are cooked and all you have to do now is open a jar and warm them up or add to a dish. I got at least 45 meals ready to go.

Thanks for the garlic tips Dawn. Ill give it a whirl in Nov. Sounds easy. Famous last words.

Jerry, You're welcome. Congrats on the great potato harvest and successful canning. At least all that rain which is wrecking so much other stuff is giving you great yields on the crops that do survive the rain.

I swear, garlic is the easiest thing you'll ever grow. Plant it, forget it, and then harvest it the following summer. Nothing is easier. Garlic doesn't compete well with weeds, so I do mulch it heavily after the green leaves sprout so that I don't have to worry about weeds.

Y'all, it is too danged hot today. It is miserable. Our temperature made it up to 96 at our house with a heat index of 106. Forget watering the garden, as I think what would have been best today would have involved turning on a sprinkler and watering the people and the animals. My family stayed indoors in late afternoon after being in and out all day. Fire ants climbed the ladder Chris was standing on while painting his house this morning---apparently solely for the pleasure of biting him. That's some cranky (and determined) fire ants. Oh, and we all ate ice cream this afternoon---partly in celebration of National Ice Cream Day and partly just because it was so hot.

Dawn

Amen, Dawn. It's too hot for man/beast. I worked a little and ran errands this morning, but as soon as I ate lunch, I sat down in the recliner....and that was all she wrote. I slept for almost 3 hours! Got up and around, watered tomatoes and mowed the front, side, and most of the back yard. I've got to get out there and finish it. I'm not weed-eating, tho'.

Ice cream sounds good, but all I have are Italian Ices. I may treat myself to a lemon ice later after I get a shower.

So Chris had a run in with ants? Oh dear. Back in 1996, the kids and I had a new house built in Alabama. One evening, as I was putting the youngest girl to bed, we pulled back her pretty new comforter and sheets, and BAM....her bed was loaded with fire ants that had made their way inside somehow from the flower beds outside her window. She slept with me for the next 6 years. lol Fire ants are not nice. I hope Chris didn't get bitten too badly.

Y'all I am exhausted. 4 young boys. Driving. Heat. Sun. Walking. Heat. Walking. Heat. Driving. They got to throw tomahawks and shoot a black powder rifle. Saw lots of animals. Youngest got to play on a playground shaped like a train (he adores trains). A chick hatched in the petting zoo while they were there. They liked the dioramas in the museum (and thank heavens it was cool). They weren't particularly impressed with the shrunken heads or the airplane hanging from the ceiling (those fascinated me as a child) and they all loved the huge model train set up. I'm done.

Amy, I bet you are exhausted. I don't know how you toted around 4 of them. Mercy. It has been about 35 years...maybe more...since I've been to Woolaroc. I"m sure much has changed. I bet it would be much more pleasant in the fall, though. Whew.

I agree with all of you. This heat is really getting to me this year, strange as we haven't yet had many (any?) 100+ degree days...

Ive noticed yellowing/brown decaying leaves on my squash (all Korean varieties ) the past week. Finally found squash bugs today. I'll douse them with water, scour the plants best i can for the critters, but in this weather I'm not sure...

So question: leave the damaged plants to try and overcome the bugs, or pull them? Will they spread regardless?

This is crazy. Yeah, felt the heat here too (heat index was 103 when I checked)--until 3 pm. Suddenly it was glorious cloud cover and a noticeably "not hot" breeze. Checked the radar map and saw a rain storm over Tahlequah, but not moving west to us. Still the front obviously was providing us with the peripheral cooler air and breezes. I was otherwise occupied out here on the deck so didn't think about gardening, but appreciated the "coolness," 86 at that point. Then an hour later I thought, "Dang--should be mowing the lawn," since I haven't even wanted to venture out there. But it was too late then, had already begun preparing shepherd's pie stuff and slicing your squash, Amy, for dinner. Then GDW came out and also commented on how cool it was. I said if I had half a brain, we'd have been mowing, and he said, "Good idea! Let's do it!" And so we mowed at 4:30--we whipped it out in 1.5 hours, both zooming right along. It was still steamy, and my criteria for breaks is when the sweat is getting into my eyes; so had a couple short breaks--and we were both drenched with sweat because of the humidity. It's July 16 and the grass going nuts. SO long, SO lush. That's just freaky. I sure was tickled with all the grass I was collecting! Grass mulch galore!

