Étouffée with crawfish. But you have to go to Texas down by...I think it was Aransas NWR. OMG. I came home and mentioned it to friends, they knew it. It is a place birders go after the refuge. Wish I could remember the name. Anyway, crawfish, crayfish, crawdads...little bitty lobsters. Actually had my first in MN. My cousin caught and cooked them. If I ever do Aquaponics, they will be in my tank.

I showed DH Dale's class on greenhouses out of cattle panels. You should google that. Garry will have one for you in no time. I think DH hasn't found instructions that were clear enough for him. Our other issue is height. I'm not DUCKING in the greenhouse. And I would rather NOT step over a board to enter. But it got us talking. I planted the seed for a sod stripper. And I told him what I was thinking for the fence. Now he has to ruminate for a few days. We've looked at those greenhouses on the side of the road. Tell him they aren't BIG ENOUGH. Ha ha ha ha ha ha! They really aren't very big.

I really sympathise, Kim, I do, but not enough to come down and help. ;)

I may get run out of town on a rail, but I don't like Cajun. There is a bitter/hot in their seasonings that I really don't like. DH has quit buying Cajun seasoning, he really likes it.

No, Amy, they have some crawfish etouffee in Tulsa. :)

It was not as good as what I had in Texas. LOL, one of those places you measure all others against.

Well, I just need to TASTE a crawfish before I actually cook with them! Are they anything like lobster?

I'd think it might be BEST in New Orleans! LOL Have you tasted theirs? What was the name of the place in TX?

I'm guessing Landry's. . . http://seafoodchainrestaurantrecipes.blogspot.com/search?q=crawfish+etouffee

Landry's Seafood

The Exchange

Bellino's

Black Sheep Bistro

Katz21 Steak and Spirits

LOL

I checked Yelp for Aransas, it wasn't there. It was an old building in a small town, if I remember right, just a man's name, like Dave's, not sure that's it. It has been better than 15 years, maybe it's not there any more. I think I ate the etoufee at Joe's Crab Shack in Tulsa and was not impressed, it is now closed, so any of the places advertising it is probably better.

Crawfish has a shrimpy/lobster taste and texture.

I have never been to New Orleans, so can't say who has the best.

Bodeans sells frozen crawfish tail. Apparently there is a season for crawfish. I didn't see it on their menu. It looks like Cajun Ed Herbert's crawfish poorboy is fried. Fish Daddy's Grill House has a fried crayfish and etoufee combination. Supposed to be reasonable prices.

Yuk and no

Why eat something plucked out of the mud when there is real fish out of clean water. I don't care what kind of fancy you put on it. It is still craw dad a la mud

Okay! Yikes. But I promised I'd try them and will. No doubt with that idea in mind--I know, I know.

Oh and my greenhouse I did not duck at all. My panels were 16'. Tomorrow I get to help put up my new one!

ROFL, Kim. DH won't eat catfish because his mother wouldn't, because it was a bottom feeder. One could say the same about shrimp. My guess is unless you are one of the Swamp People, the crawfish you buy in the store is farmed. I've been fascinated by the aquaponics system that raises fish (upper level), freshwater prawns (middle level) and crawfish (lower level). They are separated by netting. I probably would not have eaten them if my cousin had not been the one to introduce them. I adored him and would likely have done anything he suggested. Good thing it was just crawfish.

I've been thinking about your green house Kim. (And SO excited for you getting new one!) We use cattle panel arches for trellises throughout the garden. DH felt that to get the greenhouse wide enough it would have to be too low. He's pretty tall. A number of people on line have wooden sides a foot high that they attach the panel to. That would solve any height issues. Many people start with a wooden rectangle base (some a foot or 2 high) which requires stepping up and over to enter. Ideally, I would have a wooden floor that would hold the sides together, and the door would sit on that. If that didn't happen, rebar driven in the ground outside the greenhouse would prevent spread and the door would not require a big up and over step. It sounds so simple, but I can't communicate it to DH.

You could lay the 2x6 flat to attach to sides and that would be a gradual step and could even slope with dirt or gravel. Rebar would not be strong enough to hold the cattle panels but tposts driven a foot would probably be more secure. I used 2x6 and drove tpost to tie it down to keep the wind from taking it.

About the crawdads to each their own right, I mean, I used to eat eggs.

Y'all who have husbands who want to cut sod and build stuff can bring them right over here. I have plenty of that stuff they can do.

Jennifer & Lisa, I don't know. Firefighters are pretty picky about what they'll be seen eating in public----for example, no cupcakes and nothing with sprinkles. It is fairly hard to get them to even eat muffins---unless you can make the muffins look nothing like cupcakes. Guess how I learned that? It kinda makes me laugh. I originally started feeding them just to get them to eat more----if you feed them peanuts, trail mix or something else salty, suddenly they need to drink a lot of Gatorade and water. Then we branched out to sweets (to tempt them to eat) and eventually whole meals at some very long fires. Now they are pretty spoiled, but I like that---I like knowing they count on us to look after them to the extent that we're able. I've been doing this almost 14 years and have a pretty good idea what they like the most (coffee!!!! on cold days or nights). The other night, one firefighter at the big Thackerville fire where we had firefighters from 4 counties told me that "you'd be perfect if only you had cans of chewing tobacco lined up on the table with the snacks". We laughed, but we aren't going to start providing them with that.

Jennifer, Maybe your hen that is laying while roosting is young or confused and tenses up and can't release her egg until she's relaxed enough to sleep?

I say that anyone who wants a nap and has time for one should just take one.

Amy, I think Ikea has a cute little greenhouse cabinet (I haven't seen it in person, only in the catalog) that might be acceptable for raising seedlings with some wind protection as long as a person could prop open the doors to prevent overheating. I'd like to look at it in the store to see how sturdy it is. It isn't very large, though.

Ikea's Greenhouse Cabinet

Everyone probably is too busy going to fires to post them. I shoot a photo now and then to send directly to Tim at work, but that's about it. We're usually running, running, running, here and there and everywhere.

We only had 2 fires today---one around lunchtime to ruin lunch for everyone, and then another one in late afternoon/evening to ruin dinner. Both were in Thackerville (of course---as that seems to be this week's problem area). The later fire was very long time-wise and complicated because it ran across a pasture and got into the tree line.

Our commissioners passed a burn ban in effect immediately through Feb 7th. It won't stop all fires, but it will help. We still had a lot of prescribed burns today that were started before the burn ban was passed this afternoon, but shouldn't have that many now that it is in effect. The wind was very low so smoke hung low over the whole county today and it was awful. I hope tomorrow's stronger blows the smoke out of here. We won't be as windy as most of y'all, so shouldn't have a Fire Weather Watch or a Red Flag Fire Warning tomorrow or Friday, but we'll be windy enough that hot spots from the 1000-acre fire, the arson fires, the escaped trash fires and all the prescribed burns could send out sparks that blow into unburned areas and start new fires. I hope that doesn't happen, but expect it will. I baked a lot today to get ready for the next few days. We have so many cases of drinks piled up that we ought to be good for a while, and all our fridges and freezers at the station are full. I feel ready for just about anything.

Yesterday Chris said his girlfriend felt ill and he thought she was coming down with the flu. Tonight he says he has it too. It sure is spreading quickly down here. Tim is going back to work tomorrow so he'll be breathing in the relatively clean air of the DFW metro area compared to the smoke-polluted air up here. Texas is having awful fires that we try to keep an eye on as well. The other day (apparently when he was coming back from sneaking into work) Tim sent me a text that said he was watching the smoke plume in Bangor. I wrote back Bangor, Maine? He was using voice to text, and it turned Sanger into Bangor. I was just laughing.

Did I tell y'all that some random driver on I-35 crashed into a fire truck at the big fire on Monday? Tim says that because that fire truck had all its operating lights and warning lights on, the fine for hitting it will be $10,000 although I assume it could be 'up to $`10,000' and perhaps up to the judge's or trooper's discretion. I am not sure how that works, but I'm just glad nobody was injured.

The longer day length is very obvious here. For a while, we were going out shortly after 5 p.m. to close up the doors to the chicken coops. Now we don't have to go out and do that until 6 p.m. or so. The chickens know when they see us coming that it is time to go up....if they are out in the chicken run, they head right indoors and jump up on their roosts. I also see tiny tufts of green trying to sprout in the yard, but then they cannot get anything going and do not really grow (no rain, nights still below freezing).

Nancy, I'm not a fan of mudpuppies---they rate on the scale of things that come out of holes in the ground, like tarantulas, that I'll never put on a dinner plate. In 2015 when we had the flooding rains, we were so wet that crawdads showed up in my garden. Shortly thereafter, crawdad snakes showed up and then there were no crawdads left. It was strange how quickly the crawdad snakes found the crawdads because we rarely see either of them on our property.

Fire season lowers my standards. Instead of waking up with a mental list of things I'm going to do, I'm just happy to wake up naturally to sunshine coming through the window----instead of waking up to the sound of a fire pager going off in the middle of the night. Then, instead of having a plan in my mind of what I hope to accomplish that day, I have two plans---a hypothetical plan of what I'll do if the pagers don't go off, and a secondary plan for what I'll do if they do go off. Instead of cleaning house and starting garden projects, I just try to get the smoke smell out of (a) my clothes, (b) my shoes and/or boots, (c) my purse, (d) my keychain and (e) my coat, hat, gloves...oh, and cell phone case. If I can get the smoke smell out of everything all at the same time, I am pretty happy---and the smoke-free thing usually doesn't last even a whole day. When we run into the grocery store to get fire supplies, we wear our fire department gear and carry our radios so it will be obvious to everyone exactly why we smell like we fell out of a smokestack. I hate walking around in public smelling like we just left the world's largest bonfire.

One thing I've been watching is previously burned-over spots. Normally, after an area burns, it will green up really quickly, but the drought has left the range plants in poor condition, so we aren't seeing much greenup. The fact that we're so dry probably has a lot to do with that. There's not many green things sprouting in the garden yet either...and some years we have henbit in bloom this year--but there's none yet, so the bees are eating the dust from the cracked corn we put out for the deer.

