Nancy, There are sources with recipes that you can trust, but as with everything else in this world, you have to know who you can and cannot trust, and that can be tricky. My go-to always is the Ball Blue Book, which updates about once every 5-10 years (depending on what research has uncovered recently in terms of food safety plus I think they change recipes as people's tastes evolve). I keep all the BBBs, but always use the recipes from the latest one. There's some good Ball canning books out there too, but again, you have to compare older recipes to new stuff/guidelines to make sure the older recipes still are considered safe. The website of the National Center for Home Food Preservation is the ultimate authority because it is based on the latest government-funded food safety/food preservation research. When in doubt about a recipe, you cannot do anything better than go to the Harvest Forum here at GW, post the recipe and ask if it is a safe one. The canning experts there can tell you yes or no and why. You also can trust the webpages of companies like Jarden//Ball, such as freshpreserving.com because they have great, tested recipes on their webpages.

Some recipes never change---especially the jam and jelly ones. Chris took a bunch of Blueberry-Lime Jam to work once for the crew at his fire station to have to eat on their morning biscuits, and one of his coworkers was astounded that I used "his grandmother's" exact recipe for Blueberry-Lime Jam. I was just giggling because it was just the Ball Blue Book recipe, though it doesn't bother me that he considered it his grandma's recipe. I believe his grandmother was no longer living, so being able to eat "her" blueberry-lime jam made him so happy that it touched my heart. Sometimes it is the simple things that are the best.

I have some very old cookbooks with old jam recipes (the kind you cook down for hours on the stove in a preserving pan at low temperatures and you only use actual fruit and sugar, not commercial pectin) and I'm comfortable using those recipes as well because jam is so easy and it is hard to mess it up, but I wouldn't use recipes that old for things other than jam, jelly or syrup.

Check your weather before you dump the leaf mulch on the garden. Are y'all expecting wind? In our part of the state we have a Wind Advisory in effect from 7 pm tonight through 7 am tomorrow morning for wind blowing 25-35, gusting to 45 mph. If I had leaves in bags ready to use as mulch, I would wait until after than wind blows through or you may find yourselves raking up those leaves a second time! I was thinking of raking leaves today, but I think I'll just wait and see where the leaves end up first after tonight's wind blows through.

Kim, I hate that you had to do all that work while feeling poorly, but I totally understand why you needed to do it.

I kinda feel cheated by this cold front---normally the earliest we freeze is mid-November so I was hoping for several more weeks of warm-season gardening. That's not going to happen.

I'll finish curing my sweet potatoes indoors, which is not normally how I do it, but the weather makes it seem like the best choice this year.

I told y'all I needed to stop checking my Fri/Sat forecast because every time I look at it, they've dropped our forecast low another degree or two.....and I predicted it would end up at 29 or 30.. (On Monday it was at 38 degrees for early Sat morning.) So....yesterday our forecast for Sat morning was 32, and this morning it is at 30. I guess the big surprise will be if it still is at 30 tomorrow morning when I look at the forecast. When it was at 38, I had hope my garden could squeak by and survive this cold front, but that hope is all but dead now.

Our dewpoints and relative humidity values have been dropping very low during the afternoons here--a couple of days ago our relative humidity dropped to 16%. Anytime it drops below 18%, my skin literally feels like it is cracking when I'm outdoors. I hate having air this dry with such strong winds coming as the combination of the two will dry out vegetation a massive amount and raise fire danger. Oh, and static electricity sure goes up when the air gets that dry. I don't notice it so much now, but when I would be taking care of Chris' parrots when he was working his 24-hour work shifts, I would get shocked by static electricity every time I touched a cage in extremely dry weather. I don't miss that. However, if you pet the cats when static electricity is high, sometimes you can make their hair stand straight up.

Dawn

Low humidity? This might be a perfect day to try to straighten my hair. Lol.

i am back in bed -- took the dogs out and they are fed. Got Ethan off to school and he is fed.

Tonight is the night to harvest everything left in the garden. Mostly peppers, tomatoes and small green Seminoles. Do y'all use them like summer squash when they are small and green?

ok. I gotta get up. The chickens are squawking and I need to find my flat iron. Lol I should already be at work right now. Oh well. Have a good day friends.

Last year our first frost was December 6th so I do feel cheated. Fever body aches and headaches are gone this morning. Going to head out in a minute to start digging picking and cutting.

Well, I started a post and managed to loose it. Sigh.

I was in Moore yesterday for son's deployment ceremony. It was a long day. Daughter drove. Leaves along the route weren't much better than anywhere else. While I was gone the chickens got out and DH (and the dog) had to chase them back in. I would have got meal worms, but he probably doesn't know where those are. The chickens survived the dogs help, though 2 are either hiding today or were in the nesting box when I was out there.

Nancy, how are the kittens today? The pepper I liked was Figitelli Sicilia, sweet pepper. "Horn" shaped frying pepper. I got it from Baker Creek. I don't know if it was just because it was a good pepper year or not (I've never had pepper production like this year), but they were maybe the most prolific plants I had. Blight Buster bell, which was a freebie hybrid I got from Seeds n Such was the most prolific bell. Who said they were only doing hybrids next year? Rebecca?

My roselle is growing in a 5 gal bucket this year, Nancy, and it's been sadly neglected. Needed fertilizer and dried out more than it should. I wonder how it would do in a big fabric pot. They do better in the ground.

I had one of those sounded good but wasn't dinners this week. Crock pot cooked onions, cabbage, apples and smoked pork chops in apple cider overnight. I went to open the tupperware for my dinner the next day and just put it back. Smell of cooked cabbage did me in. DH was not impressed either, though he ate it.

Jennifer, it helps to have 2 of you when canning, one to make sure you're following the instructions and one to do them. Once you have done it a couple of times, it is not so daunting.

Dawn, I'm glad you're getting your dryer fixed soon. Some of those appliance parts places have really slow shipping. (I know from experience). But the fridge shelf we recently got just snapped in place perfectly. Every now and then it goes just right!

Speaking of fridges, my sister cleaned my mom's out when she was in the hospital. Mom was a little annoyed, but mom was getting lax about how long she kept things. And now you can actually put something in it. But, they had a repairman come out and charge $239 for 10 minutes work on the leaking ice maker >:(.

Kim, I'm sorry you weren't feeling well. Glad your symptoms are gone today. I bought my daughter some elderberry syrup, which I like for those days I feel something coming on. I got her the fancier one with zinc and vitamin c included. She said it was so sour she mixed it with green nyquill to make it taste better. LOL. Must have been what they put in for Vit C.

H/J, glad your event was a success. Take it easy today.

XOs y'all.

I need to get some elderberry. It is good stuff. I get the one with ACV and honey.

Got my sweets almost done and could not move. Going to bed now

Jennifer, I use very small, very young Seminoles as summer squash---when they are roughly only 2 to 5 days past being polllinated/fertilized and starting to enlarge--so roughly when they are between the size of an orange and a medium sized grapefruit. Often, at that stage the blossom hasn't even dropped off yet and I have to remove it. The larger they get, the less suitable they are for use as a summer squash. However, our chickens love them and eat them at any size. I just slice them in half, place them on the ground and the chickens clean them out.

Kim, I feel cheated too, but it is what it is. Our weather is all over the place every year, so we never really know what we're gonna get. Apparently this year we're getting an early frost/freeze. I feel sorry for the children/parents who chose their Halloween costumes based on the warm weather we'd been having. Our big bash in-town is the Trunk or Treat event scheduled for Saturday night, with 1000-2000 participants expected, and our temperatures are going to be pretty chilly. Our high for Sat is forecast for 59 and our low for 34, so I expect the evening event will begin when we're in the 50s dropping pretty quickly into the 40s. Brrr! I do remember trick or treating some years wearing a winter coat over our costumes.

Amy, That has happened to me a lot lately. I wonder if the Garden Web gnomes are making mischief again and making posts disappear.

Is your son being deployed overseas or somewhere here in the USA?

I'm glad the fridge shelf snapped right into place. It is fun when repairs and replacement parts work as expected and desired.

Technically speaking, the dryer is usable (barely). With the damaged roller, though, it heats up pretty quickly and then shuts itself down (a feature I appreciate). After it cools off you can restart it, and it can run from 5 to 20 minutes (there seems to be no rhyme or reason for the varying times) before it shuts down. So, if you have all day to dry a load of laundry and can be in the house keeping an eye on the dryer, etc. and restarting it, you can get about one load done per day. I did a load of clothes on Monday, figuring that would hold us until the weekend. Hopefully Tim will have time Saturday to fix it. Then I'll start lobbying him to replace whatever it is in the control panel that is keeping most of our drying cycle buttons from working. You can push them forever and in every portion of the button and nothing happens, and it keeps getting worse. They've gone out one by one so eventually I guess we'll hit the point where none of the cycles work. If I had an outdoor clothesline, I'd just hang them out to dry, though in today's wind, they might go flying through the air.

Uggh. I hate to imagine what my mom's oven might look like. My niece cleans her house weekly, so hopefully she is cleaning the oven occasionally. On the other hand, my mom probably mostly just microwaves stuff now. Ever since my dad died, she has cooked less and less and less and mostly just microwaveable stuff or something she can cook on top of the stove. It is ridiculous how much appliance repairmen charge, and that's precisely why Tim hates to call them. He'll spend ten times as long trying to fix things himself rather than call a repair guy.

