Oh Rebecca. I am so sorry! Oh what a heartbreaker for you all. i can't begin to imagine how you all must be reeling. My thoughts are of you all and him.

Tim's dad always burned leaves back in their community in Pennsylvania, except that eventually their little town outlawed burning leaves (I assume that as the population grew, the fire risk was too high) near the end of his life. Being a very old and very stubborn (and perhaps slightly senile) man by then, he burned leaves anyway and got in trouble. I think that was just a couple of years before he passed away, so likely in the early 2000s. The law banning the burning of leaves kinda broke his heart, because to him that was just what you did in autumn. You burned the leaves. It really was an autumn tradition, and he didn't like seeing it outlawed. Like many people, they had tons and tons of towering, huge trees that produced a huge volume of leaves, and burning them was the traditional way to manage the huge onslaught of leaves in the autumn. To Tim, the aroma of burning leaves is a long-held family tradition and memory from his childhood too. We couldn't burn anything in our community growing up, so it isn't something I remember. My dad composted his leaves (and all the leaves he could get from our neighbors) at least as far back as the 1970s, so I grew up thinking that was what everyone did with autumn leaves.

There was a wildfire in OKC today that threatened homes, and a big one in Okmulgee County that threatened lots of things---and burned up hundreds of bales of hay. I don't remember if Okmulgee County was one of the counties that had a Red Flag Fire Warning today, but clearly it was dry enough there that the fire was large and fast-moving, and it took many fire departments working together to deal with it. I heard one report that it might have been started by a spark from a welder's torch. This is the time of year (especially in the absence of rainfall) that everyone really has to be careful around dry vegetation.

I don't mind if the fire pagers and phone app wake us up for a legit call--a fire, a medical call, etc. but when it wakes us up for no good reason, that is frustrating. Once I'm awakened in the middle of the night, I rarely can fall back asleep. That is a major problem that I wish I could correct, but I've been that way my whole life---a light sleeper who doesn't fall back asleep upon awakening during the night. I wish I could just turn off the pager at night, but people who have emergencies during the night need us just as much then as they do during the day time. It was nice and quiet here today so I was able to accomplish most everything on my To Do list. I cleaned house and put up/decorated the Christmas tree. Well, the tree is not 100% done, but it is coming along nicely and I'll finish it tomorrow.

Things that drove me crazy today: 1 million and one Black Friday commercials on the TV, and constant e-mail updates about early Black Friday sales, some of which are in effect now. I'm sorry, but I think Black Friday sales should be held only on Black Friday! I'm just silly that way.

If anyone wants to order tree collards from Bountiful Gardens before they close down, they're accepting orders for the tree collards through November 30th.

Jennifer, You know how it is---birdies gotta fly, fishies gotta swim, chickies gotta dig and scratch. I just accept all that digging, scratching and dust bathing as the price we pay in order to have happy chickens. I accept it because there is no real alternative---they are going to dig and scratch no matter what I do, so I accept those things which I cannot change.

I'd love to have a garden that was free of both bermuda grass and squash bugs, but doubt it ever will happen. Sometimes, about 1 year out of 5, I get a year with no squash bugs. I suspect it happens following a very cold winter where the ones that overwinter actually get killed off, but that's just a guess.

Rebecca, Some of the nurseries in Texas have seed racks year-round, so I can pop into one of those if I need seeds in the off-season. However, since more and more big box stores and feed stores are carrying seeds on the sales floor for longer and longer periods, I usually can find what I want in one of those place no matter the time of the year. I have witnessed a big change in how much/how early the stores carry related to gardening and think that one of these days they will keep the seed racks and other supplies on the shelf year-round.

I am so very sorry to hear about your cousin. What an incredible tragedy. Please accept my deepest condolences. I lost a cousin to cancer one year on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Needless to say, Thanksgiving sort of fizzled out for us that year. I don't even remember Thanksgiving, though I'm sure we did the traditional meal. We buried her the day after Thanksgiving, and you know, in a circumstance like that, her loss is forever entwined with Thanksgiving in my mind. I expect the same will be true for your family.

I've been sitting here watching The Voice and the last performer (Janice Freeman,) sang a song that just made me cry (she sang Brandi Carlile's "The Story"). Such a powerful performance. Ever see someone sing a song and you know instantly you'll never forget that person or that song? That's how this performance made me feel. It was awesome.

A strong cold front comes through tomorrow, so we get colder again. Today warmed up nicely, but both the relative humidity and dewpoint were so low that the dry air hurt my skin. Usually that doesn't happen until our relative humidity drops down to 18% and it stayed a bit higher than that today, but I think the low dewpoint made it feel worse.

Black Friday "Week" probably will one of these days become Black Friday month. Glad we don't watch network TV any more. Down side is that we tend to binge-watch stuff. And if it's good stuff, I get annoyed for having to watch just one more.

You know, a close one's death is always so painful, but I've found that it also makes us mindful of how grateful we are to have had them. Love to you, Rebecca.

One of my friends posted her planned vegetarian menu for Thanksgiving, and it made me almost drool, HJ.

I was filling in seed germination information most of this evening on my spreadsheet. I almost made myself nuts last year as a relative stranger to the procedure except the few plants that I knew. This year, after only one year. I'm pretty cavalier about many of them. But I ordered a slew of flower seeds that are more of a challenge. So I've been studying tonight and studying and deciding which can be winter sown easily, which to direct sow, which to cart sow, and several I'm uncertain about (mostly some of the more persnickety annuals, oddly enough.) It's fascinating to me, a although I am a bit of a geek about it all, still believe, at best it's an educated crap shoot. Weather, water, sown the wrong way, not waiting long enough,bad seeds, and on and on and on. I can at least improve my chances by sowing the right way and waiting, reading up on how deep to plant them and so on. It's actually fun to learn, right? At least, thankfully, the vegetables I'm most interested in planting, are fairly straight forward. On many of the flowers, I've filled in the information, and then put at the end of the descriptions, "Good luck." :) ExCUSE me?? Up to 60 days to germinate? Well, at least the experts warned me.

Our daughter and hubbie's visit today was perfect. Remember I was in a quandary about what to fix? Well, I forgot she was the one who ALWAYS asked specifically for chili, but that's what I decided on for today. Whew! Dodged a bullet there. I had told Garry first thing this morning that I had to clean the litter boxes and make the chili--what was his plan? (We always start the day off with discussing what our plans are.) He said he was at a loss, and he kinda was feeling guilty. So I said, "Hey! You make good chili, you can have that job, if you want." So he was actually grateful for that; but then I had to find some other things to do, so I vacuumed the dining room rug and mopped the kitchen floor (which badly needed it). Well so then when I began to do the dump cake, I dropped the cake pan and was making a clatter, so he noted that and asked, "Is there anything I can do to help?" All of a sudden, I began laughing to myself, and even though I ALWAYS say no, I said, "YES! I'm doing a really hard dessert recipe--I DO need help." So he jumped up and came over, and it was the funniest and most fun thing! He was flabbergasted at the ridiculously easy assignment. Then, a little while later, I decided to make a cheese ball (which he loves), and so called out to him and said, "Hey Sweetie, I got another tough assignment for ya." So he came back and I advised and instructed him on that. He was so amazed at the ease of it. And then I told him that now I could tell the kids that he made all the food they were having today--and it was the truth. It was really a fun fun time with him. And them! They're on their way to San Francisco for God knows how long. He's a lineman, and works for a company that may send them anywhere, if they're willing to travel; he does, so makes really good money--and she happens to love to travel. He's a great guy and very good at his job. I'm sad they'll be so far away, but so excited about their new adventure. Linemen, like firefighters, are unsung heroes, and first responders. (I happened to retire as a legal assistant in a utility corporation.) Those guys are heroes.

So glad you had a nice visit, Nancy. And had the perfect menu for your daughter and son-in-law. :)

Rebecca, so very sorry about your cousin. How tragic.

Yes, chickies gonna scratch and dig...and scratch some more. One (or more) must have visited the front porch at one point yesterday. I came in from the store and noticed my pretty coral flowers in a pot were gone. Completely and totally missing. We have a plan for keeping them--the chickens-- somewhat contained on the southwest side of the property--still "free ranging", but not really. I am a little tired of spraying chicken poo off the back porch. It's a big plan that involves fencing so it won't happen anytime soon. It's in line with no less than 72 other projects.

Still not thinking too much about the 2018 garden yet. I did have a thought yesterday to clean off the light shelf and start some herbs. My indoor lavender died and really all I have indoors is rosemary and spearmint. I would like to have parsley, thyme...and sage too. Does sage grow well indoors? Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme....now that song is in my head.

Nancy, I had about 25 tomato plants this year and it was a perfect amount. For me. I'll probably shoot for about the same amount. I have SunGold and EG on my list, but want to try a different large slicer type of tomato and a purple one. Not sure if I'll try heirlooms this coming year...maybe next. Is their a purple hybrid that does well in Oklahoma?

I'm at work and feeling a little lazy. Need to clean this office up.

I guess I didn't post yesterday? Hmmm. Took daughter dress shopping yesterday. We always buy her a Christmas dress, and she needs it for the company party. Didn't find anything.

Rebecca, I am so very sorry to hear about your cousin. My condolences.

I was raised by northerners, I've never cooked green beans that long. Do you put them in a crock pot?

Jen, how do you clean your luffas? I grew them 30+ years ago, and my memory was they were messy and sticky. You know some people pour homemade soap over them to make bars with luffa in them?

Personally, y'all can eat the turkey and leave me the northern stuffing. DH makes excellent stuffing, not in the bird though. He boils all those innards in the package inside the bird to make broth and adds that to a casserole dish of stuffing. And he uses french or Italian bread so it stands up better than wonder bread. I will miss it this year.

Oh, H/J, thanks for the reminder, I need to put more mulch on the garlic before tonight.

Dawn, I want to say I heard the Okmulgee fire started from a controlled burn. It was sooo windy, why don't they consider that??? I know Tulsa county was in the red flag warning. I can't remember how far south it went.

I have no childhood memories of burning leaves. I grew up in a neighborhood of elm trees anyway, not as much leaf volume. Probably didn't allow burning in the city limits. If I was younger I would steal the neighbors leaves. In this neighborhood, if they bag them up they probably use stuff on their lawns I don't want. Most around here ignore them.

Nancy, it makes me smile that you and Garry have so much fun together.

I went looking for the seed racks when I first started this gardening venture. I think ours were gone by the 4th of july. I was told they pull them and refund the companies for unsold seeds. The nurseries run the older seeds at half price. I have to wonder how much profit they make if they have unsold seeds at the end of the season. Maybe they use them to start seedlings in spring?

I thought about a tree collard, but I decided I probably couldn't keep it alive through the winter. It is interesting. I also wasn't sure it would grow well here.

I hate Black Friday, it is another one of those things that adds to my stress this time of year. DH used to try to get me to go. His mom always went. The only place I liked to go was Frankoma Pottery would have a seconds sale the weekend after Christmas. I told my dad last night I don't like this time of year and he was shocked.

So Nancy, I want to see that spreadsheet again! Lol! On those really picky things, I suggest you do it all 3 ways and see what works best.

I'm trying to figure out where to plant tomatoes this year. I was not impressed with dwarf tomatoes in pots. I had plenty of tomatoes this year, though, with 3 beds dedicated to them. I probably could cut back on the number in the ground. I don't feel like I have to try them all any more. But then the time comes and I'm like Dawn likes that one, and oh what about this one, and DH decides to bring some home...

While it's been cooler, if we hit the predicted low of 26 tonight, I expect it will kill the flowers, maybe the herbs, and I'm worried about collards and kale. I don't think the nights have been cool enough. Why couldn't it wait till next week. DH's vacation begins then, and he could help cover things. Can't trust the stupid dog. She's been pulling the herb pots out of the kiddie pool, so she can chew on the pot and play in the dirt. Get this, she PULLED the kiddie pool closer to the patio. I mean maybe 10 feet. It has about 10 2 gal pots in it. What a brat. AND a hen got out when I went through the gate. I had to hit the dog to get her to let go. I thought that chicken was a goner, but she seems to be okay. 3 of them are molting. Speckles looks plucked.

Nancy, What a perfect day with Garry helping so much in the kitchen. I love dump cakes---they are so simple.