Kim, Have fun putting up the new greenhouse. Is it twin-walled panels?

Amy, You do know that you can rent sod strippers at one of those rental places? They can be set to different depths, so go as deep as you reasonably can to get all the roots and stolons out. If we bought one, y'all would never hear from me again because I'd spend all day every day removing every list sprig of bermuda grass from our 14.4 acres, and I'd never ever let it come back. It would be beyond a full-time job, but a gloriously rewarding one.

I don't want to look at the weather forecast. I don't want to look at the wind speed. I don't want to know what's coming tomorrow. I just want to sleep. We have two fundraisers this weekend for 2 different families burned out of their homes recently, and that doesn't even include the 4 houses lost Monday at that Thackerville fire. It is almost overwhelming to try to figure out how to help all the families at once, especially if we're still fighting fires every day---it doesn't leave a lot of time for anything else.

There were no catalogs in the mail today, so maybe my catalog season is over.

This morning, when we went to town to buy baking supplies (Wal-Mart) and odds and ends for the VFD (bolt cutters to replace some that were broken on Monday, extra respirators and safety glasses--from HD), I noticed the Bonnie Plants truck was parked outside the W-M Garden Center. I went to investigate. It was delivering boxes of BP onions, and I wasn't interested in them---the Dixondale ones, even the ones at Atwood's, always look so much fresher and healthier to me. W-M also had all the bagged bulbs, asparagus, bare-root plants, bags of seed potatoes, and even a whole display of bagged, bare root succulents. I've never seen them sell succulents that way before. I didn't look closely at anything because there really isn't anything I need or have time to deal with.

Spring seems more slow to arrive in the stores than usual this year---maybe the store buyers are thinking winter isn't quite done with us yet too. I'm not in a hurry to do anything this year, unlike some years, because it doesn't feel like I should be.

One of the baby shower gift items I ordered from Amazon yesterday morning was in my mailbox this afternoon---that is even more quickly than seeds arrive from SESE and Willhite, which normally is 2-3 days.

I need to go to bed and get some sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep. If I can sleep a whole night tonight with no loud siren type sounds waking me up, I think I will wipe out the sleep deficiency that is making me drag around like death warmed over.

Dawn

Sweet dreams, Dawn. Hope you get a good night's sleep.

I am not sure Dawn. It has the polycarbonate sides, fans, auto openers, double doors. I will probably ditch this house and move in there.

LOL, Kim! :)

Woo-hoo. I'm like a goose who wakes up to a new world every morning. I got money! I can go buy seeds. REALLY, Nancy? I have no more big gardening expenses for now. No tools (and definitely no sod-cutters), no gardening sorts of soil for a while, no main seeds, no onions, no big expensive online shrubs, no nursery pots, no flats, no heating mats, no nothing. It was so liberating I just socked a bunch of money into savings right away. Hope we don't have to prematurely withdraw $$ for emergency travel or a new freezer or washing machine or something. But, after all, that's what it's there for. Slowly building it back up (on my part.) For taxes, too. Bummer. But for the first 35 years of my adult working life, I didn't have savings, so it feels like a luxury, and God's blessings to all who don't feel they can have any to put into savings. But it's important, even a little. $10, $20. . . .

And no. We would not buy an expensive greenhouse. No way. Now that I've finally realized, duh, that I have four 8' long fluorescent bulbs in the previous art, quilt, office/cat's home room, I see more plants moving in. I'm positive that's exactly what alarmed GDW this morning when I said, duh, we move the plants in HERE, and then he mentioned the greenhouses. Ahhhh, this is priceless. Good strategy, Nance! And you all must vouch for me, that I was NOT planning this! I bet the reason the kitties don't mess with stuff in here is because it's so confusing they wouldn't know where to start. They prefer a more orderly room, like our bedroom, that only has one vase of straw flowers, so it's a natural target. In here, there are cords everywhere, quilt fabric, oil painting table and supplies, tools on the back table (MY tools), a bookshelf, CDs, stereo, lots of paintings stacked here and there, a big sewing machine, my computer, some paperwork, a small freezer, a few stacks of cook books and gardening magazines, my seed cabinet, my canned goods, my TV. . . . Thankfully, the room is big enough that it doesn't look as bad as it sounds. But is getting close. I really really need to neaten things up. Ummmm, on 2nd thought, I guess it does look as bad as it sounds. Believe it or not, the rest of the house is, honestly, very neat. No wonder GDW is willing to buy a greenhouse!! LOLOLOL I think some of my friends need to come do an intervention.

Yep, if I'm not cooking or gardening, this is where I live except for when we shower and sleep. Don't ya' think all of us need a room like this? Within reason? And BTW, GDW also spends a great deal of time here, too, in the brown leather chair, which we've given carte blanch to the cats for racing over and tearing up.

I hesitate to expose this to FB, but probably I should.

I hope you sleep well tonight, Dawn.

The firefighters around here will eat anything given to them. If I made a plate of girlie cookies, decorated them pink and delivered them to the station, they would eat them, after joking about them.

I wish I would have had time for a nap today.

Crawdad and crawdad snakes??? disturbing. ew.

Your room looks so cozy, Nancy.

Are the fires a lot worse this year, Dawn? In the three years that I've been around, normally you're talking about starting seeds and onions. Last year, you started seed in December, right?

I don't have much to talk about. My kitazawa came in today. It's like Santa came for a visit.

Thanks, y'all. I slept like a rock all night long, and awakened early naturally so I think I am caught up on my rest. I got up at 5 a.m., put a load of smelly, smoky clothing in the washing machine and came back upstairs to my warm bedroom and laptop computer. Tim is headed for work and seems better today. I hope he isn't going back too soon because he did that last week and then relapsed and missed work again this week.

Kim, Ha ha! When we first built our greenhouse, I thought I'd live in it too. Then I found I had to deal with the reality of the greenhouse effect making it feel so hot, hot, hot in there on sunny days, and I don't like being that hot all the time. Still, on a winter day when it is cold and windy outdoors, it can be nice to be inside a warm, steamy greenhouse for a while. Of course, if I open the vents and doors, all that cold winter air comes rushing in and then the greenhouse is not too hot (partially because of the shadecloth) and not too cold (except at night or on cloudy days) but often is just right. I know you're going to enjoy yours. Watch for insects and mice---they love a nice warm greenhouse as much as we humans and our plants do.

If your polycarbonate walls are twin or triple wall panels you'll be able to see the multiple layers when you look at them.

Nancy, Hooray for having money! I agree it is important to sock it away, even in small increments. It does add up after a while...and I hate spending the savings once they are there. We've been saving for retirement since we were in our mid-20s, and I don't regret it, even though there were times I'd rather have had that money to spend 'now' instead of putting it away for some far-off future time. As we get older, that far-away future time is getting closer and closer and I'm grateful for every nickle and dime we've managed to squirrel away. (I chose that phrase squirrel away just for Rebecca and her squad of tomato-destroying squirrels.)

Your room looks so nice and cozy, and well-used. I love a room that is nice and big like that and multi-functional. I wonder if the cats will become more of a problem when they get more used to it and to your seasonal routine? Our cats think our plant light shelf has one purpose and one purpose alone---to shine a little light on them to warm them up while they sleep on the shelves. So, for obvious reasons, they're not allowed in the room with the plant shelf while it has flats of seeds and seedlings on it. Otherwise, they will lie down right on top of the flats and squash those little plants flat.

Jennifer, I'm afraid I've spoiled our firefighters. They don't like anything that is too messy to eat in a hurry, so cute cutout cookies with frosting are a no-no as are cupcakes. I just make large, sturdy cookies (often the size of the ones at the cookie shops in malls) they can grab and eat on the go.

Yes, our fires are enormously worse than usual this year, and for the simple reason that the drought conditions contribute to the fire conditions. I don't remember exactly how many years you've been around here, but we haven't had a really bad fire year here in several years. Part of this year's problem is, in fact, that we had enormous amounts of plants grow very quickly and very large in the rainy years of 2015, 2016 and the first half of 2017. Then drought set in, and now all that plant growth is just enormous amounts of dried-out fuel for the fires. Our last really bad fire seasons were in 2014, 2013, 2012 and 2011 when we had persistent periods of drought. In recent years, we've only had a bad 4 or 5 weeks here or there, not a prolonged season.

Think about our gardens and what fire-fueled monsters they'd be if we never cleaned out the dead plants before planting new ones, and if we let all that plant residue pile up for years and years. Well, that's what our range land and forests are like now, and here in the Cross Timbers eco-region, we have a mosaic of savanna and woodland interspersed so there's tons of fuel for the fires, especially because of the widespread invasion of junipers (commonly referred to as cedars) which burn like crazy.

Those of you in Red Flag Fire Warning areas, please be careful and watchful today.

Last night, my favorite TV meteorologist basically said to people that they should not burn anything today or the next few days and that to do so would be pretty stupid. I so very much appreciate his blunt language----people need to open their eyes, pay attention and be aware of the fire risk around them. Oklahoma is awash in a sea of dry vegetation right now as the fire season kicks into high gear, and this is very dangerous for everyone. It is ironic, is it not, that one of the best ways to fight fire is with fire, but now we are too dry and too windy to use fire as a tool against fire.

Have a good day y'all. I'm off to take care of the animals and then to cook up savory snacks in the kitchen---we cannot feed our firefighters only sweet stuff all the time. Y'all know I'd rather be working on garden stuff right now, but this is not the year for that---I am becoming worried my gardening is going to be compressed into tiny nooks and crannies of time.

Dawn

Crawdads...love mudbugs, but only in dishes. I don't care for eating them out of the shell. There's a cajun place in Tulsa that hosts a cajun festival every year. If you can make it, do so. I've never been to the restaurant itself, but the food during the festival is decently good (as good as you'll get in Okla).

