Wow finally caught up on everything. Haven't been on in a week or two now other than quickly glancing over posts!

Well I don't know if I've previously mentioned this but I've transplanted two dozen cabbages. We've had consistent freezing most nights this November (this week an exception) but it all seems to do fine with it. I probably won't cover everything until after Thanksgiving. It grew phenomenally for a week or two but is really slowing down now that the daylight hours are waning. Have I mentioned how much I hate daylight savings time by the way? Get done with school and it's freakin dark! What genius decided to put the extra hour early in the morning when we're busy inside?

Weather has been pretty pleasant here. We have the occasional "cold snap" where our highs drop to mid to upper 40's, but other than that it's been consistently in the 50's, overcast, and rainy.

Dawn, Farmers' Almanac state our last average freeze on April 14, but that's a bit of bull. We usually get a late freeze in May, and I remember in 2013, right after we moved here, we had a few inches of snow in early May. I know my Grandma says, from experience, that it's often best to not plant warm weather crops until at least the 15th of May, as a late freeze often plagues us out of the blue. She also has told me to plan on first frost in late September, as it often comes when we're not looking for it!!

I will hopefully tomorrow be getting up extra early to lay some cardboard of a new 180 square foot area in our front yard for next year's garden. Will hopefully get some compost on it soon.

Speaking of compost, I have a pretty good sized pile built in the woods now, and I've been feeding it food scraps for the most part. Well I guess a raccoon has taken a liking to them, because every night it eats them and makes an absolute mess. To fix this rodent problem i covered it with an old tarp and laid stones and logs on it to hold it down. Well the raccoon ripped a gigantic hole in the tarp to get the food scraps. On top of that, I walked outside the other night to find my CAT sleeping on the step above an opossum, just minding his own business. Lazy!! What surprises me more is the fact that he didn't get territorial with it. That same cat used to be rather mean, and he's killed pretty nice sized raccoons in the past and brought them to the yard but he's gotten so fat and lazy. He has seven toes on each of his front paws and 6 on the back, some polydactyl cat or something of that name. He's big, orange, and very good with babies despite having been mean in his youth.

Have a nice evening everybody.

Y'all are making me look bad with your giving up of sweets and bread. I have to watch myself real closely, but I'd a thousand times rather have a regular loaf of bread or a regular pie less often than a substitute. Anything other than the real thing just doesn't satisfy me. It's not the same. And, I LOVE baking yeast breads and desserts of all kind. Nothing more comforting than kneading a nice brioche dough. I'll make cookies, eat one or two, then haul the remainder up to work for everyone to enjoy. I do use stevia in my chai, and there are several drinks I like with erythritol too. I try to avoid Splenda and Equal, that stuff just isn't good for you at all. I need a good hot cocoa recipe using stevia.

There was a report on our neighborhood association Facebook page from another neighborhood association where a homeowner right here in Midtown Tulsa (a couple of miles from me) had a pack of at least 6 coyotes on the other side of his fence. He thinks they were after his chickens. Right in town! He's about a mile from the river, so maybe they came down the riverbed from Jenks or Sand Springs. The river is almost always kept low, unless they open the dam, so right now it's fairly dry. My mom grew up on a ranch in north central Oklahoma, and said they never saw a pack that size out there.

I need to plant garlic.

Wow, Jacob, nice!

I don't like it getting even darker earlier by an hour either, Jacob. I think technically we are off Daylight Savings Time now. I wish they would just leave us on it year 'round. It already gets darker because of our season. For those of us who work/school outside the home, it's a bit depressing.

I did go to the doctor and I did get some medicine. They are guessing that I had the flu last week when I had a high temp for 5 days (and because so many people around me had it). I didn't rest, and then got a secondary infection that they think is bacterial. They gave me an antibiotic and I am taking it. I hate taking them. I've had a rougher year with illness. I'm not resting or doing all the "healthy" things I normally do to prevent such things. Now, I'm reaping the consequences. I felt it almost immediately--the antibiotic. It made my stomach hurt. It's currently killing healthy bacteria as well as the bad. I hate that feeling. BUT, I must get over this crap. I'm in such a fog and I hate that. I have a lot to do and I want to enjoy it all.

Thanks in advance, Dawn, for the coral honeysuckle.

What a fun "story," Jacob--it was fascinating!

And Rebecca, I admire baking so very much. I'm glad I can't, or I would be eating sweets, believe me!

Thought I was done having anything to say here tonight. I was researching worthwhile Netflix productions and saw Chef's Table was one of the highly recommended ones. I wasn't REALLY interested, but was curious enough to give it a try, because I ADORE good food. Season 1, Episode 2 features a famous farm-to-table chef, "Dan Barber." Blew me away. I don't know that I'd like him for a friend. . . but oh my oh my what he has to say about growing good food--and the problem with food producers, and grains. . . . and he certainly has the passion and the intelligence to recognize good farming practices. I'd highly recommend it to all my gardening friends, and like you, Dawn, and others, his "it all begins with the soil's health," approach. I was absolutely absorbed. It makes me feel so good to know that I'm trying to grow good food responsibly, and that I had the good sense to recognize all of y'alls' great advice in the past year.

On another note, Tom is grounded. He did NOT come in last night, but he wanted to. I was checking every hour or so, walking out and calling him, and heard him plaintively meowing. He WANTED to come in, but either he was afraid of getting grounded or couldn't find his way out from under the deck. I was just glad to know he was there! So this morning, he was again crying and meowing, but when I went and tried to peek through the lattice, couldn't see him anywhere, and then he'd shut up. So I let him be. My friend Scott said, "Tuna." Put the tuna by the opening where you saw him go in. He'll find it. So tonight when I usually give them a little canned cat food, I put the tuna down there, but only a little tiny bit. Went back an hour later and it was gone, so I replaced it with a tiny saucer of water, there you go, buddy. You want more you're gonna have to find your way in. Then I put a saucer of tuna on the table in the art room, as I figure the smell carries a long way. GDW took Titan and Jerry into the house and we closed the door between here and the house. Sure enough, Tom was meowing so loud now it was almost a yowl, and about 10 minutes later, he came slinking in. I shut the door and greeted him with open arms. He devoured his food and for the rest of the night has been all-but-mauling me with love and kisses. Darned cats. :)

Furthermore, Rebecca, after 37 years of not touching yeast, I was scared to death yesterday about killing the yeast while meticulously following that long-ago recipe. I simply do not have the courage to BAKE! LOL But I made an awesome chicken/broccoli/rice/cheese thing today in the crockpot. . . you know, a little of this, a little of that. . . no worries about correct proportions of exacting measurements. No, baking is a science. A wondrous science. Kneading brioche, cannot imagine being able to do that in my wildest dreams!!

And one last comment: Jacob, I was enjoying your story so much that I was disappointed when it abruptly ended! I wanted more! Good stuff! (But great picture.)

I wanted to say hello to everyone. I've not been around due to health reasons. I think of y'all all the time, and hope everyone is doing well. I think gardening is probably over for me, but I wanted to report (especially to Dawn) about the Brandy Boy F-2 that I grew out. Dawn, those 2 plants were amazing, and they produced more tomatoes (none less than 10 oz...the majority over a pound, and many almost 2 pounds). They were so productive, I gave away right and left. My only complaint about them was that they had a large core. Not horrible, just more than I liked. They were pleated, had great taste, etc., They just reminded me more of an extra large, pleated Better Boy. Both plants were in 20 gallon containers and got to 8 feet.

I saved seed. I don't think I'm gonna be able to garden next year, but maybe I can give seed away to anyone who wants to follow through with the grow out.

Everybody take care, and I hope all of you are doing well.

Nancy, Once I read all Dr. Perlmutter's "Grain Brain" books and all Dr. Davis' "Wheat Belly" books, I knew that I could not, in all good conscience, go on eating tons of grains and sugar as I once did. Once you understand the link between these food items and so many chronic diseases we humans suffer from nowadays, it boggles the brain and you start trying to find ways to make your diet healthier. Basically, it all comes down to the role that grains and sugars play in causing inflammatory responses in our bodies and the way that the inflammation makes people ill. I just couldn't ignore the links.

I think the big scandal of our lifetime is that from the 1980s until the 2000s, they told us that fat and cholesterol were evil, to avoid them, to do what we could to lower them. Now research shows that, oops, they were wrong about that. That aggravates me. Now that I understand more about the complex links between Big Ag, Big Pharma, these inflammatory food items like various grains and sugar, and our own government's agencies that ought to be protecting us, the one thing I know for sure is that we individuals are on our own and must protect ourselves. We cannot wait for the government to finally come out and say "oops, my bad". So, that's what I am doing---and it is hard. I happen to love to bake and cook, and find it so much harder without grains and sugar, but I believe it is worthwhile. I am probably the last person on earth anyone believed would give up grains because I literally would bake every day if I could. So, at our house, this has been a huge change. You have to be creative if you still want to eat breads, cookies, cakes, pies, tortillas, chips, etc. because life without them (at least for me) would be just too difficult. There's a way to make literally anything and everything without grain and without sugar, though with some things it is harder than with others. So, if it takes being creative in order to eat a more healthful version of what we like to eat, I'll do it. I may whine about it and complain about it, but I'll do it!

So, in the same way that I, as a gardener, have continually searched for and sought out ways to garden in the healthiest way possible, I now do the same thing with eating, baking and cooking. It is all the same process anyway. It would be silly to work so hard to raise healthy, organic veggies, fruits and herbs while, at the same time, consuming grains and sugars that are widely understood, nowadays, to contribute to many health issues. I swear, as hard as it has been on us, it is harder on the firefighters, who sometimes tell me they miss the homemade cinnamon rolls and cookies I used to make them pretty much weekly during bad fire seasons. I haven't decided what I'll do for the firefighters in the future---I long ago stopped making homemade cinnamon rolls (so many of our FFs in this county have diabetes and heart issues that it seemed irresponsible to take them homemade cinnamon rolls full of stuff that they should be consuming) and have gotten a positive response to sugar-free, grain-free cookies, so I'll probably stay on that path with the firefighter snacks and meals most of the time.

Amy, Pinetree used to do that to me too. Nowadays, though, I am holding myself firmly accountable for buying more seeds than I can plant, and that makes me control my seed purchasing. If I don't have room specifically in mind for something, I'm not buying it. I don't know where all this self-discipline, in both cooking/eating and gardening is coming from because I certainly didn't have it in the past.

Honestly, I am finding there is something freeing about not buying more seeds than I can use---it removes the pressure to keep making the garden bigger, or to keep buying and filling more containers, so I can plant more stuff. I cannot say I am downsizing and simplifying things unless I'm willing to actually do it. So, I'm doing it. My grow list, when I get around to writing it down, will shock y'all with its brevity.

Growing coleus, from seed, makes me nuts. The seeds sprout just fine, but seem so slow to grow. So, I just buy a nice big Kong or two and then take cuttings off the purchased ones. The cuttings grow so fast and it relieves me of the tedium of watching little coleus plants not grow.

Jacob, I hate the shorter day lengths too. My poor husband leaves the house in darkness in the early morning hours and arrives home in darkness around dinner time. He has no idea what has happened at home on Mon-Fri because I don't tell him. Thus, he's always surprised on Saturday mornings when he goes outside in the daylight and sees a lawn that's been mowed, leaves raked, shrubs or trees pruned, etc. I like to keep him guessing!

Our first frost/freeze of autumn can arrive anytime from latest Sept to mid-December, and in the late winter/early spring, our last frost/freeze of winter can arrive anytime from late February to early May. It makes me nuts if I think about it too much because the range is so great---so I just try to observe the current trends and figure out what to do based on them. When the weather goes bad, I have tons of frost blanket weight row covers and I know how to use them. They've saved my warm season plants from frost or freeze damage/death many times.