Titan was very put out with us. He expects his dinner at 6:15. And he is very unhappy when that doesn't happen. I fixed it and threw it in the oven at 6. Then GDW and I were out here admiring our mowing job and waiting for dinner to be ready. Titan was beside himself--and grabbed us, then paced impatiently and finally ended up barking at us. What a riot!

Jerry. The canned potatoes blew my mind--and so logical! Brilliant! I only can hope I can grow enough potatoes soon to TRY that! AND so with you on the carrot thing! And Jerry, I want you to be retired, NOW! Idiot bosses are the WORST!

Amy, you are heroic. . . doing that with the kids. Oh my gosh, no way no way no way! And, by the way, I sliced the smaller squashes and lay them on a bed of melted butter and salt, then poured more melted butter and salt on top, and finished with smashed up Ritz cracker/butter/Parmesan cheese mix on top and baked them. The shepherd's pie was delicious but the squash stole the day for both of us! Oh it was SO good! Titan loved it too. :) We loved our zucchini last year until the SVBs got it, and we are excited to grow yours next year.

Mary, unbelievable fire any story with your daughter! What a horrible experience. And oh my gosh. . . I am beginning to think you are Superwoman!

Thank you Dawn and the rest of you for kind thoughts regarding Mom's situation. On the one hand, of course it's difficult. On the other, she has had an exceptionally blessed life. She's tired. She has been wishing she could die for the past five years. Not in a depressed way, just that she misses my Dad and her friends, and she hasn't kept active with any interests. I get it, totally. It will be a wonderful visit, and, of course, the other good thing is I will be seeing dear dear friends up there, too. Always wonderful to be back home. I have a best friend from kindergarten all the way up til now. We talk on the phone every couple weeks, and we LOVE our visits in person. I did tell GDW today, though, there is no way I can stay up there two weeks, not unless I really have to, for Mom. And I expect that will be the case. Way too invested in my little family here and my home. LOL. . . but will deal with whatever it calls for.

And Dawn, you are totally cracking me up with your talk of tearing out garden plants. You just can't imagine how hard I'm laughing about this, and I'm of course reading it all to GDW, who also is laughing. By the way, I had fun tearing out some more tomato plants in the enclosed raised beds. Woo-hoo! :) . LOL

Best day ever for all of you tomorrow! :)

Mary, I would have given anything to have a 3 hour nap. I tried to take a nap, but our dog, Jet, was right beside me on the sofa and he is getting old and senile so he barks at Tim and Chris when they walk into the room....as if he thinks he has to protect me from them. There's nothing like a barking dog to wake you up just as you're dozing off. The next time I want to take a nap, I'll bring him upstairs and put him in the spare room.

Chris reacted pretty quickly and got off that ladder and away from the fire ants. He's a professional firefighter so he has some serious ladder skills. lol. Fire ants are just the worst. We had them in Texas much worse than we have them here. I just couldn't believe they climbed the ladder to get to him. I guess the heat is making the fire ants cranky too. How crazy is it that fire ants got into your daughter's bed? We had a scorpion in our bed once in our early years here. I think the scorpions got into our house when it was being built and the plagued us for several years before we apparently, finally, managed to kill them all. Then we went about a decade without seeing one in the house until earlier this year when I found Pumpkin chasing one around the kitchen. It ran into the laundry room and underneath the washing machine and that was the end of his fun. I tried to explain to him that a cat shouldn't mess with scorpions but he is young and rebellious and wouldn't listen. We slid a glue trap underneath the washer to catch the scorpion and haven't seen one indoors since. I've seen them outdoors, but none of them have managed to bite me this year (yay).

