This is interesting. Bio degradable nursery bags.

I got that greenhouse. I'd advise you either tether it down well, or plan on filling the bottom shelf with weight. As light as it is, the wind will flip it. I put mine up, used the enclosed anchors, & it went flying in the first gust.

And for today's "dogs are smart" story: the puppy has a toy she stole from the neighbor dog. She and our younger boy take turns fighting over it. Well, he had it yesterday & when he was done he dropped it about 6" past her tether. She spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out how to reach it, and finally resorted to barking at it (in hopes it would move?). Then made sure she put it within her restricted area when she came in. I can't prove it, but I know he deliberately dropped it out of her reach.

Nancy, did you read the thing on that Rhodesian Ridgeback link "How do you feel about sharing your food? These dogs are some of the best sneak thieves on four legs. Turn your back for a moment, or leave food on the kitchen counter, and all you'll have left are the crumbs on your pet's muzzle!"

Wow, Kim, you had a busy day. I'm glad the greenhouse is working better. The tomato cages sound like a great idea. However, I couldn't crowd too many plants in the bed if I did that ;). Keep you chin up!

Rebecca, I guess the squirrels watched you and wanted to see what you were doing.

H/J, I'm always afraid my seeds won't germ so I put too many in the pot. Sometimes I separate them like Nancy, sometimes I cut them off. I leave 2 tomatoes to a cup and plant them together. A FB friend said he did that, then he plants them in CRW (concrete reinforcing wire) cages. A second cage, slightly smaller in diameter than the first is added above the first cage. So he has 8' cages. I don't have the cages, but so far 2 tomatoes together have not been a problem.

Dawn, it's interesting, I had always heard our average last frost date was 3/31. That map appears to put it at 4/5. Not a big difference, but I pouted a little when I saw it. The last time I lost seeds they were in the fanny pack I took to the garden that day. I still think some lettuce seed packs are missing, but I bought too many this year anyway!

You've been busy Eileen. Did you decide to pull the lawn weeds? You didn't mention that I told you everything I know about carrots I learned from Dawn ;)

The last time I used the 4 shelf green house, Jen, I weighted it down with jugs of water on the bottom shelf. I also moved the cart with metal trash cans that I keep potting soil and compost in to a position that sort of blocked the wind. Something tall and heavy helps divert the wind.

I have been totally lazy today. Thinking about starting some more seeds. Need to chit potatoes.

Controlled burn just went out of control at a big ranch west of town. They've been talking all week about high fire danger. SMH.

Got a couple hours outside today, after I had the chiropractor fix my neck. Squirrels left the potato bags alone this time. Only about 2/3 of my sugar snaps have come up, and maybe 1/3 of the snow peas. Not sure if that's squirrels, the seeds, or the soil. I have more sugar snap seeds, but I guess I'll pick up more snow peas. The WS stuff is perking right along, and I bet I'll see a lot of growth over the next 10 days of good weather. I'm watering every few days because it's so dry in the jugs, though. I should try the wet burlap trick on the carrots. Direct seeded some cilantro, parsley, and dill. Oregano might come back on it's own. Started lemon basil, purple basil, and Mom's preferred Burpee basil. I'm going to get a pretty pot for it and give it to her for Mother's Day, so she doesn't have to depend on me to get it to her. Started a couple mini sunflowers. Those take forever because I seed them one per Solo cup, to make it easier to transplant as they don't like to be transplanted.

This weekend I will hopefully finish seed starting (need more potting mix), and start amending the current grow bags and start filling the new ones (need compost), plant the remaining potatoes, transplant some of the lettuce (did some Red Sails today), trim the bushes more, start morning glory seeds (if I remember to soak them), and fill in the gaps where the snow peas and sugar snaps are.

I will admit that I am ridiculous about not wanting to snip off a seedling in a too crowded pot--make that choice. I fully understand that. BUT, I will thin my carrots this year. I'm so happy that both Smart Pots have seedlings now. I will be so disappointed if my carrots aren't successful.

I miss being home on Wednesdays. Tom had a hard time getting 3 chickens back in their pen this afternoon, but managed. I'm too far away to help.

Did y'all see the elderberry fb post. It's so funny how we are all so interested in elderberries now. Honestly, I've wanted one for a few years now.

What do you know about seed tape?

Seed tape? Save your money and use a spray bottle and a roll of toilet paper. Once you get the hang of how far you can go and how much to spray, you can use your own seeds and SEE how close they are. Mist again, fold TP and sprinkle dirt. Tah-Dah! That other is expensive!!!!

