Maybe you already got the ones that showed up at my house, Dawn. Johnny's, Territorial, Jung and Burpee today. :)

We have the best HVAC guy. We LOVE our HVAC guy! He showed up in 2016 on both the very hottest day of the year and the very coldest. (And the poor poor guy got to work on the blankety-blank thing that happens to be located in our ATTIC!)

I've got some of those Nancy, but not all. I think most of these companies sort and ship by zip code because they seem to arrive in various areas in groups, so to speak.

I love our HVAC guys too. They are so good at what they do. For a long time, our HVAC guy was a retired Dallas firefighter who'd been doing HVAC work as his post-retirement career for a long time, but then he finally retired from HVAC work too and I was worried about how we'd find another good HVAC guy. No worries. As it turned out, one of our friends who is a member of our VFD has a son who owns/operates his own HVAC company in the county north of us, so that's the company we use now. I'm not sure how many employees he has, but we usually get the same two guys responding to service calls at our house---and they both are members of the VFD in their community where they live, so they and Tim always have plenty of fire department stuff to discuss while they are here. I feel lucky that we've only had good service personnel (not just for the HVAC but for other stuff like appliances as well) here and they've been efficient and trustworthy. I know that's not always the case nowadays.

I think that the extreme cold we're expecting in a few more days will try a lot of folks' patience. It doesn't take much cold (or ice) to push power systems, HVAC units, etc. to their breaking point so cold spells tend to be unpleasant. We also tend to have more fire calls as people's heating systems (especially space heaters or older fireplaces) get pushed to the limit and start smoking or set the house on fire. Finally, down here at our end of the state, water lines often freeze up if we make it down into the single digits, especially if it is for a prolonged period. We ought to stay warmer than that this time, if the forecast models are correct. I expect those of you further north will get quite a bit colder up there than we'll get down here.

Dawn, I did think about the snakiness of your yard and if you had a good place to put the kids' garden, but if you have one I do think they'd love it. Maybe a teepee of sugar snaps? Rainbow carrots? A Matt's Wild Cherry tomato that they can hide under for shade? Sunflowers and mini pumpkins are a given. Spinning gourds? I'm sure on non-snake days you could take them in the main garden and show them how sweet potatoes grow, what a hornworm is, which peppers they do NOT want to eat right off the plant, that kind of thing. And no, I haven't grown balsam because I can't keep it watered. Still focusing on mainly drought tolerant plants. I'm also really interested in your Genuwine and Big Brandy experiment. I've wanted to try those two, so I'll be following how they do as far as disease resistance and taste.

The one thing I know I will be ordering this year is pelleted lettuce seeds. I think they will change my life. I've never gown a heading lettuce because those damn tiny seeds. Pelleted seeds will be the best thing ever for my fumbly, autoimmuney fat fingers. I have heard that they don't last as long as regular seeds, correct? Between Johnny's and Territorial, I could bankrupt myself on lettuce seeds. Pelleted carrot seeds will happen too.

Amy, storage totes always seem to go on sale in January, so we can keep an eye out for a good sale. I need a couple too.

Tonight Travis Meyer declared this weekend as 'bug killin' cold'. I'm happy to endure those temperatures if it means bug killin'.

Wow. It's cold. I'm okay with the cold except the dogs need exercise and I'm just not up to walking them when it's this cold. Or at least not tonight.

Is it easier to get cuts on the fingers when it's so cold?? I have cut myself 3 times today while outside doing chores. I have Raynaud's, so my hands get especially cold...and stupidly I didn't wear my sealskinz gloves. I'm not sure why I have Raynaud's -- I have no other disease that Raynauds is a symptom of--but I do have it. My fingers get white--completely white like snow. And numb. However, I do have (from one parent) alleles for several autoimmune issues. (Thank you 23 and Me for making my dna raw data available). And it was thought I had lupus a few years ago because I had a positive ANA test..but they were mystified because my cell strength was so strong...so, no lupus. My best friend from high school--Randy--calls them my "jedi cells" maybe 'cause of the midichlorian thing. ANYWAY...

Seed catalogs are coming in daily. I really like Gurneys but never hear much good about them. I got a Kitazawa catalog today. What do y'all order from them besides squash? I'm not putting squash in my garden this year. Taking a break from it.

The tree is down. :( There's now an empty space in my living room. I'm not going to start seed until February and am going to try, try, try to focus on painting and re purposing some furniture.

The coop is much better than our old one, but the roost bars are right in front of the window, which is just single pane window. I put cardboard on the window sill tonight hoping to help block some of the cold. In the hot months the window is nice because we can open it for a breeze. It's screened and we put hardware cloth on the outside.

I like all the new threads about grow lists, etc. I will look at those soon.

When is everyone starting seed?

HJ--NOW you remind me of my adorable DIL Stephanie in MN! Aha. Another clue into you. It's no longer my bff in Wyoming you remind me of-- you are way beyond her. You are my Stephanie in Oklahoma! LOLOLOL Uh-oh. She was tough. IS tough. SHE was a challenge, but very well worth the effort. And as much time as she put into her Christmas lights and Christmas tree and house Christmas decorations, from Thanksgiving on. . . the day after Christmas she began taking everything down. Now me, if I'd spent that much time putting them up, and some years way back, I did, I left them up until about the middle of January.

You and Stephanie are adorable freaks. LOL again. (And if Steph had chickens, she'd do just what you do. She is one of the kindest folks I've ever known.) Having said that, it took her many years to warm up to me. She thought I was always judging her. She thought I must think she was stupid. She was very defensive from the get-go. I think it was the fact that Wade and I had been through so much, and changed our names to the same last name (Russell), she assumed she had to break through that. She never DID assume correctly. (I always knew the ONLY way to behave as an MIL was to BACK OFF and not criticize, and to make best friends of my DIL.) The only time I ever offered opposition was when she wanted something of me, not ever when she was dictating food policy or child-rearing policy or husband/religion thoughts. But two different times times she wanted me join her in pyramid scheme "businesses," and I told her no. Both times she was FURIOUS with me. I tried so hard not to criticize her, and just tried to let it go at, "I just don't do any things like this," but then she'd keep after me, and I ended up telling her, "Steph, no. I've been through it myself, didn't work, and I am NOT being non-supportive of you, it's just something I can't and won't do because of MY experiences." As silly as it all was, it was a big bone of contention with her for about 10 years.

She is SO smart, and in so many ways, just like me. And we both try to find the spiritual truth, always. She's on a different path right now, but keeps trying, and I know her heart is true and good. We are both hard core tomboys and tough workers. Wade once commented on that, saying that we were two peas in a pod--both able to carry a 75-lb bale, didn't mind getting dirty, and doing whatever needed to be done. I loved it--Steph didn't so much. . . . until Steph and I had to work together on all of Wade's investment properties. THAT'S when Steph and I began having a good time. We were his two best employees!

Have any of talked about or thought about "We marry our mothers or fathers"? I have, and I FINALLY married my "fatherP)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)P)o (that was Tom's typo) (who was perfect--kind, gentle, thoughtful, loving"-- Garry. Well, I do believe Wade married his "mother." She's so much like me I just have to laugh. Love that girl so much. But she is an improved version of me, so I love her that much more, and have learned much from her.

I've no doubt, HJ, that you and my DIL would be very good friends.

And, BTW, my hands have been hamburger many years--YES cracked and bleeding through many years. They first start cracking so you put some lotion on, then the cracking gets worse, and finally one starts smearing the bag balm on and wearing socks over them to bed at night. Socks worked better than gloves.

Dawn, ever since I read that your husband used odd phrases, I tried to imagine if they were the same things my DH says, which, of course, I can't remember now, except for the ones inappropriate for here. His mother drank wudder, not water. She had some colorful expressions, too.

My rosemary didn't survive the summer. It perished for lack of water while waiting for the herb bed to be rebuilt. I am not sure it is worth the trouble to try to keep things alive next week. I am picturing some kind of cold frame set up similar to what was mentioned in the row cover thread. Most of my beds are 4 x 8, so a portable system that could go over any of the main beds and could be used for insect cover in warm weather AND MAYBE keep the dog out at the same time. Then again, Honey loved shredding up my green frost blanket. I really hate going out in cold and wind trying to cover/uncover things in winter. I need something that is easy for an old woman.

I was looking at my inventory list of seeds and I certainly don't NEED any seeds. But I do WANT them. I have a long list of kale varieties, but like tomatoes, I haven't gotten to TASTE most of them. And lettuce! Holy cow. Unfortunately I want $5 of seeds here (+shipping) and $10 there (+shipping).

This is the kind of weather where we have a fire in the fireplace. I hope we have enough wood to get through next week.

Rebecca, DH came back from the recycle place with a bunch of heavy duty ones. Plus I have grow bags. Honey likes to chew on grow bags, sigh.

My understanding is pelleting coating for seed goes on wet, so it kind of starts the germination process, therefore it doesn't keep as long. (Hope I'm telling this right).

I heard the bug killing cold comment, too.