I agree linemen are unsung heroes. They get up and go out in all kinds of weather to get the power back on, and will travel to other parts of the country when disaster strikes. I think it is cool they'll get to live near San Fran for a while. That's such a pretty part of California.

jennifer, I have a plan to fence in a free-ranging area for the chickens too, and it also involves too much fencing and too little time and too many other projects ahead of it on the To Do list. They have really irritated me this year (and in general, but especially this year) by pooping on the porch. You know, they can roam all over and poop where they roam, but instead they come stand on the porch and do it there. I get tired of hosing it off. I'd like to fence in a large area for them that would keep them contained but also be big enough that they feel like they still are roaming. Maybe it will get done in 2018...or 2019. Hopefully in 2018.

I've never tried to grow sage indoors because mine in the garden stays green all winter, or mostly all winter, so it hasn't been necessary. I would think it would do just as well as the other herbs do indoors.

Purple tomatoes are tricky. Their are no hybrid ones I know of, either with or without superior disease tolerance. For me, Pruden's Purple is pretty disease tolerant but it is not a hybrid. Purple Calabash is another heirloom with better-than-average disease tolerance. Finally, Eva Purple Ball seems to have really good disease tolerance, but really produces a fruit that is more pinkish than purple.

Y'all, despite the lack of rain, I have things sprouting. I checked the bluebonnet area on my way down to the mailbox, and sure enough, found several small, recently-sprouted bluebonnet plants. This typically occurs in November, so I wasn't surprised. They are very low to the ground and 1-1.5" in diameter. Also 'sprouting'? Baby grasshoppers. We've had grasshoppers hatch in January or February of a warm winter, but I don't think we generally have fresh hatches in November. They'd better not eat my bluebonnet plants, or I'll be an unhappy camper. We've had quite a lot of freezing and near-freezing weather, but apparently the ground is not so cold yet that the grasshopper eggs won't hatch. The dog yard also has hatched a lot of winter rye grass. Yay! I assume their frequent fertilizing of the area has made some dormant rye grass seeds germinate and grow. It isn't much, but every little bit of green is welcome, especially when we are this dry.

I'm glad you commented on the tomatoes, HJ, and then Dawn's follow-up comment. I kind of went overboard on the purples, so maybe I'll just try two of those varieties, cuz I know now I have to grow Heidi, Early Girl, Mortgage Lifter, Sun Golds. BHN 1021. Any of you have any comments on your favorite purples? (I have four of them) And I believe I have a great list of peppers and tomatoes to grow next year after carefully reading what all of you have had to say!

Peppers are going to be a problem, though. Especially if I need to keep a couple far away from the rest or each other. Okay, got it. One in large pot on deck, 1-2 jalapenos in shop bed, sweet/bell peppers in raised beds.

See, Rebecca? I tend to overthink everything! I laughed out loud reading your initial comment about my overthinking. If you get to know me, you'll find that if it's something I care about, over-thinking is part of it!! Now that doesn't mean I execute precisely, mind you, or even close to precisely. LOL I just recently made a price-comparison spreadsheet with Reasor's, Aldi, and Walmart. That's so I'll know if I can get Walmart-priced food as cheaply at Reasor's, and which Aldi items are the "must-buys."

I love that brother David's wife loves that I am so much like him. I take it as a great compliment. He had detailed lists of his music and cataloged CDs, all of which he'd transferred from his albums and playlists. She gave me one of the CD boxes--there are 100 CDs per file box, and there were over 2 dozen file boxes. I knew he had done it since I talked with him so often. And likewise, I began a collection of classical music--I also (before he began making his lists) created a spreadsheet catalog of my classical music, the composer, symphony and ratings each one got, and which was preferred. Part of it was the delight of gathering the most outstanding performances, part to assure I didn't buy the same one three times. David, funny David. Oh what a wonderful character and man he was. Enchanting. His particular gardening passion was succulents and cacti--and he also knew a great deal about trees. But if he wanted to grow a particular flower, he'd call me to discuss. I'd like to write a book about him. One year he spent the entire year making hand-crafted Japanese kites! He was an outstanding drummer and music lover, and became a bagpipe player (usually takes 4-7 years to become one--took him 4-5). THEN he proceeded to research our family history to get the proper clan plaid (our heritage is English/Scot.) THEN he decided he'd knit his own cable-knit stockings for the outfit. One of the most interesting folks I've ever known. And we HATED each other as kids. He thought I was beneath contempt, and I thought he was mean. (He was!) I actually think I've figured all that childhood stuff out. Wasn't his fault. I miss him every day, but what a gift he was to me.

I don't pay attention to much stuff, but like I said, if it's something I care about, whole different story. And with quilting and painting, I DO get down to the nitty gritty perfect technique stuff (but there are always ways to cheat the technique), even while letting the mind go free to create. I'm a mess at red tape and files (my strengths at my job most certainly weren't filing and filling out forms) and weaving a way through the mazes of what are, to me, are idiocies.

Mostly, although I am a very hard worker, I am lazy. I don't want to take longer to do anything than necessary, so always am looking for an easier way. With cooking, I always take the long way, but try to do it in the easiest way possible--which is why we always have leftovers to freeze, for those days when I don't have much time to cook, or because I love a certain dish SO much.

Well, obviously, THAT was all about me and my meanderings! Your fault, Rebecca. I am beyond excited at lasagna coming up on Saturday. Gonna be absolutely the best ever coming up--and the chicken/tortilla chip thing for the grandkids, and the 10-layered salad (for Garry) and 2-3 different kinds of cheese balls and shrimp scampi dip and cold shrimp dip. That'll fill 'em up. The menu is tailored for these particular folks. And my heart will be hurting and missing my family in Minneapolis. And since we don't do sweets, the peach crisp is a nod to dessert. (We were dismayed yesterday that the kids over-ate on chili and cheese ball, so didn't have room for dessert--we'll be throwing the entire dump cake out tomorrow, I am sure. I didn't eat any, Garry ate a bit, Carrie ate a tiny bit. Now SEE why we don't do dessert?!!!)

Roast leg of lamb and asparagus and Yukon gold baked potatoes, a nice little ingredient-filled tossed salad for Thurs.

I adore food!

Also, Rebecca--I am so happy you pointed out the Capetown daisies. I am fantasizing about that bed now. Capetown daisies are going to be the filler in the raised truckport flower bed, alternating with blue globe thistles--Heliopsis alternating with tithonia as the "thrillers," and lovely sweet potato vines all down the way as spillers. See, Dawn? I pay attention. I'm anxious to try the zillions of flower seeds I ordered this year, and veggies and herbs. And if a certain one doesn't work out, can give it away in a swap next year! Win win!

Amy--I'd love to set up another get together when you have time. . . or Eileen or Rebecca or George or Dorothy, anyone who lives "nearby." And if any of the rest of you find you're coming to the Tulsa area, stop by! It's only 45 further minutes! LOL. I so miss visiting-in-person with gardening people. . . but it is what it is.

Disease tolerance in tomatoes is really, really misunderstood. The few diseases for which some tomatoes have tolerance bred into them are verticillium wilt, fusarium wilt (there's three races of fusarium, so tolerance varies), nematodes (a microscopic pest, not a disease), and a couple of others. The types of serious tomato diseases that tend to bother us here are those fungal diseases that can spread through the air, water and/or soil and very, very few varieties have (or ever will have, I believe) tolerance of those diseases. I really don't care which hybrid tomatoes are tolerant of VFFFNT, for example, because those diseases aren't even a problem in my garden. So, that disease tolerance doesn't even matter to me and I consider it largely irrelevant, and the few (mostly from Dr. Randy Gardner's breeding program at NCSU) that have been bred to have some tolerance of Early Blight? They still get it, but the difference is that they can resist it for a few weeks, and I mean just a very few weeks---maybe long enough for a few fruit to ripen, but generally not enough to outlast the disease the whole season. So, don't destroy your sanity chasing after varieties that you believe have some mysteriously wonderful disease resistance or tolerance because they are the Holy Grail that generally do not exist. There's a few exceptions. Celebrity is one. It has strong tolerance to many diseases and even seems to tolerate Early Blight up to some point, but then the fruit (to me and my tastebuds) is the equivalent of commercial, grocery store tomatoes in terms of flavor and texture, so why grow it and eat it? Instead, choose the varieties that set fruit well in our heat and that have flavor you like and use disease management techniques to keep them alive as long as possible.

I have more to say but dogs that need to go out, so I'll hit submit and write more later.

I got an unmarked tomato at the swap this year (or it was marked & I lost the tag) that turned out to be a purple variety. I picked a fist sized tomato this weekend, and that's after several below freezing nights. I saved some seed from it, if it's that resilient then I'd love to grow it again.

It is a common misconception that heirloom or open-pollinated varieties lack disease resistance. This is not true at all. Plenty of them tolerate the common diseases that tend to plague tomato growers in our climate. The reason this misconception exists is that no one owns exclusive rights to distribute these open-source tomatoes, so no one ever has been or ever will be willing to spend the money to test them for proven disease tolerance. Why would they? Who would invest the time and money in testing open source varieties if they cannot profit from that investment of time of money? Nobody, because it isn't an investment that gives them a monetary return. So, those of us who grow the open source varieties rely on our own experiences to tell us which of the open-pollinated varieties perform best for us with the diseases common in our own individual locations. That's the issue---all of us face different disease pressure depending on many variables---and it is different from one year to the next. When you are starting your seeds in winter, you have no idea if Spring and Summer will bring wet, humid weather with plentiful bacterial and fungal diseases or not. So, even when you carefully choose varieties, it is a crapshoot anyway because the weather they will face is an unknown variable. I've grown oodles of open-pollinated varieties whose disease tolerance is just as good as, or even better than, that of highly-touted hybrids. The issue is that it will vary from one year to the next. For the main disease that plagues my garden, which is Early Blight, there's only a handful of hybrids said to be disease tolerance to EB and most of them have not proven that tolerant to it in my garden in a bad EB year. You get maybe 1 to 3 weeks more of growing time with the EB-tolerant tomato varieties, and the trade-off, in my mind, is that they have the flavor and texture of commercial tomatoes---so I don't bother growing them. If I wanted commercial flavor and texture, I could save myself the aggravation and buy tomatoes at the grocery store.

The ideal growing conditions for tomatoes? Growing them dryland style in a very dry (almost desert-like) climate with little rainfall during the growing season and with perpetually low humidity. This is why commercial growers love California where they grow tomatoes in exactly those conditions, using copious amounts of water delivered via irrigation systems that put the water in the soil, not on the plants. Say what you will about Oklahoma, but low humidity is not common during our growing season unless we are in advanced stages of drought. That's why you don't see huge, commercial tomato farms here. So, we just do the best we can with what we've got and we know we have to work on disease prevention and disease management in the years we have rainfall and higher humidity. The one thing I do like about advanced drought is that as long as I can deliver enough water to the plant roots, the tomato plants will stay pretty healthy and will keep producing. Even in 2011, when we were in the worst drought seen in our lifetimes (unless you've lived long enough to experience the drought of, maybe, 1936?), my tomato plants produced fruit despite us having around 100 days of temperatures over 100 degrees (and as high as 116 in my garden), very little rainfall (by early August, we'd received about 12" for the whole year) and we had tons of pests but blessedly little disease. The plants were not very productive in that heat, but we were harvesting tomatoes even in August (and broccoli survived the whole summer too) and they had great flavor because you couldn't water them enough, even if you tried, to ruin the flavor. The plants that produced well that summer are on my bulletproof variety list, even if some of them are not my favorites for flavor.

For me, flavor matters most, so I grow what we like. Everyone has different taste buds, so the ones we like may not be the ones you like. They all, as grown in my garden, have more or less the same tolerance, or lack of such, to common OK issues like Early Blight, Bacterial Speck and Bacterial Spot, so those are minor issues when it comes to variety selection. (They are major issues when it comes to choosing your disease management techniques, which includes plant spacing.) For me, in our clay, nematodes are not an issue. For folks in OK growing in sandy soil, especially sugar sand, nematodes are a huge issue and nematode tolerance has to be the first criteria for choosing varieties. Friends of mine here, as close as 1 mile from our house, have given up growing tomatoes in their sugar sand because they cannot win the nematode battle.