Nancy, I love your room! We have an agreement in our house: he doesn't get a man cave & I don't get the equivalent. He's always playing video games so his computer is in the living room. I'm either on the couch or at the kitchen table, so we can do our own thing but still be together. I was alone for 35 years before we met & now I'm married, I don't feel like being segregated. But give us a few more years. Once I get a greenhouse, I may change my mind.

I think I finally thwarted the puppy from my garden, though she's plotting. I can see it in her eyes. But I think it's secure enough that I can start planting soon. While making notes last night I noticed some things need to be planted now, so I've gotta get with it. This whole work all day is for the birds! I'd much rather be home playing in the dirt. Only 21 years 8 months to go until retirement. I did some math (what can I say, I'm a number cruncher). Including weekends & holidays, I have been employed for 9200 days, & have 7900 left until I'm eligible for retirement. So you could say I'm more than halfway done!

Wow. I missed a lot last night, but I was tired.

Are crawfish the same as crawdads? We used to catch crawdads in a creek that was in a residential area where my grandparents lived. Southside OKC near May and 59th. I probably had them as pets. lol. I know that I didn't eat them. Maybe my grandparents did...or my grandpa. I know that he cooked coon at times. (Y'all I am 2 generations away from straight-up hillbilly)

Y'all are talking about greenhouses. Off Indian Hills, there is a house that isn't in very good shape. I am a nosy person, so I drive real slowly by things that I find interesting so I can peer. There is an old greenhouse frame on one side, although it's currently being taken over by the trees that seem to move closer each year. However, it is still standing. I've wondered about stopping and asking about it. Maybe they would want to give it away? In my peering, I've noticed stacks of large terracotta pots behind the house. I can't see clearly, but really want to snoop. Probably a gardener lived there at one time and has either passed or is ill and can no longer garden.

Rebecca, Tom builds stuff, but he really doesn't enjoy it. I'm grateful that he plays along as well as he does. I would enjoy it if I had the skill of using tools. Maybe I should practice. I miss my Dad for many reasons, but he would have had ALL my projects completed because he was talented at it and enjoyed it too.

I looked back up. I thought I skimmed through someone talking about aquaponics and hydroponics. A LOT of people talked about those things at the home and garden show. Ethan got one of those kits three years ago--I think it's from Back to the Roots...anyway, it's a fish tank and herbs grow in a tray on top of the tank..they were fed by the fish waste. It was fun, but he stopped caring for it and I had a "real" garden to take care of at that point. I sold it in a garage sale last year.

Went to El Tequila for lunch (the Owasso branch is very good, though I've heard the Tulsa restaurants are not. ) Had mango shrimp ceviche. I love that stuff! I have decided I must really like mangos. It occurred to me it might be good with crayfish. Online recipes make it with white fish. Now, I am not a sushi fan. I'm not eating fish "cooked" in lime juice. I have however eaten fresh raw shrimp, caught that day off the Washington coast. So if the restaurant didn't cook the shrimp first, I would live. But many of the online recipes cook the shrimp first, which I would do. They have added a "Cajun boiling pot" section to their menu (which I found odd, but...) It had crayfish. I didn't get any because I'm not fond of Cajun, and I had a feeling these would be spicy. ANYWAY...yes, H/J, crayfish, crawfish, crawdad. Apparently mudbug, too? LOL. Jen, the crawfish festival is apparently sometime in mid May. Cajun Ed's Herberts (pronounced Ay bears) Meats is having a Marti Gras party, Feb 13th. Check it out on FB.

I was talking about aquaponics. If I was younger, I would try it. I see it as a way to grow your own proteIn. I have chickens. I could do rabbits, I don't think the neighbors would tolerate calves, goats or sheep. Fish, though, yeah. But tilapia is recommended for warm areas and I just don't like it. But then I read about the 3 level system that did tilapia, prawns and crawfish. (And, BTW, I don't have rabbits because I only want them for their poo. I could not eat one I had raised and DH won't let me have one as a pet.

The Boy Scout Troop DH was a leader in (and 2 out of 3 boys were in) had an annual event on private land east of Locust Grove called "the coon hunt". The people caught and cooked racoons for the boys. Doesn't appeal to me. Apparently they are quite greasy. Yeah, they SAID it tastes like chicken.

I have 2 dogs. You have heard much about Honey the Sasquatch. Holly, the beagle is old (11?) way over weight and arthritic. She can barely get up the steps to the house. So how did THIS dog get in the chicken pen last night? Chickens were in bed. She was barking at something in the yard behind us. I had Honey in the house so Holly could do her business in peace. WTH?

Dawn, I am glad you got some rest. There was a grass fire near Skiatook Lake, believed arson. It was not as windy as I expected here. We had a NWS fire danger alert, so I expected more wind. I haven't heard more about todays fire.

I do know you can rent sod strippers. As much as I am sure DH wouldn't mind owning yet another tool, they are pretty pricy. If you ever see that greenhouse cabinet, let me know. I have 2 of the shelves with plastic covers. One cover is unused, but the shelves, well, I think we might be able to put together one set of shelves between the 2. The wind is dangerous and it has to be weighted down to keep it from blowing over. Honey would be the problem with using that one.

Nancy, my extra rooms are much smaller and much messier. And I can attest the main part of your house is clean and uncluttered.

Jen, At least you're more than halfway there. Tim is eligible for early retirement now, but wants to work at least a couple more years--possibly more. Both our dads worked until they were 65, but I don't think Tim will work 5 more years to reach that point, though you never know. We've seen tons of our friends take early retirement somewhere between their early 50s to early 60s, and almost every one of them had a new job within a couple of months...having figured out either (a) their retirement money wasn't going to last another 30 or 40 years or (b) they were immensely bored without a job to go to. (Clearly they weren't gardeners or that would take care of the boredom issue.)

Jennifer, Crawdads and Crayfish are the same, and they have many, many nicknames, often unique to particular states or regions or even families.

It is possible all of us are just a couple of generations removed from straight-up hillbillies. Heck, there are people here in my county that are hillbillies---they're recognizable because they are the ones who stop and pick up roadkill animals and take them home to prepare/eat. (Nope, not making that up.) I'm sorry, but until they create Roadkill Helper, I'm not gonna cook and eat any roadkill....and probably not even then.

Why not stop and ask about the greenhouse? You'll never know unless you ask the questions on your mind. Perhaps they'd be happy to have you take it away or might sell it to you for a song....or a promise of buckets of tomatoes and armloads of flowers.

Tim can build anything, but he doesn't especially love doing it, and he doesn't have time to do it. My list of things I want done keeps getting pushed back further and further into the future---probably after he retires. Then, I think he'll be bored and whiz through the list (or, at least, that's what I hope). I definitely am not a builder, so must wait until he can do it.

Amy, Your talk about the Boy Scouts and coons reminded me that Chris' Scoutmaster had a family ranch out near Scotland, TX, and they'd camp out there, catch frogs, kill them and cook and eat the frog legs. I've never eaten frog legs and never will. I'm pretty sure Tim and Chris said they tasted like chicken, and Chris was impressed because those frogs were huge. I think I'd rather just eat chicken.

We went through a lot of animal phases here---and all I want from this point forward is chickens, cats and dogs, though I loved our turkey, Augustus, for as long as we had him. I don't want cows, horses, goats, guineas, rabbits, geese, ducks or anything else---especially anything that will attract more predators. We have enough of those already. I am beyond the stage of wanting to take care of 8 or 10 different kinds of animals daily.....easing into animal retirement. Well, except we keep feeding a multitude of wild things. The gold finches are voracious eaters and we are keeping 7 feeders busy all day long from before sunup to shortly below sunset so we're using enormous amounts of those tiny thistle seeds. We buy a 35-lb. bag of thistle seeds about every other week. How can those tiny birds eat so many of them?

Honey might be rubbing off on Holly. Now that Jet is old and terminally ill, he suddenly thinks he is 3 years old and runs out into the dog yard with Jersey, Ace and Princess. He runs, he rolls, he plays, he barks.....maybe he has dementia and thinks he is 3 or 4 years old again. He never has played out there with them, preferring to walk out into the side yard and do his business and play (in his younger days) by chasing a ball or stick. Suddenly, he's Ace and Princess' blood brother and cannot leave their side. Jersey is bored with it all and often runs upstairs to hide when the other three are going out. She and Jet have sort of traded places. Oh, and why buy Jersey a pink bed and Jet a blue bed? He sleeps on her pink bed all day and she sleeps on his blue bed, but then when we carry their beds upstairs at night, each sleeps on their own bed. Our dogs have minds of their own.

I read about the fires up there. I'm just glad things weren't worse than they were.

Of course we had fires. They weren't as bad as Monday's or Tuesday's, but it wasn't as quiet of a day as yesterday. Our worst fire in our county today was an arson fire (one witness reported the vehicle believed to be driven by the person who set the fire, but cops couldn't find that vehicle) set on the edge of a neighborhood in our own fire district. It threatened three homes, and I am amazed the first one didn't go up in flames. I believe the flames were licking at the exterior of that house when the first firefighter arrived, but I only heard that from others because we obviously weren't there at the scene at that point. I'll give the people in that neighborhood credit---they were not standing around acting helpless while waiting for the firefighters to arrive (you'd be surprised how seldom we find people making any attempt to protect their own homes with even just a water hose)--they were out there with water hoses, shovels and tractors trying to protect and save their homes and their neighbor's homes, hayfields, bales of hay, outbuildings, etc. I was so proud to see that! I think those three homes all might have been in trouble if the local folks there hadn't been so proactive. This fire moved fast....and that was expected. Our firefighters were out there for more hours than you can imagine, largely because of big brush piles that caught fire in the wildfire and piles of bales of hay. It is almost impossible to put out big round bales as they burn and smolder inside forever, so when we left the last couple of guys there, they had unrolled bales and were putting them out. I think they were out there another hour after we packed up all our drinks and went home. The home that was most threatened apparently had just recently been purchased (by one of our current neighbors) and he came tearing up there in his truck in a tremendous hurry. I didn't speak to him as I was occupied with other stuff in the midst of the fire command post area, but was told he was shocked to see his house still standing--he thought he'd lost it to the fire. He waved at me and smiled as he left, so I could tell he was relieved---he seemed very stressed when he first arrived, as we all would be if we thought our home was burning up. I hate days like this. Tomorrow probably will be another----and next Wed already seems like it is going to be a bad one.