H/J, I love the salad turnips from Kitazawa. Tokyo Market and Tokyo Cross hybrid. There are a thousand different kinds of greens to try, most have a mustardy flavor I'm not fond of, but you might like. There is Yu Choy Sum (flowering brassica) which is eaten as stems and leaves or also when the flowers bud. It is kind of like broccoli only easier to grow. There is Chinese celery, which I call leaf celery because it has the taste of celery, but not the thick stems. Japanese spinach, which is the arrow leaf kind, they are a source for Roselle. A hundred different kinds of radishes. Molokeyhia which is the Egyptian spinach I grow. Unusual beans, too.

Hmmm, Nancy, #2 son married first, I don't see her as being like me, #4 and #1, nothing like me. My daughter IS her father, marrying someone like him would be a war.

The truth is, I can't leave gloves or socks on my hands all night any more than I can stand socks on my feet. My sheets get stained from bag balm. I always say I'm going to put it on before washing dishes and then put the glove liners on with rubber gloves. I don't like rubber gloves either. They always end up wet inside.

Speckles continues to escape. I think she is flying out. She has learned to go back in the run without much complaint.

We are going to Bartlesville today. Have a good day everyone.

Rebecca, I am contemplating turning the side yard---an area of bermuda grass between the driveway, house, and detached garage---into a raised bed garden for the girls and I eventually. Maybe not for this spring/summer, but perhaps we could have it ready for planting next Spring. In an ideal world, we'd kill the bermuda grass (ha, ha, ha, never gonna really happen, is it?), put down 6" of gravel on top of landscape fabric, and build beds on top of the gravel, with really, really wide paths so that if any snakes ventured into this area, we'd see them there against that gravel. The raised beds would be all containers, perhaps galvanized metal water tanks or something. Maybe we'd start out with only a few and add more as time went on. I don't know. Another thing I can picture is a large deck with Earth Boxes on it, and with that being a gardening area the girls could enjoy. We've never had trouble with snakes getting on our porches, not ever, so I think a deck garden could work.

I hope we get bug-killin' cold down here, but our local TV mets have been focused mostly on warning people to bring the pets indoors, or to provide a safe, warm place for them outdoors if you cannot bring them indoors. I hate bitter cold spells like this because people inevitably will accidentally set the dog house, home or barn on fire trying to keep animals warm with space heaters or heat lamps that are too close to something combustible like blankets, hay, straw, pine bedding, etc. Or, space heaters indoors are too close to drapes, piles of clothing, beds or whatever. Very cold spells often end up being busy in terms of the firefighters and medics running lots of calls. I'm hoping we somehow manage to have a quiet, sleepy week both this week and next.

Oh, and the local TV Mets mentioned pipe-busting weather as a possibility too, although I think it is more likely for folks further north than us at the far north of our local channel's TV viewing area. Down here along the Red River we're only supposed to drop into the mid-teens, so I'm not so much worried about that here.

Jennifer, I don't know if it is easier or more common to cut oneself while doing chores outdoors in the cold, but it could be. I'd think dry skin would be more vulnerable to such things. I don't usually have trouble as long as I remember to wear my gloves.

With Kitazawa, I like some of their greens, their lettuces, and their melons. Oh, and their Armenian cucumbers, which often are the saving grace that keep our chickens happy through the worst of the July and August weather. When harvesting Armenian cukes for the chickens, I let them get big and melon-like before I harvest, and then I cut them in half like a watermelon, place them on the ground, and watch the chickens have a party with them. Kitazawa has an awesome selection of oriental types of cucumbers and radishes if you like those, and they have red malabar spinach and several types of hyacinth beans, which I like to grow as ornamentals to cover fences.

I haven't taken down the big Christmas tree in the living room yet, but I've removed about 25% of its ornaments, if that counts; nor the equally tall but skinnier one in the mudroom...nor the three 2' tall tabletop trees in Tim's office, the front entry and the kitchen....or any of the other Christmas decorations. My goal is to have all that Christmas stuff down and put away before New Year's Day. I'd have them down already except that I decided my priority this week is to get my Grow Lists completed so that if there's any seeds I need, I can get them ordered. Jersey is ready for the living room tree to be down and gone because it is in her spot where she like to sleep on her dog bed, so she's been unhappily displaced for some time. She still likes her dog bed so close to the tree that she'd be underneath the tree if she could squeeze underneath it. It doesn't matter where I put her dog bed---she just pushes and scoots it to where she wants it, so clearly I am only the boss of me....not the boss of the dogs and not the person who decides where the dog bed will go either.

I usually start cool-season seed in late January or early February, though it really is better to start brussels sprouts and cauliflower seed as soon as the new year begins, so maybe I'll do that this year. If I start too early, I just end up with plants that need to go outside before the weather has settled down enough for them, so I don't start any of the other cool-season stuff too early.

For the chickens, we will sometimes put up an infrared heat lamp on the coldest nights, and might do that for Sunday through Tuesday. We always make sure the heat lamp is very secure so they cannot knock it down and set their bedding on fire. Really, though, we've been much colder in some past winters than we will be this weekend (at least temperature-wise, but our wind chills are going to be lower than what we usually see) and we've never had a chicken have its feet or comb (or anything else) freeze. We do usually add extra bedding to the nesting boxes because a lot of the chickens like to snuggle into the nesting box bedding in cold weather.

Nancy, Some years I have left the Christmas stuff up that late, but the later in January that I leave it up, the more I dread having to take it down, so I've found I'm happier in the years when I take it all down by New Year's Day. Then, I can start filling the bare spaces with spring flowers and wreaths and such, or potted herbs. I love, love, love Christmas and all the decorations that go with it. When the lights are are all the trees and such, the house looks magical. This year I had 5 strands of fairy lights tucked into large glass vases and such, and three colored (red, green silver) Mason jars that have fairy lights built in, and I hate to put those lights away. I think I may tuck them away in the linen closet in a basket or in some other easily accessible location so the girls and I can drag them out in spring for Easter for for a fairy garden or whatever. They really loved those little twinkling lights.

Amy, Now I won't be able to remember any of Tim's odd Pennsylvania Dutch expressions, but I remember they blew my mind in the beginning. Oh, and his whole family calls soda "pop", as in "do you want a pop?". Ha, when I was in high school, pops (or licks) were what bad boys and bad girls were given when the assistant principal spanked them with a wooden paddle. Being a Texan born and bred, we called all sodas "cokes", even though for most of us when we said we wanted to stop at the convenience store and get a coke, what we actually were going to get was a Dr. Pepper.

Also, the difference in the names of meals---I grew up with breakfast, dinner and supper. I think Tim grew up with breakfast, lunch and dinner....and, if we ate what I'd consider a late dinner or early supper, he calls it "linner" (sort of the afternoon version of brunch), and he's the only person I know who does that.

Tim's dad, when referring to the fact the three boys get in more trouble than one boy alone, always said "One boy is a boy, two boys are half a boy and three boys are no boy at all", a phrase which always kept me confused. Now, I've noticed Tim says it too. In fact, the older Tim gets, the more he seems to be like his dad, which blows my mind. When we were younger, I thought Tim looked more like his mother than his father, but now he is the spitting image of his dad. I don't know how that happened.

We also have had a lot of trouble with the names of some foods he grew up eating---he loves pigs in a blanket, which to me, would be little hot dogs or sausages wrapped up in crescent rolls. Is that what he means? No, it is some sort of ground beef mixture cooked in rolled-up cabbage leaves---a dish I've never even attempted to make though he speaks of it quite fondly. I believe its real name is halupki, or stuffed cabbage or stuffed cabbage rolls. He refers to meat pies with a meat filling/mashed potato topping as shepherd's pie, even when the meat is beef. To me, a shepherd's pie must contain lamb or mutton (hence the use of the word shepherd's) and a beef pie would be called a cottage pie. So, sometimes when discussing food, we would think we were on the same wavelength and then would discover at some point that we were on two totally different wavelengths. His maternal grandparents were of Swedish descent, so he likes all sort of Swedish food that I am not likely to touch with a ten foot pole. Oh, and his grandmother had an odd phrase that really offended people. In the very small mountain town near Erie, PA, where she lived, most people made virtually all their baked goods from scratch, so baked goods from a store were considered a very rare and special treat. So, she'd tell someone that their baked goods were "almost as good as store-bought" and she meant it as high praise indeed, but people tended to think of it as an insult. Tim used that phrase with me a few times, and I set him straight and told him I didn't care what sort of compliment that was in Mt. Jewett, PA, down in TX, it was not a compliment and he finally stopped using that phrase 'almost as good as store-bought'. Sometimes it is just the way he says stuff with a PA Dutch accent that drives me crazy. Luckily the longer he lives here in this part of the country, the more his PA accent fades and his TX/OK accent takes over.

I don't need many seeds, but that doesn't stop me from wanting them. If only seed catalogs didn't have photos! I can ignore the flowery writing, dismissing it as typical ad copywriter BS....nothing is ever really as great as they say it is when they are trying to sell it to you (except, possibly, SunGold tomatoes) but it is hard to ignore those photos, especially in the dead of winter when everything outdoors is brown, wheat-colored and dull compared to the vibrant greens and colors of the growing season. It isn't that I thoroughly dislike all the tawny, golden colors of winter grasses and such, but just that I love green so much more. The relative greenness maps look awful now---my county's relative greenness is down to a measly 15% this week, and I think they are generous in classifying us as 15% green. Looking out our windows, about the only green we really have now is our burford holly shrubs.