Kim, Your symptoms sound like a cold or the flu. I hope you take a long afternoon nap and wake up feeling better. Take care of yourself. Like it or not, the freeze is coming, you've done all you can do in advance of it and the hardest work of the 2017 gardening season is behind you now. Relax and enjoy the break from slaving away in the garden every day. You're worked so hard all summer and I'm sure you're ready for a break.

Y'all I had a possible wild hog encounter today, and I use the word possible because it happened so quickly and then it was gone and I wasn't even believing my eyes. Jet and I were out walking on a road south of our roadway. At the west end of that road there's a sand/gravel pit area where they mine sand and/or gravel from the riverbed. We were walking east, but still alongside the road that leads to the sand pit operation. Big trucks are in and out all day hauling that stuff. If we walk early enough, we miss most of the big trucks---I think we are walking while they are on their first or second run down to the metroplex and by the time they are coming back for another load, we are back home again. Today, though, I cooked bacon and made flaxseed muffins first instead of walking first, so we were really late getting started and the traffic was heavy.

At one point, Jet and I stepped well off the road into the bar ditch---about 8' back from the road because there were two semi-trucks coming from either direction and they were going to pass on a pretty narrow roadway right beside us. As they were passing, a large creature that looked absolutely terrified by the the trucks was running west along the road on the south side, while Jet and I stood, headed east, on the north side of the east-west road. I got a pretty good look at it. My initial reaction was that I was seeing the ugliest, biggest, most horrible dog ever....or a wolf (lol, I know we don't have wolves here), but the head was all wrong....and that is when I realized it was a very large feral hog. A hideously ugly one. (Not that there's any pretty ones.) I was terrified. After the trucks passed each other, I watched and it kept running west until it was out of sight. That's a good thing, but believe me, I already was figuring out which gate into a cow pasture we could take to put a 5 or 6-strand barb wire fence between us and the hog if it came after us. Since it kept heading west, we resuming walking east, but when we turned to walk back west to get back to our road, I was nervous that we might run into it again. We didn't. It was awfully late in the day for feral hogs to be out---probably a little after 9:30 a.m. and I suspect that when it got to our road, it turned south and ran. There's not many houses down that way and there's hollows and creek beds the hogs like to run so I'm guessing it sought refuge that way. Luckily for Jet and I, the heavy traffic was pretty steady so I was hoping that just the noise of the trucks would keep that feral hog from coming back after us. They can be really aggressive.

So, when we got home and Jersey was waiting for her walk (and barking incessantly to remind me it was her turn and she was tired of waiting), she and I went north up our road, and I doubt I'll head south anytime soon towards the crossroad Jet and I used today. I hate to imagine what the wild hog encounter could have been like if there had been no huge trucks rolling through. I'm usually not happy about the trucks, but today I was thrilled to see them.

It is odd because just yesterday I was speaking with our neighbor who lives west of us--the one who is our buffer between us and the river--and I asked about his grandchildren's dog that had disappeared one weekend recently when they were up visiting. I'd been watching for it but hadn't seen it and was hoping maybe they had found it and forgot to tell us. Nope. It disappeared into thin air never to be seen again, but what he said yesterday seems especially chilling now---he said he told the grandkids (they are older---teens and early 20s) that he thought the wild hogs probably got the dog. I agreed with him but also said I thought maybe a timber rattler had gotten it. (It seems less painful to think of snakebite as a cause of death than to think of a dog being killed/devoured by wild hogs.) I'll have to remember to tell him I saw that big hog out in broad daylight. Usually they are out from sometime after sunset to just around sunrise and it isn't real common to see them in the middle of the morning.

So, that's my horrific wildlife story for the day, week, month and year. I haven't been that close to a feral hog in years, and hope never to repeat the experience again.

When crap like this happens, I just hibernate indoors as much as possible until I get over the shock of being so close to such a potentially dangerous wild thing. I'd like to say that I have nerves of steel, but I don't. My nerves are more like nerves of jelly.

Dawn

I bet it WAS a long day for you all, Amy, and on more than one level, I suspect. I hope all goes well for him. I still don't know where so many towns in Oklahoma are, so just kind of studied a map of the state a little bit. Baby steps. . .

Took me the longest time to get Stillwater and Stillwell straight in my head! And Broken Arrow and Broken Bow (LOL). And many many other towns, of course.

Thanks for the pepper references. I was quite obsessed with finding everyone's recommendations yesterday.

Kittens seem fine. BUT discovered tapeworms, too, in Jerry! So ran into town for medicine. Aggh. I think Tom's okay. I'm doubting Jerry got the worm medication when they arrived at the vet's; maybe they just forgot or maybe they gave meds to Tom twice. Who knows. Either that or he got reinfected after they treated them--they WERE living at the vets for 3 weeks. Oh well, glad I spotted them.

Now THAT is an interesting combo of ingredients. I'll have to think about that one. VERY interesting. So if I'm tempted, I'll have to remember your words!

Taking brug cuttings today, some succulent cuttings, got some stuff rooting in water. . .yikes! And I had to laugh at your warning, Dawn. Well, if it gets that windy, the leaves will be blown no matter WHERE they are. I'm going for it. Throw em in the beds and water them down and cross my fingers. SAYS winds to 20 mph tomorrow. We'll see.

You know, I was just thinking about the deck. Since heat rises, and the deck is anywhere from 3 feet to 6 feet off the ground, maybe the deck's warmer than I'd thought it is. Maybe. . . I'm going to scoot fabric pots up closer to the house side of the deck; maybe they'll make it through this frost. If so, great. If not, bummer. :)

Ha! You sneaked in here and posted, Dawn, before I finished mine, which I'd started earlier, and then just never scrolled back up. Now I have to go read about feral hog encounter!

Dawn Don't you carry an equalizer for such encounters? How scary. When I was picking peas outside of town this year I kept thinking I heard a snort grumble sound from the milo area. When I went back the next time there were tracks all over the pea patch.

Dawn is hard to tell with me. I get flu symptoms when exposed to wrong foods and chemicals. They have been defoliating cotton for weeks. Also when I went to Denton I helped me sister in her garden. We got poison ivy. Apparently I am not immune to it anymore. I have horrible blisters and it said on the Web that people could experience flu like symptoms. Ha. And seek help if you do.

Well back to picking.

Okay, Old Man Winter, I'm ready...

I can't believe how early the first freeze is going to be this year, and here it is 84* right now, so it really is hard to imagine. I lifted and potted up some annuals and tender perennials from the garden (pentas, Mexican heathers, Diamond Frost euphorbias, purple fountain grasses, plumbago, and esperanzas), and they'll be spending winter in and out of the garage. And as I tell my husband, I'm not a cheapskate, I'm just frugally minded. :0) I put all the pots on a cart with wheels and just push it in and out of the garage. It's worked really well the last two winters.

All the houseplants are inside, and the patio looks so bare and empty. On the flip side, the house is packed full with plants. After I paint the guest bedroom, I can put some in there. It's on the west side of the house and gets wonderful sun.

I'll cover the cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, and kale tomorrow. I know they can take cold, but I just wonder with it being so warm today, if it would be too much of a shock for them. The spinach, lettuce, and beets that I direct sowed are looking so good, but they are still small. I'll cover them, too.

I went ahead and cut down the cannas. I finished putting out pansies, snapdragons, and dianthus. I also planted my garlic. Wow, this has been a busy week.

Oh, Dawn, I read that you can dig the sweet potato vine tubers and save them for next year. I'm going to try it.

Goodness, I'm not usually so chatty. Hope everyone's ready for the weather roller coaster.

Michelle

Nancy,

Kittens seem to attract worms. I don't know why. We don't have much trouble with them with our adult cats but every kitten seems like it has to be dewormed multiple times its first year or two.

Kim, On our property I'm usually armed, but I don't carry a concealed handgun while walking off our property. Jet's leash, the cell phone, my keys and my canister of pepper spray are about all I have enough hands to manage.I used to always carry my fire radio with me, but now that they can dispatch fire calls via a phone app, I don't have to do that any longer.

I kinda doubt that my pepper spray would have any effect on a wild hog. Honestly, I never expected to see one out that late in the day. I am very careful to not walk too close to sunrise or sunset because of all the creatures (feral hogs, coyotes, bobcats, skunks, etc.) that prefer those hours, but this feral hog probably didn't get the memo about only being out at night. Normally, though, they do tend to be creatures of the night and usually if there's one, there's a bunch, so at least I only saw one.

I'm now reassessing our morning walks and thinking maybe I should switch to walking indoors on the treadmill, but the dogs will miss getting to walk and sniff and smell and bark at squirrels and what-have-you. I don't have feral hog encounters often---maybe once every 3 to 5 years, so I should be good now until at least 2020, right? Tomorrow morning likely will have a wind chill so low that we skip the walk, and we usually don't walk on weekends when Tim is at home. So, I don't really have to decide what to do until Monday. I have encountered more strange creatures, including 2 bizarre human encounters, in the last two weeks of walking daily than in the last two years, so taking a couple of weeks off from walking might be a good idea. I can be lax about carrying my pepper spray, but after encountering a couple of unknown creepy type people (twice in one week) the last couple of weeks, I have been being very careful to carry it on every walk lately.