I've now seen the same basic core group of firefighters from about 6 departments (plus others at some of the bigger fires) every day this week and we all agree we are tired of looking at each other and hope to not see one another tomorrow. Yep. We do think we will see each other, but we're still hoping we won't. We're all great friends....but we still don't want to spend a part of every day together at fires. It gets old quickly. Every time we leave a fire, we say goodbye and "I like you, but hope I don't see you tomorrow". Then we laugh like we all are so clever---work a fire together long enough and you get punch drunk and will laugh at any other thing, I think.

Anyhow, another day another dollar and another fire. Every time I wash a load of stinky, smelly laundry and have nice, fresh-smelling clothing, we have to run to another fire and come home all smoky again. It is the story of my life. Dispatch is about to dispatch firefighters....and I think it won't involve us. I hope it won't.

Everything I ordered on Amazon is here, so I'm ready for the baby shower this weekend. Tons of firefighters are expected to be there, and we're just hoping that we won't be rushing out the door to go to fires. Just think, if I'd gotten my flower seeds ordered, they could be arriving any day now, but that's not happening.

I carefully checked the little green sprigs popping up out of the ground, and they are a little cool-season grass called poa annua. I am so happy to see something green, I might drag out a hose and a sprinkler tomorrow and water the yard just to encourage more green. At this point, green grass is protective in terms of slowing down the advance of grassfires/wildfires. I also saw henbit sprouting in the dog yard, likely because the dogs tinkle and water/fertilize the ground. We have rain in our forecast but any rain that falls is expected to be a minute amount.

Our county is back in Severe drought, which somehow sounds so much worse than Moderate drought. Well, at least we can console ourselves with the fact that we are not yet in either Extreme or Exceptional drought. I hope we never reach that point because if we reach it before planting time, there will be no point in planting.

Don't get me started on arsonists and why they do what they do. Entire books have been written on the topic and those books barely scratch the surface. Today, while chatting with some local law enforcement officers, we exchanged names of possible suspects....and we had the same folks in mind in some cases. Even though it is hard to prove, we know who usually is starting the fires---but you cannot prosecute them if you don't have eyewitnesses seeing them do it. It is incredibly frustrating.

Our winds were higher than forecast today and our relative humidity was lower than forecast. That seems to be common almost every day this year. I lose more faith in the NWS weather forecast models as time goes on....more and more every day, week, month and year. I've noticed our local TV mets do not exactly agree with the NWS models either and give us their own interpretation---which tends to be much closer to the actual weather we have. It is our local TV met who warned us tonight about next Wednesday. He knows we watch his forecasts very closely and count on him to get the word out about fire danger, which he and his team always do. Our county is not by any means the only county down here having fires, but we've lost so many people, homes and acres to fires lately that I feel we have received a disproportionate part of the news coverage. It makes it sound like our whole county is burning up and it isn't. We have plenty left unburned so far.

There's tons of fires down in Texas. Kim, if you see this, Denton has had several big fires this week and today's was at the Robson Ranch Golf Course. A ton of fire departments (Ft Worth, Flower Mound, Argyle, Krum and many more) came to assist and protect the adjacent homes towards which the fire was moving. I couldn't tell from the video on the TV if the actual golf course itself burned, or just land surrounding it. At some point they had about 30 trucks out there representing about 100 firefighters and many departments. It is amazing to me how well our mutual aid assistance works---rushing firefighters from all over when a department needs help with a big fire.

My plan for tomorrow is to get up, get dressed and get outdoors to work and get something done as early as possible after the sun comes up. I'm hoping for a quieter day and hoping to get some things accomplished out in the garden. Go ahead and laugh. That's been my plan every day this week, and so far all I have accomplished is that I managed to open the garden gate one day, though I didn't step foot into it. I cannot think of any way to make less progress than I've made this week in the garden.

Dawn

This fire stuff just makes me sick at heart, Dawn! I'm SO mad about arsonists, so sorry about all the fires! And so sorry you have to spend so much time with it all. Every day I hope and pray for no fires for you. But God bless you all for the work you do! We asked the lady across the street about needs for the VFD here; but apparently they are well-funded somehow (nothing else in Wagoner County is well-funded), and she said they had few needs. But she liked that I thought to ask. . . of course, they don't have the fires to contend with here, most of the time, that you do (notwithstanding the fact that most of one side of a whole block in downtown Wagoner has been destroyed by fire in the past year--that's a whole 'nother story.) This is an impoverished county and Heaven only knows when the buildings may be demolished--let alone ever rebuilt.

I'm praying that you get to garden tomorrow. Or to get done what else you need to get done, besides fires! Hey Dawn! I was so getting into ordering seeds--now even that has come to a standstill. Pouting. Hey, I know--want me to order a bunch of flower seeds for you? LOL

I was checking out the drought map on OK today--it's dismal, isn't it. I'm so grateful for the app. 3 inches of rain we've had in the past 60 days. It's dismal.

Amy, the Boy Scouts and the coon trip--I believe I'd much rather eat crawfish! EWW. The 3 experiments with squirrel meat were enough for me. Speaking of which, I was out checking the raised beds yesterday, and could have sworn I heard Tom and Jerry thundering past nearby and then realized it was squirrels in the ceiling of the shop I was hearing. $#%^&*( squirrels. Yes. They are tree rats and I've lost any compunction about death by gunfire.

I DID eat frog legs once as a child. And I liked them just fine. Can't remember, but yes, am thinking I thought it was like eating a chicken drumstick. Farm-raised, they grow to be gigantic sized. Well you all know, that if what we had to eat was what we could find--and nothing else--we'd gladly eat it. Worms, bugs, all kinds of things that other folks all over the world have access to, so eat. I'll try about anything once. In fact, I doubt there is anything I would absolutely refuse to try, if someone I trusted told me it was good. I'm gullible that way. :) Also. . . in Peru, you know guinea pig is their mostly commonly consumed meat. Many of the Quechua folks in Peru had guinea pigs living with them, in their houses, running free--most were dirt floors in the kitchens and living rooms. They were like our chickens--pets AND food.

My SIL in Wyoming had expressed a great interest in Ammi Visnaga, and I had just happened to order some from Swallowtail. So I told her I had them and would send her some, which I did. And sent her the germination rates and requirements. And we had ongoing email conversations about it. And guess what--the seed packet I sent her didn't say any of that.

Now here's where I go off into one of my rants. Yeah. Plant the seeds, see what happens. Look up the seeding recommendations. . . . . . what we all get is a bunch of nothing. I think GDW may have been right when he said this morning, as I was ranting and raving, that seed sellers just care about selling, not about growing. This has been giving me fits the past year. Stratification? Apparently, many of these seed sellers have never heard of it. Really. Grow and guess and hope. I really have to say, that from now on, I will only buy flower and herb seed from companies who give good instruction on germination. I have frankly found that Stokes provides comprehensive instruction, along with their germination rates. I appreciate that. Swallowtail's pretty good. I don't know who else is, but would like to know. Yes, I know I can go to Clothier's database, or a few others. . . but it's maddening.

I CANNOT believe you guys said you liked my freak room; that was not my intent--my intent was to show you a mess. No. NO, really, obviously the room is out of control. YOU need to come help me fix it. I have no idea where anything is in here. LOLOL Love to y'all!

Jen, that was so funny, counting the days. Bless your heart! LOL And I'm glad you're over the hump. I hope you like your job so the days go more quickly!

I'm so glad to hear you and Amy like the mudpuppies. I shall go forward with delight now--I can DO shrimpish/lobsterish! And yes, I'd already pegged Cajun Ed's as the place to go! Woo-hoo!

Oh! And food places in Tulsa. Amy, Rebecca, Eileen, any of the rest of you, ever gone to El Chico? BTW, Amy, haven't gotten my last order in yet from Pinetree. Amy and Eileen, and Rebecca, and anyone else in Tulsa, can we meet up 2 weeks from from tomorrow (Friday)? Trading seeds, having fun? Yeah, I'm headed for Cajun Ed's in the next couple months. :)

Of all the Mexican options, El Chico is my least favorite. My son likes it. I have never cared for it. That's one of those to each his own things. El Fogon in Owasso, El Tequila in Owasso, Jalapeno in Collinsville. Monterey House. Those are my favorite Mexican restaurants.

2 weeks from Friday. Where do you want to go?

Too late to comment on the rest, manana.

My 2 favorite Mexican places are Ricardo's in the strip mall at 41st & Yale, & this hole in the wall place at 11th & Utica.

H/J, no harm in asking, right? And in my experience, asking to buy something usually nets you a better deal or they'll just give it to you. Decide what the highest you'll pay, ask lower than that, & see what they say. Hope you get your greenhouse!

Nancy, Our VFDs in our country for the most part are not well-funded, but we do fundraisers and such and we get by. Some counties have a portion of their local sales tax that funds their VFDS and ours does too, but the amount we receive is very small. Still, it is better than nothing. Small rural counties with little economic development just cannot come up with the money to fund their local needs the way some larger counties with more economic development can. We accept that this is our lot in life and make do with what we get.

Drought conditions are dismal and not really expected to improve significantly over the next three months, and that is what worries me. Every day we go without significant rainfall, we get deeper in that hole and it becomes harder to climb out. Our best hope is that our usual April, May and June heavy rainfall comes through for us. It also doesn't help that the 3-month outlooks show the odds are high that our temperatures will remain above average. Both the rainfall and temperature outlooks are especially grim for NW and W OK, where we already have some counties in Extreme Drought. I don't know if this is true for every county in OK, but in my county, statistically speaking, January is our driest month. We average 1.74" of rain in January annually, but so far this year we have received only 0.1" (and that's rounded up from our actual rainfall amount of 0.06") because the lowest the map goes is 0.1". I believe Mother Nature owes us some rain this month but I don't know if we're going to get enough to help. When we do get rain, it is coming as a few one-hundredths of an inch that often doesn't even really wet the soil surface. Parts of our county got a trace of rain overnight, but our area didn't even get that.