The dark colored fruits, whether we are talking about varieties labeled as black, purple or brown, all have their own unique flavor, with a few having a flavor that is more unique than others. They pretty much all have the same disease tolerance. So, while Cherokee Purple and the very similar Indian Stripe have almost identical flavor, I find Indian Stripe produces slightly more (but slightly smaller) fruit per plant but have similar tolerance/lack of such to the common diseases as CP has. All things being equal, I'll choose Indian Stripe over CP, but some years I grow CP anyway, largely because it is a sentimental favorite since it is the first purple variety I ever grew and I've never forgotten what my very first taste of the flavor of a CP grown in a good, dry year tasted like. It tasted like nothing else I'd ever had! You don't forget a moment like that. The average non-gardener looking at my garden cannot even tell that CP and IS are different varieties because some years the striping on IS is so faint (and it fades away as fruit mature) but I know the difference. The flavor of both is superb though. Pruden's Purple produces larger fruit and has, in my garden, better tolerance of Early Blight. I'm not saying it doesn't get EB if the other plants get it, just that it outlasts it a bit longer. I like virtually all black and purple varieties, and most taste about the same, have about the same disease tolerance (or not) and produce about the same in the heat. Some people love Pale Perfect Purple, but it tastes like a typical pink tomato to my taste buds. All the above actually makes variety selection easy because it means it doesn't really matter which ones you choose. Ha! How is that for honesty? Give the average person a plate with one slice from each of your favorite purple varieties and they may like them all, but they probably cannot pick one favorite because the flavor difference between the varieties is so slight.

In the endless search for the varieties that would produce best for us, tolerate diseases and provide large harvests of tasty fruit, I've grown at least 1000 varieties over the last 25 or 30 years. Guess what? They are more alike than different. Yes, they are. Most have little tolerance of Early Blight, for example, and most stop setting fruit in our worst heat. So, my choices of varieties are based on flavor first, productivity second, and diseases third. If rain is falling, and if you grow a lot of tomatoes in the ground in a backyard garden when proper 4-year rotation of plants is difficult to achieve, if not impossible, the disease pressure hits most varieties the same. The only tomato variety I've ever grown that absolutely, positively manages to get disease and die pretty much before it can produce a single ripe fruit, year after year, is Paul Robeson. I have tried and tried and tried. In wet years, in dry years, in the ground, in containers, in the spring and in the fall. In my garden Paul Robeson = early death. I'm done with it. I have tried so many times trying to capture the so-called legendary flavor of this variety. What I've learned is it has typical black tomato flavor, and isn't nearly as good as some other black tomatoes. I believe it earned its legendary status when it was the only/first black tomato someone grew...so they raved about it. If the first black variety they had grown would have been Black Krim or Carbon or Black Brandywine, that would be the legendary flavor they rave about. Paul Robeson is only legendary in my garden for managing to die 8 years out of 10 before it produces a ripe fruit. This past year I got a couple dozen of half-ripe fruit that ripened inside after the plants died, and they were not anything special. I gave it the old college try, though, and didn't give up on it until I could determine the flavor was not all that. After growing is sporadically for about two decades, I can tell anyone who asks that it does not grow well here and its flavor is not that special---every other black tomato variety available has just about the same flavor.

Now, I have chickens to feed and water---I've put off going out into the 30-something degree air for as long as I reasonably can.

Thanks for that, Dawn. Fascinating and good stuff! After realizing the ones I have to grow, will still stick with just two of the purple varieties (maybe) just to keep the number of them down--the ones I have are Cherokee Carbon, Carbon, Cherokee Purple and Black Krim. I loved sampling the ones you brought last year, Amy--I wanted to get Arkansas Traveler, too, but didn't end up ordering it. When reading all y'all's comments about sites that produce great seeds, I got as many as possible from Johnny's, SESE, and Victory, just because they were the first of the sites you all mentioned that happened to have what I was looking for.

Interesting, Dawn. Thanks for all the info.

In my limited experience, the heirlooms seem to be a favorite of insects and don't produce as many fruits, although the fruit is much tastier. I would like to study my plants and try many varieties, but I have to keep it real. Until Ethan is out of high school, my time is limited (not a complaint because it's my choice as I've chosen to be involved), so I'm looking for plants that grow better-tasting-than-store-bought fruit. And ones that give me the least hassle. Which is why I like Early Girl and SunGold. Early Girl is far from the tastiest, but it makes decent salsa. And it's not horrible. I just sliced one and ate it on my Ezekiel Bread a few minutes ago. Yum. I still have a couple of dozen green ones that are slowly becoming red.

Amy, I forgot to mulch my garlic. WHY?!

Today's agenda is making spice cupcakes and seeing a movie--Thor finally.

And a little complaint. Why does my husband store away the water hoses when we are going to have a freeze? I just asked him to disconnect them. I'm going to need them obviously before spring, so why put them away? Then I have to go find them and drag them out. At least leave one.

A lot of folks have that hose thing going on HJ! The one to our back yard is SO heavy, And such a pain to roll back up on the hose holder! I told Garry very specifically (after I was the one who rolled it up about 3 weeks ago) that I had to water now as long as it's so dry, so I AM JUST GOING TO LEAVE IT UNROLLED. (So he doesn't get all ambitious and roll it up. . .)

Well, there is finally carnage in the yard. Last night's nip got all but the toughest,. Fun to see who the toughest are. Surprised to see nicotiana are among them, Guess I'll be doing plant clean-up today. It's pretty cool, maybe it will warm up a little by this afternoon.

My thermometer says we went down to 26 last night. That is up close to the house, so it could have been colder in the garden. Kale and collards did ok covered. The herbs WERE covered at 4 pm. Sometime after that SOMEONE (4 legged someone) pulled the sheet off. Mutter, mutter. What I have left there actually looks ok. (Sage, parsley, tarragon (which shouldn't have survived, chives, a poor yarrow that needs a permanent home.)

I had to cut down some tomato plants to cover the bed yesterday. Arkansas traveler and Gary 'O Sena both were still alive and green at root level. There may have been a ripe tomato on GOS. It fell and will probably make little GOSs next year. My note from the end of May said NO BLIGHT for GOS. It was a VERY vigorous plant. There already were volunteers coming up in that bed. In my short experience, my bulletproof varieties have been Indian Stripe, Arkansas Traveler, and Large Red Cherry. They also have 3 different flavors. Heidi was a win this year. GOS will go in the ground next year, as will Cherokee Carbon. I love Grandma Susie's Beefsteak as well, but that has to go in early so you get ripe tomatoes before heat. Cherokee Chocolate will get a chance in the ground next year, it was used and abused this year and made good tasting fruit. We'll see about production next year. I am disappointed in dwarf varieties, but, of course, I'm disappointed in any tomato grown in a pot. I will likely always grow Early Girl and Jet Star hybrids because they are early and consistently good producers. They go fine in sauce when the dark tomatoes are being sliced. And my dad won't eat dark tomatoes, so ....

Nancy, Monday DH goes on vacation till the first of the year. We'll work something out.

If you're not saving seeds from your peppers, you don't have to separate them. Cross pollination does not affect the current season's fruit.

Nancy, I don't understand your comment about keeping some peppers away from the others? Why? They do not cross-pollinate and cause issues in the current year (this is biologically impossible, despite various claims on the internet that it happens). If you think separation is necessary in order to save seeds, that is a separate issue---and one very easily overcome by bagging blossoms before they open and then saving only seeds from fruit produced by bagged blossoms. I grow all my peppers in rows in the same bed or beds and have no issues, and I've done that forever, dating back to gardening with my dad in the 1960s and 1970s when I was still a child.

David sounds like such a well-rounded person who had so many different interests, and could master them all if he chose to apply himself to them. That's special. Y'all must miss him terribly. I think the fact that you are so much like him is not that surprising considering y'all were siblings. In our family, it is totally the opposite---none of us are alike in any way, including appearance, but then we all 4 are adopted and had different biological parents, so there's no common DNA to link us together in that way.

Funny story. You know how we all know that we are aging, only deep in our hearts maybe we think everyone else (like our siblings, for example) is aging and we ourselves really are not aging as quickly? Or maybe we think we hide it better? We were driving down to my mom's house one day a couple of years ago and we came in from a direction that allows us to see her house from the NE while looking across a large city park. As we were driving beside the park and could see Mom's house in the distance, I saw someone I thought was a stranger in my mom's backyard. I told Tim 'Look at that old man in Mom's backyard. I wonder who he is and why he's there? I hope it isn't a prowler." Then, as we got closer, I said "Never mind, it's my brother. When did he start going bald and developing a big belly?" (Not actually that big, but he has ulcerative colitis so always has been more on the lean side due to all the dietary restrictions needed to manage UC.) We were laughing, but rather ruefully, because he's only three years older than us, so if he looked to us like an old man, then I know we look equally old to other people too. (I never told him I thought he looked like an old man either, so don't y'all rat me out!) I did tell my sister later that same day and she thought it was hysterically funny. I think you see someone differently when you think they are a stranger versus when you're looking at a beloved sibling. In person, face to face, he doesn't seem that old to me. Old is relative too. As we reach our late 50s and early 60s we certainly are growing older...every single year...but then, if we are lucky, we still have at least a couple of decades left and I think that growing older is more a state of mind than anything else. I'm grateful we 4 kids have lived long enough that our mom hasn't had to deal with the grief of having one of her children precede her in death, which is something we saw our grandmother go through.

Amy, I heard that too, but it was when the fire was still burning, and you always hear multiple wild theories at a time like that, especially if people are stressed. Sometimes they prove to be true and sometimes not. Would it surprise me if it started as a controlled burn? No, it would not. Most fires, certainly more than half of the ones that we fight, were started by human activity, and generally on purpose. Whether it is a brush or trash fire that escapes control, or a spark from a welding torch (like what happened with the huge fire in Woods County on the same day) or whatever. there would be many less grass fires and wild fires at this time of the year if people were more careful. There are innocent causes---we get a lot started by a squirrel on power poles or by arcing power lines in high wind too. The squirrels always leave evidence in the form of a charred, black squirrel body in the midst of the burned area.

Honey is a brat. Oh Lord, that girl is trying your patience. Puppies are so destructive, and sometimes it takes them years to outgrow the destructive age. Then, before you know it, they are calm and settled down and don't create any trouble. And, before you know it again, that tiny bit of gray that began appearing on their muzzles has spread and they are more white and gray than whatever their original color was and you realize they are nearing the end of their lives....and, then, you miss the puppy days because they are so long ago and far away. Jet was once a hyper-destructive demon and now he spends most of his days sleeping on the sofa (a sofa he never was allowed to climb upon until he was well past his chewing/destroying stage). I wish the perfect middle years of a dog's life could last longer before the old dog years set in. Ace and Princess are only three, I think, but have graduated from chewing up/gnawing everything in sight (the recliner, the coffee table, Tim's rolling desk chair which, once upon a time (until dogs chewed the wires) had a built-in back massage feature) to only chewing up the blankets I use to cover the couch and recliner in Tim's office to protect them from the dogs. A new blanket is cheaper to replace than new furniture, so I think we are making progress. I don't know that it is enough progress to replace the previously chewed furniture, but we certainly are getting closer to the time when the furniture in the office will be replaced. I am afraid that if we buy new furniture now, they'll chew it up one day when we are gone to a fire and they are lonely/bored---which is what happened when they were puppies. They never chew on things in our presence--only in our absence and then they look up at you with innocent little dog faces that proclaim "No, I don't know how that happened. It certainly wasn't me." Of course it was them!

I hate everything about modern retail. For the life of me, I cannot understand why stores start putting bathing suits on the racks in December (they used to wait until at least January) and coats hit the stores in July or August. I don't want to buy anything (except, lol, plants and seeds) months in advance of the proper time for them. If you want the best "new this season" Christmas decorations, you need to buy them when they arrive at Hobby Lobby (or wherever) in August because by November when you actually are contemplating decorating the Christmas tree, the good stuff is all gone and the leftover stuff you don't want for your tree or house is on clearance. I personally don't want to buy Christmas decorations in the summer, nor bathing suits in the dead of winter. Every year I avoid the brick-and-mortar stores more and more, not just during the holiday season, but year-round. Even when we go places that I like, like Sam's Club or CostCo, we tend to quickly make a circuit only of the rows that have items we need and we get in/out of the store as quickly as possible. I don't go up and down all those rows very often searching for whatever is new or interesting. If you hit Sam's Club or CostCo when they first open and you have a clear list of exactly what you need, you can be in and out of the store before it gets busy. I like that. Sometimes I laugh at myself--because when we leave the house, I have a list of 8 or 10 stores I want to go to and a specific reason for going to each one. Then, after we've gone to Sam's or CostCo, the feed store and maybe Wal-mart for odds and ends the big warehouse stores don't carry, I'm over it and fold up my list and declare I'm done. It is getting to where the other stores don't have enough to entice me to step foot in them. I've done that for months now and have decided that those other stores may never see me step foot in them ever again.