I heard snorts weekly for about a 4 month period a few years back. It was always when the dogs and I were walking, and it was always coming from the property next door to us or the one across the street from us. Each time, though, the snorts were from within the fenced pasture, so I wasn't really too worried as we had a good barbed wire fence between us and the snorting creatures. Having said that, if the snorts continued like the feral hogs were moving in unison with us, I'd turn and go home. Those were the good old days---the pastures, and especially the fence lines, were overgrown with thick, dense vegetation like greenbriar, cedar trees, sumac, sand plums, etc. so whatever was on the other side of the fenceline couldn't just come through the fence...and we couldn't see it and I'm pretty sure it (or they) couldn't see us. Now those property owners have really cleaned up the fence lines, so the hogs could come right through that fence if they wanted to. (It takes an incredible fence, sometimes, to stop the hogs if they do not wish to be stopped.)

The very first time I became aware they were on our property, about 10-15 years back, I saw mud all over tree trunks a couple of feet above ground and was baffled. I talked to our neighbor who lives behind us as well as to his brother and his cousin and they all said it was spots where the feral hogs rub against the trees and told me if I would examine the mud rubs closely, I'd likely see hog hair there. No thanks. I didn't even want to look for that. I quit taking walks through that part of our woodland after that. Later on, we had them wallowing in a deep hole in our creek bed during a drought---the only part of the creek that still had water in it. They stayed there a long time, but as far as I know, never came up out of the woods any closer to our house than the creek bed. Just knowing they were less than 200 yards (probably about 125 yard but I've never measured it) from our house made me nervous.

When I talked to our neighbor yesterday, he mentioned specific places he was seeing the hogs, and it was to our north and west, not to our south and east where I saw the one today. I'll have to let him know they are traveling down that other direction as well.

I wondered if inadvertent food exposure was making you feel crappy. Sorry to hear about the poison ivy too. I do not react very strongly to it. Tim does. I guess that's the difference in him being exposed to it many times in his youth, and me not really being exposed to it until we moved here. I keep a Poison Ivy blocking lotion to put on if I am working somewhere that I know has poison ivy and if I inadvertently make contact with the P.I., I run right inside and use the Poison Ivy cleaner I keep in our medicine cabinet. I've only broken out with a poison ivy rash once, but once was enough to make me be as careful as possible. I had a friend who inhaled the poison ivy oils from the air/smoke when they were burning brush a couple of decades back---her lungs broke out in a rash and she had to be hospitalized. It seems like her recovery took quite a while---and she broke out a lot externally as well as internally. That woman had no luck at all!

Michelle, I've been surprised at how well the tubers of ornamental sweet potatoes have overwintered just sitting in the back, dark corner of our walk-in pantry. I had thought they'd probably rot. Some did, but not all of them.

It is crazy to think of how our weather is going to crash....today we hit 87 degrees here (which was ridiculous and, of course and as usual, warmer than the forecast) and Saturday morning we'll hit about 30 degrees. That is a huge change and I do think the sudden change could shock some plants. Usually our hardy plants have time to adjust to gradually cooler temperatures and it hardens them, but this early freeze hasn't allowed them much time to harden off to colder temperatures.

The cold front isn't here yet. It was getting close and our wind started to change and then it just stopped. Our local TV met has said for the last couple of days that the cold front would arrive around 7 pm tonight. Well, it hasn't made it here yet. I wonder if it has stalled a little bit. Maybe we are lucking out and will get another warm hour or two or three before the cold front arrives and the temperatures plunge. Tomorrow morning's wind chills are supposed to be pretty brutal.

I took a last, longing look at all the beautiful flowers still in bloom in the garden. Some are annuals that definitely will freeze. Others are perennials, like autumn sage, that often stay in bloom most of the winter here. I've got so many varieties of autumn sage blooming now and I hope they escape the freeze damage. Even some of the Russian sage is still in bloom. The autumn sage plants likely will be the only flowers the butterflies have left after the freeze hits us Saturday morning. I'll probably plant some winter annuals. I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

The deer were lurking around the compost pile just before sunset tonight, with young fawns with them, and I haven't tossed anything on the compost pile lately, so I felt bad for them and took a plastic coffee can of cracked corn and hen scratch out and made little piles for them near the compost pile. I hope they appreciated the kindness. With the way my luck goes, they'll be standing out there tomorrow morning, waiting for another handout. Not only are our pets spoiled, our wildlife is too.

Stay warm, everyone! I'm afraid this blast of cold weather will remind us why we like April and May so much---after the cold has departed.

Dawn

I was too happy about the cold front not being here. Our wind has abruptly changed direction and picked up speed, and now is coming out of the N-NW. I believe the cold front is about to roll through.

I would be scared out of my wits, Dawn! That's quite a story! I believe a feral boar would scare me more than, say, a black bear.

The weather change hit here a little while ago; winds picked up and temp is dropping. It IS a little sad, always, the first freeze. I'll cover the tomatoes, but bye bye to many plants. I certainly wish I had a room with enough light to put some in.

I never plan dinner menus out. . . but tried (and already failed) this past week. Ha! So we had broccoli cheese soup and baby chef salads tonight. :) I needed to use the broccoli.

Tom accidentally pulled the cord out of the computer; went to recover the doc I was working on; McAfee intervened and said there was an update--didn't get the doc recovered--after I'd spent an hour working on it. Sheesh.

That is such a scary story, Dawn!

Nancy, your dinner sounds delicious!

We didn't get in until after dark. (shopping for OBA) So, I didn't get my garden harvested. OR wasn't here to see the chickens put themselves to bed. Got in, went to the coop to lock everything down. Wait! a chicken is missing. Everyone QUICK! get a flashlight and search the property. It's after 8 and dark. It's either Dolly or Buttercup--the buff orpingtons. I'm so upset but trying to be reasonable. "everyone loses chickens--it's normal...go on with your life". We are walking the property, and shining the flashlight unto neighbors' property. I looked in the coop one more time, and she was there! Just not on the roosting bars with her sisters. Phew. I got lucky this time.

I took a flashlight to the garden and harvested what I could. I'll try to get the rest tomorrow. Not what I wanted, but shopping just took longer than what we thought.

If I remember correctly, It was the middle of November when we got our first frost last year.

Frankly, I wasn't keeping a calendar or diary then. . . but this seems earlier than my previous two years here. Well, come to think of it, I was harvesting tomatoes the week of Thanksgiving last year, so it must not have frozen here yet! LOL

I'm glad you dodged a bullet with missing chickens tonight!

Oh yeah, HJ, the broccoli cheese soup is pretty good! Not as good as potato/corn chowder, or creamy mushroom, but REAL good. And GDW loves salads SO much. I'm so glad he does, because although I always love them from restaurants, not at home. I don't get it at all, but thankful GDW does--cuz salads are good. I like them okay with enough cool things in them, like carrots, tomatoes, peppers, always onions, hard boiled eggs, sunflower seeds, bacon, grated cheese, mandarin oranges or black olives--anything I can think of to make them more flavorful. Here's the rub--Garry loves iceberg lettuce--I hate it. I'll start using Romaine, and he'll acclimate. Haha!

Amy, now I'm on a mission, trying to fill in my plant database. You rascal! LOL Do any of the rest of you keep a diary or a table or notes or spreadsheets on plants you're growing? I started one last year, mostly for purposes of plant (mostly flower) propagation. But have expanded it now, thanks to Amy. It is so helpful for me to remember where I bought what seeds, and note which ones are good here/problems and so forth.

HJ, considering how busy you are, you are amazing! Two dogs that are not perfect angels, a kid that keeps you so busy, and a family--I remember those days! Your job. . .and, in fact, ALL of you who are working other jobs and still grow such amazing gardens. . . it's beyond me how you juggle it all. I worked probably 9-12 hours a day (counting travel time) for all my life. No WAY could I have had a garden with the boys growing up--it was only when I was living alone that I could pour my spare time into gardening (and then only plants, shrubs, herbs and flowers.) Alexis, Michelle, Denise, Bon. . . I know there are many of you. . . and sorry I cannot remember you all. Jacob? What I love to see are the numbers of young people on FB Oklahoma Gardening who are gardening. Lovely!

Well the wind picked up and blew in some pretty cool weather. After I got off work I ran around in the cold wind nailed a board over the door to shed, tucked in all my sweet potatoes with a heater on low and the min max thermometer, grabbed all my aloe about 36 ran to the shed watered them well and put them in with the sweets. Finally got it all done and got the heater in the camper going.

I only got about 2 gallons of tomatoes picked. There are probably 20 gallons more. If it does not freeze tonight them I will tomatoes tomorrow. And eggplant and peppers too. So much I couldn't get done being sick.

I couldn't have even gotten it done being healthy, Kim! You are something else!

That is what my mom always said. Lol.

Mom Fryhover, That's quite an ugly pig in that photo. Maybe I should sharpen the tip of my umbrella and start carrying it.

We had encountered bands of javelina while camping/hiking in some national and state parks in Texas a couple of decades back, but they just ignored us (thankfully) and kept moving on. I kinda thought it was cool to see them---from a reasonable distance.

Once we started seeing feral hogs here, I was sort of freaked out. It got worse for me once they popped up on our property---more nerve-wracking them seeing them in the river bottom lands while at wildfires, for example. However, they've always stayed pretty far from the house---maybe the closest they've ever come to the house is a little over 100 yards, and that was during an exceptional drought year when all the ponds and creeks dried up except for one deep hole in our creek---and those feral hogs hung out at that deep hole and wallowed in the mud until that area finally dried up. They were true feral hogs---obvious descendants of domesticated pigs--one had quite a bit of reddish-brown to it, and another had a lot of white. Most of the ones I see running the roads are black, more like Russian boars than domesticated pigs. After that drought ended, the hogs in the creek went away. We still have them wander through the back of our property , which is about 1,000' from the house, from time to time. There's wildlife trails back there used mainly by deer and coyotes, but by other wild creatures as well, including feral hogs. We live so close to the Red River that everyone's property around here, if they have acreage, has lots of creeks, gullies, swales, etc., and the feral hogs travel through those areas to avoid the dense brushy undergrowth in the woodlands. We used to keep trails cleared through our woodland so we could easily walk through those acres, but once we realized our trails made it easier for unwanted creatures (including trespassers and poachers) to wander through our property, we stopped maintaining the trails and let the underbrush reclaim them.