Amy, You deserve a medal. I hope you were able to spend the rest of the day just chilling and relaxing.

FItzjenning, Yellowing and browning leaves on the squash could be from the squash bugs feeding on them but also could be because the plants got too dry or from some sort of fungal disease if you've been having rain regularly or if you water with a method that puts water on the foliage. I'd remove the damaged leaves. Squash bugs are a huge problem and their population, most years, tends to increase until there's enough of them to kill all the squash plants, so it can be worth your time to try to control them if you want more squash. If, on the other hand, you've had too much squash and are sick of it like we are, you can leave them alone and let them work their evil. That's not really the best plan overall because that means you'll have tons of the little brats trying to overwinter and get an early start on your 2018 garden. So, one reason to try to control them now is actually so you won't be overrun with them next year. Having said that, I killed the first few squash bugs I saw. I removed eggs and destroyed them. Then, being overrun with squash early, I developed a 'who cares?" type attitude and quit worrying about them. That was at least a month ago. Maybe 6 weeks ago. So, what happened? Uhhh, nothing. Every now and then I see a random squash bug or a cluster of eggs ut not often, and when I see them I shrug and walk on by. Something, and I'd guess it is one beneficial insect or another, must be in my garden controlling them for me. That's the only thing that makes sense. Normally, squash bugs, if ignored for 4-6 weeks, would have multipled to huge numbers, killed all the squash plants and moved on to melon plants and other stuff. In my garden? Not one dead squash plant so far and very few damaged leaves. It sort of baffles me. It also is a reminder that even when we understand pests, their life cycles and how they behave, sometimes a given pest has an atypical year.

Nancy, Titan sounds so precious. I can just picture him pacing and worrying and trying to tell you that his dinner is late. That is just hysterical!

I'm hoping we can mow tomorrow. Tim is taking tomorrow off because they have a big deal going on Saturday so he is going to work Saturday. The heat really is beginning to crank up. I dread the next couple of weeks. After we mow this week, we shouldn't have to mow again for another month unless it rains because the lawn is not going to grow much without rain in this heat, and rain doesn't seem likely. Right now the name of the game is just to beat the heat, outlast it, survive it....whatever it takes.

Nancy, My grandmother reached that 'acceptance' stage in her latter years too. My grandfather had died of leukemia in the late 1970s and she had outlived all her brothers and sisters and their spouses and all his brothers and sisters and their spouses by quite a few years. She also had outlived one of her own children. So, she'd calmly say "there's more waiting for me over there than there is here", and we knew that she was ready....for at least 5 years before her actual death at the age of 92...and possibly for longer than that. My own mom, who is 88 and has been on dialysis (due to complications of diabetes) for over a decade has also made comments to us several times that she is ready to go. For her, it would be as simple as making the decision to stop dialysis (and at times she seems close to making that decision) and I hope that all we children would be mature enough to accept that decision if she ever makes it. I don't think it would be easy to accept it, but dialysis is painful and I believe she has the right to decide when she no longer wants to endure it.