Eileen, For some reason, cats like to eat pea sprouts and bean sprouts. I have to keep my cats out of the garden when peas and beans are sprouting, or put netting or something over the seedlings to protect them. I don't know about flowering sweet peas, but edible peas usually don't recover if they are small and the cats nip off all the leaves.

Jen, I believe you're right about the dogs. They are really into gamemanship and love to one-up one another. It keeps us laughing, doesn't it?

Amy, Remember the average freeze date is just the average---the 50% point, so there's a 50% chance your last freeze occurs before that date, and a 50% chance it occurs after. Honestly, it is all a crap shoot anyway. We get whatever we get and I never feel like my garden is safe until after May 4th because that's the latest freeze or killing frost we've had since moving here. For 7 years straight we had the last freeze or frost in the first week of May, which makes my average last freeze date of March 28th seem ridiculous.

Dang it. Y'all hang on, I have three dogs in the dog yard and a coyote taunting them......

And I'm back and the dogs are in and the coyote is headed off to harass someone or something else. You always know when there's a coyote out there because Princess and Ace make the most blood-curdling sounds. They do not like coyotes and think they're big enough to take one down. They. are. not.

Rebecca, I was wondering how bad it was there. I saw numerous reports of the Oklahoma Forestry Service sending aircraft to various fires in the Green Country. It's been a really horrible fire day in several counties in your area, and in at least a couple of counties out west.

Don't get me started on controlled burns, which rarely are controlled properly, so usually get out of control and becoming raging grassfires or wildfires. We've had our share of those today too, but not like what y'all have had up there or what NW OK has had. Tim is still out fighting a fire, but ought to be home soon. This morning, Dispatch sent us a list via our phone app of controlled burns that they knew about in the Dispatch Center and I was ticked off/irritated about them before I ever made it outdoors. With all that burning, the air quality is crappy and also, even on a relatively low wind day like we had down here today, you know fires are going to escape control and run wild. I expect things will be a lot worse tomorrow with the higher wind speeds.

Seed tape? They're okay but the commercial ones are thicker paper and you have to keep them really wet to get the seeds to sprout. Make your own as Paula described and they'll work great.

I worked outside for the longest time today, and just tried to keep track of the fires in my head as they were paged out. Tim had gone in to work 2 hours early for a very early staff meeting so he left 2 hours early. Sounds great, doesn't it? He got home a little before 5 pm instead of a little before 7 pm. And, around 5:10 pm, the fire pagers went off and I haven't seen him since. Dinner was only leftovers from yesterday, so now his dinner is leftover leftovers.

I'm not sure what sort of garden work I'll do tomorrow. Maybe weeding. With wind expected to gust into the 30s, the biggest challenge will be finding a sheltered place to harden off plants. I want them to get some wind exposure to toughen them up, but not so much wind that they are damaged. I expect with the much higher wind, we'll have more fires and I'll have to go to them, so I don't want to start anything too involved that would take a while to finish because the odds are I won't be able to finish whatever I start.

I worked so hard in the garden today that I am sore, but it is a good kind of sore because it means I accomplished some things out there today. I am hoping to call it an early night. My sleeping is still messed up from the time change.

Dawn

I totally regret cleaning up the raised beds!!! Remember I said I planted the onions last Friday? Well, I was shocked to see that they were in a mess today. Some stinkin' cat (not mine! Mine is always indoors) used my raised bed as his/her litter box!! What should I do now? Fence up the whole raised bed?

The poop was huge, and it stunk so bad I just left it alone for now since the sun is setting. Sigh, I only used like 1/8 of the raised bed, and the cat had to mess up the very corner with the onions.

Amy, I will probably be hand plucking the lawn weeds over time. I find it quite therapeutic to yank them out. I also try to convince myself it's good to be squatting for a while every day. I'm not diligent or meticulous though, so it will just be whatever I manage to do before it's time to start mowing.

I need to look for the elderberry post on FB, and also figure out how to start the elderberry cuttings that Nancy generously shared with me and Amy!

Sigh, I knew it wasn't a good sign when there were paw prints on my deck storage bench. Think I've only seen a cat in my yard once. Maybe that is why the neighbor's dog was barking all afternoon.

Thanks for the Mesonet links, Dawn; interesting, the average and last freeze dates for us vs the soil temp. I knew the soil temp was about that, because I took its temperature. :) It surprises me to see from the maps that ours is so much cooler than, say yours, but that our last frost is earlier than yours, and average last frost is about the same; maybe we're just a tiny bit behind. I would have guessed all three would have been behind you. I do love the area we live in, though, no matter what the temperatures. As you love yours, I'm sure. I checked out some of your others, too. All interesting.