Jen, What drives me crazy is that resilience like that seems inconsistent within a given variety. I've found very few tomatoes that are truly resilient in virtually every year. Among those few? Early Girl (late for me, but then it produces all year long, including in August when few others do), Heidi (I think it would produce on Mars, Juliet (I don't grow it often as it produces 400 million small tomatoes which means you stand out in the sun for hours per day harvesting all of them), Fantastic/Super Fantastic (SF is an improved version of F), and Pruden's Purple (can even die to the ground after a particularly bad bout of Early Blight and then miraculously comes back to life, regrows, and produces again until it freezes). A variety that bounces back after trouble in a wet year or after an early freeze may not bounce back well at all in extreme drought conditions. So, my once much-longer list of resilient varieties has gotten progressively smaller over decades of growing.

Nancy, Every BHN variety I've ever grown, even those that have lasted long enough/become well-liked enough to eventually get a real name that is not BHN followed by numbers, has had the hardness/texture/tough skin of commercial varieties. Their flavor also is highly variable. So, far me, they are a waste of time and space unless a person just likes to look at determinate plants covered with big rock-hard fruit that will taste like they came from Wal-Mart. In the years that I am foolish enough to grow a BHN variety, my taste buds don't like it, so the fruit either end up in salsa or I give them away to people who, unlike me, do not have taste buds spoiled by open-pollinated, heirloom types and who might, then, find the flavor, texture and tough skin of BHN types to be acceptable. If I was a commercial grower who was growing tomatoes to sell, I'd probably love the BHNs, but I'd sell all that fruit and would eat only the heirloom types I grew for my family. I cannot even tell you how many BHN varieties I've tried and not liked enough to ever grow them again. I dislike them enough to throw the remaining seeds of that variety in the trash because I cannot, in good conscience, give them to anyone who I like---it just would be wrong, wrong, wrong. Your mileage may vary.

Jennifer, I haven't noticed that heirlooms are more attractive to pests than hybrids, but then I barely grow any hybrids at all so it probably would be impossible for me to fairly compare the two types due to the lack of hybrids. It makes sense though. If my taste buds find the flavor of OPs and heirlooms superior, why wouldn't pest taste buds (if they have them) also found their flavor superior?

Early Girl has great flavor, as do many of the early hybrids developed back when they crossed 2 or 4 parents and created new hybrids the old-fashioned way. Now that the hybridization techniques are much fancier and they breed for specific named genes that confer different qualities they seek, it seems like flavor isn't even considered by the major breeders any more (though they claim it is). Of the hybrids that I like, they all are the much older hybrids, not the more modern ones.

I have no answers for why husbands do the things they do, but I feel your pain. Our weather varies enough here that we always keep hoses out in the winter---in our specific fire-prone grassland location, we always leave the hoses out because you never know when you will need a hose to put out an approaching grass fire while you're waiting for the fire trucks to either put out the fire near you or to arrive at your house or your neighbor's house to stop the fire before it advances any closer to you. We usually have out as much as 300' of water hose in the winter, though of course, they are not hooked up to the faucet if the weather is going to be near freezing. When there is a fire within a half mile of us, I usually don't leave the house if it is a windy day. Instead I hook up the hoses, watch the smoke in the distance, and remain ready to protect our house. If our house is safe, I can leave the house to go help at the fire, if needed, but I refuse to leave our house unprotected in the face of advancing fire. I know plenty of people who have saved their own homes from encroaching wildfire by using a water hose while waiting for firefighters to arrive and take over the bigger job of completely extinguishing the fire itself. So, to me, the prospect of possible wildfire is one good reason to keep a hose out and ready to perform. We haven't had a fire within a half-mile of us, except maybe once or twice last spring, this year so I'm out of practice in dealing with those. Note: When you are at a wildfire or grassfire near your home and the fire chief (of another dept., not ours) suggests maybe you should go home and get ready to protect your own place, that's a sign that you should listen to him and just do it because he's clearly thinking that they may not be able to stop the fire from reaching your property.

Enjoy the movie. We haven't gone to a movie in many years, and I do not miss them at all. Tim will catch them sometimes on DirecTV later on, but I don't even care enough to sit and watch them. I never have been much of a movie person, so my movie-going years ended (mercifully) once Chris was old enough to go to movies with his friends without us.

Did y'all see that David Cassidy passed away (may he rest in peace)? Oh, for us children of the 1970s, it is a sad day indeed. When I think of him, I don't see him in my mind's eye as he looked (or behaved) later in life. In my mind's eye, he perpetually is Keith Partridge, singing happily with his TV family.

Dawn

A quick once around the yard and I found nothing damaged by the weather. Maybe things will wither as the day goes by. Gazania looks good, Tansy is fine and still blooming. The calendula flowers look wilted, but the plant looks ok. Verbenna, fine, Laura Bush petunias unfazed. Even the Alyssum and phlox looked alive. The onion tops may be burned a little.

H/J, garlic is pretty hardy, probably no problem. Mine has not sprouted yet. It was planted late, so I didn't want the cloves to freeze.

Yes, I hate this time of year with hoses and faucet covers. My faucet cover (which is painted with sriracha sauce to keep the dog from eating it) broke when I tried to put it on. Almost everything has a quick disconnect, which helps. I tried to drain the hoses and left them on the ground next to the house. I lost a watering wand to a freeze once. They sell metal hoses. I wonder if they would survive better than rubber. Maybe not, since they wouldn't be as flexible.

H/J, I find DH doesn't realize he is much stronger than me. He would have put those hoses away, too. I couldn't unscrew the spray nozzle on one of them, one of the few things not quick disconnect. He hates that I leave them laying in the yard and has run over them with the mower more than once. It is an ongoing disagreement. He wants a box that they wind up in. But I can't bend over to wind them up and I can just imagine the spiders that would make a home there. I've bought several super light hoses. But the water pressure at my house is too high and they blow up.

Hahaha, Dawn! I guess you don't like BHN! I laughed so hard. Still laughing. Okay then! I have plenty of others to grow instead! Thank YOU! Which reminds me. , . after all the discussion of good online seed-ordering sites here, I chuckled reading all the FB posts on folks who only order from BC.

Like you, I haven't been to a theater movie in years, not since the Minneapolis grandkids were small, about 9 years ago.

That WAS a funny story about your bro. Every once in a while, I'll look in the mirror and do a double take on that old woman looking back at me; usually I must not really be seeing when I look in the mirror.

Yep, I misread the seed packets--said IF you were going to save your seeds, keep them separate. Okay, thanks guys.

It feels weird (but good) not to be making giant food preparations today. And even Saturday's food won't be that much of a big deal. We're going to have the most fun making the cheese balls and shrimp dips. We got enough cheeses that we'll have cheese balls to send home with them, I think. There's a lot of cheese in the fridge! One daughter and her family love black olives, and one loves her green olives (as do I), so we get our very own cheese ball just for us! I love cheese balls, because you can put about whatever you want in them, within reason.

I'm a ketchup freak. I admit it. Last night we had Reubens, and when we started in on them, GDW said he was surprised I didn't get the ketchup out. I said, "Ketchup with sauerkraut?? ICK! EWW." No, even I have SOME ketchup standards. Not with sauerkraut, not with peanut butter, not with my cold roast ham, beef or pork sandwiches. But can't eat a grilled cheese without it, or hamburgers. And for steaks, gotta have my ketchup/worchestershire/butter sauce. Obviously, I don't have enough to do today. Guess I better go find something to do.

Wow, good for Ron, Amy! I bet HE enjoys the time off. :)

ROFL at ketchup. It is a pet peeve of Ron's. His mother put eggs on her ketchup and no one was allowed to do that here except her. One kid tried to put ketchup on mashed potatoes and that grossed him out. I have never heard of it with grilled cheese, but I grew up with jelly on top of grilled cheese. Of course, Minnesotans butter all bread first, even if you're putting mayo on it. My parents still do that, but I never liked it.

I was looking at a picture from my son's birthday party last year. The focus was on my daughter and her boyfriend. A couple of chairs over this strange old woman was in the edge of the picture. I was like "why is that old woman in the picture...oh, that's ME!" One time I was looking for DH at walmart and couldn't find him, just this gray haired guy with his back to me...oops.

Yes Honey's a brat. I have called her a few other names. I went and bought step on trash cans with lids to replace the trash cans we keep by our chairs. She keeps pulling tissues and wrappers out of the trash and spreading them around. I'm hoping this will slow down her "decorating" the floor. Of course, she pulls the stuffing out of toys, and brings in sticks (and parsnips) to chew up.

Don't you love puppies? Our girl has decided I'm her person, so she must snuggle up to me any time i sit down. My poodle and our younger boy are NOT happy. They're my dogs and this interloper is supposed to be daddy's puppy.

Got most of the prep work done, just have to throw it together and shove it in the oven tomorrow.

Dawn, remember my experience with heirloom (and all) tomatoes is very limited. It just seems like insects prefer the heirlooms. I could be way off. It's just what I've noticed, but there could be another explanation.

I actually enjoy the entire movie experience--popcorn, drink, etc. Once you've seen a movie at the Warren you get spoiled though. Heated, reclining seats. The theatre is pretty--art deco. However, I can't eat the popcorn along with a coke at the Warren. IF I eat popcorn, I have to go over to their diner/cafe and get an unsweet tea. Something about the chemicals in the soda and their popcorn combined makes me sick. I have 4 other movies I want to see over the next 4 weeks. We will see Star Wars on Christmas Eve as is tradition to see a movie on Christmas Eve. We saw the Lion, Witch and Wardrobe ones, then moved to the Hobbit ones and now Star Wars.

Y'all were talking about ketchup. Have you noticed that some restaurants have the best ketchup. You know I love me some fries--pototo love. Chic-fil-a and Whattaburger have the best ketchup. I haven't been to Whattaburger in a couple of years--but when my family wants Chic-fil-a, I'm always happy 'cause I can get a large waffle fry and their ketchup.

Amy, we've had a few mowing "disasters" because I leave stuff in the yard. And the hose situation is always an issue. I'm glad it's not just us.

How is Thanksgiving tomorrow? Where are my babies?

Jen, I do love puppies. This explains how we once had 8 dogs---because puppies are irresistible. We're down to only four now---one born in 2005, one born in 2007 and two born in 2014. I think your older ones will get used to the new interloper---it just takes time. It took Jet about 2 years to get used to our two newest puppies. Now he actually acts like he acknowledges their existence from time to time, which is a big improvement over him just pretending, as he did for so long, that they did not exist and did not belong here.

Amy, So much froze here when we had that early hard freeze, but if the bluebonnets are any indication, we should have Laura Bush petunias and verbena bonariensis also sprouting any time now. It happens every year. I'll have to check the garden tomorrow to see if they are popping up yet. Oh, and the sage and rosemary still are green, as well as the comfrey, so there's still a few bits of green here---more in the garden than in the yard or pastures. The crinum lilies only half froze, so the top half of the plants is brown and the lower half is green. The pineapple sage froze back (and probably died because it has no prior cold conditioning to prepare it for more than 8 hours below freezing) but the autumn sage only froze on the tips of the branches and otherwise those plants still are green. I think I have autumn sage in 4 or 5 colors of flowers now, though some colors only vary slightly from the others.