Nancy, It is nerve-wracking to have them get too close. Luckily, it is fairly rare. I think I saw 2 alongside that same road either last year, or the year before, but they were dead beside the road (though it made me nervous to see them, and I was hoping they were dead and not just sleeping or something) and the dog and I walked past them and they did not, in fact, jump up and come after us. I did avoid that area for a few weeks after that because nobody's nose wants to smell rotting hog carcasses, and for some reason, the vultures didn't eat them like they usually eat roadkill. I don't know why.

We have too much wildlife here as it is, and the feral hogs are incredibly destructive and tear up the land something fierce.

The very first time I saw a dead feral hog beside the road---a big black one---I thought it was a bear cub. So did Tim. We turned around, and drove back to look at it to make sure it was a hog and not a bear, and several other cars were stopped there looking at it too---for the same reason. lol. It was very close to Lake Texoma and we figured a bear from eastern OK could have wandered a few counties east of its usual stomping grounds, but it was just a hog.

I've seen just about every sort of wildlife OK has to offer here except for elk, antelope, alligator (had one in a farm pond 1/2 mile from us but I didn't see that one), groundhogs and bears. I'll be perfectly happy if I never see any of those things here. The groundhogs usually are found only in far NE OK, the bears in far eastern OK, and the elk and antelope in W or NW OK. We really shouldn't see them this far south. Alligators sometimes are found in/near the Red River, but more often in far SE OK than here in southcentral OK, so while they are occasionally spotted, it is rare.

Jennifer, Believe me, I was appropriately scared. I was wondering if I could climb a tree one-fourth as well at 58 years of age as I did when I was 10 or 12 years old. Probably not, and I would have found it hard to abandon Jet to fend for himself. Luckily, I didn't have to make that choice. I have no real idea what I would have done if that feral hog had turned and come back at us after the sand trucks went on up the road. My best guess is I would have tried to get into the pasture so the barbed wire fence would have been between us and the hog, but it is a six-strand fence and I am not sure how I would have squeezed between a couple of fairly close strands. Across the road there was a 5-strand barbed wire fence, so that would have been easier, but I think the hog had come out of that pasture via a creekbed, so it probably could have gone back in that pasture after us the very same way.

I'm glad you found the chicken. For what it is worth, we've had them stay out overnight at times and survive perfectly fine. It just depends on what wild thing is or isn't prowling on any given night. Often, when they hide, I find them near the house or barn, often sitting up in a shrub or small ornamental tree. Sometimes (I don't know why) they are sitting on top of chicken coop roof, like a night watchman. That's not good---an owl will find a chicken that is that exposed.

Nancy, All my notes are in my head. I kept notes the first couple of years here, but then didn't need them after that. They were helpful in adjusting to the different timing here in terms of planting dates, late freezes and frosts, early freezes and frosts, etc., because I still was on running on my Fort Worth gardening data when we first moved here and I had to get used to being 80 miles further north. Oddly, the weather here tends to be both hotter than Fort Worth in the summer and colder in Fort Worth in the winter, making we think we lost all the way around in terms of temperatures when we moved here. I expected it to be colder in winter, and colder both earlier in fall and later in spring, but didn't really expect it to be hotter in the summer.

Kim, For someone who was sick, you got a lot done. If it freezes and you don't get the rest, then that's just what happens sometimes. A person can only do what they can do in any given time period, and there's no point making oneself crazy fretting over the things that they cannot get done. It took me a long time to learn that here---that I can only do what I can do within a specific time frame. I had to let go of a lot of the "should's" in my mind and accept the "could's". There were times I both planted and harvested by flashlight, before I realized how active the snakes were at night. I don't do that any more.

I am laughing at the weather this morning. Every single day this week, when I have looked at my NWS forecast for Saturday morning, our forecast low has steadily dropped. A few days ago I complained that at the rate it was going, our original forecast of 38 degrees was going to hit 29 or 30. Sure enough, yesterday morning our forecast showed 30 degrees for Sat morning. Today it shows 29. I wonder if we'll wake up to 28 degrees? That would give us a hard freeze.

I need to cut some flowers and bring them inside today. Maybe sunflowers and zinnias. Tonight the fat lady will sing.

Dawn

She definitely is howling here. Maybe getting her vocals ready to hit those low notes lol. I am getting ready to go see if the eggplant is worth picking and then make some blackberry jam for market.

With a high of 50 I doubt we will have many customers.

My goal is to make 3 kinds of jam before next Friday. I am joining in with artists and want to have a decent variety of jams and jellies. Since the roselles did not make ton I will have to buy some at natural grocers. They have organic dehydrated roselle calyces. I am going to make some jelly with mine and compare the 2 and see if there is any noticeable difference.

Kim, Can you make jam from dehydrated calyxes or has too much of the juice been dehydrated out of the calyxes? I've only made jam from fresh calyxes or fresh-frozen ones. When I dehydrated them, I only used those for tea. They seemed to work fine for tea, so I think they might work fine for jam, depending on what you can extract from the dehydrated calyxes.

I bet you won't get many customers tomorrow if the wind holds up. I think if the winds die down, a lot of people might be in the mood to stroll through the Farmer's Market before the season ends.

My niece who lives near Abilene posted TX station footage this morning of a cotton bale/cotton module fire at the Roscoe Co-Op west of Abilene. The TV news report said it started in burs and spread to the bales. It looked incredibly bad---like our big hay bale fires here, only with a much higher dollar amount assigned to the loss.....at the time of the news story she posted, the estimated loss was $825,000.00 and the wind was gusting as high as 39 mph. The burning bales and modules appeared to be lined up in rows and in the background--right behind them and right above them--you can see wind turbines spinning. I'm thinking the turbines spinning in the wind aren't really going to help the firefighters any. About all the firefighters can do in that wind is let the burning bales burn out and try to keep the fire from spreading to more bales. What a rough day they are having there!

It is cloudy, cold, windy and just icky, icky, icky here. I was hoping at least for some sunshine. Maybe later in the day. Neither the dogs nor the cats have any desire to stay outside one moment longer than necessary, and I kinda agree with them. The one good thing is that I bet we will not have a heat index above 100 degrees (nor possibly above 90 degrees) again this year. Yippee.

Dawn

I did not see that on the news. That is terrible. I hope they can keep it under control. Thankfully they all have good insurance. We have cotton lined highways from now until February.

I believe when dehydrating it only removes the water therefore concentrating the flavor. So I think if I just add water it will go back to original strength. I will let you know how the test comes out. Trying to get my blackberry done I am so slow today.

Well, said good-bye to the brugmansia today. I had Garry cut it down. Now I have branches to move into the garage for cuttings. And waved goodbye to everything that's going to give up the ghost Saturday and Sunday. I will cover the tomatoes and move the fabric pots close to the house, but that's it. Everything else, adios.

I feel a chili dinner with grilled cheese coming on for this evening.

Dagnabbit, happened here, too, Dawn. Every time I look at the weather, the low drops. Now it's 27. Kind of funny, really. I thought I was so done with the garden--now that I will be, all of a sudden I'm not happy. Haha!

Oh brrr for you at market tomorrow, Kim!

Wow--that is one big hay-burning fire in Abilene. WOW And my brain isn't big enough anymore to hold all the new information I've learned from you all! Especially intent on capturing plant recommendations, as well as all the germination info, PLUS my seeds to be ordered list.

Mesonet says 29, National Weather Service says 28. Bah humbug. I covered one bed of kale and collards. Both that one and another got mulched. I'm hoping the mulched bed will be ok. Too many stakes in that one to cover. Was going to cover the herbs, but forgot and now have grandson, so my work in the garden is done. So be it.

I have elaborate spreadsheets because that is how I wrap my head around things. They organize my thoughts. Sometimes they are even useful ;)

My coleus out front has seen better days. The wind keeps blowing the pot over. I'm not doing cuttings. I could, but it's not going to happen. The citrus trees are inside. The lime looks great. The lemon looks bad. We picked everything we could find. Green tomatoes, okra, cowpeas, green beans and a few peppers. Grabbed some basil and hung it to dry. Pulled seed pods off the Egyptian spinach, but I don't know if they're mature enough yet.

I don't think I'm supposed to publicise where my son is going (though they did a TV feature) but suffice it to say it is not anywhere I WANT him to be. He is training in Texas now. Will be home for Thanksgiving and leaves sometime in Dec. I am not a good military mom. Maybe because he went to Egypt a few years ago and I had hoped that would be his only deployment.

Another thing that went off without a hitch was the replacement of the radiator in the truck. I didn't even hear any bad words!

I prefer my folks microwave. They are unlikely to burn the house down that way. My sister is there most of the time, but they had an ancient convection oven on an extension cord that had melted. And some of the stuff in the fridge was growing. There is frugal, and there is dangerous.