Rebecca, Everyone has to follow their own path. I never, ever, ever thought I'd give up constant baking (and eating) of items with grains and sugar, but once I understood the role they play in poor health, I had to make the right choice for good health. Do I hate it sometimes? Of course I do. I see a marvelous recipe I'd love to bake, and then I realize I couldn't or shouldn't, or at least I should find a way to bake it without grains and without sugars. Believe me, life was more fun when I just baked and ate whatever I wanted. I'm determined to avoid the chronic health conditions linked to the inflammation from grains and sugars. I saw both my parents suffer from these sorts of health issues, and I want to avoid that. Last week, when I walked in to the party and saw the cupcakes on the cake table, I knew right away I was going to eat one. (Ha! If I could have, I probably would have eaten six of them, but I restricted myself to one, and it was perfectly lovely---and one was indeed enough. I hadn't had a cupcake in probably a year, and I'm not sorry I had one last weekend, but they aren't a regular part of my diet any more. I miss them. I do.

I truly miss baking all the time. I miss eating whatever the heck I wanted! The downside to cutting grains and sugars? I'm going down in clothing sizes and having to buy smaller pants and such. lol. In fact, I've been trying to add more protein and more fat because I think my upper arms are looking skeletal. That's funny. Of all the things I've ever had to worry about in my life, skinny arms was never one of them! This makes me laugh (at myself and at my life) because 20 years ago I would have given anything to be able to find a way to carve the fat/flab off my upper arms. Now it has happened without me even realizing it was occurring. Life after menopause, and without grains and sugars, is just so weird.

The coyotes in town don't surprise me at all. In fact, neither do possums, coons or skunks in town. Even in the 1980s/1990s when we were living in a Fort Worth suburb that was developed in the 1940s/1950s, we still had plentiful wildlife roaming at night, including all the ones I mentioned above plus coyotes and foxes. My brother found a fox in his mailbox once! Why? Did it crawl in there to sleep? Who knows? I know that coyotes are common even in big cities like New York City, Detroit and Chicago. Why wouldn't they be? They are on a perpetual search for food in order to survive, and big cities serve up rats and other rodents, small domestic pets, and food via dumpsters, trash cans and trash bags. Out here in the rural areas, the coyotes tend to deplete the rodents, squirrels (you need a coyote in your back yard this winter to eat the squirrels). rabbits, etc. by January and are increasingly desperate and increasingly visible, even in the middle of the day, as they search for something to eat. The hungrier they get, the more we see them out hunting--and, not just them, but the ring-tailed cats, bobcats, foxes, etc. Even when I'm not seeing many predators, all it has to do is snow---and then, in the morning, when you see the plethora of predator tracks everywhere, you realized how very many are prowling your property at night.

Jennifer, Well, at least you're getting having the flu out of the way early this year, and now all you have to do is beat this secondary infection and then work on returning to good health. I know you hate having to take the antibiotics, but sometimes they are a necessary evil. I also know you'll be able to restore all the good bacteria in your body afterward---with prebiotics, probiotics and all kinds of fermented foods and drinks. You can do this! I hope you're back to normal in no time at all.

Nancy, Tom deserved to be grounded. I've used food to train our cats to come indoors before dark. They come to understand that if they aren't in by dinner time, the other cats will devour the canned food and they'll be stuck eating dry kibble. It is amazing how easy it is to train cats with food. Tom will learn.

Mary, I'm glad to see you here. I worry about you when you aren't popping in and chatting with us. I am sorry that it appears your health issues will deprive you of gardening. That is not fair. I don't know what I'd do with myself if I couldn't garden. I'm gonna be the crazy old lady talking to her plants in the nursing home someday I am sure.

Dawn

Dawn, I agree with you on the grains and sugar causing very many diseases common today. However, I would like to add that the way the grain is prepared plays a huge roll in the affects on our bodies. Most of the time in centuries past, most bread was eaten using what we now call a sourdough starter, as yeast was not purely cultured until around the late 19th century, and really it didn't come into much use until the 20th century in the common household. My belief is that once cultured yeast became so popular by the 20th century is when most of the gluten-related issues became on the rise. Almost every bread today is now prepared with cultured yeast, and thus so many grain-related diseases are prevalent. These diseases don't seem to be nearly as common before the last century or 2. What's more is that studies have shown that most people with gluten-related issues can tolerate a properly prepared sourdough bread without issues, but if they eat a bread made from cultured yeast, they pay for it badly. Now, after researching over the past year or two, I've found that a sourdough starter contains not only yeast, as cultured yeast does, but also a vast range of bacteria as well, e.g. Lactobacillus. This bacteria is what makes the sourdough starter "sour", the reason sourdough was dropped when the popular cultured yeast was made available. It doesn't just make it sour though. The sourness is causes by lactic acid, an offset of the bacteria when it eats the grain. Now, this bacteria will actually eat the grain in breads and predigest it for us to eat. In short, we're eating it's compost when eating sourdough bread. When this happens, the gluten is already digested by the bacteria, so it's fully broken down for us into a digestable form. What's more, a lot of diseases, largely cancer, today are also caused by an agent called phytic acid prevalent in most grains and nuts. This phytic acid has the job of holding onto all nutrients in the grain, and it is the reason why most grains store so well, because nothing can enter the grain with phytic acid. Even more, when eaten, say, in a bread, phytic acid will still be prevalent, leeching any nutrients it finds in our path on its way through our digestive system. Our body pretty much gets it out as fast as possible. Now, that lactic acid I talked about produced in a sourdough starter is so acidic that it will actually neutralize the phytic acid in the bread-making process. The bacteria also turn most carbohydrates in complex proteins when digesting the grain. The bread is now far more digestable. When cultured yeast is used, there is no bacteria to do this. Thus the issues today. A lot of people say to eat whole grain breads because they contain more nutrients; however, they are often worse for you than white bread if prepared with a cultured yeast because whole grains contain phytic acid, and sifted (white) flour have it removed with the bran/germ!

These are my thoughts on what I've researched on the topic. Since switching to making my own sourdough breads, I've noticed a lot of difference in the way I feel. Sourdough starters can be maintained to not be as sour either, which is very nice if you're someone like me who doesn't care for a "sour" bread. I occasionally make cultured yeast grains, and brioche gets me every time, but I don't overdo it. It's an interesting debate to read up on. I think, as you said, everyone has to decide and research what's best for them, as no person on this earth is the same!

I love to bake, Rebecca. Bread is my favorite to make, of course, but I enjoy baking all kinds of goods.

Sorry if I bored everyone LOL

While not exactly the same topic, I found this article about salt, blood pressure and gut bacteria very interesting. That T Helper cells contribute to inflammatory responses, and gut bacteria can help prevent that was another interesting point of the study. They find more and more things that gut microbes are involved in.

Jacob, I love sourdough bread, but I found keeping a starter going was too much for the little bit of bread we eat. It seemed I was waisting too much of it.

Mary, it's good to see you, and I'm very sorry your health has not improved.

Yeah, yeah, Dawn, get us all hooked on seeds and then make us look bad by being disciplined. if YOU don't like coleus from seed, maybe that's one way I can pare down my seed list. I usually get coleus from Smashed Thumb greenhouse, to support our friends. Of course SOMEBODY must be starting the seeds, unless she is growing from cuttings, too.

I'm actually lucky Nancy made me start my list earlier than usual. I can look at the sales and catalogs with an actual list instead of freaking out and ordering everything. I need to clean out my seed drawers and take inventory. I bought perennial flowers last year that never got planted, so I need to winter sow and or scarify/cold treat seeds. I need to remember what I have so I don't duplicate and most importantly, find the things I'm out of that I know I need.

H/J, feel better soon. Swill down that kombucha. I know anti biotics are horrible. I read an article the other day that claimed cultured veggies helped prevent the flu.

Nancy, I'm glad Tom came in. Maybe something outside scared him under the deck and he was afraid to come out.

We had a doctor appointment today. They did extra tests on DH and sent me to get an ultra sound of my leg. Apparently I have vericose veins, which have been hurting. He wanted to be sure I had no clots. It made me miss a luncheon with my Y ladies, which made me sad. All tests were negative, but it sure ate up our day.

I, on the other hand, Amy, LOVED growing the coleus from seed! First, it was fun to see the colors early on; they didn't seem, to me, to take any longer to grow up than, say, tithonia or cleome or nicotiana. They germinated really easily. But the main reason I'm growing 3 different kinds of red ones is that I plan to put an awful lot in the shady beds. I'd break the bank buying them! And likewise, I am SO glad you got me to DO a spreadsheet. I'd be lost without it now. I actually kinda know what I'll be doing and what I have!

No, Amy, nothing scared him--he was scared the minute he ran outside--and promptly disappeared under the deck! LOL I am 99% certain that's where he stayed until he found the hole again to get out!

I'm glad all turned out at the doctor appts.

Mary, blessings to you as you're narrowing the scope. Will you try to grow a few things in containers?

Ha, Jacob. Certainly wasn't boring. Interesting, as a matter of fact. Probably it's a combination of yeast AND the way wheat and other grains are grown and harvested.

Jacob, very interesting. I've wanted to start "keeping" a sourdough starter. It can live right next to the SCOBYs. LOL. Did someone give your starter to you or did you make your own? Someday I will do this. My family loves bread and would not give it up. I like bread too. Normally I eat Ezekiel Bread, though. Sometimes if I'm eating out or for a treat I'll eat regular bread. I've been fortunate and haven't had issues with gluten, etc. We are heading right into baking season and I also love to bake. I do use organic sugar and wheat. Hopefully those make a small difference.

Thinking back to recommended diets and all...

I remember as a small child in the 70's, the "diet platter" at restaurants usually consisted of a scoop of cottage cheese, a hamburger patty--no bun, and sliced tomatoes. Then, it all changed in the 80's. I remember when Taco Bell was criticized in the 80's for using coconut oil and stopped using it. For real.

For me, eating a grain diet is my preference because I've never enjoyed meat. My breakfast is usually fruit, egg, and Ezekiel Bread OR organic oatmeal and fruit. Lunch is a salad made with a variety of veggies, unflavored yogurt, honey, and usually something else--melba toast or a slice of Ezekiel Bread. Dinner varies. Sometimes it's real bad like potato chips. :( Shameful. Sometimes it's wonderful like quinoa, beans, and veggies.

Then there's that Eat Right for Your Blood Type diet....

Hi Mary! I'm so glad you checked in. Thanks for sharing the info on Brandy Boy F2.

Did you get your garlic planted, Rebecca?

About our diets...I think we all just can do the best we can. It's hard to be picky when you're invited to someone's house for dinner. Of course if you have real illness like Kim, you must avoid certain foods AND people don't expect for me to eat meat. And, different people have different amounts of time to bake/prepare healthier choices. It's just sad that our food has been so damaged/altered so much that it causes illness. Crazy.

Hazel, I've made multiple over the past couple of years. Really, you just mix together flour and water (I do a small amount so less flour is used unneeded and none is wasted), and let it sit for a couple days. Once it shows signs of bacterial activity (lots of bubbles), usually after two-three days, you just feed it more flour and water (again, small amount), and then do the same the next day, etc. After 5-7 days, you should have an active starter, and it can be placed in the fridge and fed once a week. Often I take mine out 12-24 hours before a bake and feed it at room temperature to let it warm up and get nice and active for bread. You can discard to keep it from building up, but if a small amount is kept, there shouldn't be much discard, if any. I've also found it helps to mix in some pure honey on the first mix, but the first initial mix only!

Most of my breads only use a small amount of healthy, active starter. 2 Loaves of my normal sourdough contain around 1kg of flour, but I only use 150-200g of starter depending on the surrounding temperatures, weather, etc.