With regard to tearing out the plants, my attitude on that has changed over the years. It used to be that I wouldn't take out anything that still was producing. But, you know, once you have eaten all you can stand fresh and you have canned, frozen, dehydrated or root cellared all you need for the foreseeable future, then what's the point of keeping on growing more? Sure, you can spend time watering, harvesting, etc. and giving away the produce, but with it being so hot and dry that watering enough creates a financial burden, then I don't see the logic in keeping those plants going. Usually, when I throw up my hands in disgust at the drought and stop watering, plants don't really die....they just slowly decline and decline until they look so horrible that I yank them out. Even in 2011 with only about 11" in rainfall from Jan-July or early August, and with roughly 90 days where the high temperature exceeded 100 degrees (and often exceeded 108-110), surprisingly few plants actually died even after I stopped watering. In fact, I totally abandoned the garden because we were out fighting wildfires day and night and night and day for a couple of months, often gone from home more hours per day than we were at home, and somehow surviving on very little sleep. Did the garden die? Nope. Even some broccoli plants that were growing in shade at the west end of the garden survived and produced a harvest in late autumn/early winter until a freeze finally got them sometime in December. The Seminole pumpkins survived and produced until the first freeze and beyond. Sometimes gardens do amazing things and the way some plants survived total abandonment in the second worst drought year ever in 2011 (I think 1936 was the worst) just amazed me.

I love growing plants, so yanking out anything is not something I take lightly, but I can do it!

Dawn

I would not have survived yesterday if my daughter and youngest son had not gone with me. Original plan was to have DH go. But he now works Sundays and 2 of them were not in town till then. They had fun. Next time I will choose someplace with less walking, or take the wheel chair. Its hard, the youngest is 4 and the oldest turns 13 tomorrow. Hard to find someplace they can all enjoy.

My daughter asked how I did it dragging 4 (or more) kids along where ever I went. I think it was threats. We also played a game called "silent running". See how quiet you can be til we get home. It was SOO funny. The two brothers' mom was telling them they'd lose electronics time for every time I had to get on to them. I said Poppop used to threaten to cut the cords off the games. Their eyes got really big when they realized the ramifications of THAT.

I'm still tired. I took a pain pill last night. Not so much because I hurt, but I was too tired to sleep.

Nancy, I'm glad you liked the squash. I can never find the dang things. I noticed I have another giant in a hard to reach spot.

Yes, Titan wants to eat on his schedule, LOL. He was so happy when we went inside to eat.

Mary, fire ants beats the giant spider in my daughters bed. I was pregnant with #4 and she had a habit of coming to sleep with us. We'd been talking about how she was a big girl, going to be a big sister, big girls sleep in their own bed, etc. Tucked her in. "Daddy, there's a spider in my room". Yeah, right. Only there was, a saucer sized wolf spider on her raggedy Anne doll she slept with. Needless to say she slept with us that night, and has been terrified of spiders ever since.

Impressive potato harvest, Jerry. I don't get enough to can. I wonder if DH would like them that way? I know Johnny cuts them into french fries and cans them that way.

My mother has been in the acceptance stage for years, my father has not. Makes for some difficult conversations.

Nancy, I'm sorry about your mom. I hope you have a good trip.

This was another blessed day here--unfathomable. HOT earlier on. But was comfortable from 4 pm on. . . not great, but tolerable. For crying out loud it is July 16-17! What the! We are so thankful, and amazed. DID have to do some emergency right-now watering, but quickly remedied. For a perplexing property with constantly-shifting sunlight and hard-to-gauge amounts of it, further complicated by the heat, it has, by and large, responded in a way that I'm thankful for. I think, for us, the challenge is to focus in on who responds well where they're planted and who just freakin' doesn't like it. One thing I learned is how to deal with Bermuda. My two furthest back beds are full of: first one, cleome, bee balm; second, cannas, Russian sage. Both of those are going to be ripped out in a couple months. The first because of the Bermuda; the second, because of the Bermuda, plus neither the cannas nor the Russian sage get enough sun. When I moved down here, I didn't get the Bermuda grass problem. So I just pulled it up the best I could and planted, Wrong. This fall, I'll take everything out and prepare the beds. And, NO cannas there and no Russian sage. Lifelong education is a very good thing, right? My saying: all an educated crap shoot. Meanwhile, though I'm almost gleefully yanking out paste tomatoes that are weary and done, got a few cherry and Illini and Abu Rawan plants in flower beds that are going crazy..