Couldn't see yours, Jacob. :) Or Kim. Or Jack.

We're tired. I had baby plant stuff earlier; then we took off for the doctor in Coweta for GDW, then Walmart, then Muskogee, dirt and dinner, then home. Kind of a long day. But good day. 30 miles south, could see a greenish haze over the trees (and groves of Bradford pears. . . what you all south and west feel about cedars, probably is what I feel about Bradford pears.) But as we drove north to home, nope, can't really see that green haze except for some of the smaller trees that aren't oak. Nonetheless, the country is slowly greening up, and it was a beautiful drive. I'm so anxious for the oaks to leaf out so I can see how much extra sunlight we have from 3 1/2 missing trees. . . . waiting, waiting. It's so nice this year not to be doing all the lasagna layering and building of new beds. I feel like a real slackard. Not to say there's nothing to do out there--there is PLENTY. But compared to the previous 3 years, it's kinda like vacation. The beds are pretty much ready, save for getting the heavy whole-leaf mulch out, getting some compost in, and getting wood chips spread in some of the flower beds, and a lot of things to be direct sowen in the coming month,

Amy, yes, I DID read about the food thievery--that was one of the ridgeback characteristics I was laughing about.

Yep, HJ, the elderberry craze has taken hold of America, it's plain to see; which indicates to me that medicinal herbs are taking hold, as well.

It sounds like you've got things under control, Rebecca. I don't, exactly, but kinda. :)

I read about planting peppers in pairs, Amy, but not tomatoes. Nevertheless, in two instances there were two healthy seedlings close, so I potted them up together just to try em out.

Jen, you KNOW he plopped the toy just out of her reach on purpose, and so do I!! LOL

Glad the greenhouse is working pretty good now, Kim, and Eileen--did you get your potatoes planted? No me. I haven't even gotten them yet. Question--there'll hardly be time to chit them. Do I chit them and plant late, or plant them un-chitted?

Okay, gonna roll out of my chair now.........zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. :)

PS, Eileen, I have the directlons right here. I am so sorry I didn't make copies for you guys. I'll send them to you.

Interesting about the May 20th last frost in the panhandle. Must be the fairly high elevation. I've always loved the Texas/Oklahoma panhandles. I feel very "at home" in the southern Plains whenever we drive through- the wide open spaces.

I believe our AVERAGE last frost here is about April 20th; however, we do tend to have frosts into early May sometimes, and to be on the safe side it's normally best to plant in mid May. First frost is almost always somewhere between Oct. 1 through 20th, and sometimes in late Sept., but not often. I prefer the later planting even if it IS an early year personally, because the soil is perfectly warm for all warm weather crops, and not only do they take off much better than than anything planted earlier, but I have also noticed that there is far less pest issues planted later. Isn't that odd? When the plants start out so slow/weak due to cold soil when planted earlier, the pests get to them much earlier, and much worse. Same with fungus. Out of my trials last year, and trials my parents conducted in years before, following northern Missouri planting dates from their extension has yielded the best results. I suspect it's the elevation, but who knows. E.G., last year was a very early year, last frost in early April (not normal), so I put out cucumbers in early April to try and take a chance. Well, they sprouted but were very weak looking, and they wouldn't grow. Pests ate them by the time they developed true leaves. Okay, tried late April. Same thing. OKAY, temperatures finally were regularly hitting the 70's by mid May, and mostly 50's at night, so planted then. MUCH BETTER, but still not fantastic. So I tried a little later for pumpkins out back in late May. Fantastic. 1 week germination and NO pests at all throughout the entire growing season, other than some grasshoppers. They developed powdery mildew in August, but that's normal. Cucumbers planted early developed downy mildew very early, had squash bugs, and just kind of crapped out. I'll shut up now. Fascinating isn't it?

Trimmed my onions and leeks. They said it was 28 this morning, but I think we got down to 25 or so at least, because everything froze in my greenhouse again, which on a clear night doesn't happen until a certain point normally. These clear nights are killer. What's more nerveracking is the beautiful 50 degree days we enjoy before it freezes. After sunset, the humidity drops, and temperatures soon follow. It's easy to tell mostly.

Eileen, our cats would get along well. My cat wakes my father up every night. He doesn't come to me, even if he is sleeping next to me in bed; he goes straight to my dad, and right in his ear. He then starts yowling at him, every night, like clockwork. Thus, we have to put him out before bed, unless it's especially nasty out. He gets his revenge on us, going straight to the garden beds when we go back to bed and digs everything up, then goes to the bathroom. He's already dug up many of my now sprouting peas. Fox urine takes care of the squirrels, but certainly not my cat. Sadly I can't shoot him (forgive me for the joke), being ethically moral and all, so there's not much I can do other than wet the beds so he won't want to roll in them. I love him though; it's a complicated relationship lol.