Yeast isn't bad, but just yeast alone can be bad. A sourdough starter contains a healthy amount of yeast as well as the bacteria.

Diets are important, but I do believe you can quickly kill yourself trying to avoid everything. Example, soy, yeah it's not great and we try to avoid it, but it's in everything. You can't avoid it 100%. I'm not going to stress if I wind up eating some. Of course, if I had a health condition related to it then I'd feel differently towards it.

Kim, you must be a Marvel super hero! Nonetheless, if anyone can do it, you can. But eat RIGHT. You are not going to have time to feel lousy!!! I am beginning to realize, at 69, that I can't do as much as I could 20 years ago. I am in continual denial. I CAN do what I did 20 years ago, just for not as long. :) And THE very last thing I want to contend with is being sick. I am so thankful I have enough muscle strength and no joint problems, so can move about okay. But I suspect my heart is not great, nor my lungs.

Even though Tom is grounded, he seems not to realize it. Apparently he has had an epiphany. NOW, he loves me more than anything in the world, and even liked GDW. Somehow, HE understood that I saved him and cared enough about him to go out calling for him, and provided his way back into the house. He has been all over me, laid down with his belly up, jumped into my lap for pettings, Even let me lift him up from my lap to the table. Been forehead bumping me. It's a miracle. Wow--it was a 6-week ordeal, but I do believe now he LOVES us. Cool.

Tomorrow looks like the last nice day for a while, so I will be out blowing leaves for Round 2 and 2/3. GDW sliced off part of his middle finger drilling holes in a black walnut stump yesterday so he could pour gas in and set fire. He SHOULD have probably gone in for stitches but it was in a joint position, and stitches may not have held, so we butterfly bandaged it instead. We don't do doctors, so agreed it would be an iffy solution and opted out. However, means, he is banned from operating a lawn mower tomorrow, and maybe even leaf-blowing.

Did I tell you guys I cut off the fingertips of my right hand middle and fourth fingers 2 years ago? I was operating GARRY'S old lawn mower, which was a bitch to start. The side chute was filthy with debris and leaves. I needed to clear it, but because it was so hard to restart, I managed to hold it but was able to lean down to clear the chute. I had no idea that the instant I raised the chute and put my hand down there, my fingertips (thank GOD I didn't insert my hand further) were going to be sliced off. After 67 years of lawn mower safety, it came to that. My poor right hand has gone through a lot. Twice broken, then my thumb-to-arm tendon ruptured as a result of one of the breaks, then the two finger amputations. Only things it really interferes with is hand-writing and finding the keys in my purse. and typing! Fingers are numb and can't find the right positions on the keyboard. Doesn't interfere with painting or gardening.LOL Poor hand. It has suffered a lot of abuse!

I've been studying studying planting, germination. . . . But Mostly have been thinking about good soil=good plants. I am a convicted supporter of NO chemical, GOOD soil, and as much as possible, heirloom plants.

Last weekend I got out and cleared the garden bed, then covered it with about 3" of half composted grass clippings. And wound up harvesting a timato the size of my hand (delicious having fresh toms this late in the year). Hopefully I'll have some time to get out and do the front bed, but with thanksgiving next week I may be too busy. My dad and his wife are supposed to come down so I have major cleaning to do. She's not fond of dogs, so we can't go to my dad's since we don't have anyone to babysit the "herd".

Finishing up my seed swaps, the one I'm hosting over on facebook plus the others im participating in. I was able to get several things people had wishlisted, so once I get my packets in I can divvy everything up and send back. And then I think it'll be time to break from swaps. I already have twice what I can plant, with all my new goodies I'm gonna have to dig up the entire front lawn. I apparently lack Dawn's restraint.

Ahhh, but she admitted that she used to horde seeds, at least. In just two years, I believe I'm catching on as to how to collect seeds. I daresay I have made up for lost time in that department.

I'm watering today. And got lots more leaves rounded up and mulched. The beds all have plenty of mulch this year. I was musing today while gleefully throwing leaves into all the beds, how much different things were when I was young. I remember everyone raking their yards clean, getting all those nasty leaves out of the beds AND the yards, and burning them all. Guess one could drive down the streets and find out who the garden-lovers are. I'm sure my neighbors drive by and think I'm a half wit. One of the neighbors told Garry that we weren't going to grow anything because oak leaves are acid and will kill everything. Garry just laughed and shrugged. LOL

Lol Nancy, half our yard is laid out in cardboard to kill grass for no-dig. Meanwhile neighbors have a nice tidy green lawn....They probably think gardeners are insane, but in truth gardening is what keeps one sane! Then we've only mowed once or twice this past summer so in places our yard was 3 feet tall! Mainly for grass clippings for the garden lol

Y'all are a bunch of eco-freaks.

:D

Haha, Jacob! Yep, I'm sure they do! And I agree about the sanity. Also restores the soul. Ahh, smart, Jacob, letting the grass grow, though in our case it would be a bad idea since what you see below is all Bermuda (and weeds). LOL I'm so thrilled the beds are filled with those poison oak leaves. I wonder if the neighbor wonders why all those flowers below aren't dead yet from the acid. LOL

I had to include my favorite tree. I am somewhat obsessed with this particular tree. I have two paintings half-way done of it, about this same pose. I love this tree!

Yeah, gardeners are probably a bit insane. I should probably try to paint for a while. Truth is, I'm very nervous about it with these two new wild hooligans in the house. I'll have to be very very careful.

I realized today, also, that I have 2 enormous fluorescent bulbs with a shelf 3 feet below, and realized I could move the little coleuses (colei? lol), begonias, sweet potato vines and brug cuttings to that shelf--again, if I can think of a way to keep the kitties away. Putting on my thinking cap now.

My bff of 64 years is an "Eat Right for Your Blood Type" person, HJ. She can't eat chicken, she tells me. She's been doing this for six or so years now. I should sick her onto probiotics and Kombucha. I'll have to ask her if she's been reading up on them. Also DIL Steph in Minneapolis. I KNOW Steph will be interested.

Dawn, I got all obsessed last night about finding online thoughts about good soil making tastier veggies and fruits. after watching the one garden-to-home chef talk with such passion about it. I couldn't figure out how to do a google search to come up with the right links; I'll have to keep up the search.

LOL, HJ, speaking of eco freaks!

I think that one reason coleus from seeds drive me nuts is that my weather accelerates from winter to spring in about 5-10 days in March (or sometimes February or sometimes April) and the stores are filled with big, full-sized transplants while the ones I start from seed at the appropriate time based on my average last frost date are 1/100th of the size of the ones I can pick up in the stores. It doesn't help that most of my plant shopping is in Dallas, where the stores also run a month or so ahead of the stores here in southcentral OK/north central Texas. I get the same craziness from having nice, big tomato plants hit the stores here in mid-January. (And it seems earlier and earlier every year.) Planting time in Feb/Mar here exactly crashes headlong into the peak of our winter/spring wildfire season, and I expect a bad one in 2017/18, so I am planning ahead now to have as few trays of seedlings in the greenhouse at that time as possible. It has gotten a lot harder to keep the chickens out of the greenhouse when I'm not home as the flock has gotten substantially larger the last couple of years, so there also is that. If the greenhouse doors are open for ventilation, the chickens may stay out while I'm around because they know I'll come chase them out with the broom, but the minute I leave to go to a fire, the party in the greenhouse begins.....

Y'all can grow all you want from seeds and I won't complain, but just don't expect me to get seed-starting fever. I have plenty to do with all the veggie seeds I start, and flowering plants always end up on the back burner anyway. I've always raised more annual flowers than I have room to plant, and then I drive myself insane trying to squeeze them all into the space available. It is time for me to stop that insanity! Plus, more and more, my ornamental plantings are veering towards perennials, which are smarter for me in the long run---as they ultimately save time, money and effort. I added a lot of different varieties of autumn sage and Russian sage last Spring and intend to add 4 times as many perennials this Spring. They are pretty much bulletproof in our hot summer weather, and often the autumn sage stays green all winter (it still is green now) and cycles in and out of bloom throughout the fall and winter too, so I feel like the more of it we have, the better. Over the last few years, we've increasingly added more perennials and less annuals, which always was the plan once I felt like the soil was improved enough and well-drained enough to invest in larger numbers of perennials. I hope by the time Tim retires in a few years that the ornamental part of the garden will be pretty much all perennials, except we'll always have zinnias and a couple of other annuals for the butterflies. We'll always have poppies and larkspur in Spring time too, and then the zinnias pop up in that same bed as the poppies and larkspur are finishing up. The poppies, larkspur and zinnias all reseed, so their area is as self-sustaining as the perennial beds, where all I need to do is weed the beds and rip out the excess self-sown seedlings that pop up.

For so long all I focused on was enlarging the garden areas, moving fences out in order to squeeze in more beds, building more raised beds every year and growing more, more, more. Well, I'm over all that. I now want to focus on the area we have, not on adding more square footage. I want to focus on making the ornamental part of the garden more self-sustaining and easier to maintain. I no longer want to spend every available day in planting season just endlessly, endlessly, endlessly transplanting more and more annuals. I want perennials that pop up out of the ground on their own without my assistance. Part of it is the energy deficit that is the difference between being 39 or 40 years old versus being 57 or 58 years old. I have many gardening years left---all the years I remain on this earth I hope---but for my own sake, I need to make gardening more user-friendly and less exhausting. This is especially important since Tim works so many hours now that he cannot do the mowing and weedeating like he used to, so in 2018 I'll return to mowing and string-trimming 2 or 3 acres weekly---and I remember exactly how long it used to take me to do that back when I did it in our early years here. We could hire someone to do it, but I know we won't---we're just too frugal to pay someone to do something that we are perfectly capable of doing ourselves. I also know that ever since the terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad drought months of 2011 when we got so sick from the heat while out fighting fires day and night for the whole summer, well I just cannot tolerate heat like I once did. This is common in people who have suffered in the past from heat exhaustion or heat stroke like we both did that summer. I can't change it, so I just have to learn to work when the heat is not at its worst, and I have to be sure Tim doesn't overdo it in the heat in the summer too (because he will overdo it if I don't watch him carefully).

There is a part of me that never thought I'd calmly, happily cut back on the time spent gardening---I always have gone at it all day every day during the growing season, but as I've cut back more and more the last couple of years, I've been happier---you can only fight the insane heat and dry spells up to a point, and then it seems like a person (me!) needs to know when to come in out of the heat. Well, in 2018, I'm coming in out of the heat. I'm also continuing to cut way back on canning---I made only a minimal amount of jam and jelly this year, and may not make any next year---we have cut back on sugar so much that we really aren't even eating jam and jelly any more, so I see no need to keep canning them.

And...tomatoes! I love tomatoes, but can only eat so many of them, and need to stop growing tons and tons more than we'll ever eat. I've got several years of tomatoes frozen in the big chest freezer in the garage, so how many more do we need? I also am only canning about 25-35% as much salsa as I used to, so don't need all those tomatoes for that either. So, my 2018 grow list will be stunningly short, and I'm good with that. Simplify, simplify, simplify. That's what I'm doing. For a long time, my gardening has been like a treadmill---once the treadmill starts running at planting time, I'm on that treadmill all day every day forever and forever for months---in the kitchen processing the harvest if not in the garden growing and harvesting it. This coming year, the treadmill slows down and occasionally stops. I'm excited about that. So, now y'all know where my head it at. I haven't even made a Grow List for next year yet, which isn't like me at all, and I haven't ordered any seeds. When I make the Grow List, I'll probably already have on hand virtually all the seeds I need anyway, and the list will be super short.