My Weston tomato sauce maker arrived today, (thank you, Amy and Dawn) and so will be canning tomatoes, no not tomorrow, but Thursday. Cucumbers and sweet potatoes and Kim's eggplants and okra are growing like crazy. I managed to get a lot of fertilizer on stuff today. Enchanted by increasing blooms on "endless summer" hydrangeas, and their leaf growth--for some reason, they are going nuts! Crazy. Itching to buy some fancy datura for next year to put where the cannas and Russian sages are now. . . . .

Am feeling thankful I can get up to Wyoming on July 28, where I'll see friends and relatives and know I don't have to worry about home, but will hate being gone, too. How blessed I am to have GDW in my life.

However, still reeling about YOUR day at Woolaroc, Amy! No WAY! YOU are a saint!

Best to all of you,

Amy, You are a saint. I hope all the fun the kids had makes up for all the pain and tiredness you had to endure, and I hope you're catching up on your rest. Being too tired to sleep is the worst thing on earth and I get that way a lot during planting season.

My dad, having Alzheimer's, hit the acceptance stage early, probably when he was in his early to mid 70s (he lived to be 85). He knew what the AD would do to him as it progressed because it ran through his family like wildfire (one reason we kids are so glad we were adopted and didn't have his family's genetics) and, since he was one of the youngest of 9 kids, he'd witnessed it killing many of his older brothers and sisters. While he was very early in his Alzheimer's Disease, he and my mom did all the right things with DNRs, medical power of attorney given to my oldest sibling with me as the backup if anything happened to him, making their wishes very clear and in writing, etc. I don't think my mom reached acceptance until the last couple of years of her life, and my dad has been gone since 2004. When Daddy was put into hospice care in the last week of his life, then my mom freaked out and wanted to rescind his DNR and medical power of attorney (thankfully she could not reverse his earlier decisions that way because he had suffered long enough). So, from watching her I think I have learned the importance of accepting the inevitable and of knowing when to fight and when to let go. At least I hope I have. I'd never try to prolong the life of a loved one needlessly if they were terminally ill and the quality of their life was extremely poor---I think we do too much of that in this life as it is. I hold my grandmother in my heart, soul and mind as an example of a strong woman who did everything in her power to stay healthy and live a long life but who also was ready to go when the time came.

Nancy, Our gardens teach us so much if only we listen to them. My garden has taught me that there's nothing on this earth that grows and invades as relentlessly as bermuda grass. lol. Digging it out and staying on top of it is all that has worked for me.

I'm glad you're going 'home' to visit your mom even though I know it also is hard to be away from everything/everyone here for a prolonged period as well.

Tim's mom had an atypical case of Lou Gherig's Disease that did not present with the typical symptons and which was, therefore, not diagosed during the three or so years that her health was in a steep decline. Tim's sister, who worked in a field related to the medical industry, was taking her mom to one specialist after another seeing answers, treament and a diagnosis and, quite honestly, wasn't getting anything helpful from them. At one point I remember telling Tim "I think it is Lou Gehrig's Disease" (we were driving someone and I was reading a newspaper article about someone else who had LGD with the same nontypical symptoms as his mom's) and none of them could see it like I could, so my amateur diagnosis was ignored. I think that was because they were so close to their own mother emotionally that they couldn't objectively consider that LGD might be what it was since she did not have the usual symptoms. So, anyhow, when a doctor finally diagnosed her and put her in the hospital, his sisters told him her time was going to be short and that he should fly up and spend time with her while he could. They were talking in terms of months, not days or weeks at that point. He immediately booked a flight for the following week and made arrangements to take time off from work. He was going to fly up on the following Wednesday. He even figured he'd try to go up there for a week here and there over the next few months. The doctors thought she'd last at least another few months but instead she died the night before Tim was scheduled to fly. It was heart-wrenching. He, of course, would have flow up immediately if anyone had said she might not last another week. For all that medical science knows and can do, we still just never know when somebody's time will come.