Gonna finish my tea now. Have a good night everyone.

Oh I'll add: Hazel, the seedling thinning gets me too. It helps if it's an edible seedling though lol. I'll go thin cabbage seedlings or lettuce seedlings when I'm hungry for a snack. Kill two birds with one stone.

Beautiful day in q

Eileen, Well, to deter my cats I keep a squirt bottle handy and squirt the cats with water if they're thinking the raised beds are litter boxes. That works for me because the whole garden has an 8' tall fence around it to keep out the cats (and most other animals) so the cats are only in the garden if I open the gate and let them come in. I don't always do that. Sometimes I close the gate behind me and leave them on the outside looking in because, honestly, they can get in the way and impede progress, and some days I don't want to deal with them in there. It is harder if your growing area is not fenced because you cannot easily control the access to it. So, if it is possible, I'd fence off the raised bed if you can do so in a way that leaves you the space to work in it. The fence needs to be tall enough that the cats can't jump it or climb over it. Other ways to deter cats? Hmm. Some people have luck sticking plastic forks in the soil with the prongs upward so that the cats get 'stuck' by the prongs. I don't much care for the plastic fork look myself, but sometimes you have got to do what you've got to do. Some folks used the dried seed pods from Sweetgum trees in the same way as they are very prickly. You might have luck just laying bird netting atop your bed, letting it float loose on top of the plants. You might need to use U-shaped landscape fabric staples to hold the netting in place. Most cats don't like to get their feet tangled in the netting so they'll stay off a raised bed with the netting on it, but not all of them will. We had a cat once, long ago before we had a tall fence around the garden, who'd dump his little load right on top of the netting and then look at me and walk off, as if to say "Well, I can't cover it up because your netting is in the way".

I have a persistent problem with the cats liking to dig up onions, for no reason other than they think it is fun. Sometimes they carry off young onions plants in their mouth like they are little mice. This is most common in the first few weeks after planting before onions are well-rooted into the ground. To deter them (and also to protect the onions from hail), I put low tunnel hoops over the onion bed and just cover the hoops with deer netting attached by zip ties. (Bird netting also works but is more lightweight and won't hold the weight of a cat who thinks the low tunnel hoops are cat hammocks upon which a cat may nap.) This works pretty well to keep cats out of the onion beds, but it is a PITA to lift the netting in order to weed the bed. I make the low tunnel hoops by hammering rebar into the ground to serve as anchors and slipping the ends of PVC pipe over the rebar to form each hoop. I generally leave the netting over the onions as long as possible, especially until we can get past the worst of the hail season, but you have to remove the netting before the leaves start growing through the holes in the netting.

Some people use commercial animal repellents, but I've never particularly noticed that these actually work for more than a few days. They have to be reapplied after heavy rainfall.

Nancy, I love all the tools available via the OK Mesonet. I imagine other states have similar mesonet systems, but since I don't live in those states, I've never tried to access them or figure them out. Still, as useful as Mesonet data can be, it is no substitute for tracking our own conditions. I find my soil temperature and moisture (and also air temperature) can vary a great deal from the numbers recorded at our Mesonet station. The highest (elevation-wise) raised bed in our garden often is much warmer than the other beds. I believe it is because this bed is directly adjacent to the gravel driveway and benefits from the heat soaked up by the gravel when the sun is shining. Since that bed is so warm, I often plant cool-season flowering plants there really early in the season so the bees and other little creatures can enjoy the flowers when little else is in bloom.

I love where we live, truly I do. The people here are awesome, and we do have good weather....in March and April, and in October and November. In July and August? I hate, hate, hate the weather. We are too hot and too dry and relief is often months away. I spend most of July and August asking why we moved to this god-forsaken part of the country, but then I get over it when rain returns....in September or October or November, depending on when it returns. The lesson I've learned? Rain always comes back eventually so we just try to ride out the rough spells. Drought is our middle name most summers. We had drought in 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014, then we had a reprieve from drought in 2015, 2016 and the first half of 2017. Now, it looks like drought is more likely again in 2018 and I'm bracing for that. After 2.5 good years without drought, it is hard to adjust to drought again. Our area tends to be a feast-or-famine area where we either go weeks and weeks with no rain at all or we get two months of rain in a week or two (or sometimes in a day or two). I wish we had more consistent rainfall here like what a lot of you get in eastern and northeastern OK, but we just don't. I would love to live in an area that gets an inch of rain every week, or even every other week, but our rainfall here just doesn't fall like that.