Jacob, Regarding wheat. The wheat we have now is not like my grandmother's wheat 50 or 100 years ago, as so much as changed with how it is created/hybridized. After reading deeply on the subject over the course of several years, I really don't even want to eat the stuff. I won't deny wheat and other grains are addictive---most people, if you suggest to them that they give up wheat, they'll flat out tell you, without even thinking about it, that giving up wheat (and other grains) is not ever going to happen. There's a reason for that. Grains affect the very same receptors in our brains that are affected by opioids---so we all become addicted to grains through long-term and constant exposure to them. There is a very real physical reaction to giving up grains---often referred to as low-carb flu, keto flu, primal flu or paleo flu...as those are the ways of eating (WOEs) that generally involve giving up grains---and it is similar to what drug addicts experience when detoxing from drugs. It basically is withdrawal and it isn't fun. Going grain-free truly means going grain-free (wheat, barley, rice, rye, etc.), not just going gluten-free. When I first began reading about the health issues related to grains and sugars, it was mind-boggling, and I remember thinking it all was very interesting and all but that I'd never give them up. But I kept reading, and the more links I saw between grains, sugars and virtually every disease suffered by mankind today, the more I saw the logic in making the choice to try to weed them out of my diet and out of my body. Maybe I'll never give them up 100% (though I know I should), but I have given them up about 90% of the time. Maybe someday I'll hit 100%. I'm not going to try to talk anyone into going grain-free, because it has to be something a person really, really wants to do, which I do. (Tim, hmmm, not so much---he wants to be healthier but not at the expense of giving up grains/sugars nearly as much as I have.) OverallI've always been in pretty good health (notwithstanding a brief battle with breast cancer in 1999-2000) so I didn't think there was a lot wrong with my health that would be improved by giving up grains and sugar (to the extent that I've largely, though not completely, given them up) but I decided to try it anyway. I feel like a completely different person! The change in my health is that obvious, and I feel 20 years younger. I noticed this summer when I backslid and ate more grains and sugar, I felt more and more tired (completely exhausted really) and had odd aches and pains and just didn't feel so hot at all. I worked hard to cut most of the crap back out of my diet, and I feel 1000% better. So, for me, this way of eating works. And, while research shows that sourdough breads are somewhat easier on a person's body, that only means they are less bad than grains that aren't fermented, if you know what I mean. In my mind, for my body, less bad still isn't good. I've been strongly influenced by the links Dr. Perlmutter and others show between grain consumption and dementia. My dad suffered from Alzheimer's Disease for a very long time (around 15 horrible, ever-worsening years) before it killed him, and to be blunt, I don't want to go down that path. If I cut grains and sugars from my diet now, can I prevent it from happening to me? I don't know, but I choose to try.

In the beginning, the thought of trying to eat somewhat normally without grains seemed daunting---I couldn't even picture it, and I didn't go cold turkey---I weaned myself off one thing after another, but in the end, I discovered there is a non-grain option for almost all the grains we consume if I am just willing to spend the time preparing the non-grain option. It gets easier over time---when I gave up grains, you couldn't even buy grain-free tortillas or grain-free tortilla chips and making them was so time-consuming (!), but now both are available in some stores. It does help that as the paleo/primal/keto/wheat belly ways of eating become more common, the food products geared to those methods of eating also become more common and more affordable.

One of the "worst" side effects, by the way, is that you get to where you do not miss the grains and sugars that much---so, even if you are craving something like a doughnut, and then one Saturday morning you decide to have that doughnut, you find (or at least I do) that it no longer tastes good and no longer is nearly as appealing as you remember it being. That shocks me. It makes me think that my tendency to eat grain-containing fast food on Saturdays with Tim could completely go away someday as those foods become less and less appealing to me. It is happening with sugar too---I've cut out most sweeteners (except as specifically called for in grain-free baked items, which for the most part is erythritol or monkfruit) because even small amounts of them taste too sweet to me now, and if ever there was a fully-addicted sugar-a-holic, it was me! Now, the sweet treats my brain craves only taste good in my memory---in real life, they're too sweet and often sickeningly so. I've never been much of a consumer of Sweet-N-Low or Equal, and now stevia is what I use in my tea. I'm even cutting back on how much of that I need because it is starting to taste too sweet to me as my tastebuds become more used to the less sweet foods I eat. So, it kinda makes me mad, in an odd way, if I give in to a craving for a sweet treat I used to adore, and then I don't much care for it when I do eat it. When that happens, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. It makes me want to pitch a temper tantrum! Now, I'll stop boring y'all with nutrition stuff!

Nancy, It sounds like Tom had an amazing epiphany! We've had that happen with once-feral cats after we've worked for years to tame them and turn them into domesticated pets. It is amazing when the light bulb goes off in their head, and they choose to give up being wild and free, and decide to move into your home (bit by bit, ever so slowly) and become a domesticated pet. There are people who say you cannot tame a feral animal, but I've found that's not true---with enough time and patience many (not all) feral cats can become great pets. It just takes years---and most people expect it to happen in weeks or months. Tom understands now that you two are his people and he is your cat. He gets it. You planted a seed of love in him and it grew and grew. Maybe Jerry always got it, but Tom was just slower to come around. (Some cats are slower than others to grasp that, I think.)

Our once-feral Yellow Cat, who lives in our guest room upstairs because he never took well to our other cats and wanted to fight with them (he is inside when they are out, and once they are in, he goes out) is fading quickly now. We don't know his exact age since he already was turning white-haired when he came to live with us permanently around 2008 or so, but think he is around 15-20 years old based on how long we saw him roaming our rural neighborhood. He is getting that look of a old cat whose years are winding down, and it breaks my heart. For a long time, I thought Slim Shady would be the next ancient cat to leave us, but he's holding his own. Yellow Cat isn't. Tim and I have been focused on giving Yellow Cat lots of extra love and affection every day because it is so obvious that he is declining. It happens---particularly with a cat that is older than dirt. I'm not even sure he'll make it to 2018. We have so many years of great memories with him though, and I'm grateful for all those years. Of all the cats we've ever had, he was the most garden-loving cat in the world. He truly believed the garden was his and his alone and he patrolled every inch of it, knowing every nook and cranny. If a new catnip or catmint plant popped up anywhere, he knew it before I did. He doesn't even go into the garden now unless I carry him in there. He's become content to curl up on the porch and sleep most of the time he is outside. He sleeps most of the time he is inside. The handwriting is on the wall.

Amy, I hate that the doctor's appt made you miss your day with the Y ladies. Varicose veins are fascinating (but, I guess, in a bad way). Until the last couple of years, I thought they only existed in someone's legs. I learned a couple of years ago that they can occur elsewhere in the body (or, at least, in the female body). Our nephew's wife went through the most horrifying bout with chronic pain and received no answers from doctors for years and years, though she constantly pushed them to try to figure out what was wrong with her and to help her. Ultimately they diagnosed her with pelvic congestion syndrome, which essentially is caused by having varicose veins in your lower abdominal area. Surgery that they thought would help her a great deal really didn't---her pain level seems about the same, though the random swelling of one leg that made her have to walk with crutches or a walker did somewhat abate. This pain really has ruined her life, and I just hate that for her because she's still so young. It is frustrating that medical science has no real solution for her. And, I have to add this (all of y'all, please don't throw bread and rolls at me), but ever since I gave up grain and sugar, the one little place on my leg where I've had a varicose vein ever since I was pregnant with Chris---that place has shrunk down to almost nothing---visually it has largely receded, which I didn't think was possible. It never has hurt, though, so I've been lucky in that regard. And, if I act up and consume very much grain or sugar at all, it plumps right back up again---which is one reason for me to not consume too much grain-containing food when Tim and I are out on Saturdays. Grain seems to affect it more than sugar does. I don't know why.

It was so much hotter than forecast again today. I get so tired of it. Forecast high was 80 and we hit 85 (our local TV met said last night on the news that 'the usual hot spots' likely could go up to 85 and I just knew he was referring to us and I just knew he was right...and he was). I think the heat ends when the cold front roars in here in the early morning hours just before sunrise. We'll be cold for a while, but then next week by Thanksgiving we're supposed to be perfectly normal---highs in the 60s and lows in the 40s, I think, which is about right for late November here. The wind is up and tomorrow will be worse, and fire danger is up accordingly.

Our red oaks probably peaked in color yesterday and today, and I think they were brighter yesterday than today. So, for us, the fall color is all downhill from this point forward.

I noticed today that both Wal-Mart and Home Depot have oodles of bedding plants in the stores now, and some of them are more warm-season than cool-season. Those must be leftovers they're trying to unload on unsuspecting souls. They also have the usual Christmas stuff--poinsettias (I have a big red one sitting in a flower pot on my kitchen counter now), paperwhites, amaryllis, some cyclamens, Norfolk Island pines, rosemary plants pruned into a traditional Christmas tree type shape, tiny living Christmas trees in small containers, and then the usual pansies and such. There's still a few daffodil bulbs and stuff like that left too. I resisted all of them except the poinsettia. I already have 4 pots of amaryllis growing downstairs in the breakfast room and a Christmas cactus setting buds upstairs in the weight room. CostCo had a breathtakingly beautiful arrangement of silk flowers in an urn that included the most life-like red amaryllis I've ever seen. I looked at it a long time and was tempted to buy 1 or 2, but ultimately decided that perfect silk flowers just don't give me the joy that real ones do. I also wondered how I'd store the arrangement during the non-Holiday season because it was pretty big and I just cannot imagine sticking it up in the attic with boxes of Christmas ornaments after the holidays end.

The stores were a zoo today---we thought we'd be beating the pre-Thanksgiving rush by doing our shopping today, but I think we were wrong about that. I was so relieved when we were done and were home again. I 'think' that we might be able to stay out of the stores until at least next Saturday or Sunday unless I think of something vital, food-wise, that we forgot to buy. More and more, I hate the big crowds in the stores around the holidays and am perfectly happy to shop early, miss the worst of the crowds and not have to deal with them for the most part from Thanksgiving through Christmas. I did a great deal of my Christmas shopping today. I'm happy about that!

Dawn

Dawn, I found a post from you related to a question Mariposa had since the Home Depot folks weren't giving her good plant info, and she was new here. You mentioned that when you were newlyweds, you so badly wanted four o'clocks, and your yard was very shady. But you grew them there. How did they do? I need to take out the peonies and creeping juniper (!) one of these days, because both are slowly dying since they're in mostly shade--sheesh. It's too bad, because I love both creeping juniper AND peonies. So I've been thinking of replacements---the New Guinea impatiens with go in, along with several of the red coleus, for next year, but I want to get some freely self-seeding flowers in there and perennials. I hadn't thought of four o'clocks until you mentioned that post. Ours are doing great in a bed that gets about four hours of sun; the front bed has one light shade area, that's the only peony that isn't in real bad shape--the rest, at best, heavily dappled shade.

Nancy, I love the pics of your garden, but is your truck on your back porch?! Not that that would be weird to us. We park wherever around here.

What blood type is your bff, Nancy? B? I can't remember who isn't supposed to eat chicken. A's are vegetarians and O's are meat eaters--I remember that much. I did that diet faithfully about 10 years ago. I will say that I've never felt better physically. I was warm all the time because I think my metabolism was running hot. Which was a good thing. A's aren't supposed to eat tomatoes and that bugs me. I'm not sure if I felt so good because I was "eating right for my blood type" OR because I was eating high quality foods. Baking own bread, etc.

Wow, it's warm tonight. We sat outside without the fire pit and it was pleasant. Just a little windy, which was nice with the pretty sounds of the wind chimes. I wonder what our neighbors think of us--I know they think we are weird. I'm sure they can faintly hear my Damh the Bard music or the exact opposite: Tom's top 40 country.

I wish I was awake, but I"m so sleepy. I hate getting old because of this. I used to could stay up until 2. I love the night time hours and hate being sleepy at my favorite time of the day/night.

I saw that my garlic has sprouted. I hope this batch makes it. Bad luck last year. I love garlic and we eat a lot of it.