Of all 4 of our parents, my mom was the one who didn't care about trying to be healthy---she didn't eat properly, didn't exercise, etc. My dad and Tim's parents all tried really hard to eat healthy, stay active, etc. So, I guess in one way it is ironic that she outlived them all by well over a decade, but she was a decade younger than them so that may have played a role in it as well.

Dawn

I'm not a saint, if I were, I would have stopped at my parents and let them see them. The kids were really wound up when we first got to Bartlesville, and afterwards they were tired and getting cranky. I didn't have it in me, though I know my folks would have loved it. Maybe one at a time next time they're in town. I took it very easy yesterday, although, processing tomatoes still gave me my steps goal on my fit bit. That always amuses me, it's because the non dominant hand is moving.

I have a question about the Weston. How do you clean the screen? I have kind of a soft brush I've been using, but I wondered if there was a secret to it. It DOES make short work of a couple of pints of cherry tomatoes about to go bad! DH hates their skins, and I hate peeling.

Have to go move the hose. Honey as been really good about staying out of beds, but she took a shortcut through the tomatoes today. I think she has chigger bites!! She had a pill to take care of fleas and heartworms, but she has what look like bites all over. She loves to play in a pool, though, so I think I'll try to get her to do that when we're out to drown the chiggers. Of course then I have a wet dog to deal with.

Amy, I still think you are a saint, and I do think 4 tired boys might have been to much for your parents at once. I bet one-on-one visits would be more enjoyable for your folks....and each kid would love being the center of attention too.

For my screens, I scrub away with a soft-bristled brush. The one I use is a cornsilk brush, originally purchased to clean cornsilks off the corn cobs. (Sshhh! Don't tell you husband that these exist if y'all don't already have one, or he'll go on a kitchen gadget buying spree.) It works very well in conjuction with running water. If I happen to have a really gunked up mess and that doesn't work, I use a stainless steel scrubbing pad, though that doesn't happen often. The machine does make quick work of a lot of tomatoes, for which I am grateful.

Poor Honey. I hate that she has chiggers. Wet dogs are stinky but they do love cooling down by playing in the water, and I cannot say that I blame them.

Dawn

Bugs bugs bugs! I'm so sorry to make you all repeat. . . but I wasn't paying attention when you discussed treatment for leafhoppers. Bad. I don't know that anything is warranted quite yet, but would like to know just in case. I'm also surprised to see so many little grasshoppers--hadn't seen them until this year. I'm pleased I got all the oleander aphids off the milkweed, by using just water and my gloves squishing them. Now the milkweed is going great. The cucumbers are already blossoming like crazy, and I think that's crazy!

GDW and I took the car in for new tires and had a couple errands to run--unfortunately the two places were closed for lunch hour--and one of the places close for a 1.5 hr lunch hour! We always laugh so hard when we run into that. First neither of us has experienced it anywhere else (in the US), and second, we always tell ourselves we have to remember not to go to town during lunch hour! So we meandered through Walmart, trying to walk real slow, and then went to the one place at 1, then onto the other place, which was closed until 1:30! So we said to heck with it and went and ate LUNCH, Amy! LOLOL . So guess what, no supper for us tonight! Maybe we'll have a root beer float later. Yeah.

I despise Alzheimers. So hard; feel bad your Dad had to go through that, Dawn, after watching so many of his family go through it.

I was super glad you discussed cleaning the Weston, Amy and Dawn--I was already thinking about it!

I was visiting my new garden friends down the street, and though they have gorgeous beds and plants and veggies (only their second year in this house, but they have done a ton of work and are good gardeners), are having their share of problems too. They said the squirrels have ruined half their tomatoes! (Thankfully they have quite a few tomatoes.) But that brought up a question. Their neighbor has tons of tomatoes, but they are developing what they described as little "blisters," which then quickly spoil the tomatoes. Can you tell me what that is? And they ARE having bad leafhopper problems. And one of their squash has spread over a large area, but the part that is somewhat shaded has been taken over by mildew. Could that be right? It certainly did LOOK like a really bad case of mildew. At any rate, we had a lot of fun visiting, and I took my hori hori along to show them. They loved it, and Scott asked me to order one for him when I order one for Garry. Hahaha. Decided I need to grow some castor beans next year. Theirs were doing great in partial shade, full sun--they aren't as big and gaudy as I'd previously thought they get, so I think I may need to set some out here and there.