We do not yet have the big problem here with Bradford pears being spread by seed that reverts to the thornier Callery pears they were bred from and then running rampant in wildland areas. There's several reasons for that, I think. The main one is that when cedars cover every square inch of ground, the pears don't stand a chance. Also, our soils and rainfall are less encouraging to the Bradford pears. I think it would be harder for them to get a foothold and run wild in dense clay that spends the summer rock-hard and cracking from lack of moisture than in better soils with better rainfall. I do occasionally see some that have managed to sprout and grow in drainage swales and such, but not often. This is still big ranching country, and so the ranchers do prescribed burning every year (generally sometime between January and the end of March or sometimes even April) to burn off brush and trees that try to invade pastureland. That burning probably helps keep some invasive trees, like the pears, from invading more than they already do. Without that prescribed burning, we'd live in nothing but a cedar forest. It is the fallow farm/ranch land that is not burned off periodically that develops cedar invasion issues. Lots of folks like us who have bought land that used to be farm land and built homes on it do not control cedars the way the ranchers do, and that's a shame. You watch those pieces of land year after year as the cedars spread and take over. and I just hate seeing that happen. We try to eliminate all the cedars we can on our property because we don't want to lose control of our land to the cedars. Plus, they're a tremendous fire hazard, and they harbor ticks.

I've planted potatoes both chitted and unchitted and gotten good harvests either way, so do whichever seems right to you. If I had a choice, I'd choose chitted if the ground is wet because chitted potatoes are more likely to grow/less likely to rot, even if it means planting later. If the ground is dry, it isn't as critical for them to be chitted first.

Jacob, I believe it is the elevation in the panhandles that keeps them cold for so long. It is lovely countryside up there---so raw and rugged and natural---but probably a really difficult place to garden or to farm. NW OK is big winter wheat-growing country, where they sow the seeds in the late summer or early autumn and then harvest in late Spring or early Summer. It is the ideal crop for them because their summers are routinely too hot and far too dry. Of course, with the extreme to exceptional fall//winter and now Spring drought, there will be little to no wheat harvest in those dry areas this year. State climatologist Gary McManus posted photos yesterday or the day before on the Mesonet ticker showing the poor condition of the winter wheat and the plants looked pitiful. I cannot tell if they are even still alive and dormant or if they are dead, but they don't look as full and thick and robust as usual even if they're only dormant and not dead. I'll link the ticker page below, but if he posts a new ticker today, you'll have to search by date for the previous one because I think only the newest one will link. Here's the photos of the awful condition of the winter wheat crop up there in NW OK:

OK Mesonet Ticker

It makes you wonder how anyone can make a living in agriculture up there in that part of the state. Or, in fact, it makes me think it must be really challenging to be a gardener anywhere in far western or northwestern OK. That area is also ranching country, but the pastures and hayfields are burning this week, and I imagine that if this month is like most Marches up there, there's a struggle to get to the cattle and get them out of the path of the wildfires.

I've always been a big advocate of basing planting on soil temperatures and air temperatures (along with looking at the 10-day forecast to rule out any sudden weather changes....like snow in April after you're already 'hot') because I have noticed that plants that go into the ground too early when the conditions still are too cold generally are not happy plants. They do seem more prone to both disease and insect attacks. Flea beetles, for example, are a huge issue on early plantings here in my area but not on later ones---and sometimes you only have to wait a couple more weeks to completely avoid the flea beetle issue. Using soil/air temperatures instead of planting by date serves me well. Luckily we warm up (at least our soil and daytime air temperatures do, but sometimes nighttime lows stay too cool much later than I like) early here. I could have planted tomatoes in the ground in February based on soil temperatures at times during warm spells, but I know better than to do that. (grin) In a climate as highly variable as ours, the soil temperatures can spike up into the 50s and 60s even in cold winter months if you have a few days of temperatures in the 80s, but that doesn't mean those soil temperatures will stay there.

Average last freeze data isn't really all that helpful because we never really have an average year. Here at our house, since we moved here in 1999, we have had our last freeze as early as February or as late as May. I just try to observe the weather closely and guess when the last freeze will occur. As time goes on and I get more used to how our weather generally behaves, I get better and better and understanding when to plant and when not to plant.

Kim, It looks like it was a gorgeous day in q. Did y'all go back to harvest some lingering crops? It is nice to see your fruit trees blooming. I hope they leave them there so you and your little man can go back and harvest fruit later. Did you also go and gather some buffalo chips?