I just googled it--Type B. I had to laugh, I also looked up O (me). Remember I just said I had never been much of a "bread" or "sweets" person. I also have never been a milk drinker. I must have been instinctively following the O diet all along! lol

And no, the truck is under the car/boat port next to the shop. lol That was funny! And I got a good laugh about the music your neighbors are hearing! We're like that, me with my Peruvian windpipes or classical music, and Garry Dean with his country. I have made GREAT concessions for him on music when we're driving. I love some country music--not the newer stuff and not the really old stuff; but adore Don Williams, Willie. Crystal Gayle, the Judds, Josh Turner, and enjoy enough others to be okay. I made up a playlist for GDW to listen to when we're driving, leaving out the ones I don't like. But had to include 3 of Hank Williams (3 that one has to include. . . even I do). By the way, I'm the only person that ever calls GDW "Garry Dean." That's because I heard his mother call him that so often when we were young and lived across the street from each other. So I always thought of him as "Garry Dean." And, of course, she usually called him that because he was in trouble, according to him. (Probably more true than not.)

I keep editing this post, HJ, cuz I keep remembering stuff. I love love love wind chimes. My other longtime bff (both of them played the bassoon--weird), Leann, loved wind chimes, too, and when she was dying 4 years ago, told me she was going to get me her favorite wind chimes, and then when I heard them, I'd know she was visiting. Poignantly and sadly, she died before she got it done. And yet she'd implanted the message to me, so it really doesn't matter. I think she's visiting whenever the wind chimes chime. The summer she died (end of July), I was up early on a Saturday morning and at 7 a.m., the wind chimes began chiming in a moderately gentle breeze. I was on a sheltered deck where they didn't chime that often. and when they did, I tuned in immediately and knew she'd died. Later that day her husband called to let me know. Down here, I have two on the deck, and they don't chime that often either. I've been meaning for the longest time, to get some really beautifully tuneful ones like Leann had and just haven't. I think I need to.

Amy, kept meaning to tell you we tried an experiment yesterday. We went to Muskogee to experiment. We visited the Aldi's and Homeland that our buddy Scott recommended. I'd forgotten what Aldi's was about, and we were shocked when we had to deposit a quarter to get our shopping cart. Shocked! But we plowed on. Didn't take long to catch on what they were about. I had a grocery list, and I was able to find 10 of the 21 items on that list--but eggs at $.46 a dozen??? Coffee at $4.99 for 3 lbs?? Bread for $.88? Crazy! Both of us were impressed enough with the prices, that if we like the food okay, we decided when we have to make trips to Lowe's there, GDW will drop me off at Aldi's while he goes to Lowe's. (And Aldi's is close to Lowes.) Homeland? They were okay--really good on canned goods, but we buy hardly any canned goods. Produce, not impressed really; I mean they were fine, but wouldn't make a special trip. And hated their meat selections. Cept for the really good 5 for $25 specials, but still not really impressive. So we decided our main go-to store once a month will be Reasor's in Broken Arrow, Walmart, holding our noses in-between, and Aldi's to stock up on sale items. So now GDW is getting more insistent on getting the new freezer, and now I'm okay with it, all of you enablers who were telling me we needed one.

Ha, ha, Nancy! I shop at aldi's weekly. The general stuff is good, I even like their spaghetti sauce better than the name brand. Of course, it comes in a slightly smaller jar, which is one way they lower costs. I buy their ultra soft triple roll toilet paper. The cookies are good, LOL. Cheapest price for a gallon of milk in town. I get their family sized chicken leg quarters for .89/lb, roast them, skin and debone them and make broth from the bones and have cooked chicken to freeze. DH buys the coffee beans and likes them, along with coffee creamer. Pasta is good. Haven't bought broth in a long time, but we used to. The soups are acceptable, but I prefer progresso. On Wednesdays, they have the freshest meat. Sometimes they'll sell out by the weekend. They have an already seasoned fresh salmon which is good. Beef roast is good. Pork chops are good. Ground beef, depends on the fat content. I like their hummus better than name brand. I don't use any of their soap products, but they sell Tide and Dawn. I DON'T like their canned tuna. But I'm not fond of tuna to begin with. I also don't like their freezer bags. Their produce used to be good. Not so much any more, but they're supposed to have more organic. Potatoes and onions are good, seasonal veggies, good. Sometimes the fruit is good, sometimes not. Lemons and limes are usually cheaper. Reasors has good meat. You can get kombucha there. Pimento cheese spread at the deli. Their produce is usually excellent, but pricy. And I drone on and on.

Kim, your new venture sounds exciting. Sorry you were sick. I get sick when I go to Walmart. I think it's anxiety from all the people. And it was hot in there yesterday.

Jen, I hope all your seed swaps work out well. I know it's a lot of work.

H/J, Nancy has a prettier shop than my house, LOL. That's where all those Mexican (?) Sunflowers grew last summer. What are the little yellow flowers, Nancy?

My dog found what was left of the bag of alfalfa cubes and has fertilized the yard. She's been pulling stuff out of the shed, chewing up pots and dragging around a kiddie pool. What AM I going to do with her?

Mom and I stop at Aldi occasionally. She's a name brand everything freak, so she mainly goes for the produce. I hear good things about their house brand laundry detergent, but haven't tried it. Their chocolate is AWESOME. Real Belgian or European type chocolate, at a fraction of the cost of getting it elsewhere. I'm going to use it for turtles this Christmas. I prefer Reasors meat to pretty much anywhere else except Sprouts. Sprouts also has the best produce at the best prices.

I had floury paw prints on the kitchen floor after I came home from work last night. I should wipe up better.

I just had an awful lot of fun reading up on Aldi's! (And Trader Joe's.) (In Germany, Aldi Norde and Aldi Sud.) Good stuff, and after reading for an hour, many different articles, I'm sold. I was especially impressed with the emphasis on quality foods. I used a can of fire-roasted diced tomatoes last night, and they were much tastier than the best common name brands I've gotten at regular grocery stores. I will not worry one little bit now, about the quality; your info, Amy and Rebecca, kind of confirm that. Ingenious idea from the Albrecht brothers! Here's one of the many many articles I caught. https://www.rd.com/food/fun/what-is-aldi/

Hahaha re shop comment. You doofus. (The shop is big, though. The guy who built this house about 12-13 years ago was quite the guy, apparently. A single guy, just a partying man known by the locals here--not a builder by trade; this was his idea of the perfect "man cave," I decided. Apparently he had these little lights strung across the deck and a hot tub in front of the bedroom doors, where he had many a party. He built the car/boatport for his boat and RV, and built the MAN shop.) He didn't really skimp on materials used, but some of the workmanship is a little questionable. Surprisingly, I appreciate his design, and surprisingly, he didn't skimp on closets, either. It's interesting. Many of the locals in our area have been to parties here so know the house. lol

Honey Honey Honey! What IS Amy going to DO with you!

I had an epiphany last night studying up and thinking about where to put plants. That is to say, everything I read or hear about what plants to put here or there, kind of flies out the window with our yard. For example, HERE, the shadiest place in the yard is the west side of the house; the sunniest, the north side, followed by the east side; and the south, second shadiest. Further, when "they" say, "Needs full sun," not at all necessarily. I got a chuckle reading up on herbs and where to put them in a garden. You'd be surprised at how many online sites insist that herbs need full sun. Maybe in Minnesota or Canada. Not in Oklahoma or my yard! Only herb I have in full sun is the basil, which just was overjoyed with being in the same bed as the Mexican sunflowers. Even the sage bushes aren't in full sun, nor the rosemary, and they thrived in their 3-4 hours of sun. And many of the herbs love their rather heavily shaded homes--including the thyme, oregano, fennel, lemon balm, parsley (both varieties-grew monstrous in only a few morning hours of dappled shade and heavily dappled shade the rest of the time. The Mexican sunflowers in the full sun raised bed took quite a beating with sun scald, as did the marigolds during the heat of summer, so will put them in one of the part-sun beds next year--the shop bed. NOW the marigolds are triumphant and in their glory. (Those are the yellow/orange ones you asked about, Amy.) The main problem I have is with mildew, first, and how leggy many of the taller common ones get. I adore nicotiana, and will try again next year, but keep them whacked off diligently as they get terribly tall. I did that with the marigolds I grew in back (the east side), too, they were supposed to be 12-14 inches tall, easily got to 2-3 feet and promptly fell over. So I cut them way back and the came back stronger and sturdier--but then had to cut them back again. Whatever works, right? But there are plenty of flowers in the world, and plenty that don't have that problem. It's fascinating to me! Cannas--now THOSE need more full sun.

Enough of my rattling on. I have had my nose in reading for 3 days. Reading and thinking. Hope you are having great weekends, everyone.

The truth is, every body and every thing in OK can use a little afternoon shade in the summer.

Jen. . . we should be paying a nominal service fee to you for your hard work on these seed exchanges. If it doesn't cost $5 to ship the seeds, you pocket the rest!!!! Likewise, if it costs more be sure to let folks know!

I think Aldis is my favorite store. Besides thrive market which is online. Most of what I eat/use I can get at these 2 places. I wish I could got everything online as I do not care for shopping. Like you Amy i think i could break out in Walmart. I do not like that store at all. The crowds the perfumes the chemical smells set me off and agitate me to no end. I think its funny my mom will not try Aldi at all because 20 years ago she got limp produce at Aldis. The one in Denton is so nice and clean. Its the best one I have ever been to. They actually have 2 now. Lubbock does not have one yet but I hope they consider it. I am actually hoping to grow and preserve more of my foods this year than ever before.

I remember Aldi coming here maybe 12 years ago? I have an online friend from Denmark and in a conversation I mentioned trying the new grocery store, Aldi, and she said they have them in Denmark, but she thought they were gross. I'm not sure why. She probably told me, but I don't remember. Honestly, I rarely shop there. I should try it more often. Last time I went there, I bought a garden arch/trellis thing--no food. I'm stuck in a rut--I go to Natural Grocers and then normally to Walmart to pick up what I couldn't at NG. I like Crest a lot. I do okay in Walmart except at times I don't have the mental barriers up. At those times, it feels like I can hear everyone's thoughts and it's overwhelming.

I like your wind chime story, Nancy. I have some similar stories.

So, what's everyone cooking for Thanksgiving?

Speaking of grocery stores. Who's angry that they have to start buying fresh veggies now? Okay, I'm not really angry, but I sure miss the garden veggies.

HJ, I can understand someone thinking Aldi is gross. There sure aren't any frills! We discovered an Aldi that's close to the Reasor's in Broken Arrow, so I think our next Aldi trip will be over there. But once I read about their food, their banned ingredients list, their testing; I'm tickled. DIL in Mpls used to bring me foods from Aldi constantly, and if anyone is persnickety about eating healthy, SHE is. She loved Aldi, and I liked the quality of everything she brought home to split with me. I just let HER do the shopping there for me because it was quite a ways from us, and I was too busy working to go shopping at 3 different stores during a week. But if I can get good quality food at a really cheap price, I am so there. And now I DO have time, so will concentrate on Reasor's and Aldi, and only fill in with Walmart when necessary. Now, see, to ME, WALMART is gross! LOL Well, no store is perfect; we have to pick our poison--I guess that's why we're trying to give back to nature and harvest our OWN foods infar as possible, right?

I'm going to roast our leg of lamb--the kids aren't showing up until Saturday, and GDW and I don't really want ham or turkey. And I decided I was craving lasagna after Dawn mentioned it, so we'll have lasagna on Saturday (AND the Mexican chicken casserole that some of our grandkids adore); and a big multi-layered salad, and French bread garlic butter/cheese mixture with peppers. Peach crisp for dessert.

What are you having?