Dawn, you and the wildlife are getting crazy. Is there a safe place you could DRIVE to to walk the dogs? Or, maybe just walk around your house a few times, LOL. We took Honey to Lowes yesterday. She loves going in the car. She's been terrorizing my daughter and her dogs today.

Gotta go, back later.

I have everything picked, and am letting everything else go. Squirrels are definitely scurrying over here. I'm pretty much ready. Have a few beets and some sugar snaps growing still. Second planting of carrots didn't come up, again. What's the secret?

Seeing more color around here today, and I'm sure we will as time goes along. It's nice to see. And I love the cooler weather. Heat gets turned on for the first time tonight.

Speaking of fall food, I made a big crockpot of Poor Man's Stew tonight (aka, clean out the freezer soup). Hamburger, beans, onion, bag of frozen veggies, boxed broth, aromatics. Cheap, warm, and filling. Planning to make a batch of pasta sauce for the freezer this weekend. The weather makes me want something simmering on the stove.

Who was asking if I was doing hybrids next year? I am, for the most part. What is the question?

Rebecca, I was talking about the Blight Buster F1 bell pepper I grew this year. It was prolific.

Back from dinner.

Dawn, did I miss the story on your human encounters? People wanting to hunt? People up to no good?

H/J, I've had to search for chickens before. They find the highest perch they can, but not necessarily the safest.

TTFN.

Kim, I think that she had posted the link from KTSX this morning. She lives near Abilene, so if that's not the station, then it would have been whatever is a local station for Abilene. The firefighters fought the fire for at least 12 hours, and it isn't out....because, you know, just like big round hay bales, those cotton bales or modules will smolder for days. At least they kept it from spreading to all the cotton at the gin. I assume the gin has insurance on the cotton that's being processed there. There's still a few places that grow it near ud---some in Cooke County and some in Grayson County and I love driving by them and seeing the plants in summer (so gorgeous when blooming!) and seeing the 'snow' later in the fall/winter. I'd like to grow it here as an ornamental, but it would have to be in pots because cotton once was grown on our land back when it was a farm decades ago and I discovered cotton root rot in our soil when we first moved here. Thus, I wouldn't try to grow cotton in the ground here---the cotton root rot likely still exists, though I did everything I could to mitigate the situation/fix the soil so that various plants would stop dying of cotton root rot.

Nancy, The final day before the first freeze always is just so bittersweet. I always drag my feet and hate doing the final harvest because it is so....final. Maybe I harbor a secret hope that the predicted freeze won't come? So, this afternoon after the sun came out, I dragged myself out to the garden for the last harvest and got it all done. I just tried to soak up all the atmosphere, and the prettiness and all. I still had grasshoppers, cucumbers beetles and one now dearly-departed leaf-footed bug (I snipped that sucker in half with my scissors) out there in the garden with me, and the chickens had discovered where the row of sweet potatoes used to be and were happily digging and scratching their way through the soft soil I left behind after digging up the last few sweet potatoes. Well, I missed one small sweet potato and the chickens dug it up. Then I snatched it away from them before they could peck at it and I brought it up to the house. It was a great sweet potato year. There were a ton of big ones---many in probably the 2-lb. range, but the biggest one (which was the very first one I dug this year) was 4.87 lbs. That sweet potato probably will make a sweet potato pie or two all by itself.

I have two trash bags full of peppers in the extra fridge in the garage---all sorts of peppers---serrano, jalapeno, Anaheim, sweet bell, poblano and others I've probably forgotten. I'll deal with them another day. I was just glad to finish picking them all so the freeze wouldn't get them.

I brought up the last 12 or 14 winter squash to the house and have them curing in the mudroom. The big tub of sweet potatoes is in the breakfast room and tomorrow I'll spread them out on a set of shelves upstairs to cure in the spare room. There's tomatoes on the counter in the kitchen. Sadly, the Lima bean plants were heavily covered in tons of blossoms and tiny beans that never will have a chance to mature and be harvested this fall. A couple more weeks of warm weather would have given us tons of fresh Lima beans.

I expect that when I next see the garden, it will have a lot of black, mushy plants in it, but I remain hopeful that the autumn sage will outlast the cold. mostly because it usually does. The Dallas Red lantana was still looking splendid, but it is not real cold tolerant so it likely will be brown and crispy tomorrow. I feel bad for the butterflies and bees because there won't be much left for them after tonight's freeze.

Amy, Wherever they end up, I hope they remain safe. That is all that matters---that everyone comes home in one piece, hopefully healthy and whole. Of course it would be natural for any parent to hope that one deployment is enough. Sadly, this last decade or so has seen some military units deployed over and over and over again, almost without ceasing.

Hooray for the successful, curse-free replacement of the truck radiator!

I agree with you about there being a difference between being frugal and dangerous. Being a firefighter, Chris is a stickler about extension cords. If he sees anyone hooking up a microwave or any other sort of portable stove (convection, toaster, whatever....), he is quick to tell them that using an extension cord or power strip in that way (or with a space heater) is a quick way to burn down your house. My parents veered towards being much too frugal and would keep a microwave forever....once the danged thing started shooting out sparks (I don't know why) we insisted they get a new one so they wouldn't burn down the house. My mom still has her original General Electric stove from the early 1950s and I worry that it is so old that maybe it has deteriorated and might be a fire risk, but then, she hardly ever uses it anymore so it probably doesn't matter as much as I think it does.

There's a walking trail in town near the hospital, but sort of on the edge of town where the town meets the country, so I don't necessarily think walking there would be any safer than walking in my own neighborhood. Also, in town there's predators too, probably more than I encounter here in a year,....generally drug-using ones that will rob and steal to get money for their drugs.....so, maybe I am better off staying out here in the sticks and taking my chances with the normal wildlife that I occasionally encounter. Based on how seldom I see wild hogs here, I ought to be free and clear of hogs for the next few years anyhow. I can outrun the rabid skunks (at least I always have so far), most coyotes will slink away when they see you and if I encounter one that won't, then the dogs and I turn around and head home instead of trying to push our way past an aggressive coyote who's making a stand. The deer bother me a bit during rutting season---if you encounter a young male, it may try to engage you, but there again, I can just turn and go the other way. I've had them follow us, but never approach us too closely. We have so much wildlife here, and 99% of the wildlife encounters are innocent. Even in the worst cougar year, we lost poultry and some people lost small dogs and cats, but no humans were attacked.

I admit the feral hog thing was scary merely because of what could have happened, but nothing really happened, and those big semi trucks hauling sand scared the fool out of that hog. I thought he was going to stroke out from anxiety, so I bet he never comes back close to the road again.

In a few weeks, they'll be shutting down our bridge that leads out of our little rural neighborhood and over I-35. We'll be fairly well cut off from civilization for a while. There's not an on-ramp there. In order to get to I-35 we have to keep going east to State Highway 77 and either go about 5 miles south to Thackerville or 5 miles north to Marietta, and with the bridge out we cannot reach Hwy 77 that way. People who normally use the road/bridge to get to our street will have to go about 3 miles further north and take a different road and then double back south to our area. People coming home from the south, like Tim coming home from work, will have to do the same thing. The bad part is the inconvenience of it all. The good part is that the dogs and I can walk every day and encounter very little traffic as long as the bridge is shut down. The big trucks will be using a different route that won't involve them sharing a road for us. So, for me, it is okay if the bridgework takes years (though it probably won't.) I think the last time they did serious bridge work, that bridge might have been out for 3 or so months though. It was wonderful. Almost no traffic and quiet just like it was when we first moved here. I could walk the dogs without a leash because there was no traffic. I'd never attempt that nowadays because a lot of people have moved into our area since then, but it was nice back then. The downside, of course, is that without the heavier traffic, wildlife might roam a little more.

One reason we moved here was to live in an area with lots of natural beauty and wildlife. It is just that we got perhaps a bit more wildlife than we counted on.

I'm not sure why the feral hogs are here. They usually stay down in the river bottoms and only come up here on higher ground during drought. While we've had extremely dry spells, we are not, technically speaking, in drought here. We are, however, about a foot short of our average annual rainfall, so we need a lot of rain over the next 2 months or we may end up in drought before we know it. Logic would tell you that the hogs might flee to higher ground if something was hunting them. I'm not sure what preys on hogs. The coyotes are bad this year, but I don't think they go after the hogs. Maybe they'll attack the young hogs. We do always know when the hogs are traveling our creekbeds because our dogs will bark at them for hours. When the dogs bark for hours at something none of the rest of us can see or hear, that's hogs. I admit the dogs have been doing a lot of that barking the last couple of months, but I was sort of ignoring it. I know better.

Honey sounds like an adorable terror. Our neighbors to the SW have a young golden retriever who slips through the fence to come walk about a tenth of a mile with Jet and I, or with Jersey and I if we have walked that way. (Jersey would rather walk north, Jet likes to walk south.) The dog is so adorable and just wants to love on us and play with us and walk with us, and I am so worried that he'll get hit by a truck that I am scolding him and pointing toward his pasture and telling him as sternly as I can to "Go Home!" Eventually he will, but a couple of times I've had to grab his collar and hang on to him as a truck is passing so he won't panic and run in front of the truck. He's still all paws and legs and has such a happy face and it is hard to sternly tell him to go home when he just wants to be all lovey and sociable. Their other dog is older and grumpier and has a certain point in the yard that he won't cross---he'll come running with the golden retriever but then at a certain point he sits down and doesn't budge. I wish the younger dog were as good at staying in the yard for his own sake as that older dog is.