It is going to be gorgeous here today, y'all, so I plan to be out in the garden as soon as the sun comes up. I want to accomplish as much as possible before the wind gets too high. I think for us, the high wind will be more of an afternoon issue than a morning one. At least I hope that's how it plays out. We expect a lot of fire issues statewide because of the strong March winds. We expect fires locally, though I'd really love to be wrong about that.

Dawn

I did bring home some chips. Not many since I also brought furniture and other garden stuff in my car lol. 3 buckets of chips and molasses tub full of rabbit manure made for a pleasant rise. Really none of it smells is just the idea. We had the best day. Breakfast at the place I used to work, library, bank, senior center lunch, state park playground Prarie dog village and bingo, my old place to view the beauty of spring. Apricot tree is absolutely stunning this year. After we got the car loaded we went "back to daddy's to chill" cars, coloring, and memory games finished off the day.

He spoke sternly to me because I walked on his baby beds 3x. I can not believe I forgot where he planted. Carrots are good and lots of my herbs are coming back thick. What a beautiful place it is in the spring.

Eileen, get old fashioned mouse traps, set them and lay them upside down (carefully). When the cat disturbs them they spring in the air and scare it. It only took 3 days to convince one who was using a planter at my house. It isn't easy to put them upside down, but it can be done. I have done the fork thing to keep dogs from wallowing in plantings. I have also taken dried cayenne peppers, broken them up and sprinkled over an area. I'm not sure that would work for cats.

H/J, I made seed "blocks" with cheap thin napkins and school glue. I'm sure Paula's method works, too. I was concerned the glue would be a problem, but it wasn't. I expect you could use a flower and water paste as well.

Nancy, I don't know if I've ever done the peppers in pairs. Food for thought. I guess if you can plant 3 onions together (winking at Kim), why not. I'm all for intensive planting, LOL.

Jacob, see what I said to Eileen above. The trap doesn't snap on the cat because it's upside down. It just springs up and startles them.

Glad you got to spend some time with your grandson, Kim. Too funny he remembered where he planted and you didn't.

Dawn, there are a lot of things Oklahoma does not do well, but weather and public television I think they do exceptionally well.

Have you ever put wood ash on cut seed potatoes? I read about this yesterday. The article said a small potato or piece produced fewer but bigger potatoes and a piece with more eyes produced more but smaller potatoes. DH threw a monkey wrench in my plans and decided potatoes needed to be in a bed this year. Can I get away with planting spinach in between potato plants? That is what is supposed to go in the bed I've revised to potatoes.

I don't know what I'm doing today.

Amy, I don't know what I'm doing, either. Poor Garry had a rough night of it. . . didn't sleep at all. He finally moved to the couch. . . I slept soundly then, don't know about him. But he's sawing logs now, and I'll just let him. Oops, he's up. Well, good. I guess I'll go move leaves out of beds, to get them ready. Yeah, that's it.

I agree completely, Amy. OK does do weather right. PBS, I haven't watched it. But I do like Tulsa's attention to the arts.

It is gorgeous here, too. Windy, but gorgeous, nonetheless. I've been doing exactly that, Amy. Been raking leaves out of beds and mulching them. I note it's easier to put them in than take them out. Have a fan blowing on grow cart seedlings, and I am WATERING. Dawn, you probably find it hard to believe that I need to. I need to. LOL

Oklahoma does weather right because we have all the seasons here. It is just that sometimes we have all 4 seasons in one day. : )

I have no first-hand knowledge of PBS in OK because we don't watch it. It isn't that we have anything against public TV, just that we watch very little TV in general....and less and less of it all the time because there's too many things to do that aren't TV.

I never would use ash on my potatoes in the soil that I have here because ash is alkaline and we already have highly alkaline soil and highly alkaline water. Growing potatoes in soil that is too alkaline can lead to potato scab, so ashes should be avoided if your soil pH is 7 or higher. (My uncorrected soil and water pH are 8.2 and occasionally test at 8.3, so I have to acidify the soil a lot just to grow scab-free potatoes.) And, to be clear, I do a great job of acidifying my soil for potatoes and never have had scab....but it is an awful lot of work. For people with acidic soil, I am sure ashes probably would work but you'd only need to add them if your soil is lacking in potassium (potash), which is the K in N-P-K. If a soil test indicates your soil lacks K, then adding good quality hardwood ash (not ashes from charcoal briquettes or cardboard or anything else) could help, but I am not sure how you figure out how much to add. If your soil already has adequate potassium, I don't see any reason to add more.