Seed companies exist to sell seeds and, beyond that, most of them do not care if the people who buy those seeds have any success with them or not. I appreciate the good companies who have detailed germination info on their seed packets, catalogs or websites, but those companies are few and far between. Those companies who provide that info are more likely to get my business than the ones that do not.

All y'alls talk of food is getting to me. While y'all are discussing great places to eat, I'm sitting and counting how many slices of bread we're getting in one loaf and calculating how many sandwiches we can make from 8 loaves of bread in order to feed our firefighters a meal.....y'all are killing me here (but I'm laughing as I type that because it isn't like I'm mad about it or anything!) I'm hoping to eat a real dinner in a restaurant tonight---one that isn't cold food at a fire, fast food on the way home from a fire, or frozen food heated in the microwave because we just came home from a fire. Our lives have gone a bit topsy-turvy lately and everything, including the cooking of family meals and doing garden prep work, is out of sync or non-existent. I am trying hard to get back into our normal routine and that works, at least until the pagers go off.

Dawn

I hope you get a fresh, warm meal tonight, Dawn! As well as all of the firefighters, although I know they are grateful for the sandwiches and goodies that you bring to them.

El Chico...my family used to eat there every month or two. The first Mexican restaurant that I remember was in the old Capital Hill area of OKC. I was very small, so only have fuzzy memories...although I do remember the children's plate was called the Pony Dinner. I was just talking to our maintenance guy about a place called Chi Chi's. Do you remember that one? I'm pretty sure it was a chain...not just the one in south OKC.

I'm a little intimidated about going to the door of that house--the one with the greenhouse frame. I know that someone lives there, but have never seen a soul. I don't want to get shot...or force someone who is ill to get up to answer the door. I'll need to gather my courage first.

Received my SESE order yesterday!

On FB, several of my west moore area friends posted about rain last night. Pretty sure we didn't get any at all.

Nancy! Just let us admire your freak room! okay?! lol It's actually a really nice room. Everyone should have a freak room.

Oh, yes, Jen! El Rancho Grande, 11th and Utica! That's a good place and they've been there forever. I don't remember Ever eating at Ricardo's, though I've seen it (back side of Desi Wok). I don't go south much, so there are probably lots of good places I don't know. I left Baha Jack's off my Mexican list, also Owasso, with fast food ambiance, but good food.

I found a place called Outsidepride. It had info on how to grow a lot of the things I was looking up. Don't know how they are to deal with, but almost everything has an how to grow section, and height, width, Sun needs. It helped me a lot, even though I didn't BUY from them.

It is true seed companies exist to sell seeds, and some keep prices low by not putting much info on the packet. Sometimes I look at a packet and think "well maybe in Maine", so it is all relative.

My brother started hunting as a teen. One time mom cooked the stuff he brought home. I only ate the quail. Couldn't bring myself to eat a bunny rabbit, squirrel or whatever else he brought home. This is the kid who grew up on PB&J and cheerioes because he was so finicky about food. There was a restaurant here, pre kids, that served frog legs. Ron got them once. I would have a hard time with that. Why do you suppose the Scouts chose to feed our boys weird things? Some kind of right of passage? The coon hunt (they didn't actually hunt any) was a wilderness camp, no facilities and in winter. I guess they were learning to rough it, LOL.

Dawn, instead of canning all those tomatoes you aren't going to grow, maybe you should make fire meals for yourself. Maybe you do. Microwaved food is better if you made it yourself.

Well it's payday and time for the monthly trip to Walmart. Gotta go.

We had gloriously mild and humid weather today, so we had no fire calls and I was able to work outdoors. I spent my day hauling the dead tree that fell in the wind and broke into a billion pieces to the compost pile, one wheelbarrow load at a time. After I transported all the smaller pieces by wheelbarrow, I carried larger limbs and branches to the hugelkultur bed, one by one, until I wore myself out. Hmmm. I didn't wear gloves and might have touched something that was poison ivy. It could have been Virginia creeper. With no leaves on it at this time of the year, it is hard to tell and we have both in this area. While I am tired tonight, it is a good kind of tired, though, like you know you are tired and sore because you accomplished something.

Tomorrow ought to be similarly cool, at least partly cloudy, and possibly as mild as today and there's virtually no chance we'll get enough rain to make it too wet and too muddy to work, so I am hoping to spend the whole day working on the yard. I'm even willing to skip the CostCo trip this week just so we can work in the yard and garden. I want to mow everything down as short as possible, scoop up any leaves we haven't already gathered, and finish cleaning up the dead tree. That part will require a chain saw to cut up the trunk and lots of heavy lifting.

Amy, I do have some homemade meals frozen and in the freezer ready for use and have used them some days, but other days we come home literally too tired to even cook and eat. It is, perhaps, funny that I rarely eat at the fires myself because I'm too busy feeding everyone else. Sometimes after they're all fed and the activity quiets down, I'll eat something, but usually I just postpone eating, telling myself I'll eat when I get home. Then when I am home, I'm too tired to think about cooking anything. Sometimes I'll just drink a protein shake because it is quick and easy and requires very little effort.

I have to brag about our VFD's youngest firefighter, Amber, who is (I think) 28 years old and belongs to one of our firefighting families (all 4 members of her immediate family belonged to our VFD at one time, but her brother moved away, so now there's just 3 of them). Anyhow, Amber has been involved with our VFD since she was a teenager, and now is a teacher at the Marietta Elementary School. She also is a coach for the Girls on the Run program. She also fights fires. I am not sure when or if she ever sleeps. Today she was named Teacher of the Year at the school, and we're all so excited and so proud to see her exemplary work recognized! She works so hard at her job and y'all know that the state of Oklahoma sure doesn't pay our teachers enough for what they do. Her mama is about to burst open with pride. I'm glad we had a day off from fires today so we could spend our day texting and FBing and bragging about Amber instead of running from one end of the county to the other.

No garden catalogs came today, so we've probably gotten all we are going to get here, but the Cackle Hatchery poultry catalog arrived. Luckily it is wrapped up in a clear plastic bag, which has kept me, so far, from flipping through it. They have 202 varieties of chicks, and the one pictured on the cover is adorable. I think Chris bought some of his poultry from them last year.

That's all the news from here. I'm planning an early bedtime again tonight, trying to catch up on all the sleep I've been missing. Maybe it will be quiet all weekend and I'll catch up on everything. Seed-starting Sunday is just a little over one week away.

El Rancho Grande is probably one of the best restaurants in town. Not impressive to look at, but good food. Unfortunately I'm not available on the 9th, but y'all go and have a great time. El Chico is ok, for prefab chain food. Never been to Ricardo's, but hear good things about it.

If anyone likes German food, Seigi's down south at 81st and Sheridan is awesome. Good food on the restaurant side, and a great little European food market and meat market on the other side. Pizza - Andolini's or Hideaway. And Merritt's for dessert.

I need to break my winter doldrums by starting some hardy perennials and maybe a few cool season herbs. My diet has been pretty crappy this month, partly from being busy with flu season at work, and partly because January is always a bad month for me, autoimmune wise. Those cold fronts really beat me down. I know I need to eat better to get past all this, but all I've really been doing this month is working and sleeping. Maybe I'll go to the winter market in the morning and see what they have there.

I'm afraid to try to plant anything in April if we don't get some rain, though. It will take a lot of water to soak things enough to make it happen. I'm planning on all the flowers being drought resistant, and focus the water on the veggies.

In other news, my daffodils are up.

We went to Tulsa today, but since I didn't have all the seeds, wanted to wait for lunch with Tulsa people. We did try El Chico, just because it was a place GDW had eaten at many times when he lived in Tulsa, and he wanted me to taste the veggie relish they serve. I'd pickled some veggies last summer that reminded him of theirs; so, that was our purpose in visiting there today. It was "okay." Fun to try the relish, and they have an amazing chile relleno (however, didn't feel like they charred the peppers first--the peppers were pretty solid (like uncooked--except for the cooking it got in the deep fryer with the breading surrounding it, and sure looked like its skin was on.) Having said that, the breading was STELLAR! It was pillowy and very crunchy and flavorful. I have been looking for this relleno (only with cooked pepper inside) for 45 years! I first tasted it in Casper, Wyoming; the Mexican food cook was named Suzie--her identical twin Mary worked as a waitress in the same restaurant (they were close to 50 yrs old). Suzie was mean--took me a long time to sweeten her up, but once accomplished, she was a fun character--and boy, could that lady cook!; Mary was a dream. Back then, the Ramada Inn was about the nicest restaurant in town; they had a really enormous and fancy "coffee shop," and a formal dining restaurant, too. (I know this because I worked there, waitressing.)

I was so excited to finally find a relleno very similar to hers. Been searching for it my entire adult life until now. Obviously still haven't found it, but close. However, even the relish and the relleno probably wouldn't entice me to return. It was good--it was fine. Just that we love Lopez in Wagoner so much, nothing else will do, and we're really only in the mood for Mexican every couple weeks. Maybe I can talk Lopez into serving the escabeche relish dishes, too.

When we got home, about 4:30, we had to lay down and watch an old Western to let the food settle. We're loving watching some of these old Westerns again; we'd kind of gotten out of the habit.

Good luck with working up your courage, HJ--do you have a friend who could go with you?

I've used Outside Pride, too, sometimes, Amy, for seed info. Some sites are really not that helpful--usually these aren't seed companies but blog sorts, like oh, the spruce or sfgate, giving more general info. And with some flowers, you can read six different ways to plant from six different normally reliable sources. One I've kind of been enjoying is Higgledy Gardens in England!