Tim does not mow over hoses but he has mowed over an extension cord many times before when we run one out to the chicken coop for a heat lamp when we have tiny chicks in the brooder. That has been an ongoing dispute between us simply forever, with me insisting he needs to roll up the cord and then mow, and him insisting he can mow right over it and not cut it because it lies close to the ground and he mows higher. Yep. Right. That's why we have an ugly orange outdoor extension cord that has been cut by the mower and repaired with black electrical tape dozens of times. So much for his cutting high when the cord lies low theory! Last year I finally insisted we buy two new outdoor extension cords and replace the old cut-up one, but I bet he has that old, pathetic taped one hidden away in the garage somewhere---hanging on to it for no good reason. I did finally hide his black electrical tape so he couldn't tape up that old cut cord and had to buy a new one. Whatever it takes to keep us safe.

I have that same reaction when I see photos of Tim and I---who are those old people? That cannot be us. (sigh) I guess I should be grateful that we have been blessed to live long enough to look old. It really hit me this year---it is our nephew hosting Thanksgiving at his house. Our nephew. Our son's contemporary. In the 1980s, our parents passed the torch to Tim and I and to my brother and his wife (we alternated hosting holidays for many years), and by the mid-2000s, it was my sister hosting stuff at her house so all the 'kids' could manage to be at our family gathering and then at their spouse's or significant other's family's gathering in the same day (still a lot of driving for them, but not like it would be if they came up here). Now, my sis has passed the torch to her son, whose house is about 20 miles closer for us. Woo hoo! Even odder to contemplate---our nephew's oldest stepdaughter turns 15 this Spring, so before we know it, he and his wife could (not saying they would) pass the torch to her in another decade or so. Wow. It seems like just yesterday we were hosting our very first Thanksgiving for my entire family, though it easily has been about 32 or 33 years since we did that. I am not sure where are the years have gone.

Nancy, Between Tim being a cop and Chris being a firefighter and with both of those professions working 24/7 year-round, we long ago got used to celebrating holidays on days other than the actual holiday. Now it feels like a shock to me if we get to actually celebrate the holiday on the proper day!

Today I was baking cookies to take for the youngest generation to enjoy tomorrow and Chris dropped by with his girlfriend's two daughters. So, I stopped baking and we had a cookie and soda party (sugar them up and send them home!), and then we went outside to take Thanksgiving photos with Augustus the Turkey (I had to assure the girls that Augustus is a pet and no one is going to eat him for Thanksgiving dinner). After that we went into the chicken coop to visit the baby chicks in the bird brooder in the chicken coop and, in the process of letting them out of the brooder and taking photos of the youngest girl holding the chicks, we had a jailbreak and the mother hen and one of the chicks escaped and ran into the woods. Hilarity ensued. You cannot catch a chicken that does not want to be caught! Who says we don't have any excitement around here? The hen and chick did return to the coop before dark.

The last two movies we saw were "The Help" and "The Blind Side", so however long ago that was. I enjoyed them, but in general, I just don't see movies coming out that I find appealing. Tim doesn't seem to see movies he wants to see either---he'd rather watch old, old sports movies from our childhood or young adult days, and he'll watch them 1,000 times. Usually, when I see a movie once, that's it and I'm done. Obviously our tastes in TV/movies are not compatible at all.

It feels odd to have everything done the night before Thanksgiving and to not be stressing because everyone is coming here. Just so odd to be so calm. I've gotten used to it though. I'd gladly host any time, but since we're the odd ones out that live a gazillion miles from everyone else and all the kids are grown up with kids of their own, it is just easier for them all if we do the driving.

I-35 has been a zoo the last couple of days with wrecks, high speed pursuits, etc. and Tim said traffic was absolutely horrendous coming out of Dallas this afternoon. He left work a couple of hours early and still got home only a tiny bit earlier than usual---it always is this way on the last work day before a holiday. Hopefully by tomorrow the highways will be calmer and quieter. I expect traffic will be heavy but hopefully it won't be crazy.

Y'all have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Dawn

Jen, who doesn't love puppies! I saw a photo tonight of basset hound puppies. Oh my gosh, too too cute! We missed the little puppy stage with Titan. He was 10 mos old when we got him. :( And my former two cats, since they were both totally feral, weren't much fun as kittens. These two hoollgans are now totally socialized to us; it has helped, I'm sure, that I do all my paperwork and computer stuff right out here in "their place." That allows them to jump up on the table to eat, as well as nap, and then trot over my computer keyboard and get in my face. Which they are doing more and more often.

Cute, Dawn, how old are the girls? They'll remember you and your place for years to come. What a delightful day it must have been for them, complete with herding chickens!

HJ, I know what you mean about enjoying the movie experience; was fun when the grandkids were little. Five of us would go and have a blast. We'd smuggle in Milk Duds, but then would get the buttered popcorn and our pop. Ahhh. When the Lord of the Rings series first began, one wasn't born yet, and granddaughter was only 2 and obviously too young to watch unless it were carefully edited, But Wade and Steph and I were HUGE fans. So for the first one, we went to it in the middle of the day. I took 3 hours of PTO; they picked me up, and we went to a theater nearby and we were the only ones in there! It was a hoot. We were draped all over the chairs. The second one--Steph was busy that week and told Wade and I we had to wait til the next week, so she could go with us. Wade and I sneaked away and went without her, but pinky swore neither of us would tell--again, in the middle of the day. The next week when we went together, she could tell from our faked reactions that we'd already seen it. So funny.

Now the reason we aren't really interested in going is that there are so few movies we're interested in seeing. And nowhere fun nearby to go even if we wanted to.

Aha. I finally got my plant spreadsheet done enough. Know what method I'm using to plant everything, have special instructions down for all that need them.

Nancy! There's a ton of movies to see right now! Thor, Justice League, Murder on the Orient Express, Daddy's Home 2, and finally Star Wars (when it finally comes out).

Ethan was too little for The Lord of the Rings, but a good age when the Hobbit series came out in 2012. Tom had some weird fascination with the Misty Mountain song and would "sing" it in each following movie at the theatre (even though he didn't know the words OR the song wasn't even in the movie), so it became a funny. That's how it is for us. We are weird.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pyy_FIYE7EE

I have hard time watching a movie at home. Too many distractions.

I had a crazy thought of going thru my seeds tonight, but that would be dumb because I have way too many other things to do.

I'm thankful enough for my family today to get up at 8am to make yeast rolls for lunch. And I'm thankful for dough hooks and electric mixers.

Dawn, I love your theory on growing tomatoes. I think we all agree that we are thankful for YOU and your help with all our gardens. And essentially, I agree with everything you said. It makes perfect sense. I also agree that your climate is very different than mine up here, and therefore, there are enough differences to warrant us experimenting on our own with varieties to find out what works for us. I am growing almost totally hybrids next year, because I don't know what this wilt stuff is that I brought in this summer, and I want something that might have a chance against it. I know the EB and fungal stuff aren't going away, but I have enough on my plate to deal just with that. I think I can manipulate soil moisture levels and fertilizer enough that I can get the best taste possible out of them. I had a Pruden's Purple last year, and it was one of the first to succumb to the wilt, so everything is relative. The heirloom that survived the longest with the wilt was Soldacki. And I know everyone says that Celebrity can survive almost anything in a garden, but it will NOT survive my garden. I've had them 3 times and they were always the first to keel over and die at the first sign of any disease. For me, Big Beef and Early Girl have been far tougher than Celebrity.

I still think I brought in the wilt on purchased tomato plants, so my goal this year is NO BIG BOX TOMATO PLANTS. I'll get them from my trusted Stringer nursery if I buy any at all.

Rebecca, the one time I grew Pruden's Purple was 2015, the year of the monsoon spring. It was in a bed with Indian Stripe. Indian Stripe was vigorous and productive. Pruden's purple was blighty and didn't produce much. I think I took it out before fall. That said, I have a theory that unless you are using the same pack of seeds as someone else you might not get the same results. I think my PP seeds were from a swap and may not have been true to type. Everyone raves about Black Krim. My seeds were from a seed rack. Mine were spitters on an unhealthy plant. I don't like to save tomato seeds, I've never mastered the bagging technique. But I think seeds should be saved from plants that thrive. I may try again this year.

I TRY not to bring things home from the box stores. I don't buy flowers from them. [There was an article on facebook about neonicotinoids affecting birds ability to navigate for migration. There are numerous articles from legitimate sources about their affect on bees and birds.] And then I go in there for something else...well this year it was the only place I could get collards and kale.

He is a cutie Kim.

H/J, my seeds are sitting on the fireplace. If we are to ever have a fire I must move them. But they need to be inventoried. But, like you say, not today.

My last experience at a movie theater may well have been my LAST. It was freezing in there. Even DH was cold. I saw "The Help" in a nice theater. I prefer to watch them at home, with my own snacks and comfortable chair. I kind of miss Blockbuster. I can never find good movies on Netflix or Hulu. Maybe I'll do some searching while DH is on vacation.

The youngest has made it home from El Paso, the oldest has to work (IT). We are going to Cracker Barrel. I will vacuum today, and they can come here after the restaurant. I'm okay with not having to wash dishes.

Nancy, The girls are 9 and 2 and they are so sweet and precious---as is their mother. I'm so glad I was doing something fun, like baking cookies, when they dropped by. You know, it wouldn't have been nearly as fun for them if I was cutting and laying tile, which is today's task, so they dropped by on exactly the right day. Children always have fun here---between the garden, the fruit trees and the pets, there's always something interesting to check out. Tim's best friend's grandson adored hunting for frogs at the pond when he was little, checking the garden for ripe watermelons, gathering eggs from the chicken coop, etc. He's about to finish college now, but those memories of him hanging out here with us when he was a wee little lad are ours forever.

Jennifer, I enjoyed movies with Chris, our nieces and nephews and all their friends when they were little, but I don't miss those days so much now. Actually, when I think back to all the craziness of getting several kids into the theater, popcorn, drinks and candy in hand, etc., I'm just happy we survived those years.

I don't know that going through your seeds would have been dumb because clearly your gardener's soul needed to do something gardening-related. I often get urges to do something like that when life is too busy with other stuff, and I think maybe it is the universe telling me to slow down and smell the roses (or paw through the seeds).

Kim, He is getting so big and just as handsome as ever! He sure has lost the toddler look and looks like such a big boy now! I hope your Thanksgiving was great.

Rebecca, I have been fighting hard to rein in my tomato obsession. There truly is no reason to grow twenty times as many as we can eat or five times more than I am willing to can, freeze or dehydrate. I think I'm certainly going to miss having 100-300 tomato plants each Spring, but that part of my life is absolutely, positively over and I'll garden in a more sane and restrained way going forward.

For me, Early Girl has better disease tolerance than just about any other variety I've ever grown, and I think its flavor is very good. I've never really liked Celebrity, and believe me, I have tried. It can tolerate disease a surprisingly long time, but I don't like the fruit---so what's the point in growing them? (I'm laughing at myself here, because some years I grow these disease-tolerant varieties even though I don't much like their texture or flavor. I need to stop doing that.) Big Beef probably is the best-flavored hybrid around, at least to my taste buds, and I grow it probably 3 out of 4 years. My dad adored Big Boy, and I like it just fine, but it does not produce very much fruit per plant in my garden. I think we just get too hot too early for it since it tends to be slow to start producing. I prefer Better Boy, though it still comes in a distant second to all the heirlooms. And, my garden did have tons of Early Blight and other diseases this year, so if I had any sense at all, I'd either skip growing tomatoes completely this year (that's never going to happen) or I'd grow them only in containers and choose only the most disease-tolerant hybrids. But, I have no sense, so I'm sure there will be plenty of OPs on the list, although I actually intend for it to be a really short list. My brain keeps screaming "Simplify, simplify, simplify!" The issue is whether my gardener's soul that still wants to grow everything will listen to my brain.

I agree with you on Big Box store tomatoes. They often bring in disease with them right from the start. If I buy any starter plants this year, and it seems likely since we all know I can not resist tomato plants that are already in bloom on the store shelves in January, I'm going to keep them in an entirely separate room from the room where I raise seedlings. Won't Tim be happy to see me taking over two separate rooms with tomato plants? That way, if the big box store plants are carrying a disease, hopefully I figure it out early and dump that plant before it ever can get close enough to my other plants to spread the disease to them.