I've worked as much as I can outside, but the wind and smoke are annoying. I carried in all the flats that are hardening off after I felt like all the plants had had all the wind they could tolerate in one day. Tomorrow's a new day and I guess I'll carry them back out again. At least tomorrow's wind is supposed to be slightly lower. Now that I've had a little break, I'll go back out and work some more. There's always Johnson grass stolons waiting to be dug up, unfortunately.

Everything under the sun is popping up in my garden now, including in the pathways. This includes volunteers of the following: peppers, tomatoes, daturas, chamomile, zinnias, malva sylvestris, larkspur, basil and celosias. Oh, and tons of weeds like lambs quarters, grasses, and henbit (too late for it as I already have other things in bloom for the butterflies). I harvested the first asparagus today. It went from 0 to 60 mph in about 2 days' time. That's the quickest we've gone from no asparagus spears visible to 'harvest me quick'. There will be more to harvest in another 1-2 days depending on how quickly the short ones that I left today get taller.

I was looking at the mulch today and thinking it looks too much like the colors we see in copperheads. I need to add a layer on top, especially in the pathways, of something that is either darker or lighter.

Now, back to the garden for me.....

Mrs boss, 2 boys and I planted 700 feet of potatoes in 1 hour. I was going to finish seeding but the wind is horrible. I could not take any more. I got beets and turnips in. Carrots and kale tomorrow. Hopefully. Taking a dinner break and then going to work in greenhouse

Yeah, wind here isn't nice, either. You got a LOT done! Yay!! You're amazing, Kim!

The wind is miserable.

I have several things that need to go into the garden soon. Maybe on Saturday?

I had to water today! Even the onions. Several little sprouts in the pea and nasturtium bed--that's always fun to see. They now have toothpicks protecting them.

It looks like the lavender is coming back, but the rosemary is not.

I stayed at work until after 4, but was able to get a few things done like the ones mentioned above.

Still no sign of asparagus spears. Coneflowers--yes.

I worked a little on the flowerbed in front of our house too--just a little.

Robin stayed around for 3 days, but she has moved on.

I'm so happy to have internet back. Sooner Wireless posted on their fb and I made a couple of comments, but didn't realize that ALL my friends could see the comment. I wasn't mean, but wasn't nice either. It was just so frustrating because Ethan had a TON of homework. Like it or not, we depend on the internet.

Spring Break starts tomorrow, but I will work for a few hours tomorrow. I'm trying to determine the best days next week to stay home and work outdoors. Hoping Tom will take off a day and finish up the coop/shed.

I believe both the wind and the fire danger will be high tomorrow, but then Saturday will be better. Most of us are in areas covered by a Red Flag Fire Warning tomorrow. I'm contemplating staying indoors tomorrow and cleaning house until we get paged out on fires. At least that way, when I come home, it will be to a clean house. I had about all the wind I could stay today. I still haven't had to water yet because the soil continues to be pretty wet from last month's rain. They've raised our chance for rain on Sunday from 20% to 50% so it is looking like I need to do what I can in the garden on either tomorrow or Saturday or both before the garden gets too muddy again, not that it is dry yet--it just is less muddy each day than the day before.

Kim, Y'all got a lot done in a short amount of time. Yay!

Jennifer, The robin stayed as long as needed. I think it came to show you that Charlotte had transitioned and was okay. Or, it stayed just to bring you comfort. Mission accomplished, right?

I cannot complain about anything this week except the wind. There's been too much of it. That's life. It's March. Of course it is windy. Before we know it, it will be April and hopefully the worst of the wind will be behind us. The wind beat my plants soundly today, but they all survived. Down here, tomorrow is expected to be a tiny bit less windy. Every single mile per hour less than today will help, even if we only end up having wind that is, let's say, 5 mph lower tomorrow than what we had today.

I didn't both posting the Drought Monitor Map because there was so very little change on it---the only real change I noticed was that more of the Extreme (D-3) area in NW OK moved into the Exceptional (D-4) category. No surprise there.

What? No one was sleepless and posting during the night? It is unusual that I was the last one to post last night and the first one this morning with no one else posting in between.

So, I'll think positive and imagine that everyone had such a good day in the gardens and yards yesterday that we all were sleeping soundly all night long.

This morning I am trying to plan my day and am very torn between staying indoors and cleaning house or spending as much time in the garden as possible. Maybe I'll split the day in half and do both. I just know that once I make it outside and into the garden, all thoughts of cleaning house will leave my brain never to return today. So, if I am to clean house today, it must be first thing because the outdoors will be too alluring today with all the warm weather. We're supposed to be about 15 degrees warmer than average today, and it is hard to dislike that. Who wouldn't want an 80-degree mid-March day instead of a 60-something degree day?