I got one really beautiful moment today that I can only describe as a gift from God. I was walking up to the house from the garden with a wheelbarrow full of winter squash and I looked up at my favorite red oak tree, which we planted maybe 12 years ago, and it was mostly green with some brown tips on the leaves. One limb, though, one stupendously glorious limb had gone completely red---every leaf on it that had no special color as recently as yesterday was just flaming red today. It was so pretty. I know the cold likely will keep the rest of the tree's leaves from turning red like that, but for that one moment as I looked at that limb of suddenly-red leaves, I was reminded how gorgeous those red oaks can be when the weather cooperates a little. I have no idea why all the leaves on one limb and one limb only suddenly turned red overnight, but it was quite a spectacle---albeit, a small spectacle. I'd love to see the whole tree do that but this probably isn't the year for it.

Dawn

Amy, I haven't heard of that one before, but this year the peppers are the one thing that didn't get hit by disease or pests. So, I think I'm sticking with the same varieties next year, Charleston Belle and Yolo Wonder. It's the tomatoes I'm leaning towards hybrids on. Between the squirrels and disease, it was just too much for them.

Well I keep thinking I will get caught up and I just get more and more behind. A friend came and picked basil tomatoes and then went pear hunting. Found a good tree and got about 8 gallons. Ready for market, kind of sort of ready. My last one as Caprock Gardens. Good night John boy

Stew sounded yummy, Rebecca--I never thought of putting hamburger as the meat in stew, and I bet I will like it a lot--fact is, neither of us really loves beef stew, but I bet I would love hamburger stew (because I love hamburger/veggie soup!).

Laughing about your red oak branch, Dawn! Congratulations! He special-delivered it for ya!

I finally got my garlic ordered! Never did plant the stuff I had left over from last year. And some of it still looks good; so I'll plant it all when the new stuff arrives. I spent all day working on my "organization" of plant info and seeds, figuring out what veggies and flowers I'll be ordering this year or have already ordered; I had a weak moment/couple hours and found some stuff I decided I had to try this year. I believe I'm about done, really! I so get what your gardening philosophy is here, Dawn; that you experimented enough to know what grows great for you, and stick to it. That has been my approach, too. I only planted certain things up north, once I'd figured it out. Now, down here, it's Experiment City. And I'm trying some totally different things next year and not going to grow the Oklahoma no-brainers, as some of them have turned out not to be no-brainers here at our place. Next year I'm not planting or growing any rudbeckia, gaillardia, cleome; I'm pulling out the peonies, I think. No green sweet potato vines, no morning glories. Nicotiana, I can't give up on, but GOTTA find a sunnier spot for them. Dahlias did surprisingly well here, so I may find some more of those.

Not giving up on zinnias, as the fall planting did beautifully; in fact, ordered more. Ordered some flowers that look delicious to me--I loved white marigolds up north, and found some great ones at Swallowtail and Johnnys. I've never grown scabiosa but always wanted to. Balloon flowers do well here, don't they?

My few flower successes here were the datura, the brug, CATMINT is gonna take over the front shop bed; the marigolds always show up, and I didn't want to grow them, but I give up. They are soldiers. Hyacinth vines are tough AND pretty. Would you all believe I have had success with FERNS. I can hardly believe it myself. I just remembered to actually keep them watered this year. Love love love verbena. Hated it up north, love it here. It performed beautifully. Had two different varieties--one grew from 2 tiny survivors of seed-planting to a mound that is about 4 feet long and 2 feet wide. . . I can't remember which variety it is. It's got feathery leaves and small purple flowers, but it is happy. Does this ring a bell with anyone?

Black-eyed Susan vines were happy. Tithonia a star! I don't really have a place for the verbena bonariensis--please tell me, does it really prefer full and hot sun? If so, I'll put it into the next-to-the boat/car port next year, alternating it with the tithonia. Purple and orange together please me.

I ordered several BLUE flowers today. My most un-favorites up til now have been yellow and orange and white. Now all of a sudden, I'm excited about those colors. I love heliopsis--does it grow well down here? Such an easy plant up north. And finally after all these years, I remembered to order globe thistle. I worried about growing forget-me-nots down here, but one single one I bought at Lowe's last year, loved it here. I found a Stokes Aster online and decided I had to try it. And many other things, today. This next year with flowers is going to be quite an experiment. I'm excited about it. I ordered specific deep or bright red coleus. And there was a beautiful RED amaranth that I ordered.

I'm quite decided on tomatoes I'm going to be growing, and peppers--(until you unglued me with yet one more today, Amy! STOP it!)

Do any of you find that certain potatoes do better than others?

What about cabbages?

Best carrots?

Yep, having a real freeze right now IS bittersweet! But I'm prepared--hope everyone else is, too, since there's not much we can do about it. It sounds like a lot of you were crazy busy. I think I'll have time to clear some beds and winter sow a few flowers.

And Amy, thank you, for your spreadsheets--gave me some great ideas! Not to mention it was fun seeing what you're growing or what you've grown.

Kim--I have a question. . . according to what I think I've learned about you, you haven't been gardening for THAT many years--how did you decide on which varieties of what to grow!? PS: Story of my life; more I get ahead, more behind I get! It's all good. We could be in the bar. this keeps us all out of trouble and tending God's garden as best we can.

PS: I am so so so excited about ordering my onions! Well, actually, I already did. . . lol. I listened to y'all, and just went for it. Well, technically, I didn't hit the order button yet. but I want to be ready to hit it soon. I get so frustrated when I try to order something and all I see are "out of stock" signs. Does it get challenging the closer to onion-planting time for Dixondale? When's a good time to order?

Kim, Good night, Grandma! Oh I miss The Waltons. That was such a sweet show.

Getting caught up is impossibly hard.

I guess I can gather persimmons now because the frost will have begun working to reduce their astringency. They don't look good after frost but their flavor improves markedly.

I hope your last market as Caprock Gardens is a good one.

Rebecca, I hope the squirrels do not survive the winter and come back to haunt your tomato plants next year. One year of those thieving varmints was enough.

Nancy, I let reseeding annuals tell me where they wish to grow. While I planted my nicotiana at the shady west end of the garden so it could have morning sun and afternoon shade and it does reseed there sporadically, it also persists in reseeding itself at the complete opposite end of the garden in full sun. I won't see it there at the east end of the garden in Spring, but by late summer there's nicotiana in bloom someone along the east fence line. Oddly, it is an area I don't water (don't want to encourage the Johnson grass that lurks along the fence line) at all and it is not uncommon to go for a month without rain at all in summer, but somehow the nicotiana thrives just as much there as it does at the other end of the garden where it has half-days of shade and at least occasional water. It never is a lot of nicotiana at the east end, often just a plant or two but it amuses me that it doggedly tries to grow in what I consider a bad place for it. Then again, it knows more about what it needs than I ever could guess.

I love dahlias but don't have a lot of luck with them here. The smaller, more compact versions do better in our heat, but once we are hot and dry, they burn up fast, and brown out and are just done, done, done. The dinner plate dahlias I do adore and they tolerate the heat better, likely because of their large tubers, but then voles will invade the garden randomly at night and eat the tubers. The first clue I'll see will be that the plant randomly falls over during the night since it has been severed from its tuber. So, I've given up on dahlias.

My zinnias, particularly the Profusion zinnias, still were in bloom last night. I"m sure they are a frozen mess this morning. I will miss them. Zinnias reseed vigorously here, though some colors seem to reseed in a more dominant manner than others, so I only sow new seeds every few years--usually in an effort to restore a particular color that's not reseeded well. The green Envy zinnias never reseed well, but they are so pretty that they're worth planting from new seed every year. I really love the cactus-flowered zinnias too, and they don't reseed as well as the dahlia flowered zinnias.

White marigolds have not done spectacularly well for me, as our summer heat down here burns them up and browns their petals quickly. You might have better luck up there since your summers might be a bit cooler than ours and also a bit more moist most years. Marigolds in general are spider mite magnets so I have largely stopped planting them....unless I can plant them outside the garden somewhere to serve as trap plants to attract spider mites away from the garden. That pains me because I love, love, love marigolds. And, with spider mites, they are erratic. Some years every marigold plant will be covered in spider mites by May, and then I just bag them up and throw them away in order to get all those spider mites out of the garden. Other years, they hardly are touched by spider mites even when tomato plants are covered with mites. There seems to be no rhyme nor reason to it either.

Annual verbena does well in Spring for me but normally doesn't rebloom well in the heat, so I haven't stayed up to date on the names of the current hybrid ones. The only perennial verbena I grow is Homestead Purple and it does make huge sprawling mounds of plants when it is happy, but it is not one you raise from seed. The tall verbena bonariensis loves hot and dry weather. and can handle just about anything. Mine reseeds in the pasture, the gravel driveway, the bar ditch, etc. and looks just as good in areas that get absolutely no irrigation as it looks in areas that I water occasionally. (None of my garden gets much water because I'm too thrifty to give it a lot of water., having learned in our drought years that if I start watering too much, I create big lush plants that demand more and more water, so to make them drought-friendly I give them almost no water and they learn to survive on what they get. It seems cruel, but is an important survival technique in those awful years when we only get 18 or 20 or 24" of rainfall the entire year.)

Some heliopsis do well here, others don't. You just have to find the specific ones that flourish in your soil and your climate conditions.