Amy, I agree with you on seeds. There's so many 'strains' (not official strains, but you know what I mean) of CP out there that I think I was growing an incorrect version of CP for most of the first 8 or 10 years I grew it. I didn't realize at first that it wasn't the real CP, but then I got the real, true CP from seeds purchased from Victory Seeds (and, later on, from the last version of Gleckler's Seedmen, which sadly is no longer in business) and found it was even more special than the random CP seeds provided by much more well-known seed retailers. Now I am a lot pickier about my seed sources. Sure, we can order seeds from just about anyone, but getting seed that is true to type seems to be getting harder and harder and harder. Oh, and for me, JD's Special C-Tex is so superior to CP, BK and IS that I ought to just grow it instead of them anyway. One good thing about JD's is that seed has been available commercially only a few years so the seed industry hasn't managed to ruin it yet.

I largely gave up Spring bedding plants because they are raised with neonics. I look forward to the day when companies stop using that crap and we're able to buy bedding plants again without worrying about nenoics harming our butterflies and other creatures. I think that day will come, or at least I hope it will. I find it much harder to raise tons and tons of bedding plant type annual flowers indoors under lights (just because space is limited and I am always overly focused on raising veggie transplants) and I'd buy flats and flats of them again in a heartbeat if I could buy clean ones. For perennials that are clean, I tend to only buy them from a nursery that is 100% organic. It means a much further drive for me just to shop for perennials, but at least I know I'm not bringing home plants treated with systemic insecticides that I'd never willingly use myself.

My seed box is sitting in the living room floor beneath the TV. There's no reason for it to be there. I brought it downstairs one day when I thought I'd have time to inventory it and assess if there's any seeds at all that I need to buy for 2018, and I haven't found time yet to do that. That seed box has been sitting there in the same spot for more than a month, I'm sure.

Cracker Barrel is always an excellent choice. Their food reminds me so much of the cooking of my grandmother and aunts (and my dad!) as it is the good basic southern cuisine (lol) upon which I was raised. My mom never was much of a cook (she didn't like it, and only considered it a necessary evil) but she always burned the dinner rolls on special occasions. So, every year, someone in my family (not her, as she is about to turn 89 and doesn't cook any more) burns at least one batch of rolls while heating them up on holidays. It makes us all laugh---it never is intentional but it certainly is a family tradition for us, like it or not.

We had three fire calls yesterday, but Tim only made it to one of them as we were out of town for the other two. (It grabs the attention of all your relatives when your phone erupts with a fire siren sound during Thanksgiving dinner....) The call he went out on was a very bad two-car motor vehicle accident on the interstate a little after midnight Thursday morning and Tim was gone to that one for a couple of hours. I believe they airlifted one patient and took 3 or 4 others to local hospitals via regular ambulance. For two families, Thanksgiving went way downhill with that vehicle accident as both vehicles were badly damaged and had to be towed, which certainly makes it hard for you to get to your Thanksgiving destination. The second fire was an oven fire, and the third one (which seemed to take a long time to bring under control) was a grass fire/wild fire that occurred when someone lost control of something they were burning. Once we arrived home, our pagers did not go off again---though some other VFDs did have fires late in the day. I'm hoping today that we'll have zero calls, but suspect it will be similar to yesterday---the vegetation is so dry and the relative humidity is getting incredibly low in the afternoons. I look at the thousands of acres of grassland that surround us, see how very dry they are, and just shake my head. I cannot imagine that we are going to have a good winter fire season. I think it will be a bad one.

We're headed towards the upper 70s for our forecast high temperature today, which would put us at near-record heat for this late in November. I'm totally over all this excessive warmth, especially when it is not accompanied by rainfall. I'm beginning to wonder if it will rain again here this calendar year, or if we already are seeing the development of the Drought of 2017//18.

Lady bugs, lady bugs, lady bugs. They still are swarming everywhere outdoors on warm afternoons and trying like crazy to come indoors. So are black and red wasps. They all need to read the memo and understand that the cool season has arrived (or, at least, dates associated with the cool season are here). We swing wildly from very cold early mornings to pleasant mid-days to almost hot conditions by mid-afternoon. Still, 78 degrees feels a lot better than 98 or 108, so at least there's that.

Irrationally I want to go shopping. I don't know why. I hate Black Friday. So, I'm not going. We are going to stay home and tile the mudroom floor. I bet money that when we get ready to start, Tim will discover he forgot to buy something and we'll be headed off to HD to buy it. It is always something stupid too, but something you have to have.

Dawn

We saw Justice League last weekend. It was good, better than the last movie we saw (I can't even remember what it was, only that we both lost interest halfway through). As much as I love going to the movies, I'm losing interest in it. I'd rather stay home and watch it here.

Quiet evening last night, so I sorted through the seed swap offerings. Now I just have to wait on a couple more packs and divvy them up & everyone gets an early Christmas present.

Your little man isn't quite as little, all of a sudden, Kim! But, oh my gosh, is he ever a cutie! Hope you all had a fun yesterday. Ours was so nice and relaxing. I got a bunch more plants pulled and tossed into a heap--I felt much just like the author of the poem wrote and that Alexis shared.

And we're off and running today. . . lots of fun cooking stuff.

Did y'all see the free shipping code from Harris Seeds? 8HSHOLIDAY. Good through the weekend, any size order, and lots of things have nice discounts on them. I spent just under $20, and got a couple kinds of cosmos and zinnias, a calendula mix, celosia, Corvair spinach, Jet Star tomatoes, red bunching onions, yellow squash, and Hera dill.

Hands over ears--can't hear you!!

I sent my Pinetree order today, supposed to get 15% off because of black friday, but I must have missed entering a code because I didn't get a discount.

I spent my afternoon and evening at a very tough fire just a short distance off our road. Apparently someone was burning trash down in a trash pit or gully or whatever (a common method of trash disposal out here in the boondocks) and they thought it was more or less done and went indoors....only to discover themselves surrounded by fire and smoke some time later when the fire escaped their pit or gully and began traveling. Bless their hearts---they are sweet, kind, salt-of-the-earth wonderful elderly people and this must have been terrifying as it came so close to their home, barn and cattle. My heart goes out to them and I am just so relieved they were not harmed by the fire. Everything else is just stuff, but lives are irreplaceable.

This was probably the worst grass fire in our neighborhood since last December, and possibly the worst one since 2014 in terms of size and degree of difficulty. Our Dispatch Center always pages out 3 VFDs per alarm, starting with the initial 3 VFDs for the first alarm. As soon as Tim got to the fire station and could see the smoke plume from the fire, he asked for a second alarm, which would be 3 more VFDs. Then, after he left the fire station in the brush truck and drove less than 1 mile, he could see more of a rapidly-growing, gigantic smoke plume and asked for a third alarm---all of this before he even arrived at the fire scene and could give a proper sizeup. I really think a 4th alarm wouldn't have been unreasonable given the rate at which this fire was spreading, and the fact that homes were threatened. Guess how we spent the remainder of our day?????

The good news is that we got to have a lovely, albeit smokey, post-Thanksgiving picnic of bologna, ham and turkey sandwiches (plus the chips of everyone's own choosing) plus all the water and Gatorade they could drink alongside the roadway in the fading twilight, with our dinner lit not by candles but by starlight, moonlight and the flashing lights of emergency vehicles. By then, the fire was not exactly fully under control, but it was getting there, and we ate in shifts so someone was always out there fighting fire while the others were eating. We got to see other firefighters we hadn't seen in months--it is nice to be able to chat briefly while they are filling up their brush trucks at the tankers. It always is good to work with one another again, though of course, we'd rather not have these fires in the first place. The other good news is that no one lost their homes or any other structures, and all the dogs, horses and cows were safe and unharmed. Considering how bad it could have been, all's well that ends well.

It was stunning how quickly this fire moved with only moderate winds in the teens gusting into the low 20s, and a good reminder that dried-out vegetation burns fast and hot. We had some complications---fire getting up into the trees, and also very uneven terrain filled with gullies, dry creek beds, a pond here or there, drainage swales, fences you could not see in the blinding smoke, fire trying to jump the road (this would have been a disaster, but it didn't happen). etc. Several firefighters told us they were lucky they didn't end up crashing into a pond because visibility was so low. The firefighters from the 9 VFDs who responded worked hard for several hours to get this fire put out. I'm just so grateful the fire is out and we all made it home before midnight. Yay! In fact, we made it home well before midnight.

Seeing how fast this thing moved makes me want to take out my string trimmer and cut every inch of our pastures down to 1/4" high in order to deny fuel to future fires. I also am grateful to live in a community where we have such dedicated VFD members who will drop everything, even on a holiday weekend, to respond when called. As a gardener and plant lover, it was horrible to see everything burn. On the other hand, this sort of burning sure does clean up the trash like greenbrier and other highly invasive weeds, so at least there's that.

Clearly I did no seed shopping this afternoon or evening, so y'all need to stop taunting me by talking about doing your seed ordering. (grin)

It was hot enough again that we had to worry about stepping on snakes. Fran and I were extra careful about walking around because there were tons and tons of leaves on the ground, and we were watching carefully for venomous snakes. We didn't see any, but a few sticks hiding in the leaves might have frightened us once or twice. We have active imaginations.

I've been fighting allergies/a cold/the flu/bronchitis (any one of these, not all of them) for about a week now, and being out in the smokey air for 5 or 6 hours was not helpful. I took Nyquil when I got home and now I'm headed for bed. The cold front that's coming will bring strong winds and a shift in wind direction, so we need to be prepared for this 125-acre burned area to have some hot spots flare up overnight or tomorrow. It is almost inevitable.

Sunset was a smashing array of gorgeous pink and orange skies, largely because of all the smoke in the air. The sunset itself was awesome.

Does everyone feel "in sorts"? I sure do not. Wish I knew what was wrong....

I think it's awesome that y'all are already buying seed.

I did a tiny bit of Black Friday shopping. The only thing I purchased was my daughter's keepsake ornament. I'm really sad that Ethan's stopped last year. I have to find a new series for him, but none of the new series fit. His last one was Santa's Sweet Ride. It started when he was 6 and it was the perfect ornament series for a little boy. I bought our tree...and a teeny tiny one for my daughter's house. I had the hardest time (it's that out-of-sorts thing) deciding on a tree. Since being in this house, we've done real trees, but something seemed weird this year so I was going to buy a cheap artificial tree, but nothing is cheap. And I just could make up my mind. So we ended up buying a real tree from the Boy Scouts.

(The Christmas season can start now! The old BC Clark song/commercial from my childhood was just on TV)

My focus is so awful now. I MUST stay focused tomorrow. I am going to try to only be at home tomorrow and get stuff done. I hate disorganization. And that is my life right now.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone else feel that things are weird? Out-of-sorts? A strangness in the air? I"ve felt weird since May. And I've talked to a few people who say the same thing...but they are people who are similar to me...

All of this makes me miss my old home.

But then I hear the owl across the street and the coyotes to the south and I like it here. I like it a lot. I like my garden even though it's incomplete. I like my chickens.

Hope everyone is having a good Thanksgiving weekend.

Dawn, don't get sick! I hope it's not the flu! Do you have a fever? Although, honestly, the coughing is worse than the fever. I'm glad all animals and people are safe from the fire. How scary. It is so dry...very dry. We kept a waterhose near our firepit last night...and there was no wind. None at all. Rest up and stay well.

I don't much like the way your fire season is starting off, Dawn. I'm horrified by today's story! And congratulations to all you generous people who got it out by this evening, and prayers for no start-ups tomorrow, and in fact, NO fires tomorrow--or car accidents. AND I do hope you're not getting sick. Hope you're sleeping soundly as I write.

As always enjoy your comments on tomatoes, everyone, including specifics on different varieties and about responsible seed companies. I ordered from ones you all had recommended and feel really good about them all (hahaha except for BHN 1021!)