I had to laugh--the rest of my seeds showed up while we were gone. Of course. I must say, I'm again a bit overwhelmed by all these seeds.

And my brilliant idea of putting totes with cuttings on the top shelf in my "everything" room? The cuttings are loving it! More on the grow cart. And it's only the end of January! AGGHHH. I might have to toss the coleus; will not toss the sweet potato vines, begonias or brug, of course. I should have another 4-5 SP vines by the time I can put them out--yay! As I said, I hate paying $6-7 for a small 4-pack of them at the stores.

Dawn, I admit, I am a "foodie." I'm sorry we were torturing you! I'd make it up to ya, if you'll drive up and have dinner with us. :)

My Dad was a Cub Scout Scoutmaster. I felt so sorry for myself with two older brothers being in Cub Scouts. They got to go to Camp Elakawee (emphasis on "kah") every summer. The families could go up for their final evening campfire ceremony. Things were very different for girls who grew up when I did, as some of you may remember. We had no Girl Scouts in our town, even. Still, even I have fond memories of the Camp Elakawee get-togethers. My oldest bro, my David, went to the Boundary Waters in northern MN when he was a senior in HS for Explorer Scouts (must have been right after he graduated). I remember that, well, too, because it was the first time he every brought something home just for me. (He didn't like me much back then.) He brought me a large intact piece of paper birch bark, about 6x8 inches. I treasured it, and had it for years. He was astonished a few years ago when I mentioned it, and was touched that I DID mention it.

I see a few other posters have posted while I was here lost in my head (not an infrequent happening with me. . . lol)

Really? GERMAN food in OK? Okay, now you sent me down a whole 'nother path, Rebecca. That will be a must for me. And not because I love German food. In fact, German food strikes a blah chord in me. But there was this restaurant in Mpls, the Black Forest Cafe, an institution, almost. The inside hadn't been changed, I am sure, in 50 years. It was rather dark, with wood siding, to boot, which made it even darker. No fancy furniture (but some great art), but at least they kept their booths updated, with no sinking seats--and for the most part, pretty doggone bland food. BUT. They had a really large outside patio, vine-covered, and in the summertime, it was a charming and gorgeous place to be in the middle of the "happening neighborhood) area just south of the main part of town (where I lived for some years.) The two main draws for me were their sauerbraten, sauerkraut balls (they were breaded and deep-fat fried baseball-sized balls) and their wine list and beer list. In terms of good food? uh, not spectacular aside from the two dishes I mentioned. In terms of favorite loving memories, right at the top. I loved this restaurant, not for its spectacular food, but for my love of the kinda weird ambience.

Dawn, I am so glad you had no fires today. I read your comment about protein shakes as I was eating a PB&J. We had a late lunch that did in my stomach, and DH wasn't hungry till late, so we had sandwiches. I do understand. I hope you get garden time again tomorrow. How is Tim?

Rebecca do you work M-F? Someday we need to get together sometime.

Nancy, I'm glad you got good chili relleno. Wish we could cobble together the best items from each Mexican restaurant. The Jalapeno in Collinsville has the most amazing verde sauce. It's not too hot for me, which is hard to find. They serve it warm. As I said, the ceviche at El Tequila is wonderful. In general they have good food. I have never ordered Chile relleno, but I bet El rancho grande would do it well.

We bought seed potatoes at Atwoods today. Walmart had seed racks out.

Tomorrow we're going to B'ville to celebrate my dad's 91st birthday.

Have a good one.

Rebecca, I hope we can get some warming trends going (yes, I know a big cold thing is coming back in Feb, but maybe we can be warm for a bit before then) and then maybe you'll feel better without the cold beating you down so much. It has been warm here the last two nights, but I think we are about to return to cooler nights though the days will stay above average for a few more days anyhow. January is an odd month---at times it seems to fly by, but then it also sometimes feels like it crawls by---especially when the weather turns cloudy and cool and the flu continues to rage on and on and on. A couple of weeks ago we had a lot of sick kids in our area (not enough that our schools closed down like so many others) and now it seems like their parents are sick. I suppose they caught it from their children.

I'm worried about going into growing season so dry. The precipitation forecasts do not seem especially encouraging. Even when rain makes it into our forecast, we tend to get nothing or next to nothing. We had a 70% chance of rain overnight. At one point they said we might get 0.25", then dropped it yesterday to a 50% chance and maybe 0.10". So, of course, we got not a single drop. That's the story of our lives this winter down here. Not a drop of rain.

Usually the one nice thing about a La Nina winter is that we'll warm up early and can plant some things early. The bad thing, of course, is the lack of rain. So, we've got the whole lack of rain thing going on already and it still seems too early to tell if we'll warm up early---I think we might, but we have to get that big February cold spell out of the way first.

I haven't checked to see if my daffs are up. I need to do that today. Nothing else much is going on here as far as plants are concerned. I have been toying with stringing together several water hoses and attaching a sprinkler and then watering the bluebonnet area down near the front gate and driveway. There's usually a lot of bluebonnets up by now and there's almost none this year---just a couple that sprouted back in either November or December. I almost never irrigate that area, but I'm starting to think I'd better do it if I want to have bluebonnets this Spring.

Nancy, We've eaten at El Chico and El Fenix our entire lives in Texas, and I think Ardmore has an El Chico we've been to a few times. The chain restaurant-type foods at places like this aren't that good, but they're okay. I miss the little hole-in-the-wall type Mexican restaurants we had in Texas that made really good Tex-Mex food, and I also miss the great ones like Joe T. Garcia's in Fort Worth. We have a local restaurant here called La Roca and we eat there occasionally. Choices of places to eat here in Marietta are very, very limited, and we only go out to eat maybe once a week. There's a lot more eating options down at the WinStar World Casino in Thackerville, but we never, ever go there (except on fire calls) and probably never will. I am not a fan of all the traffic, noise, insane number of lights (feel sorry for folks who used to have a quiet country life down there and now have this monster casino beside them with all those bright lights), etc. And, even though they try to keep it out of the news, there's increasing amounts of criminal activity down there in that area. We just avoid that area like the plague, which probably is not a very popular stance here, but I liked that area better back when it was big old fields of prairie grasses where you'd see lots of wildlife passing through. We moved here to get away from the bright lights and big city, and that meant largely giving up eating out in restaurants---and I don't miss all that as much as I thought that I would.

I won't even drive more than a half-hour to eat out, which pretty much limits us to what is in Ardmore, Marietta or Gainesville, so I suppose we're not going to drive all the way across the state to do the same thing. (grin) Sorry. Y'all will have to have your fabulous lunches out without me. I'm just too far away geographically.

I used to overwinter sp vines either in pots indoors, or I'd just dig up the tubers in the fall and store them in the pantry with the regular sweet potatoes, but in recent years I don't even do that. Overwintering stuff inside requires more time and patience than I have, especially when the cats think indoors plants are play toys. and/or cat beds. Winter Fire Season probably is the reason I stopped trying to overwinter things indoors. Some years I overwinter quite a bit in the greenhouse, but I didn't this winter because the greenhouse plastic is ripped and needs to be replaced so it doesn't hold heat well this winter.

I'm ready to start some seeds and get some things growing---one more week and it will be seed-starting time here. The little voice in my head that guides my gardening decisions has been telling me to not go getting in a big hurry this year, so I trust my instincts and have been patiently waiting until the time is right. My instincts in this area are usually right, although all it takes is one big prolonged warm spell to make me want to ignore the voice in my head and just go do what I want to do. You know, if I walked into a garden center today and they had pepper and tomato plants, I'd want to buy them all, bring them home and plant them, but that little nagging voice in my head would be telling me not to do it. Thankfully, the garden centers seem slower than usual and behind this year, so I'm not likely to see any warm season plants in them anytime soon---they don't even have cool-season plants in yet, though those often arrive on Fridays in January and February, so maybe they've got them this morning from a delivery yesterday. Some years we have tomato plants here by mid-January. This is not one of those years.

Amy, Tim seems like he is recovering pretty quickly from the flu, but his energy level certainly isn't back to normal yet. Thanks for asking. I have noticed that the older we get, the longer it takes us to bounce back from something like the flu. I hope y'all have a good time celebrating your dad's 91st birthday with him. It is incredible to live that long----think of all the things he has seen in his life time. If my dad were still alive, he'd be turning 99 in February, but we lost him when he was 85. I cannot believe he's been gone so long. My mom just turned 89 earlier this week, and I cannot believe she's lived this long because she certainly never has made any effort to eat healthy or to take care of herself. She inherited her mom's good health genes I guess in that sense. Her mom lived to be 92, though the last two years were pretty rough with one thing after another healthwise. I cannot imagine living to be 90-anything---it just seems light years away, though we get closer to it every year.

Have a good day everyone. I've got to get out and get started on the yard early because we have two separate fundraisers today for families burned out of their homes by recent fires. It is going to be hard to squeeze in everything I want to get done here today with those two extra events on the schedule as well.

Dawn

Neither Lowe's or HD here in town have much garden related anything out other than seeds and seed starting stuff.

Saw the first hyacinth peeking out of the ground today. Not worried about them for the upcoming cold spells, because I know they'll be ok. I really need to get in back and clean up a bunch of stuff, but I'll have to soak all the pots to get the remaining plants out. Last years herbs haven't broken down yet. And, I have stakes I can't pull out of the ground because it's too dry.

I want to go to the Home & Garden show Wednesday to talk to fencing people. I have to get that done before planting starts. I'm going to price it out with a couple of built in garden beds, but I think that will be out of my budget.

We got a little bit of rain overnight, just enough to settle the dust.

Nancy, most weeks I work days, but there's the occasional evening, and roughly every other Sunday. If I work Sunday I usually have the following Wednesday off. It changes a lot. I'm not available the 9th because I work the day, then Mom and I have ballet tickets that night.