With most vegetables, including potatoes, the variety is less important than getting any variety planted at the right time for it. This is particularly true with cool-season crops that have to go in early in order to beat the heat. My favorite potato is, always has been, and always will be whichever one I'm eating on any give day but Yukon Gold is a particular favorite, and I love Norland Red for early red potatoes harvested young as baby potatoes and cooked with a pot of fresh green beans. Green beans and new potatoes is one of my favorite springtime dishes. For russet types, Norkotah does especially well in our climate, and I also have played around with many of the fingerlings just for the fun of having all that variety. The best place I've found to buy seed potatoes in late winter is Atwood's. While other stores have more varieties, a lot of those are unproven varieties, and often are only labeled as white or red potatoes. Atwood's carried only 4 or 5 varieties, but the ones they have are the ones recommended for Oklahoma.

Any cabbage variety I've ever grown has done perfectly well. I prefer to grow mini cabbages because they mature early and are the right size for us. I only plant the full-size cabbage varieties if I am wanting to make/can sauerkraut. Full-sized cabbages require a ton of space that I don't have. Well, I have the space, but I grow too much of everything ,so letting cabbages take up a lot of space just isn't on my priority list. I usually get my baby cabbage seed either from Johnny's or Renee's. Both of them have multiple varieties of the small headed types of cabbage.

With carrots, I like plain old Danvers and any of the small carrots like Little Finger. Because I am a carrot lover, I often grow the purple, yellow, white and red varieties as well, but their flavor can be very different from that of regular orange carrots so they are not necessarily for everybody. A lot of folks don't like that stronger, spicier flavors.

With Dixondale, I usually order in December or early January. Their 'out of stock' tags remain on the webpage descriptions until they are getting closer to them being available to ship. Usually you can order pretty far in advance in fall and winter if you want to, but you cannot order in summer. This helps them avoid problems with people who think they ought to be able to order onion plants in July when none are available. They are just sowing seeds now for some varieties. They usually have the firsts of the short day and intermediate day varieties ready to ship by mid-November for places like Georgia, south Texas and other warm winter areas where the main onion crop is planted in early winter for a spring harvest. With the long daylength types, those won't be ready for shipping until after Christmas---early January usually. I tend to only order maybe 4-6 weeks before my planting date. By then, if Dixondale has had any sort of seed issues/crop failures (very rare for them, but it can happen), they already know what is in short supply and may note such info on their webpage or in their monthly newsletters. I always let them pick the best shipping date for me (though you can override their recommended shipping/planting date if you wish) unless we're having a very hot winter and I want to plant onions earlier than usual. They will ship to you by zip code, having assigned planting dates to zip codes so they are shipping at the right planting time for any given customer based on their geographical location.

Dixondale ships what I am sure are billions of onion plants every year. One year they told us in their catalog (I think it was on the cover) how many Candy onion plants they ship per year...just that one variety....and I believe it was 600 million plants. Many large commercial growers in many states order from Dixondale, which is a very well-oiled machine that continues shipping millions of onions (as well as leeks and other related items) per month for at least half the year. They funny thing is that when you deal with them, you feel like you known Bruce and Jeanie from their newsletters and webpage and it seems like a small, friendly company, right? Yet, their business is huge and the amount of onion plants they raise and sell annually is staggering. I really feel like Dixondale Farms is one of the premier ag companies in the USA because they are both user-friendly and yet so good at what they do. I love their onions so much that I order and plant far too many every year---something I'm trying to correct.

Did everyone freeze? It only went down to 29 here and we had heavy patchy frost. Our mesonet station? It is freakin' Old Man Winter over there this morning---a low of 22 degrees and the lowest wind chill I saw when I checked for them was either 14 of 15. My gardening friends who live over there probably are not happy at all this morning with those temperatures.

Dawn

Dawn, I saw several trees along the turnpike with just one pretty red branch and wondered why they did that. I also saw a few with bright red vines that I assume was poison ivy.

Kim, I'm glad you got some help. Good luck today!

DH likes the Red Creole onion that came in the sampler pack. The white and yellow onions didn't keep long enough. I'm thinking about a long day onion this year. Was it Copra you grew, Dawn? Any others you would recommend?

I like Muscade, Napoli and Nelson carrots, but Nelson must be going to wherever Packman broccoli went, not available. I tried several new varieties this spring, but they didn't get separated well enough for me to decide on taste. Carrots never got planted this fall.

Rebecca, I think I bought Charleston Bell to try next year. The Blight Buster was a freebie that came with a seed order.

Grandson is demanding attention.

Wish I knew how low it got last night. Last time I looked it had predicted 27. . . but I only saw three little nips--on one of the coleus (and there are probably at least a dozen coleus out in the yard or on the deck and patio) and both the black sweet potato vines. We're sort of in the middle of a triangle, with Tahlequah, Porter and Inola forming the corners of it. Their lows were 29, 31 and 36. We're closest to Tahlequah, 29. and furthest from Porter, 36. From the Mesonet, looks like tonight will be a little colder. This is very interesting, the yard telling me how cold it is compared to Mesonet findings.

Thank you for all the info, Dawn.

I haven't been outside yet (just got warm indoors), but from the kitchen window things don't look as bad as I though they would. Peppers aren't happy, but the green beans don't look like anything happened. We may have barely touched 32 here. I may go out tomorrow afternoon. For now, I'm drinking tea and getting ready to watch the OSU game, from the comfort of my bed and fleece blanket. My back hurts. Partly the cold and partly the steroid shot I got back there Thursday.

Nancy, you might like this soup/stew. I make it a lot because it freezes well, and is good to be able to thaw and warm it up after a long day at work when it's cold out and I'm too tired to cook. I make it differently each time, it seems. You can customize it based on what you have and like. This time I used a pound of hamburger, a can of pinto beans, a couple of low starch potatoes, cubed, a can of diced tomatoes, a bag of frozen mixed vegetables, an onion, a small box of sliced mushrooms, lotsa garlic, some Better than Bouillon beef base with the appropriate amount of water, a couple bay leaves, lotsa worcestershire sauce, several shakes of soy sauce, and salt and pepper. Let it go for about 6 hours in the crockpot. You can use a couple cans of beans (pinto, kidney, black) in place of the beef, or use ground turkey or pork, or chicken thighs. Taco seasoning makes more of a taco soup. More or less broth as you like it. Rice or pasta instead of potatoes. Whatever soup veggies float your boat. Hot peppers. Rotel tomatoes or fire roasted or crushed. Swap out the broth depending on your protein. On the side, biscuits, cornbread, garlic toast, French bread, soft rolls, blueberry muffins...now I'm glad I left a couple servings out of the freezer, lol. It's just hot and filling and cheap and goes a long way.

Another thing I like to keep in the freezer is a meaty pasta sauce. That's on the schedule for this weekend, if my back cooperates. Even if it doesn't, the hamburger is thawed and use it or lose it.

I could probably get through most of next summer without buying very many veggie seeds, but y'all know that won't happen. I have plenty of Late Girl, Big Beef, and Brandy Boy seeds, but I have my eyes on a couple other hybrids, plus I need Sungold and I think SS100. I'm good on peppers, and lettuces (but I'm sure I'll find more lettuce), but need spinach. Plenty of carrots and beets, but need green beans and sugar snaps. Need red bunching onions. Need good hybrid yellow squash. And a few more 15 gallon grow bags and potato bags. And of course, flowers. Tithonia and zinnias, marigold, indian blanket. I'm sure I'll find more. Right now I'm pretty focused on holiday shopping, though, for cooking and gifting. Plus, my niece turns 14 on December 6 (I feel old). Thanks for the Atwoods rec, Dawn. I'll just get my seed potatoes there this year.

Think I'll have another cup of tea before I heat up my soup.

I think it was 25-27 or so at the house as a guess. Tower in town read 27. We're kind of protected because our garden is in a little dip, so it was really a patchy killing frost, but our neighbor's yard on top the hill was completely frozen over. All summer crops are dead. Actually we have one pepper plant that has survived two frosts now and is still blooming and producing. All other are dead. I think it's Big Bertha bell pepper? What a champ!!

all cool weather crops are recovering nicely.

Nancy, did you look at the Cape Daisies on the Swallowtail site? I grew them this summer, and they are spectacular. Look just like the picture, tolerated the heat and the drought well (I did have to throw them some water occasionally, but not a lot of it), and the bees loved them. Amy, you'd like them too. You know you want some.

You rascal. I'll go look straightaway!

Oh my gosh! Even Garry kinda gasped! LOLOL. That's a no-brainer! I've ordered far too many things from Swallowtail in the past couple months. Oh well, what's one more. It just happened that they were the only site I could find that happened to have what I wanted! I have ordered a lot of stuff from SESE and Johnnys, too. That daisy is CRAZY!!

Isn't it? I have 3 packs so far for spring. My mom wants me to start a flat of them for her. They are really stunning, and tolerate our summers. I've only grown the white ones so far, they are so gorgeous that I don't want the others, lol.

I have clean sheets on the bed and the fleece blanket laundering, other laundry done, an Italian-ish meat sauce simmering on the stove, working on my holiday baking list, drinking tea in my jammies. Need to pay bills tonight (ugh) so I can see how much I can spend on seeds. :) Glad this summer didn't kill my gardening mojo (and that squirrels leave the flowers alone).

Amy, Tim and I were joking that the single red branch might be turning red because it is dying. I don't think we're right about that, but I have pondered why only one branch has leaves that have changed color. I do see quite a bit of red poison ivy in the trees along fence lines when I walk the dogs. I don't care if it is poison ivy (not our property, not our problem), I love seeing the red foliage.