Our chicken run has a bird netting top, and Tim wants to upgrade it to welded wire fencing or chain link or something, which makes me LOL, because who is he kidding---when do we ever have time to work on projects like that??? However, even just the bird netting roof on the big chicken run and the chicken wire roof on the little chicken run do keep the chickens in and the bobcats/coyotes out, so I suppose it is doing its job well enough. Recently, I came home from a big fire (about 2 weeks ago) and found a huge hole in the bird netting roof over the big chicken run. It was big enough a coyote could have gone through it, though we didn't see any telltale signs like feathers or blood or anything that would indicate a bird met a sad fate. Maybe the wild critter crashed through the bird netting in the dark after the birds were securely closed up in their coop and then I found the hole in the netting the next day. We'll never know, but that hole was patched up promptly because our chickens will fly up through a hole in the netting if they get the chance.

I hope y'all have a good trip to Bartlesville and back.

It is gray, gloomy and cold. I can handle the cold when the sun is shining. When there's no sunshine, I'm not such a happy camper. I've been keeping the cats indoors endlessly because of the coyotes, and I have some really furious cats. I might let them go outside for a while tomorrow afternoon, but if I do, I'm going to stay out there with them. There was a bobcat in the yard near the garage this morning when I first went out (of course, it ran off into the woods when I opened the back door), and coyotes howling near the back garden area overnight. I'm ready for these predators to pack up and move on.

Dawn

Too bad we aren't neighbors I could cook for Tim some of those special PA foods. Not really I don't like them except the new years tradition of pork roast kraut and potatoes. Scrapple, hog maw, and many other traditional PA meals are left up there. I used to make pigs in blanket the cabbage way regularly. Cookies and many of the PA dutch treats are good.

When we moved there and my youngest was fascinated with all those new foods he asked what is scrapple? My mil said well its like a mixture of all the leftover stuff and formed into a block?!* he said oh we have that in Texas we call them. "hot dogs "

Whats funny is he'll use speech to text for sending me a message on the phone. When it doesn't understand him, he gets frustrated, his Joisey accent comes out, and he starts cussing at it. And that's when it understands perfectly. Only he has some language censor turned on so all the cuss words get bleeped out. It makes for some amusing, and occasionally confusing texts. So far, all Google does is tell him "sorry, I didn't quite get that."

Kim, My aunt (she married my mom's brother) grew up in PA and gave me an Amish cookbook from PA as part of our wedding gift. I use that cookbook a lot and treasure it highly, but I have stayed away from highly ethnic/regional food like scrapple. The dessert section always has been my favorite part of that cookbook.

Jen, That is too funny. Tim uses voice-to-text a lot since he's in his car commuting about 2.5-3 hours a day and some of those voice-to-text messages are hilarious, but only because something he said was misinterpreted....sometimes the actual meaning of something gets lost in the translation. I just send him ????? in response and then he has to look at his phone and see what it sent me, and then tell me what he actually was trying to say.

Other than the bobcat here this morning, there were no scary creature sightings at our place, but on the evening news they showed a game camera shot of a cougar from Grayson County, TX, (SE of us) and the reason the guy found it was his neighbor saw a cougar on his place around 11 a.m. the other day....which might explain why he's had 5 or 6 calves go missing over the last 18 months or so. That got the two of them to talking about the mid-day cougar sighting so the guy with a game camera checked it and found a shot of the cougar from last Thursday---it obviously has been eating well. It looks a lot more plump and healthy than any cougar I've ever seen here. I hope it stays over there---those big cats can roam over a pretty large area and we don't want it here. Of course, they don't want it there either. There's been a lot of rumors about big cats/long-tailed cats, as they're often referred to locally, but this is the first new photo of one that I've seen in months. Maybe the coming bitter cold will send it fleeing further south (we can only hope).

I took all the ornaments off all the Christmas trees today---the big ones and the little tabletop sized ones. They're all sorted by color, boxed up and sitting in the spare room upstairs, waiting to go up into the attic once the trees are boxed up and ready to go with them. I'll take down the trees tomorrow. Jersey perked up when she realized she's about to take back her favorite sleeping spot from the Christmas tree.

The Burpee catalog arrived today. I didn't really see anything special in it, but that's not terribly unusual.....I am a hard sell and it takes something really special nowadays to make me part with my money. It helps that I just went through the seedbox yesterday, so I'm very aware of how many seeds I have, and how few I really need to buy (which doesn't stop me from wanting more, but it might stop me from buying more).

Tomorrow it is almost going to be slightly warm here, with highs in the upper 40s, sort of a last good day before the cold sets in for a while. I think eventually we hit the point where we stay below freezing for several consecutive days. They are backing off on our forecast sleet/freezing drizzle/snow or whatever might fall, lowering both the percentage chance and the amount that will fall. I'm okay with that---a dry cold would be fine with me. Our grasses in the fields are really fiercely dry again, but I suspect our county commissioners will let the burn ban expire, as scheduled, next week because of the rainfall we have received. I think we're the only county left on either side of the river down here (kudos to our commissioners for not cancelling it early) with a burn ban remaining, as all the other counties have cancelled theirs one by one. I expect we'll have trouble with fires on whatever day next week gets really windy. When the weather pattern changed from warm/sunny and dry to more cool or cold/cloudy and a little rainy, the wind speeds really dropped, but that is not going to last forever.

Dawn

Nancy, I'm so glad you have a good relationship with your DIL after a rocky start. It's a bit confusing when someone wants you to get involved in MLM company and you tell them "no"...and then they get angry. My good friend began selling Melaleuca awhile ago, and although she asked me to sign up to "sell" it (or whatever it's called) she didn't get angry when I said no. The products are actually good and the price for the products I buy are very comparable to the products I purchase at Natural Grocers--soaps, lotions, cleaners, etc. But, to get the lower price you have to be a member and order so many points worth. It's not bad though, I just order it all at the end of the month.

I'm ready to put my Christmas stuff away quickly after Christmas. Ready to move on to the next thing. My stuff is all down now except a few wreaths that I'm trying to figure out. I really want to "re-do" them for January, although they're not specifically "Christmasy" right now. They are simple grapevine wreaths with just a bit of greenery, pinecones and a few berries. Maybe take that stuff off of them and add some white sprigs or picks for January?

Amy and Dawn, thanks for the kitazawa seed suggestions. Are the Armenian cucumbers tasty...for people and not just chickens? lol

Amy, I hope you had a fun and productive day in Bartlesville.

Ooo...how fun to have a kids garden for your little girls, Dawn. My sister's kids had a little garden when they were small.

I really need to clean up the coop tomorrow as it will be the warmest day for awhile. They're spending more time indoors and so it's poopier than it was during the warmer days. We probably won't add a lamp for them though. At some point we will do that. I've seen a way to do it where it has a screen under it in the event it falls...and it would prevent a chicken's wing from getting caught if she flew up into it. Our coop is pretty "warm", I think. It's insulated and has a ceiling light and electricity. The only issue is the window, but covering it with cardboard really helped last night. We still haven't made their little winter door yet--just the little summer screen door, but I've been blocking it with a galvanized tub sat on it's side. We'll get there...and the hens seem healthy and happy. I'll add some fresh pine shavings and like you, Dawn, will add some extra straw to their nesting boxes.

Okay. I think I will search Amazon for the perfect planner to help me start my Year of Organization. Tom is going hunting in Nebraska next week, so perhaps I will paint furniture. Knock a couple of things off my list of 74 things-to-do.

Hj are we friend on fb. I wanted to msg you some planner organization info

I don't think we are fb friends. I'll send you my name.

nevermind, Kim, you already found me. LOL

My Arp rosemary bushes are spending the forseeable future inside the garage. I'm sure they'd probably be ok just being well sheltered in the back yard, but this way I can move them out into the sun during the warmer days.

Is the Japanese leaf celery also called cutting celery? If so, I have some of that. Grew it out last year and couldn't tell the difference between it and Italian parsley. Looked and tasted exactly alike.

I am going to have more trouble deciding on flowers to grow than on vegetables or herbs. That is the grow list I'm really going to have to get on top of. Anyone know how calendula does around here? I will at least have to have a list of how tall everything grows, for final planting. And I hate having to update a paper list or a list on my phone, with wet and dirty gloves, but also having to take my gloves off to do it. <---- first world problem

I didn't put up any Christmas decorations this year, but when I do, they never come down before January 6, which is the last day of Christmas. Old English tradition is that taking anything down before the 6th means bad luck for the next year. I think it would be less difficult for people to leave things up until then if we weren't smothered with Christmas everything starting November 1.

I love Amish/PA dutch food. Just good, honest, straightforward food, cooked with love.

Dawn, we've had a huge problem in Tulsa with coyotes. They've gotten a lot of chickens, cats, and small dogs this year. In the city limits! The hawk population is growing too. Maybe they'll feast on my squirrels.