What ever are we going to do with all these jalapenos! SO funny. I DO love pickled ones, though, but still! And I have cucumber blossoms all over the place. I SWEAR I only planted those about 3 weeks ago--WHAT? The bells are coming on a little faster for now. . . spose that'll come to a halt in August? There are 9 sitting on the counter by the sink. And we've been eating a couple every couple days. I can live with that.

Oh--another question. Was it here I was reading about the new mum bacterial disease? My neighbors got that in spades. I've been watching mine, and my crepe myrtles. . .

Oh what is better than talking with gardening friends!

Aren't castor beans what you make ricin from?

Yep, another toxic plant in the yard! (So many of them are.) My neighbors swear they help with vole problems; that voles eat the roots and go belly up. I am skeptical--just never read anything online that affirmed that. What do you experts say? Nonetheless, the plants are pretty, and it can't hurt. (That and the garlic everywhere!).

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3087745/

PS: Dawn and Amy, I have to laugh. My Mpls grandson's name is Weston. Forever on, he will now be my tomato sauce grandson.

Nancy, I don't do anything for leafhoppers and am not sure what would kill them. Neem oil or insecticial soap might kill them but I wouldn't spray either of those on plants in hot weather because they can burn them. Once we hit 90 degrees, the likelihood of neem oil, any other oil product or insecticidal soap burning foliages is so high that most people avoid using them until temperatures drop again in the fall.

By blisters does your neighbor mean discolored spots or actual raised blister-like things on the fruit?

If it is merely discolored spots that have whitish flesh underneath, that is called cloudy spot and results from stinkbugs and other sucking insects like leaf-footed bugs inserting their sucking mouthparts into the fruit. It would look something like this:

Photo of Stinkbug Damage on Tomatoes

If it is actual raised-up knobby protrusions on the surface of the fruit accompanied by discoloration which often occurs in rings or swirls, then my best guess without seeing the fruit in question is that it is Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus, which can cause the fruit to look like this:

Tomato Spotted Wilt Virus

If neither of those is what their fruit looks like, post a photo and we'll see if it is anything that anyone here recognizes.

I love castor bean plants but finally stopped growing them because I was worried about our cats or dogs getting into them. While most of the attention is focused on the ricin in the beans where it is highly concentrated, the ricin is found in all plant parts and I'd never forgive myself if one of our dogs or cats chewed on a plant and poisoned themselves. I have not found that castor beans do one thing to control voles. The last time I had a huge vole issue in the back garden, I dropped ricin bean seeds in each vole hole I found. The vole population didn't go away and they continued devouring plant roots nightly until pretty much everything was dead. They were too smart to eat the beans, and I know this because soon each vole hole sprouted a castor bean plant. Castor oil repellants did no good back there either, even with repeated, nearly constant, application of the stuff weekly or more often. So, for us, the castor beans had no effect whatsoever on the voles---not in plant form, not in bean form and not in castor oil form. Voles come and go---some years they are awful and some years they don't go into the garden at all, so I think that it is too easy to give credit to something like castor beans when really it might just be that the voles have found something else they liked so stopped eating a gardener's plants.

I know that I have read about murder cases where castor beans were used as well as accidental castor bean poisoning cases. While many plants have potentially deadly plant parts, it seems like castor beans are extra dangerous and there's no treatment for the poisoning....and it doesn't take much of it.

LOL about your tomato sauce grandson. That is too funny.

Dawn