I actually paid $2 at Sprouts this morning for organic, hydroponic wheatgrass for my cat. I usually grow wheat or oat grass for her when it's warm, but I could tell she's missed it this winter. For $2, it made her very happy. Lots of purrs and leg rubs.

I may not start seeds today. And I may end up dragging the potting mix into the kitchen and doing it inside, like I swore I wouldn't. Then there's the whole carrying jugs to the back yard in multiple trips...

Rebecca, thanks for the heads up; after hearing about your daffodils, I had to run out to check on jonquils; yep, they're everywhere! (As is henbit, Dawn. . .)

Oops, just remembered, I DO have to spend gardening $$. Got to get my drip irrigation stuff. And I'm sure lots of other stuff I haven't thought of. And more poppy seeds. :)

Yes, HJ, I remember Chi Chi's. I used to go to Chi Chi's in Minneapolis, 30 years ago.

Dawn, I didn't realize you were in the same situation we are--that is, having no decent restaurants within 30 miles. Well, our Mexican restaurant. And there is a small hamburger joint that makes really good hamburgers and onion rings.

Now that we've begun going to Broken Arrow for groceries, however, I can begin having fun looking at restaurants in Tulsa. And when we go to Lowe's, in Muskogee, we now go to Chile's for Garry's quesadilla explosion salad.

I spent an hour in one of the back beds starting on the Bermuda invasion problem. It's going to take work. . . and a lot of it. Told GDW if I didn't have so many plants and flowers in it, I'd burn it all. . . WHO planted Bermuda in this yard! BUT it could be worse. Where it is, I had heavily mulched last year, and so at least some of the Bermuda has been easy to pull up. Then through bunches more leaves on top this past fall. So I'll move the leaves off a small area at a time, get all the Bermuda removed, put the leaves back.

I'm glad to hear Tim's feeling better, Dawn. This flu stuff is SO bad in Oklahoma this year!

Wheee! Johnny's catalog showed up today. That's one big catalog, isn't it! When they chose the cover, I'm sure they had Dawn in mind. And I saw good news/bad news on my WS. Good news is that I see some sprouts. Poppies and forget-me-nots. I'm still nervous, though. Bad news is it's probably too early for the red poppies! LOL Hence the more poppy seeds. Now I believe you, Dawn, and will not worry about growing poppies.

Yes, it's hard to hold back on seed planting, but intend to for a couple more weeks and all of a sudden I have no idea what I'm going to do or how I'll do it. LOL. It seems daunting, suddenly.

I hope you all have a fun birthday for your Dad, Amy. Blessings to him.

The big box stores in Gainesville have cool-season herbs and a limited amount of cool- season veggies like lettuce, brussels sprouts, broccoli, etc. I didn't buy any but it always is tempting. It probably still is too early to plant them here as we have some more cold weather coming in February, although it is almost impossible to plant brussels sprouts too early---they need all the time they can get in winter/spring in order to be able to produce sprouts before the heat arrives.

Rebecca, I must have the memory of a gnat. I forgot to check for emerging bulb foliage today. I'll check tomorrow. I did notice Malva sylvestris sprouting in the garden though, and new growth down low near the ground on both the autumn sage plants and on the comfrey. The rosemary in the container looks like it might have frozen, but the one in the raised potato bed is green and looks great.

I'm glad you were able to make the cat happy for $2. I think it was worth it.

Nancy, There is nothing much here. There's a couple of fast food places in Marietta itself (McDonald's, Subway, Carl's Jr and Sonic). We used to have a Pizza Hut but it burned down and they didn't rebuilt it because it was losing money (long story) for years. Then, I think we have three sit-down restaurants---a chicken place at the north end of town, the Mexican place where State Highways 77 & 32 intersect in town, and a new restaurant in downtown that we haven't visited yet. There were more restaurants when we moved here in 1999 (a couple were small cafes but one was big and always busy) and a couple of convenience stores/gas stations offer some food, but overall pickings are pretty slim. Oh, and we have a doughnut shop near the high school, but they don't actually make the doughnuts here. They make them at their main store in another city, I think, and transport them here. We don't go out to eat often, so I guess it doesn't matter to us if there's many restaurant's here or not. Thackerville has one cafe and then all the development around the casino (an area which we avoid).

When we first moved here, we had to drive 50-60 miles one way to go to a Lowe's or Home Depot, but things are getting better. We now how a Home Depot in the next town south of us (Gainesville TX) and a Lowe's in the next town north of us (Ardmore OK) so the commute to them has been cut in half. We just learned early on in our years here to always make a list and do a thorough shopping job because it you forgot anything, you'd just have to live without it for the next week or two. I won't even go through the whole grocery store saga except to say that we do not shop at the store in town.

The Johnny's catalog has been one of my favorites since at least the mid- to late-1980s. It has only gotten bigger and better over the years. I keep it handy year-round as a reference.

We worked in the yard and garden today, although not quite for as long as we had hoped, since the work was interrupted with 2 fires (and the second fire turned out to be 2 fires, so we really had three). We didn't get any mowing done because every time Tim touched the mower, something broke. I think we have to go buy a new cable for it tomorrow. We did get a lot of tall grasses cut down with the string trimmer, but using a string trimmer to mow about an acre and a half of pasture just isn't on our list of things we'll ever do....so the mower must be fixed first tomorrow so the work can continue. Still, we got a decent amount of stuff done overall, and hope to do the same tomorrow. The weather was lovely, but the minute the sun started to go down, it seemed like it got cold really quickly. That's because our dewpoint (15) and relative humidity (15%) were so low, and dry air both cools down and warms up quickly.

Via both phone calls from friends driving through parts of our state and FB messages, it would appear there have been a lot of grass or wild fires in both OK and TX today---same as yesterday and the day before and the day before......'tis the season. Ours today weren't too bad---the wind was only gusting into the 20s, so they were relatively easy to control compared to other fires that had occurred earlier in the week.

We ran into the Thackerville VFD chief and his wife at Wal-Mart and it was nice to be able to stand and block the aisle (grin) and chat with them for a few minutes because we don't see them often---except at fires, and then everyone's too busy to talk. I learned he had a wreck in the fire truck (I knew someone had, didn't know it was him) early in the Monday fire---he ran into two vehicles in a smoky roadway with poor visibility, and each vehicle contained one former mayor of the town. lol. Meanwhile, as fire approached his home and he was away fighting fire further down the road, his wife loaded up kids, grandkids, pets, etc. and got the heck out of their evacuated neighborhood. Fortunately, none of those homes burned. I asked if she took the pet pig, and she said it wouldn't get in the car with the dog sitting there in the back seat, so she put it back in its pen and let her husband know that if the fire reached their place, he needed to get there in time to evacuate the pig. It is a really friendly pig from what I understand, but the dog is not its best friend or anything. Thankfully neither their home nor pig were threatened by the fire.

People here are pretty jumpy and call 9-1-1 every time they see a puff of smoke anywhere---it could be smoke from a semi truck or a train or whatever.....I hope folks calm down and get over being so jumpy. That sort of nervousness leads to unintentional false reports of fires that aren't actually fires, which wastes the time of a lot of people.

The flu seems to be spreading worse here every day, so I feel like it surely hasn't peaked yet. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I really hate going anywhere that has other people there because some of them probably are carrying flu germs around, but you cannot be a hermit for the whole flu season either.

I cannot believe that tomorrow we start Week 5 of January, and yet, we do. In the blink of an eye it will be planting time, and I suspect the polar vortex will return to make us freezing cold while planting...or, we'll delay planting a week or two to wait for better conditions.

Dawn

My Mom has the flu. Flu A. And I have...something, but I'm dosing up on echinacea, zicam, lemon water...and hoping to keep it very mild. We had to work at the Winterguard competition today and there were hundreds of people. All I could see where germs everywhere! I saw grown people leaving the bathroom without washing their hands.

I was excited to see the Bonnie truck at Walmart, but we were in such a hurry to buy items for the concession, that I didn't get to look. The plants weren't out yet. If they were, I would have grabbed a couple of herbs for my indoor kitchen window pots.

Stay well, Friends.

I saw a couple of spinach leaves coming out of the planter. No idea how since all the planters are bone dry. I piled a handful of leaves on top of them for now.

I got out and did a little planting today, too. Prepped all the containers, got about half planted, then Cliff was ready to go to the dog park. So we spent the afternoon playing with puppies. Now our boys are passed out on the couch & our girl is bouncy-bouncy-bouncy...did I mention we named her Tigger for a reason? I have a church meeting tomorrow, so I'll have to finish up my containers tomorrow afternoon. Then I can start sorting through the next round of plants.

So cool about the VFD young woman, Dawn! She must be awesome. I can understand how proud of her you all must be. What a bad time for the mower to go on the blink. (Like there's a good time?)

LOL, when I say there are no restaurants in town, I didn't count McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Arby's, Sonic, Taco Bell, Charlie's Chicken, Subway, Burger King, and a couple that are only open for lunch. Oh--and Runt's BBQ and Boomerang. That is just mean, and I don't even do it on purpose! And frankly, Subway is one we stop at once in a while. I LIKE Subway. Oh, and the Chinese buffet. We stop there once in a while, as well. So it's not like we're discerning, it's just that I'm a ninny. But, really, Lopez is the only one I'd take guests to. Period.

Good idea, Jen! Yes, I can do that--get containers ready. Thank you. Duh. And keep after the Bermuda. That should keep me plenty busy. Tigger is cute for the pup! My SIL's cat is named Tigger for the same reason (plus he's a gray striped tabby.) And he also is very bouncy.

Very weird about the spinach, with as dry as it has been.

I need to find a few more WS containers, since the cart is going to be totally overloaded, otherwise. I might have enough vinegar and oil containers to work, and/or 5-gallon buckets, and maybe even a couple containers with plastic over the tops.