My guess is that calendula will be just fine, however you do it. I'm going to late winter sow it this year. Otherwise I'd direct sow it. Rebecca, me too--the flowers are the tough ones to decide on, and that's what I've been researching the most. ALL the perennials for me, ALL the self-seeders for me, and many of the hardy annuals. That's how I'm approaching the planting. Let's compare notes, as it transpires.

Liked your whole post.

HJ, I don't have a good relationship with the DIL. I love her with all my heart. :)

I have an Amish cookbook from PA, too, Dawn, and I love it. My bff gardening friend that I found after 40 missing years. . . and like with GDW, we were besties in (different towns) high school, reconnected. She adored gardening and quilting. She was the one who dragged me into quilting, resisting and hating it for the time it took me away from painting. She died 5 years ago. . . think of her every day and think of how much she'd be loving what I'm growing in my garden now. She was living in Utah, zone 5-6. . . . and I was always so envious because her gardening season started 2 months before mine. I HOPE she can see my yard and veggies and flowers. . . . I grow many certain flowers just because of her.

Yeah, Dawn, I got the Burpees yesterday and it was really nice. But today I forwarded the rest to SIL in Buffalo Wy, not because she's going to grow anything, but because she loves looking through them. I am DONE buying seeds.

Let's go, HJ, Kim and me. . . . garden planners and journals! Kim, would you please send me the same stuff?

I wanted to comment on the different phrasings, accents, and vernacular, Amy and Dawn. . . and got a good laugh, and yeah, mine is different than down here, too--probably closer to PA's than OK's. Maybe tomorrow. Odd, though, coming from Wyoming, of all places, I was fairly familiar with NJ, PA and OK. Not sure how that transpired. Will get back to it. And oddly, too, from WY, I am very familiar with pigs-in-blanket and have cooked them several times in the cabbage and sausage mixture--from way back when. Interesting, to me.

From Wyoming. . . I always thought I talked like most of the nation did, because on national news, they sounded just like I did. And I think I was pretty much right on. . . but after I'd lived in MN for 30 years, folks would talk to me and detect that I was from MN ( maybe not from the accent, but from the vernacular). . . . or others would detect that I was from WY or Utah (again, not from the accent but from the vernacular). . . fascinating. I, for example, pronounced vehicle as "VEE-hick-cle." I tended to pronounce wash as "Woish, not WAASH." I've corrected those two. LOL. Now I am aware that folks call sodas "Soda, pop, or coke (which I would never do)." So now I always say, "soda pop." Hahaha!

Okay, I guess I've just talked a little bit about it! LOL

Haha, Dawn! Shepard's pie to me is like chicken pot pie, only shepard's is ground beef (or ground lamb) with all the same fixin's as chicken pot pie, only mashed potatoes on top--chicken pot pie is a pie crust top with the potatoes diced and combined with the rest of the veggies. It's a fun fun thing how differently we all interpret these!

Amy, we went back to Aldi today in Broken Arrow, and GDW said we should have called you and told you to meet us so I could give you the lid. I said you were in B'sville, that we could deliver it next time--but wasn't it cool that he thought of it? :)

I spent the rest of the day when we got back, doing the grocery comparison thing between Aldi and our Walmart here spreadsheet. We saved at LEAST $80. We loaded up today at Aldi, spent $178, which is an extraordinarily large amount, but bought tons of stuff, since we are now on a 2-week grocery-shopping trip.. . . and I'm still refining it. EVERY single thing at Aldi was cheaper. EVERY SINGLE thing. And for the first time in my entire life, I am having real fun shopping for food. By the way, their chuck roast last week was FAR superior to any others we've gotten in the past many months--Reasors, Meats and More, Walmart. And every single thing I've bought there is AT LEAST as good as any others, and always better than Walmart.

I probably could go on and on an on, but have already gone on enough! LOL Love and blessings to you all!

I always had good luck with the Broken Arrow Aldi's. The one on 21st street was closer & their produce was always iffy. The 2 I go to in OKC are much better. And unless you're shopping sales, Aldi wins hands down. I get the majority of our stuff there, then Walmart for pet food and certain name brands.

Can you add me to the planner list? My goal this year is to get better organized (same goal as every year).

Any big plans for the new year? Other than a church "NYE Party" that ends at 8 & a hot date with Dick Clark's copy, I don't have any.

I lost a post last night. Hmmm...where did it go. Maybe I never hit "submit". It's entirely possible. Rebecca, I've also heard it's bad luck to put away Christmas decor until after Epiphany. Maybe I should, at the least, leave up the Baby Jesus scene.

I had a weird dream last night...I had an aquarium (made into a rodent home) full of baby hamsters and they were clean and healthy--or so I thought. I went back to look at them and one of them was wet and sick looking. As I was trying to remove it, I noticed movement at my feet. It was a mouse and I quickly picked it up and almost put it in the aquarium, when I realized that it was a mouse not a hamster. In my mind I was quickly trying to connect the two situations--a mouse and a sick hamster, but couldn't figure out why a baby hamster would get sick from a mouse that wasn't even IN the aquarium. Then I was at a loss of what to do with the mouse. I had connected with it in the short time I had it and didn't want to kill it. (Of course, in real life I would have released it in a field..but dreams are weird.) Ethan and I just finished season 2 of Stranger Things. If you've watched it, you can understand why I dreamed about this. Maybe.

Tom is leaving for Nebraska on Sunday, so I will probably just stay home on New Year's Eve. Ethan got a job and has to work until 9 that night. Maybe I'll go see my sister in Edmond. Her husband's office is being relocated closer to Norman. He's from Norman and they lived in Norman until maybe 8 years ago. I'm so excited about the possibility that they could move back. I really, want them to. They've not said that's what they're going to do--but I would love seeing my sister more often! I need a house to become available in my neighborhood! They wouldn't move anytime soon. The oldest boy graduates this year, the second next year..and then their daughter still has 2 more years. It would be such a dream to have my sister in my neighborhood.

Okay. I think today is the day to try out my new mixer!

I am starting separate post about planner journals

I've got pickling melon on my maybe list for Kitazawa, Dawn. Though I don't think it will happen this year. Wonder if the melons grow like the squash?

I have a little bitty tree this year, and a wreath on the door. That is it for decorations. I don't feel the need to take them down that I usually do, because they aren't intrusive and haven't been up that long. I might wait till the 6th. Can use all the luck I can get. Speaking of which, do you think it HAS to be black-eyed peas for New Years? Could we get away with ANY other cow pea? Maybe I'll mix them in with others.

I'm thinking about throwing a tarp over our chicken house on those cold nights. It's not very big. That would keep the wind out. Need to tell DH to add bedding.

Interesting, Dawn, while getting a coke has always meant ANY soft drink to me, I once told a grocery store clerk in NJ "the pop is separate". He didn't understand. I had to say soda. I guess PA is farther west and the term must change somewhere between East and west PA. My MN mom had breakfast, DINNER and supper. I always thought that was weird. We didn't go to dinner in school or eat in the dinner room. ;) Scrapple is something DH won't eat, so I believed him. He did give me a lox and cream cheese bagel once. Edible, but nothing I've chosen to eat again. He hated that he couldn't get white American cheese here for many years. Apparently the white cheese was a endemic to his part of NJ, along with a disgusting drink that tastes like flat cola. They drank it like I drank kool aid.

Nothing is ever as good as they say it is. I should have a sampler made of that. Maybe I could trim down my purchases, LOL.

Bartlesville: 22 hawks going up, 24, a new record coming home. DH wouldn't let me count the Red Shouldered Hawk heard and then seen in the back yard. I kind of think there were 2, and maybe courting.

Dad's heart rate was high. Home health nurse was there, she seemed good. We didn't stay long, just took gifts up.

I really hate to hear about the cougar. I'm a little surprised no one has seen it in an 18 mo timeframe. I expect the ranchers will be on the lookout now.

Jenifer, speech to text does some weird things, even if you don't have an accent.

H/J, Armenian cucumbers taste like cucumbers when they are cucumber sized. I never grew one to melon size to know what they taste like then.

Rebecca, the Chinese celery I bought tastes like celery. Looks like parsley. I have had leaf/cutting celery before and it also tasted like celery. I wonder if you got the wrong seeds?

Calendula grows great in OK. Full sun, no problem. I have NOT had it survive more than one year. Maybe it would in a pot.

Nancy, sweet of GDW to think of me. One thing I have to point out about Aldi. Often their packages are smaller than name brands. You may be paying the same price/oz, because you're not getting as much. This doesn't bother me, since it is just the 2 of us. If I was still feeding 6, it might make a difference.

I'm working on my purchasing list a little at a time. Ruminating on grow lists, but no where near ready to firm that up.

Hahaha, Amy--yes! Some of their packages WERE smaller--you should have seen me breaking down the price per oz figures! GDW thinks I'm nuts.

Y'all don't even want to get me starting on my disdain for all MLM crap. The whole MLM thing makes me crazy. We've had plenty of friends and family who have gotten involved with that stuff over the decades. I hate every bit of it, and refuse to be a part of it in any way, which includes not buying whatever they are selling. In fact, I relentlessly change the subject every time they bring it up by just saying "I'm not interested. Period." It works for me. Unfortunately nowadays those same people fill up my FB feed with endless posts about what they're selling. When it gets to where they are posting daily, or multiple times a day, I just hide their posts, which helps preserve my sanity.