I forgot I had had the foil-wrapped chicken in the oven with the casserole I fixed for dinner, and when I took the casserole out, I forgot to turn the chicken up to 400, so 45 minutes later, took it out--was NOT at all done; cranked the oven up to 400 and promptly forgot about it. Overcooked it and ended up being to save about half of it; I am now poaching additional chicken. Grr. That's the only thing I'm a little out of sorts about. Strangeness in the air? You'd have to be more specific for ME. :)

I'm still laughing about getting the Instant Pot for son and grandson. Wish I could be there when DIL decides to let them open it. One year--Weston had turned 9--and he decided he was going to cook stuff that he liked by himself that fall. So I ordered him a hot dog cooker for Christmas, and then separately wrapped and numbered them in this order: a container of mustard, container of ketchup, cheese, can of sauerkraut, buns, hot dogs and then the hot dog maker. He had NO idea what was going on until he got to the hot dogs, but then he was looking at me like I'd lost my mind, and when he got the hot dog maker, he laughed, finally. I probably enjoyed it more than he did, although he used it often enough after that, I think. So shades of the hot dog cooker, this year! It's particularly funny knowing those two. Wade is a TERRIBLE cook, in that he refuses to understand or have a clue about what goes with what. The stranger the stuff he and Westie can come up with, the more fun they have. They'll make a pot of "stuff," and that's being kind. Some of their dishes I couldn't even LOOK at! Then they got on this kick of frying up bacon, sausage, ham, whatever breakfast meats were on hand, then they'd break them up into small chunks and mix into the pancake batter. They were so impressed with themselves, they'd invite any or all the guys that worked for him over for breakfasts on Saturday mornings. I must admit, that one was clever.

I hope you aren't stressed about getting seeds out to people, Jen. I think half of the fun is the anticipation of what's coming, you know? Like Christmas!

HJ. . . I kinda like drama movies the best--and we're very picky about what in our opinion constitutes good drama! lol Good directing, writing, acting, plot development, all that stuff. Criminal justice, mysteries, serious stuff. And I hate gratuitous use of obscenities..... I really really hate that nowadays! So you can see I'd have a hard time with most of the newer movies? I'm a real downer to go to a movie with, though loved the kids' movies when our kids were little--my boys and the grandkids. Having said that, I definitely am not the one you'd like to go to movies with! I don't actively criticize, but I'm not "fun."

Rebecca--I'm not TOO obtuse. Well maybe! I didn't get the point of your thankfulness yesterday until this evening. But yes, I am grateful for Dawn, too! Now THOSE were some beautiful dinner rolls! Probably the prettiest ones I've ever seen!

Now get this. Garry is going to take me to a casino for our anniversary. I laughed SO hard when he sprang that on me today (but we couldn't do it this evening cuz of all my cooking. Only other time I've stepped foot in one was in Vegas when I helped Wade and Steph move there way back right after they got married. And they've been married like about 25 years, without stopping to figure it out. I was horrified; thought I was seeing Sodom and Gomorrah. They were so amused with me. Tried to show me how to do slots; I couldn't figure out for the life of me. ONE vice I've never had--I'd rather buy seeds or thrift store levis, OR ANYTHING. Told GDW with ME, I might as well just go flush $50 down the toilet. Still, it will be a fun thing to go with him. (He doesn't like wasting his money on gambling either, and neither of us particularly like the atmosphere.) But we have talked about various things we might have fun doing if we ever garnered the energy to actually leave the house, and I mentioned I had only been to a casino one other time in my life. We DO both have fun playing poker, and teach the grandkids how to play (isn't that a Godly thing to do? and a grandparently thing to do?) I empty out my piggy bank, divvy up the money, hand it out and tell them they can keep whatever they win. (Of course, Garry or I always win it all.) I tell the kiddies this is a good thing. That ensures I'll always have money to divvy out for them. And I LOVE card games. Miss them with Westie. He was/is a card-playing fool, and usually wins board games, too. War, blackjack, crazy 8s, But all the grandkids are up for playing games, except Evyn and Olivia. I need to get some Yahtzee pads, and teach 'em spades and hearts. Garry and I go on binges with gin or cribbage. Then he suggested we brush up on chess. I demurred, saying it had been so long, I probably forgot what little I knew. But he kept it up, so we ordered a little cheap chess set and board. Played and I beat him in like an hour. He said, "Well, dadgummit, you totally SANDBAGGED me!" Total fluke, and I was laughing so hard, I almost fell out of my chair, protesting it was just a fluke! I didn't even know I'd check-mated him until I went to make MY move, and that's when I realized it. I said, "OH, CHECKmate!" We still haven't yet played again! If only he KNEW--it WAS a total fluke!

I've been flashing back a lot the past month over fun times with the Minneapolis family. . . guess that means I'm missing em a bunch. We don't talk often enough, but Steph and I traded calls three times yesterday. I am the luckiest mother-in-law in the whole world! (And now, mother of four new daughters.)

PS, HJ--I have bought every conceivable seed to plant that I intend to plant next year. I was so bummed that I waited too long last year and many were "out of stock." Now of course, there will be more that were unconceived that I will add to my intend list, you know how THAT goes, like when jlhart mentioned loofahs. . . lol but really, between winter-sowing and what goes on the grow cart, I am in a bit of a panic. Which is why I have to figure out how to move the present cuttings on the grow cart out to under the fluorescents in the art room in a way that will not allow the pesky kittens to get to them. . . I'm coming up with a plan, I think, that will work. I need every square inch on that big grow cart for seeds. And I'm also nervous about what the kittens will think of the seedlings on the grow cart. They've been pretty good, overall, but they are just beginning to enter their teens at 6 months, and are just now beginning to feel very comfortable in the house. Big trouble could lie ahead. But they're SO cute and SO loving. Famous last words. (Honey.)

What's everyone doing today?

I'll do nothing garden related. I hope to get the house decorated and hope that Ethan and Tom get the lights up. My sister-in-law and brother-in-law retired (sorta) and sold their house and are living out of an RV. It's a nice RV with a large screen TV and full sized recliners, etc. ANYWAY, they had a ton of outdoor Christmas decorations that they dropped off at our house last spring. We need to sort through that mess and see what we can do with it. I'm foreseeing a huge electric bill. And part of my problem is that I don't like the LED lights--they almost hurt my eyes. I like the softer energy gobbling old fashioned lights. Oh gosh...I just thought of something. I wonder if they are planning on parking their RV at our house when they visit in a couple of weeks. We'll have a real life Cousin Eddie situation.

Nancy, I was just joking about the movies. Everyone is different. My family and I just happen to enjoy the movie experience, especially at the Warren. AND especially in their auditoriums with heated, reclining seats. I get distracted at home when trying to watch a movie. The dog needs to go out, someone is messing with their phone, the pile of dishes in the sink...all of that takes away from the enjoyment of the movie for me. You might like The Murder on the Orient Express. It was really good. I didn't see the old one, so the ending was a surprise for me. I thought it was well done.

Okay. Tom is dressed and we are going to the shop to find the Christmas decorations now. I hope everyone has a good day...buying seed, decorating, shopping, lying around, or whatever you plan to do. I'm going to try to get "in-sorts" today. Wish me luck.

Nancy, you did get plenty of the Cape Daisies, right? They will be SO glorious, and they winter sowed beautifully for me. I'm doing them for both me and my mom next year.

My body is telling me it needs me to take it easy today, so I'm trying to. I did just get the Thanksgiving cooking and serving stuff in the dishwasher, and I'll need to start laundry after, and put away laundry, and make a leftover turkey casserole for dinner, and put more kolacky dough in the fridge to work tomorrow...so yeah, that doesn't sound like taking it easy. But I will watch the football game as I put laundry away, and get the washer loaded for the next round. That's not THAT hard work.

Trying to figure out if my mom would use an Alexa. Amazon has them on sale this weekend for $29.99. Anyone have one and really use it?

Did I make a mistake ordering Jet Star tomatoes? So far I've got those, Big Beef, Early Girl, Brandy Boy, Sungold, and SS 100 for next year. Trying to fight the disease with the best tasting hybrids I can find. Brandy Boy did very well fighting them last year.

Cracker Barrel was acceptable. We aren't into cornbread stuffing, but I was told the turkey and gravy were good. When we got there I wasn't in the mood for for turkey, ha, ha! I had chicken fried steak, the leftovers of which DH took for his lunch at work last night. The only thing that annoyed me was their website said there was only a 5 minute wait. They lied. And they weren't setting tables until all the people arrived, which I can kind of see on Thanksgiving, but DD arrived first and we still had a long wait. Then we went back to our house for pie and visiting. I DO wish they would not open stores on Thanksgiving day. I find it annoying when everyone runs off to shop.

Oh, Dawn, getting kids into movies was a nightmare, and expensive. We liked to take a pickup to the drive in, back it into the slot and sit in lawn chairs to watch the show. I can remember going to the drive in with my folks, it was a big deal. Hayley Mills movies! Bring your own snacks, or maybe get a giant popcorn bucket. One time my daughter went to a movie with her friend and her dad. He bought them giant strawberry sodas - two each. DD made it to just inside her bedroom door and threw up red soda.

It's funny, JD's Special C-Tex didn't seem very productive to me. Wonder where I got those seeds. (I would almost prefer not to grow it just because the name's too long! How silly is that. But I hate long or unpronounceable names). The one that made it to the permanent list this year was Gary 'O Sena (another problem name).

I've been wondering if the violas I bought were treated with a systemic. I need to find their tags. They are currently inside. Does that pesticide ever wear off?

I'm sorry about your fires! As bad as it is for humans, fire is how the prairie renewed itself. Some native plants won't germinate unless they've been burned. Hopefully some red cedar died with the green briars. It doesn't look like the weather is cooperating. I'm not saying the D word. Technically we are not there yet, but it feels like it.

I ended up at Atwoods yesterday for dog chews, and then Lowes with DD. She is remodeling her bathroom. She lives in our rental house. She has no idea how much better it is now (pre remodel) than it was when we moved in. I keep laughing to myself. I had a broken ankle when we bought the house. Didn't get a close look at everything. I was shocked to find a hole in the tile where someone had broken through to fix plumbing and then DUCT TAPED over the hole. I shaved goosebumps off my legs for years before we had the money and DIY knowledge to get that repaired.

H/J, I've been anxious for no apparent reason for months.

Nancy, do I need to buy you a timer for Christmas? Your chicken story sounds like what I would do. I am an absolute expert at getting burned rice or broccoli out of a stainless steal pot.

A friend of mine from California and I were talking. She said that people in CA would be offended at obscenities in movies and people on the east coast would be like "there was cussing in that movie?" I think I am more offended by the women's clothing. Man I'm old.

My mom used to buy rolls, the kids called them river rocks because of their shape and they were pretty hard.

Nancy, I know how you feel about casinos. I have absolutely NO luck with card games. I could win at spades if I played with people who would allow you to go nil. My mother in law taught the kids to play poker. My daughter was about 4 or 5. She consistently beat them all. Cards just fall to her. It would make the boys mad.

I've been trying to figure out where things will GO next year. I know I have too many flowers, LOL. Many will have to be in pots, I think. Can you grow datura in a pot? I am supposed to have a new flower bed. (The box is there, there was plastic over it all summer that DID NOT kill the grass or weeds, so I don't know what I will do there. Here I go again, biting off more than I can chew.

"Famous last words. (Honey.)" Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Rebecca, Jet Star and Early Girl are on my permanent list. It is early and productive. My note from 2016 said productive, disease resistant.

Amy and Nancy, Mom and I have started setting 2 timers when we have stuff in the oven. One on the oven, and the other on our phones. But we tend to walk off and leave our phones somewhere. My house is small enough that I can hear the stove timer pretty easily, but not Mom.

And, thanks for the Jet Star info, Amy. Hope they taste OK too. And I hope squirrels don't like them. I should watch for sales on rat traps.

Nancy, I have rotten luck at casinos too. I used to go with my friend Mark (RIP) a lot. He was a killer poker player, and he'd give me $100 and tell me I could keep anything I won over that, so I'd amuse myself while he played. I think I still owe him a couple hundred. I could lose that money faster than anyone he knew.

Plan B today. I got rid of all the dried chicken/not enough of the poached alone. So hamburger instead with tweaks to the entire recipe. Amy, I am thankful for YOU! That you also do dumb stuff, so you say! LOL So does Garry. I like having friends who do dumb things. We should have a thread for "Dumb Things I've Done."

YES, Rebecca, I did get enough Cape daisies. I BETTER have, anyway. I am so pumped to have them!! They are going to be in our great sun raised beds as the "main filler, alternating with blue globe thistles. It's the blue globes that may or may not work.

HJ. . . . Yeah, I might like Murder. . . I never did see the orginal one! And btw, Amy, I am so with you on the women's clothing deal. Man, am I old, TOO.