The Bermuda is stuff I finally let go of last summer, it got horrible after that, and the stuff I'm ripping out now has loose strands that are 2-3 feet long. I already have huge piles of it outside the bed. Having said that, it provided marvelous cover, along with the mulch and leaves for plants growing below. I was amazed. So indeed put the mulch back as I was ripping Bermuda out. I don't know if it will be possible to save the cleome and bee balm back there while getting out Bermuda. It's okay with me if I don't, though, because Bermuda grass is the top priority. There's a clump of Shasta daisy, a large Red Husker penstemon, and 3 coreopsis--those will stay intact as I rip stuff out, although maybe I'll even uproot them, too, to make sure there's no Bermuda tangled up with them.

Jennifer, I sure am hoping you aren't getting the flu. Stay well! I don't even like going to church right now--people there are so huggy! Including me, as I forget.

Nancy, FWIW, Runt's and Charlie's Chicken are pretty darn good. And darn it, you make me miss the old 90's Whitehorn burger and basket of onion rings.

It's not there anymore, Rebecca. Frustrating they can't get a good restaurant in that will draw folks in like your old one.

Runts--we've given it 3 tries. It's too cool in there for comfort, for me--those cement floors make it cold and they always have the fans going. We thought they were okay. But we don't like the skimpiness of sides, nor the fact that you don't get dinner salads. And neither of us liked the BBQ sauce! Or chicken fried steak that GDW wanted--it was tough and gristly. And what's with all the fake gravy so many outfits serve! Charlie's--we were in the mood for ribs, which they advertise on their sign outside. No ribs. We must have gotten there at the end of supper as most of the containers were mostly empty. Also, we hadn't realized it was a buffet. All in all that one trip was dreary, at best, and we left, since we'd been looking for ribs. Maybe someday we'll give them another try. Actually, we sometimes go to Pizza Hut, too, just for their salad bar, which is pretty good--and the restaurant is crisp and clean. But again, I'd never take guests to a Pizza Hut. Just we all have our different idiosyncrasies, I guess. I wouldn't take guests to the Chinese buffet, either. But we sure have fun there every once in a while.

Going out to eat is a fun thing for me, especially with friends. And what I love most is to go for foods I can't easily cook at home--or, in the case of a hamburger, ones that remind me of ones we got at truck stops years ago--they somehow always tasted better and different than mine at home. Further, I am not a fan of french fries, so don't appreciate that so many places offer french fries as their only potato choice. Many ethnic or region-specific restaurants fall into this category. I like a decent wine list but settle for ANY wine list--anything besides just beer, that neither of us drinks. On the other hand, we're not snobs about our favorite places just for us--one of the places we like a lot is Denny's in Pryor. Clean and crisp, decent menu and Garry can get breakfasts. And now Chile's in Muskogee for Garry's salad. I used to like to go to Golden Corral in Muskogee, but finally got over that. Nothing was as good as it looked. I loved Desi Work--good stuff.

Ahh! I'm growing a little rosemary bush. In a panic in December just before our first 6-8 degree night, I ran out and cut a few sprigs. There wasn't any really new growth, so I just took a few cuttings of some that seemed more green than others. And planted my first one in dirt today! It looks like a couple of ours didn't make it out there, either. But they're mulched pretty heavily, so maybe they'll come back if I cut them back. But a couple are still looking fine. Not good, but fine. And fine IS good, right?

Been working on my garden planning all evening. And am worrying about if the soil out there in the raised beds is going to be broken down to my satisfaction. Likely not, of course. Still, I have to laugh, considering where we started from 13-14 months ago. Yes, it's all good.

Jennifer,

The first time I saw a BP truck at our Wal-mart, which was just last week, it was only delivering wooden shipping crates of BP onions, but then it was back this week delivering a few cool-season herbs and veggies. I'm thinking of those poor little plants right now because our OK Mesonet station is showing a current temperature of 20 degrees and that's pretty much borderline too cold for some of the plants I saw yesterday, especially given how small they are and the fact they are in small containers and not in the ground where soil temperatures could help insulate them from some of the effects of the cold. I hope the garden center employees covered up those plants last night or moved them indoors. While the very early transplant arrivals often do not freeze or have damage at 20 degrees, sometimes they do....and sometimes the damage is invisible and can result in later problems like early bolting or buttonheading of brassicas....and no one links that bolting or buttonheading in March or April to the fact that the plants were exposed to excessively cold temperatures while on the garden center shelves in late January or early February.

I'm sorry your mom has the flu and wish her a speedy recovery. I hope whatever you're fighting is not the flu and that you can successfully repel those germs. I carry hand sanitizer in my purse, not that I am obsessive about it, but I hate touching anything in a grocery store at this time of the year for fear that flu and cold germs are lingering everywhere. I wash my hands constantly, and I do not understand how/why people would use a public restroom facility and not wash their hands. I just don't get it.

Rebecca, Well, spinach is really cold hardy. Perhaps dew and/or frost have left enough moisture behind to induce germination. We're in severe drought, are awfully dry and have tons of tiny little green things sprouting everywhere now. In fact, the OK Mesonet's Relative Greenness for our county went from 11% last week to 21% this week, which surprised me, but then when I looked at the ground closely, I could see all the tiny green sprouts popping up in fields, and clearly the program (satellite? radar?) that calculates Relative Greenness for each county is 'seeing' that greenup as well.

Are any of y'all allergic to cedar (which actually is juniper, but I cannot win that battle on getting people to correctly label it)? Because it is pollinating down here already and everyone who is allergic to it is having allergy symptoms already, including Tim and I. Just yesterday I was looking at cedars in our neighborhood and commenting to Tim how heavily they're covered in pollen, and Fran and I noticed the same thing while out at wildfires in northern Love County a few days ago. A lot of folks who recovered from the flu now thing they are having a relapse or have caught a cold or whatever, and I just wonder if what's actually happening is they are allergic to the cedar pollen.

Nancy, We all are so proud of Amber. She's just an awesome person and her students are so lucky to have a teacher who loves them and works so hard to teach them. Everything she does is always for them and about them, so when she was named Teacher of the Year, she was totally surprised because she doesn't think about stuff like that---her focus is completely on her kids.

The riding mower is dead.....or dying. It is around 16 or 17 years old and gets used a lot since we mow about 2 acres regularly. I think it really needed to be retired 3-5 years ago, but Tim is a cheapskate who doesn't want to spend the money to buy another one, so he keeps fixing it and keeps it limping along and just barely working. I just kinda wish he'd go ahead and buy a new one and have something reliable. Weekends are too short as it is and he doesn't get much mowing done if half the weekend is spent chasing down parts and fixing the mower.

Jen, I bet it was a nice day to go to the dog park. Our dogs spent a lot more time outdoors today in their dog yard than they usually do in the winter, and they were so thrilled that it was mild, sunny and warm. They were exhausted by the end of the day which I always think is a good thing as it does cut down on how energetic they are in the evening. I think Tigger is the perfect name for a dog!

I assume the planters you're planting are your winter sowing? Have fun finishing it up.

Nancy, That bermuda grass is such a nuisance, and it creeps into the east end of my garden every year in late summer once it is too snaky for me to hand-weed it out. Johnson grass does the same, and it essentially is bermuda grass on steriods. Since I don't use chemical herbicides and since the presence of the rattlesnakes and copperheads makes weeding too risky after a certain point, that sort of invasion just cannot be avoided. It drives me mad. Even if I could hand-remove it, I'm willing to bet that at some point the summer weather would get too hot and I'd decide I wasn't going to spend all that time out in the heat removing it. I'll be removing all of it this week (I hope) that I can as long as the wind stays down and I am able to spend more time at home in the garden instead of being away at fires. I think on Mon and Tues, the wind will be low enough that I'll be home in the garden. I'm not so sure about Wed and Thurs because the stronger winds are expected to return then. I have been watching for snakes this week on the warmer days because last January they came out here in southern OK on the warm winter days. A little girl in the Austin, TX area was bitten by a rattlesnake at Longhorn Caverns State Park a few days ago on a warm, sunny day when the family was excited to get outdoors and have fun after being cooped up by cold weather, and that certainly caught my attention. Undoubtedly it generally is warmer in Austin than it is up here at this time of the year, but not necessarily that much warmer, so I took her mom's warning about snakes being out to be a serious one.

I think your soil will be fine whether the stuff is broken down enough or not. We have gazillions of things that sprout and grow just fine in some pretty awful dense, red clay.....although I'd never expect my precious garden plants to survive and perform well in that stuff. It is merely that as the soil gets better via amending, the plant performance improves year after year. I've always been in it for the long haul---not expecting to totally turn around the soil in 3, 5 or even 10 years, but just dedicated to continually improving it slowly over time. There's places in my garden that probably never get as much compost as I'd like, but the plants grow well there anyway. I do look at the improved soil now and have trouble remembering how truly awful it was in the beginning---but all I have to do is dig down maybe a foot to get beneath the area of improved soil and there's my reminder of the awful red clay we started out with.

We only eat out about once a week, something made easier by the fact that it is pretty much too long of a drive to go anywhere that we'd really like to eat, and eating out usually is restricted to the weekend anyway since Tim's long commute makes his day incredibly long as it is. By the time he walks in the door at night, he's been gone 13 or 14 hours and going out to eat is not on his list of things he wants to do....and I don't blame him.

I am hoping for a better week this week than last week when we had fires virtually every day. Having said that, we're off to a bad start, with the fire pagers going off for a vehicle in the roadway on fire about a mile from our house around 4 a.m. this morning. I am sure there's tons and tons I do not understand about motor vehicles, but I just do not understand how you're driving up the road at 4 a.m. and all of a sudden your car or truck bursts into flames. That must be a terrifying moment when you realize you're in a vehicle that is on fire. So, now that I am up and wide awake, there's no way I can fall back asleep. Tim, by contrast, can crawl back into bed after something like that and be asleep and snoring in 5 minutes. I wish I could fall back asleep like that, but it just doesn't happen---once I'm awake, I'm awake to stay. This is useful in summer because I just go outdoors at the break of day to get into the garden early and beat the heat, but not so useful in winter when it is cold outdoors.

Dawn