Jennifer, That's what I do with wreaths that are not Christmas-specific. I add different picks and bows for different seasons.

Some people like Armenian cukes and some don't, so I think you just have to try them to see if they appeal to you. If using them as cucumber substitutes, the trick is to harvest them while they are younger and smaller because as they get bigger, they become melon-like (but not sweet). I like them okay, though I prefer regular cucumbers. The difference in them is that regular cucumbers often shut down production in July and August of drought years, and Armenian cucumbers do not---so if the choice is Armenian cukes or no cukes, I'll take the Armenian cukes. Mostly I grow them for the chickens in an effort to get more water, in the form of Armenian cucumber flesh, in their bodies in extremely hot weather. The chickens go nuts over them and literally come racing to me when I walk out the door with cucumbers for them---I don't really think it is the flavor of the cukes so much as it is just something moist and wet on a hot day. Chickens need all the help they can get on extremely hot days.

Rebecca, I believe that any leaf celery they list is a cutting celery, and some of the ones they carry are sold specifically for use as microgreens. Their other celery is more like regular celery but with slimmer stalks that we see on the sort of celery we eat here.

Calendula has done surprisingly well here in the spring. I try to sow it pretty early and get it transplanted into the ground around the same time as my first tomato plants. Some years it blooms for months and seems almost (but not quite) impervious to the heat. Other years it burns up in the heat. It's not a heat lover, but it can tolerate a surprising amount of heat as long as it is in good soil and gets adequate moisture.

I think everyone in OK has problems with coyotes any more, and it doesn't matter if you're in a city, a town, the suburbs, the exurbs or extremely rural---they (and the bobcats) are everywhere. Coyotes are so very good at adapting to being around humans that they even are found in downtown NYC and downtown Detroit nowadays. Their population cycles up and down, and we seem to have been on a huge upswing here both last year and this year, so it should begin cycling down again in 2018. Our cats are just hysterical because I won't let them go outdoors. I don't know how to make them understand that with both bobcats and coyotes in the yard close to the house this week, there's not even a target date in my mind when I am going to let them out. It is the same thing with the chickens---I may never let them free range again. We just keep losing too many to predators. There are years I never see a coyote on our property at all, and there's years we seem them constantly. This is turning into one of those winters where we are seeing them constantly, and spring, summer and fall were almost as bad.

Nancy, I like Aldi's when we go to it, but we just don't go to it often. We get in a routine of going to certain stores (clearly Sam's and CostCo are our big two) and that partly developed because back when we first started shopping at CostCo, it had organic products you couldn't find anywhere else except at big national chain stores of natural grocers, and their prices tend to be ridiculous. There's a reason, after all, that Whole Foods is nicknamed Whole Paycheck. We usually go to CostCo first, then stop in at other stores on the way home to get stuff on our list that CostCo doesn't have. I'll stop at Sprouts or Central Market for a few organic things we don't need in huge CostCo quantities. The only things I'll buy at Whole Foods are items not found anywhere else, like grain-free tortilla chips. If there was an Aldi's there close to any of these stores, we'd probably shop there too, but unless we go to the Sam's Club in Sherman, there's not an Aldi's real close to anywhere we shop. They seem to often be a bit more off the beaten path. I do love buying in bulk at the warehouse stores when it comes to buying items we use a lot.

The other day we were making our pre-Christmas shopping list, and Tim said "I need tomato paste, tomato sauce and canned tomatoes for the lasagna", and I told him we had all three (and all of them organic in non-BPA cans too) in the pantry, which we do because we buy them by the case at CostCo. Now, if I'd been making the lasagna sauce, I probably would have started with frozen tomatoes from the freezer, but he's more comfortable with canned stuff like his mother used, so I save the frozen tomatoes for when I'm cooking. He was astonished to learn we had two shelves in the pantry full of tomatoes. I don't know why. Does he not notice the cases of them we haul home from CostCo? Does he not see what is sitting on the pantry shelves? Maybe he carries stuff inside the house when we get home and just doesn't pay attention to what it is. Or, maybe in his mind, he associates the canned tomato paste and sauce with the Annie's Salsa recipe and assumes I only buy them/use them when making salsa. Anyhow, it cracks me up that he seems clueless about all the food packed into our pantry shelves. With a fully stocked pantry and freezers, we probably could survive the rest of the winter and all of Spring on stored food if we had to, though maybe after a while the repetition of some dishes might seem too monotonous. The other day he kept listing meat we "needed" to buy, and other than needing bacon, we already had everything at home in the freezer. I guess since I do most of the cooking, he doesn't think about what is in the freezer, but I do. I guess it is just part of my routine to take the meat out of the freezer and thaw it out and use it, whereas he thinks about the meat for meals only when he is standing in a grocery store. He'll say "Steak?" and I'll reply "freezer" and then he'll say "bratwurst" and I'll say "freezer". After a few more rounds of that, he stops suggesting stuff because he cannot come up with anything that's not in the freezer. It is almost like a game---but, for me, an annoying game because I don't know why he doesn't know what we have. When we buy meat in bulk at the warehouse places, I break it down into smaller packages when we get home and then put it in the freezer, so I usually know not only what we have in the freezer, but how many meal-sized packages of it we have as well. Maybe I should make a list for him and post it, because it is all in my head---but I don't forget what's out there in the deep freezes in the garage.

Jen, We never have big plans for the New Year, and that dates back to the earliest years of our marriage. Most cops (or at least the ones we know) don't go out on New Year's Eve because they know how many people will be driving drunk. We did used to meet friends for a New Year's Day Champagne Brunch at a ritzy hotel in Dallas in the 1980s and early 1990s, but gradually everyone in our group, like us, moved further out away from the DFW metroplex and those brunches died a natural death once the drive to them became a major commute, I guess. We usually are at home, watching bowl games or whatever, and cooking something yummy at home for ourselves....while hoping the fire pagers don't go off at all that day or that night. We generally don't even stay up until midnight. We're old and boring and highly value getting enough sleep nowadays.

Jennifer, Having never watched Stranger Things I am completely clueless on the mouse and hamster thing, but I do agree that dreams often are just weird.

I'd love to live closer to my whole family. We always lived in the same neighborhood as various family members until we moved here. However, none of them are interested in country living and we aren't interested in moving back to the city, so it is not likely to ever happen. Actually, I think my BIL would love living here because he's a hunter and we have an endless supply of wild game, but my sister is more of a city woman and would be immensely bored here. I do think when they retire, they may move further south, closer to his deer lease where he spends every available moment during hunting season, but it will have to be close to a town that meets her needs. No one should move to an area as remote, quiet and laid back as our area unless you like spending a lot of time alone with your plants, animals and tons of wildlife---country living isn't for everyone. Someone who likes the constant stimulation of having tons of people around all the time and always being a few minutes from a StarBucks or Taco Casa (or whatever) wouldn't be happy here.

Dawn

Just tasted (for the first time) the tomato sauce I canned last summer. Not bad, not bad at all. I guess I will have to continue to can. LOL.

DH said the other day that Owasso was getting too big and maybe we should move to Skiatook. I said it would have to be some place with an organic garden because I was not starting from scratch again. The only time Owasso is bad is when you're up by the malls. And Christmas time is the worst. My poor son passes that stuff daily as he lives near it. It is still easier to get anywhere in Owasso than it is anywhere in Tulsa. Unless you're stuck on the wrong side of the train tracks when there's a train or trying to pass the high school just as they let school out. I do like that my kids are close.

We don't do much for New Years either, though my Bartlesville BFF has invited us for a New Years Eve open house in the afternoon. That depends on the weather.

I was just looking at my Lancaster County (PA) cookbook. A dear friend visited there many years ago and sent it to me. Fun once again, browsing through it and thinking of my friend. I do love sausage!

Oops, just commenting to you on Kim's journal page; ask me how confused I am, Amy. I was asking if your broken wrist last year left you with any gimpiness, and that no, you may not move to Skiatook.

Yeah, no NY here, either. Party poopers here.

I'll keep fingers crossed for your sister moving back close to you, HJ. I also wish all our families lived closer to us. Makes me miss all those so far away, my relatives AND Garry's. At last our far-away relatives in Wyoming all live pretty much in the same town.

Yes, a children's garden does indeed sound like a lovely idea.

And I did actually send all my current catalogs to my SIL--I know where all those online sites are! heh heh. But if I should get any from some of the amazing flower/herb growers, I doubt I will be so generous.

I've been in lala land all day. First working on journaling stuff, tidying that up in my OneNote diary, and then researching through years of OKGW. That's been my entire day, no sense in upsetting the cart now. I feel breakfast for dinner coming on.

Trying to hedge my bets for the rosemary. Can't bring it to the house, but did run out and get several newer branch tips to try and root. And can't cover all of them this weekend, but will get the largest one covered and wish the rest good luck.

Amy, And that is how you get stuck canning, canning, canning. I only canned salsa tomato products this past summer, along with non-tomato products like pickles and canned peppers, but I still have home-canned pasta sauce and pizza sauce from 2016. I froze 2017's stewed tomatoes, processed (skinned and seeded) chopped tomatoes in 8-cup batches (for future salsa making) and whole tomatoes, and still have plenty of each.