Timer is a good idea! That is, when I remember to use them! Obviously, I NEED to remember to set them! I'll ask GDW to help me get in the habit of setting the timers. He likes jobs like that.

Yes, I bet I can lose it fast, too, Rebecca! I'll get back to ya on that.

Well, kids will be here. We feel the noose beginning to tighten, , , you know what? We're really the only place for the particular combo of kids to meet, as they all have convoluted families. Each of them has other kinds of mixed family members/siblings and so forth. Garry was whining about how he doesn't do well with these kinds of things. I said, "Well. You should have thought of that before you had them!" and laughed and laughed. I said, "I got nothing for ya--no sympathy, nada." and laughed some more. I said, "I know--3 hours would be excellent. When they hang for 6-7 hours, I don't do so well either. YOU know I can't sit still that long." I swear, it always astonishes me that they all seem fine with staying that long. Maybe it's an age thing. That's gotta be part of it, for sure. And none of them to even talk with about gardening! Or art, or cooking. :) But this way, we don't have to go to see each one separately. It's all good. He is so funny.

Gotta go make the cheesy French bread. . .

I love my children. They visit well with each other. I have seen them stand outside a restaurant in the cold because they weren't through talking yet. But I do breathe a sigh of relief when they go home. I have become sensitive to noise and get anxious with toddlers and dogs and and parents scolding toddlers and dogs and everyone moving around. I lived like that for years. Four kids, always dogs and cats, but, I haven't had that much activity around the house for quite a while. Enjoy them Nancy.

A "Dumb Things I've Done" thread would be too long.

Rebecca, the Jet Star must taste okay, I grew it again. I don't think it was as memorable as an heirloom, but it wasn't offensive. I had a lot of red tomatoes last season, so I never knew which one I was eating. I had no spitters, though, LOL.

Oh what a blast it all was!!! Like with yours, Amy, the 18 that showed up today all are so funny together. They all visit well. . . although there were like 4 different conversations in various places . . one more grandson and his 2 little ones showed up, which was fun, so here are all 20 of us. None of these hipsters knew how to use the selfie stick, which is why I'm taking the picture. I tell you. it was an absolute riot. What a lucky lucky stepmother I am. Never could have imagined I'd have been so welcomed. Wade and his family in Mpls are missing, and Carrie and Chris and their families and Cassie and Colby are missing. Carrie's on her way to SF. Cass and Colby and their kids are out hunting. Chris and his shows up here and there, hit or miss. But these are Garry's first three daughters, their kids and grandkids (two little ones are Roni's first grandkids, so great grandkids to us. The six medium-sized grandkids are my outlaws--we have weekend camp-overs in the summer. . . Garry groans and tells me, "I'm not good at this." I tell him to suck it up. (I love kids!) This is the gang we taught to play poker As you can see. . . though I dread the noise and bedlam, for some reason it just made me laugh today. Because what I realized was that the noise and bedlam were all HAPPY noises and HAPPY bedlam. So all I could do all day long was chuckle, feel thankful, and be glad I had plenty to do in the kitchen so didn't have to actually be sitting still. Instead I got to hear snippets of conversation here and there. . .what a beautiful blessed day. For those of you on FB, you can see the hilarity of the several selfies we took of all 20 of us!

Maybe there is hope for me. Maybe someday I'll enjoy my kids only a couple of hours at a time. I'm afraid I will be the opposite. But maybe not. Maybe I'll be ready to see them leave after a visit. It probably changes when they get married and introduce that dynamic. However, Mason had a long time boyfriend and I was always worried that I wouldn't be the fun Grandma. I would be the one they had to see before they could spend the holiday with the cool Grandparents. But, after 3 years they broke up. I'll deal with whatever comes, I suppose.

Jet Star! I've never grown it. I will this year. I ate my last tomato. It's a long time until May or June. I used the others in my tabouli. Now, I wish I would have used store bought in that recipe and saved the garden ones for other things.

Amy, I lot of people have been anxious for awhile. I wonder why. I have some ideas but don't want to get all mystical.

The tree is up. The house has outdoor lights. But I didn't get as much done as I had hoped.

So...this winter will be mild. I am hoping that next winter will be the year for a cold winter. That would actually work out well for me in a couple of ways regarding gardening. I just realized how very warm it was today. Thinking back just 5 or 6 years ago, it was always cold when we put up the outdoor lights. (And putting up lights at that house was not easy. There was a large front porch with white columns and a railing. Also, a hedge. Maneuvering around that was difficult. )

:)

Nancy, everyone in your family--all sides--are attractive. Just an observation.

I think I have a bad cold, not the flu. I need to kill my husband but love him too much to kill him. We have to put our fire radios on a charger every night to recharge the batteries. Apparently he did not set his radio on the charger, so it started beeping very loudly at 4 a.m. to let us know the battery was almost dead. It was like having a fire alarm going off in the house. Can anyone say "Wide awake?"

We had another big fire today, but had spent the morning buying supplies---prepackaged snacks, gas cans, bungee cords, gloves, zipties (no, I don't know why---but the firefighters said they needed them, so we bought them), etc. and cleaning up/reorganizing all the trucks and tweaking minor mechanical issues and such, so we were ready. We had already done all the basics last night, like gassing up all the trucks and refilling all the water tanks. Today was spent fine-tuning everything else and cleaning up the trucks because they were dirty and sooty from last night. We also picked up about another dozen cases of bottled water and Gatorade. We were trying to be ready for anything that might happen.

Two big multi-alarm fires in two days concerns me. Today was supposed to be a "low" fire danger day, but eventually our Fire Danger status for our county was showing "High" fire danger, so I guess our weather overachieved. The forecast high was 70 and we hit 77, which I think is a bad sign. By then, we had six VFDs, including ours, out at a combination vehicle fire (a Winnebago with a full 50-gallon tank of gas) and grass fire/wildfire (because a burning vehicle is going to ignite the grass beside it).

So, for the second day in a row, our attempt to lay floor tile in the mudroom fizzled out. Maybe tomorrow will be our day. Or, maybe we'll finally get it done sometime in 2018.

I feel out of sorts, Jennifer, and have for months. I blame the weather. I feel like, at least lately, we have all four seasons of weather every day. You wake up in the morning and it is cold, so you dress for Winter in sweats, a coat, boots and gloves and go out into 30 or 40 degree weather to take care of the animals. By mid-morning, it has warmed up a lot and you shed the heavier clothing because it feels like Spring. You start thinking it might turn out to be a really nice day after all now that it is no longer cold. Somehow, then, in the early afternoon the house is starting to feel hot, so you decide it is Summertime and turn on the air conditioner. Summertime isn't too bad, as long as you watch out for snakes hiding in the leaves when you're out in the yard with the animals but at the same time, you know that it isn't right to have 75 or 80 or 85 degree weather in November. Then, as soon as the sun starts to set, the temperatures fall rapidly, you turn off the air conditioner and a couple of hours later, make sure to turn on the heater before you go to bed because, now it is Winter again. Stack a bunch of these days on top of one another and it is enough to make anyone feel out of sorts. And...there's dust, pollen (weed and tree pollen here still is at moderate levels) and smoke in the air, so you really don't even want to be outside during the prettiest part of the day, especially if you're coughing your head off. I just want some normal weather. I want it to be cold when it should and hot when it should, and getting rain would be lovely, but I'm starting to think it isn't going to rain ever again. Or, at least it isn't going to rain again in 2017.

Other than the above, everything is just peachy keen here.

Rebecca, I like JetStar as well as all the other hybrids you mentioned. They all perform really well for me here. In our garden, Jet Star is more productive, but Big Beef has better flavor, so I tend to just grow them both. I think Big Beef is the best-flavored red hybrid available today, and Brandy Boy is the best combination of hybrid vigor, flavor and productivity available in a pink tomato.

Amy, Yes, movies were expensive and herding a bunch of kids was a chore, but those still were sweet times, and I cherish the memories. I think the kids had as much fun seeing second-run movies at the $1 theater as they had seeing first-run movies at the bigger, more expensive places. I don't miss those days though---they were great at the time and now they're over. (grin) Now it is those children who are the adults taking their kids to the movies and they can do it without me and I'm not offended at all. I really enjoyed going to movies as a kid in the 1960s and 1970s. We had a little local theater that was open through at least the late 1960s (with a drugstore right beside it that had a lunch counter, stools and a soda fountain) and we went to a local drive-in a lot in the 1970s.

I do love Gary 'O Sena. In fact, I like all of Keith Mueller's varieties, though Liz Birt is a more tart flavor so it appeals more to people who like old-fashioned flavor than to those who like the sweeter types of tomatoes. It is conversations like these that make my tomato grow list spontaneously expand and get too long.

Nancy, I think it is an age thing. When I'm with my brothers and sisters, I don't want for the gathering to end. Perhaps it is partly because we're at the age now where we've buried at least some of our parents and their siblings and spouses, our grandparents are long gone, and we've lost a cousin here or there far too young, and we're becoming more and more aware of how quickly the time flies by. You look back and wonder where the decades went. It seems like just yesterday we siblings and cousins were the kids, and now a lot of us are the grandparents. How did that happen?

Tomorrow we start the last week of November. Where did the month go?

Dawn

Love you bringing me back to earth, Dawn, and yet if you are seeing my FB posts today, my heart is bursting with love. Not just our gardening, but our people-growing/nurturing as well. I adore you all, and adore my non-gardening friends, too, and good folks everywhere. Love that I got the gift of love.

Nancy, Of all the things we have to be grateful for, the gift of love is at the top of the list! I did see your FB posts this morning. I'm always so far behind on FB and struggling to catch up just on reading stuff, much less on writing anything.

One thing about our involvement with the VFD is that is begins devouring time in ways y'all cannot imagine. For every hour we spend at a fire, I probably spend 3 or 4 more hours preparing (especially if I am doing a lot of cooking) in advance and then 2 or 3 more hours on clean-up and restocking of supplies.

It has been so quiet here for so long, in terms of big, prolonged fires that require we serve serious snacks or meals, so when we had the first big fire a couple of days ago, I didn't have any yummy goodies in the freezer just waiting to be thawed out and used. I need to cook all day today or tomorrow and fill up the freezer again. On Friday, everyone was lobbying for me to make their favorites, so I believe I need to make and freeze homemade cinnamon rolls, bacon crisp crackers, sausage balls, brownies, Chocolate Chip cookies, White Chocolate/Macadamia Nut cookies, and Sweet Chicken Bacon bites. All of them freeze well, so it is just a matter of me abandoning Tim to work on the floor alone while I bake. I still could run out and hold stuff for him or hand him stuff at the times he needs me to do that. I think I could hear the timer bell on the stove go off when a batch of something finishes cooking.

Yesterday Fran and I, while working on restocking our rehab truck, were running through lists of what we have on hand that we could use to make a quick hot lunch or dinner if needed for our firefighters. She has the stuff to make a beef-vegetable soup and I have the stuff to make something with chicken---could be chicken noodle soup, chicken and dumplings or chicken tortilla soup. Sometimes I feel like it is just hard enough to plan family meals based on what I have in the freezer, and then suddenly we are searching our brains to figure out what we could whip up to feed 15, 30, 40 or 60 firefighters. Luckily we are both old, okay older than we used to be, and have a lifetime of cooking behind us so we can whip up meals out of nothing.

I just finished breakfast, and Tim is still eating. Guess what happened? They just paged out 3 VFDs to our west to a grass fire a few minutes ago. Really? At freaking 8:40 a.m.? This is the time of day our relative humidity usually is fairly high and that often stops grass fires from breaking out real early in the day. How is this fire starting so early this morning? And, even worse, no one responded, which makes me wonder if the radio tower is transmitting to the western end of the county, so they just paged 3 replacement departments. This is bizarre. I realize some people might be out of town for Thanksgiving, but it is hard to comprehend no one is around from 3 different departments. Now Tim is pacing like a cat on a hot tin roof, wanting to start working on the tile but sort of waiting a few minutes to see if we'll be paged (I don't think we will be) to this fire before he drags all the tools and tile out of the garage.

I'd like to think we will be able to stay home all day and work here. That sounds feasible. It sounds reasonable. It also seems a little unlikely given that the first fire of the day already is occurring.

Maybe if I get myself up and moving, I can get some baking done before we get busy.

Dawn