Brr, chilly wind today. I did a walk around in the beds and garden and the cold hasn't gotten to them yet. Funniest was how hard the wind blew today--it blew our entire yard clean! (It was already pretty clean with just spare leaves that escaped the round-up yesterday in the also gusty wind.)

I've spent most of today, planning on designing the gardens, figuring out which plants and veggies to put where, and added columns for which bed seeds and plants are to go in, and one for whether they'll be direct sown, winter sown or on the cart.

Hj I totally get that about hearing their thoughts. What I can't stand is the things I see that can't unsee and things I can not unhear.

Hopefully I should be able to harvest beets spinach kale and cilantro for thanksgiving. There isn't much but it is doing well. Arugula is great but I don't care for it lol just like the smell while I am working out there.

Jennifer, We go in Aldi occasionally, but since we are so far from stores in general, as much as possible we shop at Sam's Club and CostCo and buy things in large quantity. The only downside to that is having to come up with space to store all these things you buy in quantity, but I am pretty well-organized and have a system worked out to deal with that. I hate, hate, hate running out of stuff, so buying in bulk suits us more. When we have been in Aldi, I thought that had some good deals, but because we focus so much on organic food, and grass-fed dairy and butter (available at CostCo too), if there is something we can't find at CostCo or Sam's, we're likely to pop into the Whole Foods or Central Market near CostCo to get those specialty items---like Dr. Bronners' soaps, and specialty nut flours, cassava tortillas and hard-to-find natural sweeteners. I might shop at Aldi more if there was one close to the Sam's or CostCo. For anything that is really hard to find, we do shop at Thrive Market online or Wheat-Free Market. Being able to order obscure items online and have them delivered to the house will spoil a person terribly. We couldn't buy meat, veggies, fruit and dairy in such large quantities if we didn't have an extra fridge and extra deep freezers in the garage.

I do hate having to buy produce in the winter, but it is what it is---we have lots of our own produce canned, frozen and dehydrated, but for fresh we do have to buy it at this time of the year. I am much happier during the growing season when we breeze right by the produce section because we don't need anything they have since we grow our own.

Really, since we've cut out the grains and don't buy processed, packaged foods, we tend to fly through grocery stores (even big ones like Sam's Club and CostCo, because we're generally only/mostly buying raw ingredients that we turn into meals ourselves---meat, fish, veggies, fruit, etc. It is amazing how many rows you can completely skip when you aren't buying bread, packaged convenience foods, pasta, frozen pizzas (we make our own from scratch, though, using a grain-free crust), cookies, crackers, baked goods, etc. I HATE to admit it because in our younger days we would buy stuff like chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, Hamburger Helper, frozen pizzas, etc., but all that advice about buying healthy in order to eat healthy really is true....even if it took us a few decades to see the light. (grin) We don't even buy processed meats like luncheon meats or hot dogs much at all any more. Well, there's bacon. You have to have bacon to make BLT sandwiches, which are one thing we'll never give up during the fresh tomato season.

Kim, I'd love to just be able to order everything and have it delivered! Between Thrive and Wheat-Free Market, it probably would be possible, though I haven't tried it. I am not a huge fan of Wal-mart, but we sometimes buy some canned cat food and cat litter there---just so the cats can have more variety in their diet than the limited number of flavors of canned cat food sold at the big warehouse stores. It is the big hordes of people there at Wal-Mart that get on my nerves. I think I've lived mostly people-free (well, we have people around, but not too many of them) in a very rural area for too long because huge crowds of shoppers in stores get on my nerves. It takes forever to navigate the stores when they are crowded, and I hate when the parking lots are a zoo too. We like to hit Sam's Club and/or CostCo early in the day on the weekend, so we can get in and out before they get too crowded and too busy. If we are there when they open, we're in and out in no time at all and I like that. We've shopped a little bit at the new WinCo in Denton and I like it too.

Amy, That's so true about shade in the afternoons here. I have found almost everything we grow here is happier if it can get some shade, especially in the hot summer months, but even in fall and spring too. I need shade. I need a big shade canopy that floats in the air above me and shades me when I'm out slaving away in the garden. I don't have one, but I'd like to have something like that.

Nancy, I grow cannas in morning sun, afternoon shade. They've been there for almost 20 years, so are in more shade now than they were in the beginning. The only difference I've noticed is that they do get a bit taller in the afternoon shade, likely because they are searching for a bit more sun. On the other hand, taller doesn't bother me, and the leaves don't scorch from the heat in July and August like they often do here in July and August in full sun (because, you know, we don't get enough summer rain here ever....except in 2015 and 2016, which were rare wet years). The only solution I've found for powdery mildew and other fungal diseases is to space plants more widely to get them better air flow, and while that helps a lot, it doesn't mean they stay disease-free. Maybe they just have a bit less disease, or it shows up later in the season. In a humid summer, the diseases just happen. And, of course, powdery mildew really is a heat thing here more than a humidity thing, so we get it even in a pretty dry year with fairly low dewpoints.

Rebecca, I do get some great European chocolates at CostCo or Central Market, and never even have looked for them at Aldi's. The next time I'm in an Aldi's (there is one in Ardmore, and there's one in Sherman, TX right by Sam's Club), I'll have to watch for those. LOL at the footprints in flour. Pets will find a way!

Amy, When I think of Honey, I think of that song from The Sound of Music--"How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?" but I insert Honey's name for Maria's. Well, I guess you're just gonna love her and patiently train her and teach her, because she's still a puppy and still acting like one and still growing up. In our early years here before I had plentiful, large compost piles, I'd buy bags of composted manure (Black Kow, of course) and soil-less mix for containers, etc., or dry molasses or Texas greensand and other stuff like Pine Bark Fines to make my own mix, and Jet, for several years, would tear up every bag of stuff I bought and scatter it around if he had the chance to do so. He about drove me crazy with that behavior. Eventually he outgrew being so destructive, and now he is so old and slow that he doesn't mess with anything.

Our Homeland in town is pretty awful (not really their fault as they moved into a very old building that had been several grocery stores, including a Winn-Dixie and a Kroger, over the decades) and I refuse to step foot in it except for when we need food right away for fires. At one point the health department shut it down, which was long overdue, so hopefully it is better since they made a lot of repairs, etc., and re-opened, but I still will only go there if Fran and I are on our way to a fire and need to buy food (generally sandwich fixings, bags of chips, etc.) so we can make a quick meal for the firefighters to wolf down in the midst of the fire. I won't shop there for stuff for our family, and really, I'd rather buy the food for the firefighters at Wal-Mart, but it is a 30-mile one-way trip to a Wal-Mart for us, which isn't convenient when you're rushing to a big wildfire, so that's when we go into the local Homeland. When I've been in there, it looks better than it used to, but because of past food safety and sanitation issues, I'm not happy to even step foot in it---I have a really long memory of things (like picking up a loaf of bread and finding rodents have chewed through the bags and nibbled at the bread, for example) that just make it hard for me to shop there. I do like the Homeland in Ardmore, but it is a new building or maybe it was just really, really well-remodeled after it became a Homeland and it is nothing like the one we have here.

Four o'clocks are monstrous beasts here. It is funny. It took me a few years to get them established from seed---our horrible drought years in the early 2000s were really hard on them, but once they became established and began reseeding themselves, I've never had to give them a second thought since then. The only downside to four o'clocks in shade is that they can get 5-7' tall and eventually fall over. We have a veritable jungle of four o'clocks underneath the pecan tree outside the garden's western fence line. They are a favorite place of the chickens who like to go into the four o'clock jungle to foil the hawks that are flying overhead and hoping to have chicken for lunch or dinner. Oh, and they reseed vigorously into the garden, perpetually trying to creep into the west end and take over the whole garden---I yank out a gazillion seedlings in spring. They bloom fine in the shade and are very happy there. The fuschia-colored ones reseed the most vigorously but some of the white and yellow ones do reseed occasionally. I have to be sure to weed out the ones I don't want because if you let the plants stay in a place where you really don't want them, by the time you get around to trying to take them out, they'll have big tubers the size of/or bigger than a human head and you'll never be able to dig them out...though you might be able to dig out 80 or 90% of the tuber before the end breaks off in the ground---and a whole new plant comes from any small portion of tuber you leave in the ground. Still, before we had the four o'clocks there, we had tons and tons of greenbrier there, and I had to dig down as deeply as 18" to get all their roots/runners/tubers out of the ground so, all things considered, I'd rather have a Four O'Clock Forest there than one made of greenbriers.

We stayed hot all night long as the cold front was very slow to get here---so I think it was in the mid-70s all night until the cold front came roaring in around 6:30 a.m. We're cold now though, and our wind gusted as high as 47 mph so we had leaves falling like mad, the wind chimes sounded like they were going to have a nervous breakdown and/or go airborne, etc. Some local VFDs had fires today, but there were none (knock on wood) in our fire district. Because we are so rural, the sounds of rifles were competing with the crowing of our roosters, both serving as a wake-up call we didn't need. I hate deer season. We don't allow hunting on our property, but I know we have poachers on our land sometimes, and some of our neighbors allow hunters on their land. We'll chase the hunters off if we find them on our property without our permission to be there. You have to be really careful out here during hunting season of any kind, but especially in the mad frenzy of deer gun season---we always wear red clothing or bright yellow or orange during hunting season in the hope that some careless idiot won't accidentally shoot us because we're wearing a brown or white shirt or something. I had a bullet whistle by my head one day and just thinking about it still sends a chill down my spine. I feel lucky that bullet didn't hit me. We also get lots of spotlighters shooting from the roads, which of course is illegal, and we'll call 9-1-1 and report it, but our county has limited law enforcement resources and the game wardens and county deputies cannot be everywhere during hunting season---there's just too few of the good guys and too many of the bad ones who ignore the laws.

Our autumn color looks sad today. The red oaks did peak a couple of days ago and now their leaves are going a dull orangeish-brown. Of course, this happens at exactly the same time every year---the week before Thanksgiving---even if autumn arrived late, it seems to end (in terms of pretty autumn colors) at the same time. The wind really brings down the leaves too. My least favorite season of the year is when the trees are so bare. Still, in the garden, the crinum lilies and autumn sage are green, so we still have that little bit of green. I need to dig and divide the crinum lilies. They are so huge it is going to take Tim's assistance or (wishful thinking here) a large piece of equipment like a front end loader or something. I've never even attempted to divide the crinums and it is going to be very hard because they've been there in that spot for so very long---maybe 13 to 15 years or so. The clump is massive and still flowers well, but I think it would be a lot better if I'd divide it up into a gazillion new plants. I want to plant them along the east end of the garden to maybe serve as a protective barrier from herbicide drift.

Dawn

One of the things I'm making for Thanksgiving is a fake cheesecake made from cream cheese and Cool Whip, in a purchased graham cracker crust, with canned cherry pie filling. So awful, but so good. My grandmother started making it in the 70s, then when she passed I took over, and the extended family goes crazy if it's not there. It's always demolished. I counter that with veggies, though. A big crock pot full of stewed green beans, and a roasted butternut squash and brussles sprouts dish with maple syrup and dried cranberries. Only thing I have from the garden to go with it is some parsley, but it'll be good with it.

I made a batch of spiced oatmeal cookies today, with cardamom and dried cherries. Yum. And put another batch of kolacky in the freezer. That makes 3, so 3 or 4 more to go. Still working on the gluten free batch for my sister and cousins.

I work every day until Thanksgiving starting Sunday. So, I'll have to pick up the fresh veggies Monday night, since I have to stay late Tuesday night and I am NOT going to any grocery store on Wednesday. Everything gets prepped Wednesday evening, and the cheesecakes made. Sometime I'll need to find time to bake a bundt cake for work potluck Wednesday too. The green beans (frozen) will cook overnight in the crock pot and I'll roast the sprouts and squash Thursday morning during the parade. :)

Nancy, I've never been to Denmark so I'm not sure what they think is gross or not OR why. I'm pretty sure they have stricter laws on what is sold as food. Walmart is gross most of the time. I think for us, it's convenient. It's right on the path home from Natural Grocers. Tom has put his foot down about spending what NG asks for much of their food. He doesn't care if I spend it on what I eat/cook, but he doesn't want to spend that much on his food. That's part of the problem with him, though. Subject for another day.