I wouldn't start from scratch again either. It has taken too long to fix the soil here and to fence the things that must be fenced. We're never moving from here. All the clearing of the acreage just along the property lines so we could fence it, the clearing of invasive underbrush, building bridges across creeks, building all the various outbuildings, etc......nope, never gonna go somewhere else and do all that over again. Once was enough. Now, if y'all could find a nice place with great soil or, even better, an existing organic garden and orchard, that would be pretty wonderful. Oh, and a big roomy fenced kennel for Honey and a coop/run for the chickens. Just the thought of packing up all the stuff that needs to be moved is quite daunting though. I feel like we've accumulated a ton of stuff since we moved here, despite my efforts to constantly purge excess stuff. When we moved here, we meant for it to be our forever home and we tried to move out far enough in the sticks that we wouldn't feel like this area ever could get too crowded or too heavily populated. Maybe someday it will, but we'll be too old to move by then for sure.

The weather may mess up a lot of people's New Year's Eve or New Year's Day plans, The chances of precip of any kind down here at our house are low (10% currently is the highest chance, and that's for snow on Sunday) but we are going to be awfully cold. It still shouldn't be cold enough to freeze the Arp rosemary, but if it is, I'll just plant another one in the Spring. The two Arps that I have did survive down to 4 or 6 degrees last winter, and I didn't cover them up although they were mulched. We had stayed awfully warm until that cold spell hit last December, so it probably helped the rosemary plants that the ground was still pretty warm.

Nancy, I don't know how cold you're going to get there, but the Arp is pretty cold-tolerant for a rosemary plant.

I really shouldn't even listen to the fire channel. I should leave it on 'page' all the time so I only hear what is going on when it goes off for us. Tonight Dispatch had to page out 3 VFDs out west (basically same community where we had the monster fire a couple of weeks ago) because somebody was burning furniture in their front yard. Yep. You read that right, and when the first firefighter got there, he encountered resistance from a person who (or so he said) didn't know there was a burn ban and who did not want anyone to put out his pile of burning furniture. The firefighters asked for a deputy sheriff to be sent out to assist them in dealing with that person and they put out the burning furniture anyway. So many questions in my mind....why burn furniture? why in the front yard? why resist having the firefighters put it out once you are informed there's a burn ban? I could go on and on, but I won't. (sigh) Just when you think you've heard of everything, someone springs a new one on you.....

The house is clean, the laundry is done, the house is undecorated from Christmas and now it looks too bare to me, there's no groceries, pet food or animal feed that we need and don't already have. I have big jugs of water stockpiled in the mudroom in case our water line freezes or breaks somewhere outdoors (or somewhere in the water distribution system before it ever reaches us, which I think happened once upon a time when we went down to 1 degree). Now it is just a matter of patiently waiting out the bitter cold that arrives here in another day or two and sticks around for a few days. Today was half pleasant---46 degrees---but too cloudy. I need sunlight! I have a stack of magazines, three books and a pile of gardening catalogs.

Tim was on-call last week at work, including the weekend and Christmas Day and just totally dreaded the thought of bad weather breaking out and him having to drive down there and spend the weekend or holiday running the Emergency Operations Center at the airport. Thankfully it remained quiet. Sometime before he left work for home today, they opened the EOC at the lowest level, which I think means one person sitting in there and being ready to call in others if weather or some sort of disaster breaks out, but Tim's not on call this week so it is some other asst. chief whose weekend likely will be ruined by this weather. Talk about the luck of the draw....

Dawn

Yeah, Dawn--well, we'll see how the ones without covers do--if they do well, that'll be good and maybe I'll quit worrying. ha! (The lantana next to it's covered, too.) I was so freaked when my enormous one died last year--'course as you know it wasn't an Arp.

I was trying to finalize my grow list for now this evening. It was fun.

However, I still have some a pepper list to cut back on, maybe. Decided this is the year to go crazy with lettuce and spinach.

Nancy, we get along, right? I'm confused. lol

Amy, we wrapped our coop in a tarp last year when we had the one really cold snap in December.

My house is empty and bare too, Dawn. It always feels like that right after taking down Christmas decorations. But, I haven't really decorated it fully yet after our remodel--and that's been over a year ago. I need new curtains, a lamp for the piano and something for the wall behind the couch. And other things.

I'll probably paint furniture next week and start making a list of seeds to order.

Tom just did his 23 and Me..and will take my uncle's to him when he goes to Nebraska. They finally phased me with my mother and now I have 2% asian...maybe that's why my daughter looks asian. I didn't get around to studying up on ancestry stuff over the holiday break.

My Melaleuca friend texted me today about going with her to Tulsa next Saturday for a new product launch. It's so weird that she asked this of me when we're talking about MLM here. I probably won't go. I absolutely do not want to sell it, although I enjoy their products.

A chicken coop smells so nice with fresh pine shavings.

The next 4 days will not rise above freezing. Do you think that's long enough to kill bugs?

Now, I'm just making up stuff to talk about. Stay warm!

Amy, my cutting celery is from Fedco, so it should be the right stuff. Maybe I'll just plant only curly parsley this year, and cutting celery, so I can tell them apart. And I think I'll try calendula in pots. Everything I hear suggests well drained soil for it, and my clay doesn't always qualify as that. They'd look nice on my front porch. And Lowe's has 18 gallon totes for $4.00 if you need more. I'm going to check them out tomorrow.

You know you're old when your idea of watching a bowl game is not with friends at a bar drinking beer, but at home, in bed, drinking hot tea. It was warm in bed.

The cold is going to be horrific. I'm running errands tomorrow morning so I can be back inside hibernating the rest of the weekend.

Is it even possible to buy PEPH peas frozen, canned, or dried? I have a tablespoon of blackeyed peas to choke down on Monday for luck, but it occurred to me that I'd never seen PEPH to buy.

I will be making a lot of soup this weekend, I think. And hot tea.

I bought them canned, Rebecca, but Dawn (and maybe someone else--maybe Amy?) told me even those were no good! :) AND yes, PEPHs are on MY grow list for this year--but only a couple. I'll be sampling many things. Birdhouse gourds, Luffahs, BEANS. Bush beans! Woo-hoo, and scads of spinach and lettuces. And then carrots in the spring and again in the fall, likewise with beets. But mostly potatoes, onions, peppers and tomatoes. And garlic. And corn.

Oh, HJ! Yes, we DO get along in spades! So do Steph and I--suffice it to say, I'm blessed. She just never realized how perfect she was. I hope she does now.

Stuck in Denton with the flu again for the holidays. NYE I will attempt to go to church like I usually do. My fever has finally broke so I am on the mend. It has been a rough couple days for sure. I don't know when I will try to go home since the cold is moving in.

Feel better, Kim--there is some nasty flu making its rounds!

Yes, it is cold, and not crazy about it. 25 here. Suppose it's nippy most everywhere. Somehow, reading on gardening makes me feel a little warmer.

Maybe this was already discussed, but do PEPH peas count the same as black eyed peas when it comes to good luck for the year when eaten on New Year's Day?

I dried PEPH peas, but have no black eyed peas.

I suppose I could get out again and pick up some...

Me too Nancy. Let's talk cute little green things emerging from warm soil.

Yes HJ I think any cowpea counts as NY tradition, but I am yankee so what do I know. Lol

Hahaha, Amy. I hadn't even thought about it. Hmm. Ham and beans sounds good to me. That's kinda like black-eyed peas. Thank YOU both. And--would you expect any different from me? I'd never heard of black-eyed peas being a NY tradition!! Even Garry had heard of it. I don't ever recall my family having a NY traditional meal--it was always a night of appetizers--well, I guess that IS my tradition. Appetizers.

Another day of reading. And doing laundry. That's it. BUT, I went back as far as GWOK would let me go (that was in 2012) and have been reading starting from back then. I'm up to February of 2013 (Kim has just made her first appearance.) Fun to see you back there, starting out, Kim. Kind of depressing--every year has its challenges, doesn't it!! 2012 drought! It's a miracle any of you down here can grow a garden! And it's fun to see how many of you have been on the forum for a long time. It really has been a hoot! It's like reading a good book!

The only traditional meal my family EVER had was Thanksgiving. We switched Christmas and Easter dinners around, never relying on any one meal. And I kinda like it that way, too. We DID always have a big Christmas Eve meal, however, followed by a late and big brunch on Christmas, then leftovers or snacks. Easter, either ham or prime rib (or a cheaper cut of beef), usually.

Ham and beans aren't a favorite of GDW's, but I spruce them up with lots of seasoning and tomatoes/carrots/celery/onions, and as long as I serve cornbread with them, he can do them better nowadays, he says.

Okay, Kim. Little cute green things growing. . . finally on my last round of ordering for the main garden. That reminded me of LoneJack's chia pet comment! Not many cute little green things to discuss yet. I do have all my cuttings going, and there are too many, and they are too big.