Seriously, though, on trees whose leaves turn red, those trees need the specific combination of cool nights and bright sunny days to make red leaves, and some years we don't get that combination so we don't get much red foliage. When one branch or one part of a tree turns red and the rest doesn't, scientists believe that the part turning red first just happens to have the perfect microclimate. I am not sure I buy that explanation. Why one limb on a tree that's 30' or 40' tall? Why not 2 or 3 limbs or 6 or 10? (sigh) Mother Nature has many mysteries we really do not understand.

Today we went to the CostCo in Southlake, TX, because I wanted to go to Central Market just up the road a bit after that. I'd forgotten how gorgeous that specific CostCo's landscaping is. You can tell their landscape architect must have specified trees that have good autumn color because most of the trees planted in the parking lot medians have great autumn color already---mostly Chinese pistache is what is red there right now, but also some sort of cypress trees, sweetgum and maybe some Shumard red oaks (that aren't red yet) along the perimeter. I was looking at the pistache trees today and loving their foliage and red berries. Why haven't I planted Chinese pistache here? I'm going to plant 2 or 3 next spring.

Amy, I still have a lot of Red Creoles that haven't sprouted yet. Also, Copra, Highlander and Red River. Those are the Dixondale varieties that store the longest for me. That's how I get in trouble, by the way, with planting too many---picking all those long keeping varieties means I have a lot to plant in order to have a lot to store---and then we have more than we can eat fresh even after I've made tons of salsa and chopped/frozen tons more. I need to have more discipline and pick just one long keeping type each year instead of several.

I think Nelson is getting scarce because a lot of places sold out of it in 2017. I think Jung still had it the last time I was looking at seeds on their webpage. Who knows if the sellers that sold out in 2017 will have it again for 2018. It could be that there was a crop failure at the seed production level since many of the USA retailers all buy their seed through the same big wholesalers, who in turn buy their seed from overseas producers.

Nancy, George (MacMex) lives near Tahlequah and he posted a photo on his FB page of a cabbage covered in frost (cabbage is fine) this morning and said the low there was 25 degrees, so he must have gotten some of your cold if your garden escaped relatively undamaged. Maybe the cold didn't make it quite to your place last night. We're supposed to be about 5 degrees warmer tonight that we were last night. We'll see.

Rebecca, My garden is toast. It is okay, but I will miss the Lima beans our big lush plants would have been producing for about another month. I thought about covering them up, but the trellis is 6' tall and about 25' long and I didn't want to wrestle with getting row cover over that trellis and weighed down along the egdes in yesterday's wind.

I hope giving your back some extra rest today is helping it, and the fact that OSU won couldn't hurt any. We had the game on the radio while we were out running errands and doing grocery shopping.

You're like me. No matter how many seeds and containers you have, you always need more. It is a peculiar affliction we gardeners have, of always "needing" more. lol.

I'll tell you what makes me feel old---my nephew has a 14 year old stepdaughter!!!! Yikes. I am not sure how that happened. I believe her mom was very young when she had her, but still......it seems like the nieces and nephews themselves were graduating from high school just a few years ago (been more than a decade though, even for the youngest one) and now one of them has a stepdaughter in high school this year. That sort of freaks me out. However, the rest of my nieces and nephews' kids range from newborn to about 10 years old, so they're all ages. Still, I do feel old age creeping up on me.

Jacob, That pepper plant really is a champ, or is in a perfect microclimate. I miss the green already. Everything here has gone the color of wheat except for the tree foliage. I cannot believe the difference in how everything looks now compared to just a few days ago.

Rebecca, There you go, you enabler you! Go, girl, go!

If you and I are going to have far too many seeds (and you know that we do, and probably Amy too), then everyone else needs to have far too many seeds as well.

Perversely, not that my garden is frozen, I want to plant something. I probably won't though. Maybe I'll sow some lettuce seeds indoors. It was nice today to walk wherever I wanted and to not have to watch out for snakes beneath my feet. If we have any days that go back up into the 70s/80s, I will have to watch. They don't necessarily go down for the count after the first freeze, and will continue to be out now and then either hunting for food or capturing heat by lying on concrete until we get good and cold and stay there.

I'm watching TCU play Iowa State right now, and TCU has not had the lead yet in this game. I'm wondering if ISU is going to pull off another upset and beat the #4 team in the country. It could happen. I hope it doesn't.

Dawn

Ordered--oh yeah, I agree; I couldn't even get past the white one. . . what a stunner, and since it likes sun, it's going in the full sun raised bed by the car/boat port. We widened that bed up, so it can be in front of the tithonia. Along with some black sweet potato vine spillers. (See Dawn? I'm learning! :) )

Oh dear. . . kittens arequite at home now and that's not a good thing. I should make them stay in the REST of the house, which is boring. But no, their "home" is the art room, where they can climb shelves, chew through cords, chew paint brushes, tip over paintings, tear up their cat litter areas; push tv elements off their shelves, as well as fabrics off their shelves, oh no, this is not good. What HAVE we gotten ourselves into! They're hysterical--and so cute--but SO ornery and destructive. I hope we survive this. I guess Tom's comfortable now as he is the crime partner of the duo. I MUST try to more kitten-proof this room!!! But at least now, they are BOTH lovers. Never thought I'd have a plain gray tabby; so common--but now realize looks don't matter--in cats or anywhere else. Already love these two scamps.

Rebecca, you cook like I do, apparently--I like the same kind of stuff added that you do--I'm a big fan of Worchestershire sauce, found a recipe for making it. Will try it one of these days.

I have been OCD-ing on plants, flowers and germination today and working on my spreadsheets. I did a couple walk-arounds outside; it was 55-ish, but actually pretty nice--no wind. Everything was pretty perky. However, I see it should be 30-32 for 8 hours tonight. So will be very interested to see what tomorrow brings.

Between watching the World Series tonight and researching online sites for seed-ordering, was a busy night! Blessings to you all.

Nancy
When I first started knowing absolutely nothing I followed Dick Raymonds advice wholeheartedly. He had such a passion for growing it is contagious through his book The Joy of Gardening.
Most of the seeds I have grown were bargains and deals that I acquired many different places. One year I got over 300 seed pkgs at $gen for 2 cents each. So many different seeds it was crazy. Then I got a few bundles from Winter Sowers group. And there is always the fling.
Some were personal preference I ordered.
Most of the seeds I have purchased on purpose at full price were recommendation from some enabler I mean adviser here.

I have tried so many different varieties of seeds that I cant keep up. I do know that many varieties that people swear by don't do well for me like early anything and celebrity.
I am looking forward to getting started for next year. So many fun things to plan.
speaking of planning, Does anyone use a personal/business daily planner and what kind? I am looking to buy one and doing some research the features are overwhelming

Where ARE you all! :) We did nearly nothing today. Church was wonderful . . . and then we were busy with our Sunday Sudokus for another hour, then out checking the damage, and nothing has been fatally injured. One monster beautiful red coleus on our flagstone patio took a medium hit, as did the nearby sweet potato vine. A few others got nipped--this is the same vicinity where our Rosemary died last year on Dec. 8 (can you tell I've got a grudge against Dec. 8 of 2016?) I cut and dropped a few ugly things. And have spent about 4 hours working on my Gardening table. It's nearly up-to-date. And have been carefully attending to the World Series while working on it, this evening. And we had crispy delicious fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, scalloped corn and pickled beets for dinner. Always feel guilting fixing fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy. SO bad. Should be served with a salad, but we can only eat so much.

Amy, my approach has always been fairly cavalier. If something was ugly and dried up, I cut it out. If something was diseased, I ripped it up.uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuwq hahaha, thought I'd leave this, Tom just came up and insisted on receiving pets, and now he's nibbling on my left hand.

I'm feeling so organized. Have most of my veggie, herb and flower seeds ordered. Garlic should be arriving soon. I got some cuttings and the grow car is in business. I love the "spillers," but HATE spending money on them--and they charge a lot. So I'm going to stick to asparagus ferns (ordered seeds) and black sweet potato vines, plus got moneywort seeds.

The freeze this weekend was as interesting as I hoped it would be. We were supposed to have had 30-31 for 8 hours last night. It sort of fried the one tower of morning glories, but not fatally--didn't affect the deck plants at all. Injured the other nearby black sweet potato vines and morning glory tower. A couple nips on a few others. Most interesting to me was that not one single other of the approximately 11 coleus were affected. THEN I was visiting with my most excellent friend and good gardener 1/2 mile away, The only thing he had gotten nipped on were his morning glories. I'm trying to zero in on my particular microclimates here, as is he. We're still trying to digest this. My tomatoes are fine, as are my remaining pepper plants. He's probably about 100 feet lower in altitude than us. And also, I'm thinking that where the one coleus got bit hard, as well as the sweet potato vine--and the Rosemary that died last year, are all in a line directly at the end of our house, and so am wondering if the cold air traverses down our driveway between our house and the shop. It's fascinating to me.

In Wagoner, this morning, I noticed some of the same things.

I'm fascinated with microclimates, trying to figure out what our weather is really like, since we're several miles away from any of our reporting stations. STIILL, it is a crap shoot, as I always say, or as Dawn says more eloquently, experience. My REAL close observations, now, however, are on what is going on in the raised bed veggie beds.

There's a new weekly thread, my friend.

Haha!

Here you are, Nancy! I had lost you! :)

Haha, HJ-- yes, I am a little slow. Like Amy, I need a keeper! (But we were in Tulsa the better part of today, too. I finally caught up with the new thread and just posted at the same time as you.)