We go to my sister's house for TG. I'm making broccoli, rice and cheese casserole, spice cake cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, and a pumpkin black bean soup for the vegetarians. ..and anyone else.

Kim, when do you move? I'm so excited to follow your new adventures! You should do a blog or a youtube series.

Dawn, I wish we had a Central Market here. I love those stores. And HEB. And Kroger. And Wegman's (east coast). I make do with Reasors and Sprouts, and the occasional trip to Whole Foods, Fresh Market, and Walmart (when I have to).

Dawn, thanks so much for your comment on the 4 o'clocks and shade! That's what I was hoping to hear! I have one clump that has gotten totally out of hand, and had been ripping them out all summer long, but what a delightful problem to have (not so much of a delight with morning $%^ glories! LOL Also, thanks for the cannas tip. Mine are healthy and growing, but got morning shade and 3-5 hours afternoon sun. I'll just move them 50 feet over so they'll get morning sun and then gradual afternoon shade and see how they do.

Regarding hunting season: I may be repeating myself. . . but when I lived on the ranch (it was more than a 1-family ranch, but not big enough for hired extra hands. Thank God we had my father-in law living in a house on the ranch about 500 yards away from us who was our "hired hand," and a lovely man. The ranch was 5,000 acres--would you believe it only supported 110 head of cattle? True. Wyoming is considered high desert country, and there aren't many native trees. . . cottonwood. . . a few others. Lot of sagebrush, not much grass. So the cattle had to work hard and cover a lot of land. As did we (cover a lot of land, that is . . . . heaven on earth, having to ride horses for a job! And all the four kids had to participate. One took to it with love {my Russ}, the others, begrudgingly or fearfully). The house was 1/4 mile away from the river, and around the river were rich acres of good silty soil--our farming area, growing alfalfa on 20 acres, which got the cattle through the winter with supplemental feedings of alfalfa pellets. And across the river at our location, not all that wide, maybe 50', easily fordable on horseback, was about 1/2 acre of asparagus. Folks from our tiny community would come out in June and would pick to their hearts' content, as did we. (One of the hardest things I've done in life was to leave the ranch.) I digress.

Aren't you shocked that I digressed? What I was going repeat myself on is that we DID allow out-of-state hunters onto the ranch, after we guessed that they were responsible--and yes, we charged them a fee. However, RIGHT during deer hunting season, was the time to gather the cattle and get them down to the lower pastures. We didn't so much fear the hunters WE allowed, but when we'd be out gathering, in certain places in the upper pastures, we'd be riding a high point, we knew we'd be in the sights of God-knew-how-many hunters from adjacent properties, or even the ones we'd allowed. We wore our orange vests, and we tied orange scarves into our horses' manes. It was just weird, knowing that anyone out there would be seeing us. And praying we wouldn't end up as someone's kill. So I get it, Dawn, in spades!

And Dawn, loved your comment on Honey. Nailed it!!!! I'll be laughing and singing, "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Honey!"

I discovered a new trick, thanks to my SIL in Buffalo WY. She's got a way too smart gray tabby, Tigger, that is always in trouble (he's about 10-12 months old now.) Such a loving and personable little fellow (I've been there twice in the past several months, and can attest that he is charming but a devil.) And my DIL and son in Mpls have two female gray tabbies who are just like Tigger. Well, it appears our two are going to live up to my fears/expectations based on Tigger, Stella and Izzy. So the SIL said she had a toy box for Tigger. She got him toys, and he likes them--so she got him a toy box and then went around and collected up his toys every couple days and put them in his toy box; so, for a few days after that, he was more intent on getting his toys back out than he was on destroying the house!!! So. I did the same thing today--gathered up their little kitten-sized toys that had been scattered about and put them into a small plastic tote. We laughed. And laughed. And laughed, at the kittens' reaction to that. Yep, they were going to dive in, after carefully investigating, and pull every single toy outta there, after playing with each one separately. The toy box has moved about 4 feet, and most of the toys have been removed and scattered--but it kept them from getting into trouble in the rest of the house! Amy, ya think maybe this could work? SO reminds me of my two little gray tabby sons. Only they were deeper thinkers, so were WAY more diabolical! LOL

Dawn there is an Aldi in rayzor ranch near winco. I tried winco once but found it too expensive for me. My sister swear by it.

I to will be planting barrier crops. My threat is my farmer cotton but it's not from a plane so it won't be as bad. I have 10 acres on the west and 20 on the east. Part will also be remediation crops.

Rebecca I love that cheesecake. I used to do a lemon version ridiculously addicting.

Azure standard is amazing too. Love their practices andselection. I had to quit ordering from them because our drop location has cats and every time I picked up my food it was covered in cat blech. I could not do it. Too allergic. Maybe I can connect again in Lubbock.

Hj I would like to do either or both especially this purging downsizing part. This is going to be fun and I am Journaling so that's a step. The whole blog and you tube seem so complicated. I hope to get moving December 1. I plan to stay here Monday through Thursday and there Friday through Mondays. I am committed to my friend at restaurant until her husband is done ginning.

I have so much to do the next 2 weeks I am going to watch my diet really well. Like eat out of my own garden lol

Cassava flour y'all. It is the best since I can not do coconut flour.

Made a pear galette last night. Wow and smart me saved one for breakfast. I get mine from thrive they finally started carrying it.

Can we grow cassava here?

Rebecca, what are stewed green beans? I gotta hear about these!

Rebecca, OMG--the pie! Don't tell Tim. That cherry cheesecake pie is his absolute favorite holiday dessert and I didn't buy the stuff to make him one this year since we are trying so hard to eat in a more healthy way (we aren't getting any younger, so we are trying to make up for that by being more disciplined). I'm hoping there will be so many pies at my nephew's house that Tim won't notice that specific one is missing. It is yummy and a longtime favorite of mine too. I'm taking both a sweet potato pie and a pumpkin pie since both are at least veggie-based and somewhat less sugary and guilt-inducing that some other pies.

Reading about all your veggies is making me hungry! It is hard on Thanksgiving to have room in one's tummy for all the yummy food, but I try to take small servings of everything so I don't miss out on any of it. I'm not a big eater anyway, so I get full pretty fast. I don't know how these men who go through the buffet and eat three plates full of food (before they even start out on desserts) do it. Where do they put it all? One plate full more than fills me up and makes me sleepy.

Jennifer, Tim used to be that way about food, but slowly has come into agreement with me that food is an issue of quality, so he seems more willing now than ever before to select the healthier foods. I've tried to get him to focus on quality not quantity or cost. Granted, it has taken me 35 years to get him to the point that he understands that it is smarter to pay more for healthier food instead of filling up on junk, but I do think that if he were doing the grocery shopping, it still might not matter to him that he buy organic dairy or pastured meats in the same way that it matters to me. He reverts to his "thrifty Yankee" ways really quickly if I'm not with him. I always tell him I'd rather spend our money eating right to begin with than to spend it on pharmaceutical products to fix whatever is wrong as a result of eating a poor diet. He always agrees with me in principle, but then if he is doing the shopping, he may just be price-driven (which is why I do most all of the food shopping). I'll give him credit--he is trying harder to eat healthy, but I think if I went out of town for a week, he'd revert back to his old habits and just live on chili dogs, nachos and sodas or something similar.

Rebecca, I wish we had a Central Market here! I'm resigned to the fact that we will, always and forever, have to drive 85 miles one way to shop at CostCo, Central Market and Whole Foods (really, Whole Foods is in Irving, so it is another 10 miles further than the CostCo in Lewisville). It takes the better part of a Saturday to make that shopping circuit on a Saturday once or twice a month, but then, on the other hand, we rarely have to go to another store in between the major shopping trips so I feel like that helps---I hate having to pop into a grocery store for 1 or 2 things because then you cannot get out of there without buying 10 or 12 things. I'd like to think that someday Denton will at least get a CostCo and maybe either a Central Market or a Whole Foods, but that's still gonna be a long drive. On the other hand, when we moved here, we had to drive to either Denton or Sherman just to go to a Lowe's or Home Depot, and now we have a HD in Gainesville and a Lowe's in Ardmore, so that's a hopeful sign of retail progress. Maybe decent grocery stores will keep migrating north towards us (eventually).

Nancy, You're welcome. Four o'clocks are a very sentimental favorite for me. My dad had them in our back yard (in morning sun, afternoon shade), though he generally didn't grow a lot of flowers, so I always think of him when I see them.

I agree that guys who y'all charged to come and hunt likely were more trustworthy and careful that some of the locals. You know what I mean! It drives me up the wall. As deer season approaches, we hear loud trucks going up and down the road all night long---guys spotlighting or at least hoping to. We don't hear those vehicles at all the rest of the year and it makes me sick that those so-called macho men (as they think of themselves) show so little regard for the law and no regard for personal property rights. We have, upon occasion, driven our car down to the end of our driveway and just sat and watched them, cell phone in hand, to make it clear we are watching and will report them. If they are going to break the laws, let them go somewhere else---we have people's home and animals scattered around here and don't need jerks firing indiscriminately into our pastures and woodlands. My other gripe? As soon as hunting season starts, we begin getting lots of fires in wildland areas and I blame careless hunters for starting those fires. There's 5 VFDs out on one of those now on a game reserve, a sixth VFD on stand-by (oops, we'd likely be next up after that!) and the game warden is on his way to another area in the game reserve to check reports of a second fire. If these guys are old enough to go out and camp and hunt, they are (or should be) old enough and mature enough to make sure all campfires are thoroughly extinguished. Not all of them are---hence the sudden spike each year in fires at the exact same time the deer hunting season begins.

I think the toy trick could work. I do that with Pumpkin, who is more kitten than adult cat even now, and he's a lot younger than the other cats so he plays like mad. He does scatter the toys around, and I gather them back up and refill the toy box...and he removes them again. Yesterday I had a delivery that came in a large cardboard box, so after it was empty, I put the box in the cat room, and three of the six cats slugged it out for control of the box. They all three slept together in the box last night as none of them was willing to cede control of the box to anyone else. Who has to buy cat toys? Give Pumpkin and the other cats a cardboard box (even better, sprinkle it with a little dried catnip) and a couple of old socks and they can play for hours, or even days. I don't want to say they are easily amused, but sometimes they are. Pumpkin can amuse himself for hours just chasing leaves as they fall. I guess they are a substitute for chasing mice or something.

Kim, I've only been in WInCo 3 or 4 times, and I do think I've seen the Aldi in that general area somewhere. With WInCo, I think it depends on what you're buying. They have had some good prices on fish and pork when we've been in there, and a friend of mine has switched a lot of shopping from Sam's to WinCo because they eat a whole lot of pork. I mostly went into WinCo this summer to get the Dixondale Farms melons whenever they had them in stock, which was for at least half the summer. Once our melons were ripening, I stopped buying theirs, so maybe they had them all summer but I didn't go in there after midsummer because we had our own. They also had a low-carb, low-sugar type sports drink that Chris likes better than Gatorade and Powerade, so I would go in there to buy a couple dozen bottles of that drink when he was still living here near us. He liked them for his CrossFit workouts.