Nancy, Y'all have had quite a bit of cool weather already, and I think that helps the rosemary because the cooler weather has hardened off the rosemary to gradually cooler weather (or, at least, this is how it is supposed to work). The years in which I've lost rosemary were ones where the autumn stayed flat out hot forever, and then the first cold spell hit hard in December like a tornado flying across the plains, and the rosemary could not take the sudden change from very warm weather to intensely cold weather....like, 70 degrees one day and then 18 degrees the next night, with worse temperatures following after the 18 degree night. The only other time I've lost rosemary was in a winter that was very cold/very wet and the soil just stayed too wet for the rosemary for months. That's why I now have one rosemary plant in a bed raised 18" above grade level and the other one in a large urn that's a couple of feet tall---if the rosemary is not in well-drained soil now (the urn has a cactus soil blend to which I added extra decomposed granite), then I'll never have anything in well-drained soil because I don't think I can make anything drain better than that tall bed and that urn.

I hope you have fun painting the furniture and making decorating decisions. I enjoy doing things like that so much.

I don't know if 4 cold days will faze the bugs at all. It is so complicated. Some insects have anti-freeze type substance in them that helps them survive winter, so I think it just depends on what insect you're talking about. Time will tell. This morning Tim removed a very, very large leaf-footed bug from his car that we assume got into the car trunk at the police station. It was hideous-looking. I told him to not bring home ugly bugs like that. It was a good 50% bigger than any leaf-footed bug I've ever seen here, and maybe even more than 50% bigger. It possibly wasn't a leaf-footed bug (I didn't go over and observe it that closely) and might have been a kissing bug, which I don't think normally could take our cold weather up here. Regardless, except for that hideous thing, I haven't seen many insects lately and take that as a good sign. Possibly they all are just hibernating, as they tend to do, in mulch, beneath leaves, etc. We need a really cold, prolonged spell that lasts weeks to knock back the insect population significantly and I doubt we'll get that, but constant recurring cold spells, with warm days in between, could help kill insects. One thing to do is to rototill the garden soil in cold weather, so you stir up bugs underground and expose them to colder air surfaces at the ground level. That exposure helps them freeze to death.

Rebecca, While they may prefer well-drained soil, I grew calendula in the ground in beds with barely amended clay for several years after we moved here and they did fine. Granted, it was one drought year after another, except for 2004, so they might have done better in the clay in dry weather than they would have in wet weather, but they also did well in 2004 when it was pretty wet in the spring.

You can find southern peas dried, canned, frozen or (at some stores) freshly shelled and sold in plastic containers or bags in the fresh produce section, ready for cooking, usually with an expiration date of about 7 days. I don't know if you'll find any specifically labeled PEPH--but you might if your local stores carry one of the brands of vegetables produced in the south. Margaret Holmes' veggies include canned White Acre peas, but I'm pretty sure all their other southern peas are listed on the label as Field Peas or Blackeye Peas (either of which might/might not include PEPH types) and I think Glory Foods' peas also are only listed as Blackeyed Peas on the label. I'm pretty sure I've seen PEPH sold canned before, but don't remember where or which brand it was. Keep in mind that the average consumer calls all southern peas (whether they are PEPH, black eyed, green eyed, crowder, zipper, lady or cream peas) black-eyed peas and it generally is only gardeners or southern chefs who would refer to different kinds of southern peas, like PEPHs, with their proper name.

If you want southern peas in what might be a more palatable dish, you can buy (or make) a traditional southern dish called Hoppin' John. Some Hoppin' John recipes are basically just peas, onions and peppers along with a few spices and others also include tomatoes or other ingredients. Here's one example:

Margaret Holmes' Canned Hoppin' John

When I make Hoppin' John, I usually use a lot of jalpenos so ours is pretty hot. Our PEPHs are shelled, frozen, and ready to cook along with our New Year's weekend ham, but when I want them fresh and have run out of frozen ones, Central Market has them freshly shelled, sold in plastic containers, for a very reasonable price almost year-round. I believe theirs generally are raised in far south Texas.

Nancy, Canned southern peas are nowhere near as good as fresh or frozen, but they'll serve the purpose for observing the southern tradition of eating southern peas, preferably on New Year's Eve at midnight as the new year begins, for good luck. We just wait and have ours at noon and at dinner on New Year's Day since we aren't going to be awake and eating peas at midnight. Keep in mind I am anti-canned veggies because my taste buds prefer the flavor and texture of either fresh veggies or frozen veggies. That doesn't mean all canned veggies are bad, but just that I find the other forms preferable. They are people, I am sure, who hate the frozen version and prefer the canned one too.

Kim, I'm sorry you're ill for the holiday weekend. Please stay put and take care of yourself and get well. Flu is running rampant right now. The linked map shows how widespread the flu is, as of last week:

Weekly Flu Map for W/E 12/23/2017

It probably is wise to stay there in Denton until the weather settles down since all sorts of light winter precip are possible over the next few days. We're under a Winter Weather Advisory here through 6 a.m. tomorrow (and y'all are under one in Denton until midnight) but nothing really is happening here yet. I'm hoping nothing falls from the sky. We had drizzle before we reached freezing temperatures, but by the time the temperature dropped to freezing this afternoon, the drizzle had ended, so I think we're lucky so far.

Jennifer, All southern peas count towards fulfilling the Good Luck requirement. I've lived in the south all my life, and it never has matter which southern peas you ate for good luck, as long as you ate southern peas. When we lived in Fort Worth, our next-door neighbor, a lovely woman in her 70s/80s got together with a bunch of people from her church every New Year's Eve and they ate southern peas right at midnight for good luck. They said if you weren't eating them at midnight to welcome the new year, you wouldn't have good luck. We've always just waited and had ours at noon on the 1st. It probably is a silly custom, but it doesn't hurt to eat the peas, so why not do it?

Amy, Uggh. I wouldn't have been able to eat oyster stew again either after finding that big wad of hair...and I don't want to think about where the hair might have come from.

Tim is outside making a shelter for a feral kitty who's been hanging around, and we've been feeding it this week and trying to tame it. Feral cats here usually will not survive all the predators wondering around in the winter, so I'd like to bring him or her indoors to stay safe from the predators and the cold weather, but most feral kitties won't let you pick them up and bring them in, so a big box with a fluffy old comforter on the covered patio will have to suffice. I might take a heated throw blanket out there, plug it into an outlet in the garage, and try to keep the kitty warmer on Sun and Mon nights if I cannot get it to come in tomorrow. (Most cats like me better, by far, but this one prefers Tim, so he might have better luck trying to pick it up and bring it in. We do always wear thick leather gloves when attempting a feral cat rescue.)

It is cold and cloudy here, but otherwise quiet. Our VFD/PD/EMS GroupMe mermbers are giving us constant updates from all over the county and beyond (if they are traveling), and even though there's been drizzle and there's been freezing temperatures, there hasn't been freezing drizzle yet. We're keeping our fingers crossed.

Dawn

Hall county has already had 1 accident no injuries. I definitely will be taking it easy here.

Good for taking it easier there, Kim. Good call. Are you feeling a little better?

Oh, Dawn, warmed the cockles of my heart hearing about the new little vagabond cat. Keep us posted. I wish I could take pics of these two characters. But they move too fast. We have fallen in love. They sound like little pumpkins--zooming through the house, under Titan, over Titan. Oh dear. They will certainly be keeping us entertained. They are both (knock on wood), not all that naughty. Oh, they do have their moments. Helps that we don't having any hanging curtains, right? But I do have the quilting foam board nailed to one of the walls, and it has/had a gray flannel backing nailed to it. But it is sagging and about to give way after a few assaults on it. We're not sure what to do--the only thing worse than a gray flannel covering would be foam board with NO covering. ^&* cats. But there's nothing better than to wake up in the morning, only to have a loving onslaught of cats attack like dive bombers, full of purrs, loves, maulings and mews (Mind you, this is mostly likely because they want fed, but still, just cuter than the dickens.) And today, they didn't give me a moment's peace until afternoon nap-time. All was good, however, since I was just reading. And Jerry naps on Garry's lap for the afternoon. GDW tells me he can't move, got a cat on his lap. Tom, meanwhile, has his face, his butt, his back right in front of me between the computer and my face. Or lying on the keyboard and making keys go crazy.

I still covered the easy-to-cover one, Dawn, along with the lantana, since both are close together and only 30' from the back door. I know I'm paranoid. . . .but it's not a lot of trouble. Meanwhile, the other ones out there will be my tests. :) The only other things I have covered now are four cabbages--two uncovered. Another good test--but it's presumably going to get to 5 tonight, so we'll see how cold it really gets in those raised beds, and am anxious to see what is out there tomorrow.

Had so much fun today reading GWOK's threads from 2012 into 2013; I may continue this evening. Entertaining but every so educational. As so many have said through the years, thanks all of you, so much, for your kind help.

The Purple Hull Peas I found at Walmart a few months ago were Bush's brand. Still haven't opened the cans, but will.

I need y'all to throw me some ideas for part or full shade flowering annuals for my mom's yard. She's always planted pansies and impatiens, but we are just thinking of new ideas. She doesn't like petunias. She has black clay like I do, and an irrigation system.

Right off the top of my head, Rebecca, I plan to have tradescantia in mostly shade, lots of New Guinea impatiens if I can grow them, ruellia, enormous bright red coleus. lots of lady's mantles (again, if I can grow them), And I'm going to try to grow some wild ginger in one of the prepared beds for a gorgeous ground cover. I'm thinking the New Guinea, the lady's mangles and the wild ginger will be quite a challenge. IF I could get them, they'd be glorious for the shade.

Kim, I hope your flu gets over soon. I'm almost sure that's what I had a couple of months ago. I've heard the flu shot isn't working so well this year. It seems like that every year though. I don't get the shot. I lost several lbs when I had the flu. Okay, it was only 6, but that's a lot for me. I re-gained 3 quickly but managed to keep the other 3 off--which makes a difference on my frame. However, this week I'm back to where I was pre-flu. Shoot. Holiday goodies were so enjoyable though. And I made another darn batch of peppermint chocolate chip cookies tonight! I love my new mixer and must bake now.

This morning, I heard a couple of light bangs on my bathroom window and looked out. There was a hawk flying away. I don't know if IT banged on the window or what. Anyway, I stayed out (brrrrr!) with the chickens when they had their "range" time this afternoon. It was very cold, but I bundled up and walked the dogs around the property. They are so bored.

I did find some black-eyed peas in the pantry that were probably purchased last year. They are in a Natural Grocers bag. I'll mix in a few of those with my very own PEPH peas. I like all southern peas...even black-eyed. ALTHOUGH, they can't compare with my home grown PEPH. I'm sure y'all remember my excitement when I tasted them for the first time during the summer. Our tradition was to serve them on New Year's Day.

As I was walking the dogs around the property, I found all the asparagus ferns that blew off the burn pile. they are caught on the back fence.

So, another question about chicken poo and safety. What if a bed was built on top of half-composted chicken poo with several inches of soil added to the top of the chicken poo...and it wasn't mixed in?

Oops, though the lady's mantles, ruellia, wild ginger and trandescantia aren't annuals. (Why does she specifically want annuals?)

Kim, I expect the roads will get better before they get worse. I'm glad you're not trying to drive back to west TX in this weather.

Rebecca, Annuals only? Here's some of my favorite plants for shade: Four o'clocks, only they'll likely perennialize and thus don't meet her requirement that they be annuals. Nicotiana alata or any other form of nicotiana. (Some of them reseed.) Balsam. Wishbone flower (Torenia). Monkey flower (Mimulus). Lobelia. Baby Blue Eyes. Snapdragons. Polka dot plant (Hypoestes phyllostachya)---you grow them for the polka dotted foliage which is a green background with white, pink, ivory or red dots or splotches). Begonias. Dragon-wing begonias. Coleus. Ornamental sweet potato vines. Sweet alyssum (bloom better in part sun than in shade, but last longer in the summer if partially shaded.) Coral bells. I'm sure there's more but that's what I can come up with at the moment.

Jennifer, The more I think about what I had back in November, the more I think it was the flu as well because it is very similar, symptom-wise, to what folks here with the flu are sick with right now. My friend, Jesse, at the time told me it was the flu despite my lack of a fever and said our friend, Lance, already had had it and it held on forever and he couldn't get rid of it either(just like me). So, maybe you and I were lucky and got the flu over with quite early. I hope so, because as many people as I've been around for the last few weeks (and I am sure you have been around even more), then if I haven't had the flu yet, I expect to come down with it shortly.

We have birds hit the windows fairly often, but usually not a hawk. One year we had a demented cardinal who repeatedly fought himself/his own reflection in one of the windows in Tim's office. I was sure he was going to kill himself, and nothing (not those little bird decals, for sure) stopped him. Finally I hung CDs on fishing line right in front of the window, dangling and moving in the wind and that finally broke him of flying headlong into the window to attack his own image. (Wild turkeys also do this.)

Our pets are bored two. I let a couple of the cats come into the main house from the sunroom and after a few minutes of that, they were bored with the house and wanted to go back to their sunroom and play with their catnip toys. They remind me of bored children....i.e. "there's nothing fun to do....". The dogs will go out but won't stay out long, though they quickly act bored after coming back in. I think we humans are bored too.

You have to be careful with fresh or somewhat fresh chicken manure. For safety (because of possible salmonella and other pathogens), it should be fully decomposed and cured before used in beds where you grow edible crops. For the well-being of the plants, it needs to be decomposed well-enough that it is not continuing to decompose as the plant roots grow down into it, or it can produce enough heat to burn/scorch/damage the roots.

If you were to layer the chicken manure with other ingredients,)preferably these other ingredients are chopped/shredded into smaller pieces to speed up decomposition), in a compost pile now, turn it regularly and get it hot enough that it steams in the middle of the pile, you could turn this week's manure into finished compost for use by April. It just takes turning the pile regularly, keeping it moist, having the right blend of ingredients, etc. Or, if you don't have the time and energy to tend a hot pile, pile it up out of the way and let it cold compost for probably a year. Chicken manure is great for a garden but must be composted fully in order to avoid future issues. I sometimes use mine in a compost pile and sometimes haul it out to a cold compost pile that I never remove finished compost from. So, that pile that's left where it is, is being used to fix a badly eroded area. I just throw compostables on it, let them decompose, and let native prairie plants grow up through the compost. Using this method for almost two decades now, we've managed to heal some badly eroded spots that had turned into gullies that were bare red clay. The chicken manure probably had contributed a lot to how healthy the plants in the healing gully look each year, and red clay no longer is visible. When I'm satisfied with that area being fully healed, I'll haul the chicken manure further away to another eroded gully.

Right now, I do have chicken manure on the big compost pile, layered with tons of other material, including cardboard, chopped and shredded leaves, egg shells, spent plants, etc. When we still had green grass clippings we added those as well. I probably won't use this compost until 2019 because we just added the majority of the chicken manure and bedding a couple of weeks ago. I don't like to rush chicken manure.

Dawn

Man oh man is it going to get COLD. I was watching the KY3 weather at my parents last night and they showed us dropping to as low as -4 tomorrow night with a high of 13 on Monday. High of 16 tomorrow! Wind chill warning issued for local areas with wind chills down to anywhere from 10 F to -25 F. I think yesterday was our first day above freezing (35 F) since last Saturday. Doesn't look like we'll above until this Friday or next Saturday again either. I sure am hoping this'll hope with bugs. What's so odd with this front is how dry it is. The wind really dries out my skin quickly when outside. Usually fronts like this bring wet snow!

I don't know what we're doing for New Year's Eve dinner. Last year we are black eyed peas, sauerkraut, and a pork roast but we don't usually follow a schedule with New Year's meals, like you Nancy. I don't even like black eyed peas much, though I'll eat them. New Year's Eve is usually very boring here. Just another day I guess...

Most of our chickens were looking in bad shape because I had to stop letting them free range recently. We got sick of the poop everywhere, including the porch. Hopefully we will be putting a netting up soon to keep them down in the woods and bottom yard. Anyways, they started to look very bad and weren't recovering much molting too well, so we tried switching to a new feed and they're doing MUCH better. Most have finished molting but a few are still molting and I'm wondering if they'll get frostbite this weekend. We'll see. The rooster seems to be laying off of them oddly.

Dawn, how do you find green material for your compost pile at this time of year? We have chicken manure but it's a limited source. I've been feeding mine leaves, cardboard, kitchen scraps, and chicken manure lately. I'm hoping to quit adding when I clean out the coop this spring and just let it rot until Autumn. I'll start a new one from garden waste likely this spring.

Apparently we got freezing drizzle first during the night followed by a light dusting of a fine, powdery snow, so our firefighters, cops and medics spent far too much time out working accidents on I-35 this morning, starting around 4 a.m., I think, and basically going from one to another to another. It settled down and was quieter this afternoon and we only had one medical call between lunch and dinner. We're hoping for a quiet night. Hopefully there was enough traffic on I-35 this afternoon to melt and dry up the ice on the road as the sun never managed to come out here, though it started trying around 5:15 to 5:30 pm when it was too late for sunlight to do us any good. Maybe tomorrow. The interstate was a mess, but it was drivable if people slowed down and drove properly for the conditions we had (which too many people just don't do), and it was a mess all the way down to the D-FW metro.

The cold finally arrived down here too, but we stayed warmer than expected until close to sunrise this morning when the temperatures really began to drop, so we had a few more hours of above-freezing temperatures than we had expected to have based on the forecast. I think that now we don't go above freezing again until Wednesday. The wind chills were pretty brutal late in the day here but will be much worse tonight and tomorrow. The hollies don't seem bothered by the cold at all, but the purple wintercreeper has turned so dark it is almost black. This is not unusual in extreme cold.

We fed so many deer, bunnies and birds today. We have five goldfinch feeders, including two large ones, and I refilled them multiple times today. We had dozens and dozens of goldfinches all day long. Oh, and grumpy cats and dogs who are stuck indoors for the most part, and going stir crazy. Jersey is the only dog that doesn't want to go out in the cold---she went out around 3 or 4 a.m. and then at 5 p.m. In between those two times, she just raised her head and gazed at us with an expression that said she was not going out in the cold. Not, not, not. I hope to get her to go out at least once more before her bedtime.