I don't think we have a long enough growing season for Cassava as it needs warm weather for 8-10 months. I also think that grinding down the roots into flour would be a ton more work than I'm willing to do----and you'd have to first grate the tough roots (might be possible to do it more easily with a very good, sturdy food processor) and then dry them out...and maybe grind them into flour after that? I'd be worried I wouldn't process it 'just so' and would end up with too high of a cyanide content in it. I have grown some of the ornamental varieties of Esculenta manihot, like 'Variegata', in containers and they are gorgeous plants but frost will kill them, so I think they only do well here outdoors, even in containers, for roughly 6 or 7 months. I cannot imagine it would be possible to grow cassava in the ground this far north, although....it might be possible with a hoophouse or high tunnel that is heated in the winter time. I wonder if cassava is grown in the parts of south Texas where they can plant onions as early as mid-October? They might have a long enough growing season for it down there.

I kind of suspect all the cassava used in products we buy here may be imported, but haven't read the labels to see that...and our fire pagers are going off---gotta go.

Dawn

My cassava is of Brazil

I had a long post going and lost it. Sigh.

Just got home from Aldi's. I forgot to mention I like their tortellini. I don't think I'd ever heard of it till I went to Aldi's. They do have good chocolate, and this time of year European style cookies. They have some "fake" Girl Scout cookies that I told DH to quit buying because they are addictive.

Kim, I avoid the laundry aisles at any store, for the smell. Sam's seems to be exceptionally bad. Reasor's sells this fancy soap that instantly gives me a headache. I can't do perfumes or candles or smelly stuff any more. Perfumey old women in church or daughters in a car will close my throat up. I think part of my problem at Walmart was the first thing I saw was "40 days till Christmas".

H/J I don't know why your Danish friend would dislike Aldi's, but my highschool BFF lived in Holland for a while and according to her, shopping there is much different. They have small kitchens and only shop for a few days at a time. They went to the bakery for bread, the butcher for meat, etc. An all in one place may have gone against the grain for your friend. My friend made her husband drive her to Germany to a Walmart. She said the shelves were bare, and it was dirty. Nothing like shopping here.

I used to love our Walmart when the kids were little, before it became Super Walmart with a nightmare parking lot and too many people. I could run in and out of there in 15 minutes. Now it takes 15 minutes to get from the car to the door.

We are going to Cracker Barrel for Thanksgiving. Too much going on this year for cooking (and no one wants ME to cook.) At least I won't have to wash dishes.

LOL, Dawn, my statement about summer shade was paraphrasing something you said to me when I was trying to decide where to put my asparagus bed. Funny "how do you solve a problem like Honey". Some days I wish I had named her something else. But she's really smart. She will figure things out eventually. I picked up paperwork for a training class at Petsmart. That should help.

I hated hunting season when I worked on the ranch. The guy next door, his property was kind of on a hill above my office, would do target practice in his yard. We often lost cattle. Onetime they field dressed 4 deer and a COW right at the gate. Didn't even leave us the ear tag so we'd know which one it was.

Rebecca, have you been to Trader Joe's? There's parking behind the store. I only went once, so I didn't really compare prices and quality, but it's a nice store, and it apparently has some perks.

Nancy, I put all Honey's toys in her kennel when I vacuum. She always looks at me funny. For whatever reason, when she comes to you she brings you a toy, or a bone or a rawhide. She has a lot. She also thinks she must carry them outside, so I go around and collect them occasionally. She would chew up any box or basket I put toys in. She likes to tear up cardboard, too. Her favorite is to shred brown paper bags.

I wish I could get DH to eat healthier. It's not that he doesn't eat fruits and vegetables, he does, but he eats SOO many things that aren't healthy. He came up to me with this tray of assorted cheesecakes today and I'm like NO! We said we're getting pie for after Cracker Barrel, so he would end up eating all the cheese cake because I can't eat it. He's put on about 30 pounds in the last year. Not good.

I almost lost this again! Winter peas are coming up in the bed the dog dug up. No where else that I planted them. The Elbon rye came up. I currently have volunteer tomatoes and cilantro. Garlic has not sprouted. I wish it would rain. I don't think my watering is sufficient. I see no spinach sprouting, but I see some lettuce. Next year I must clear the cowpeas earlier and get fall crops in sooner. I want fall lettuce and spinach.

Kim, That doesn't surprise me. Cassava is a huge crop in South America. I checked my package of Paleo pancake/waffle mix and it contains cassava starch, organic coconut flour, almond flour, eggs, leavening agents, salt, monk fruit and spice but it doesn't give the source of its cassava (or the source of anything else). It does make a big deal on the label of being organic, GMO-free, grain free, dairy free, no added sugar, no trans fat, gluten free, BPA free (I will assume that refers to the packaging) and low glycemic. Quick, I'd better pour this bag of stuff into a glass container with a BPA-free plastic lid and hide the packaging from Tim. If he saw how healthy it is, he would automatically decide he didn't like it. He equates healthy food with "less flavor" and other silly things, but only if he knows it is healthy stuff. If I don't tell him he is eating a healthier version of something, then he cannot tell it for himself.

Amy,

Forty days? Already? Time keeps flying! I guess I'd better hurry up and deck the halls and all that before I wake up and discover that Christmas is tomorrow. I don't understand how time flies by so quickly any more.

I do agree that Wal-mart shopping was different before every store became a Super Walmart. The same thing happened with Target. Tim and I popped into a Super Target the other day and every other aisle in the food and drink half of the store had either alcoholic drinks or mixers. I know it is holiday time, but I was astonished at how much floor space they give to that sort of product. Maybe it just shocks me because we don't drink much, so seeing a bunch of alcohol in there seemed odd to me. Of course, we had just left the CostCo in Lewisville that built on a separate but attached liquor store that opened this year, so clearly I am an old fuddy duddy stuck in another time and place when you bought liquor in liquor stores.....although CostCo always had had a huge wine selection (and they still do, it is only hard liquor---and very pricey, fancy stuff---in their liquor store). I told Tim that the liquor store's demographics were targeted at someone else who is not us. : ) He did buy some sort of pricey vodka there so he was happy, though he barely drinks vodka---perhaps his taste is changing with all the work-related travel he does. Maybe the mini bars are turning him into more of a vodka guy whereas he's always been a beer guy until now. I'll have to ask him about that.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who hates hunting season. I get tired of wearing red, day-glo yellow, day-glo orange or hot pink every single day, but I'd prefer to not get shot by someone who has a gun more powerful than they should, and who fires in the direction of our house from acres away and who isn't positive what they are shooting at...though I know they ought to be sure it is a deer, not a cow, dog or person that they are shooting before they ever pull the trigger. Jersey won't hardly got outside even to pee....I pretty much have to drag her out. She'll be fine once the hunting season is over, but she is exceptionally upset every time she hears a gunshot.

Re: Trader Joe's--if any of y'all buy pre-packaged salads there, they are doing a recall. You can Google for the info. I saw it, I think maybe on Yahoo this afternoon. Possible shards of plastic or other materials in the salads.....

Our little dog, Ace, who likes to recline with Tim in the recliner, must carry out a toy or rawhide bone each time he goes outside. Then all the dogs fight for control of it, and when they run back into the house, whoever is carrying it in their mouth tends to drop it in the laundry room as if they won the prize by being the one to carry it indoors. I pick it up and return it to the basket of dog toys in Tim's office. Two or three hours later, we do it all over again. Endlessly. I will stop him from carrying out a rawhide bone if it is rainy or muddy because I don't want a gross, mud-covered rawhide bone coming back indoors. I generally seize it at the back door before I let them go out.

Eating healthy is important, I think, but I am not a stickler for always eating healthy. If I can eat healthy 80-90% of the time and let myself have less healthy stuff the other 10-20% of the time, I'm happy with that. I know my percentages aren't that high during BLT season, and I simply don't care. Eating a BLT sandwich daily is a requirement around here during tomato season., and I just try to behave and avoid all that bacon the rest of the year. I suspect Tim's percentages aren't as good as mine. One difference though is that he is a runner and has been since high school. In the 1980s and 1990s he ran a lot of marathons and he still runs daily at work as part of his morning workout. So, his heart is in excellent health, his blood pressure is low, etc. At work, they could sign up for a whole bunch of fancy tests (they would cause thousands of dollars if we were paying for them ourselves) as part of their wellness program, and he tested great in every category thanks to his lifelong running habit. The dietician/nutritionist couldn't find much fault with his numbers, but told him to stop taking a multivitamin because "Mortality All Causes" numbers are higher for those who take multivitamins than for those who don't. The only supplement she wanted to add to what we already take is Triple K (we take K2 but when it runs out, I'll buy triple K), so at least we were on track with all the supplements that aren't multivitamins. I'm glad we're doing at least that much right.

Your DH's weight gain does sound like a lot for one year, Amy, but sometimes it happens. Tim has gained a lot in the abdomen the last few years. I have kept my mouth shut and not said anything about it. He kept buying the same size jeans he's always worn, but when he got promoted and had to be fitted for his fancy, dress uniforms that they wear to formal occasions like funerals and such, the tailor who measured him told him he needed a size 38 waist, not the size 34 waist size he's worn forever. He was stunned. His response? He gave up beer, which made me happy because it is made from grain. I don't know if his waist size will change any. I don't think it has, and he gave up the beer a couple of months back. I know men also gain more in the abdomen as they age too, but their easy out is to call it a beer belly and blame the beer. Maybe it is the beer, and also the chips, queso, burritos, tacos, pies, ice cream, etc. just like it is with ladies---though we blame ours on menopause. I like cheesecake as a healthy dessert and it is healthier the way I make it---with a crust made from chopped nuts, and a sugar substitute instead of sugar, and fresh fruit as a topping instead of a sweetened pie filling type fruit. I also like it the old-fashioned traditional way (with lots more sugar and grain in it) if I'm not making it myself. I think there's room in life for all sorts of foods. I do know a few people who have extraordinary self-discipline and only eat really, really healthy stuff. I am not one of those people. I never have been. I never will be.

I wish it would rain too. We need a good, solid 10-11" of rain before 2018 arrives in order to end the year around average. I doubt we make it. So far, November has been even worse for rainfall than October was, and October was pitiful. November does not seem promising for rainfall either.

Dawn

Thanks for reminder, Amy, I was watering garlic yesterday and noticed the hydrangeas were drooping, so ended up watering all kinds of things, need to get back after it tomorrow, since I totally forgot today. It feels so strange to be watering now.

Having fun with kittens. What a hoot. Jerry is like a little puppy dog. When he's awake and alert, he follows me wherever I go and sometimes Tom comes along. They're still little, so it's very cute to see him/them trotting along behind me or racing in front of me if I'm on the way back. I told GDW I feel like the Pied Piper.

I got a chuckle while mulching leaves to throw into all the beds. Like I'm going to be able to keep un-mulched ones out after I dump the mulched ones in? I told them to, but did they listen?? Noooooooooo.

Another kid and hubbie are showing up tomorrow. Gotta think of something to throw in a crock pot; something easy that won't take up visiting time. Not chili, not stew. Not chicken/cheese/broccoli/rice. Guess I'll be looking online for ideas. Something no frills. Ahh, I see something that looks like pork shoulder roast (you now know my problems with labeling aren't confined to seedlings). Yeah, sounds like pork shoulder roast something will be the way to go.

Tom and Jerry sound so cute. I love kittens. I like cats too, but adult cats are a little bit less adorable than kittens. Of course, adult cats also are not nearly as destructive as kittens.

Really, I'm a sucker for all baby animals. Spring here is so utterly delightful with tiny baby cottontails everywhere, calves, foals, kids and lambs in the fields. Really, now, is there anything on this earth any cuter than kids and lambs? Whenever I see them, I start thinking we ought to have sheep and goats, but then I remember that they don't stay tiny and precious for long, and instead of buying kids and lambs, I just go to one of my favorite country living blogs, called Chickens in the Road, and admire Suzanne's spring crop of baby animals.

Enjoy the kid and hubbie today. Family visits are so sweet.