The dreaded bindweed is popping up in beds and pathways so a good way to use some time today would be to yank out every bit of it that I can find. Other than that, it is just weeding, mulching and dirt work that continues. The areas that have been weeded and have received new mulch in the last week look really good as they are totally weed-free at the moment. However, this includes only a small portion of the garden, so much weeding and mulching remains to be done. Today probably is more of a weeding/mulching day than a planting day because of the forecast heat and wind.

Our soil moisture continues to improve and it is not nearly as wet as it was even just one week ago. At the 4" depth, our soil moisture is down around 84-86% and at the 16" level, it is 88%. That might not sound like much improvement, but the soil really is a lot better than it was when I planted onions. I believe the soil moisture was at 99% or 100% then. It still seems kinda wet to plant potatoes, so I'm aiming for Monday or Tuesday for that, and just hoping too much rain doesn't fall on Sunday to mess up that plan. I can see as I work that the top inch of the soil is drying out pretty rapidly in this week's heat and wind, but Sunday's rain, if it finds us, could change that too. All the huge puddles in the yard are gone except for one. Yay! I was so tired of walking carefully to skirt the muddy puddles. Our grass is almost 100% greened up in the yard where it is short, though a lot of the green is annual bluegrass (poa annua) and only some of the bermuda is greening up so far. Still, green is the color I want to see at this time of the year.

Y'all, most all of us have Extreme fire danger and a Red Flag Fire Warning today, so please be careful, and remember that the wind and heat that are a part of this warning can be very hard on young tender vegetation. Some of my plants that are hardening off (and some that already are hardened off) likely will stay indoors today just to avoid having the wind beating them up like it did yesterday. I hate for them to miss today's sunlight, but not enough to subject them to today's winds.

Kim, I hope those wildfires, especially the big Moore/Hartley County line fire at Dumas, were brought under better control/containment last night. Here, the wind finally dropped in the early morning hours and I hope the same thing happened there.

We're expecting trouble today but I do so, so, so want to be wrong about that. Sometimes absolutely nothing happens here on a Red Flag Day and I suspect it is because the forecast is so dire that people are ultra-careful.

Tonight and tomorrow we have our sweet Lillie here to visit and play, so I expect I won't be working in the garden tomorrow as I distinctly remember promising her we'd go to the playground near the Frank Buck Zoo on her next visit.

I was scrolling through photos last night of where we were garden-wise last year and previous two years. Yep, we're running about 3 weeks behind this year, near as I can tell. I haven't even begun to harden things off here; perhaps today is the day for that. I'm sure glad I waited 2 weeks to begin seedlings. The tomatoes are still growing like weeds. Hard to get get them in and out of the grow cart now. The lawn is still more straw-colored than not, but I got a fair amount of watering done yesterday. More today. The beds look trashier than they've looked before at this time, but that's because we had massive amounts of leaves to mulch and add in October and November. I'm getting out some of that and double-mulching to put back in, and the trashy look is fine by me.

I'm anxious for the potatoes to show up in the mail. I'm expecting more nice surprises soon, too--my little Laurel bay tree, dahlias (I've got some dahlias, but fell victim to Swan Island and ordered a few luscious bulbs last month), brugmansia, my Incrediball hydrangeas. I wanted at least four hydrangeas, but already when I panicked and ordered them in January, the stock was beginning to disappear and I only managed to get two, at $15 ea. Now they're $25 everywhere. We'll see if I can withstand temptation to get a $25 one or two, online or in Tulsa.

Remember how we all have these visions of what our gardens will look like, and then they actually arrive and the reality is so far from the perfect vision we had? Well, looking back through the photos, they all look SO divine compared to right now! It's all subjective and a matter of perspective, right?

Well, Dawn. So the thing is, to be flexible, right? Ready to go with what the world throws at ya. :) Of course, I hope you have no fire calls today.

Haha, Jacob, your pill of a cat! It's complicated. He's sure cute, though. Got a good laugh. I hope our two, once they're unleashed on the yard, aren't going to play havoc among the beds. Guess we'll find out. It amuses me that as worried as I was about them last fall, about them getting out and taking off, that now I can't hardly get them to go out. This hardening off of the kitties is going to take some doing, and it amuses me greatly.

Well, since the rest of you are apparently being productive and not spending your time lollygagging online, I suuuppppooossse I should go find something to do. :) More leaves out of more beds, most likely.

When my kids were little we watched PBS regularly. Sesame Street, Mr Rogers. British shows like classic Doctor Who and All Creatures Great and Small. There are cooking shows, Sewing with Nancy, This Old House, Friday and Sat classic movies, P allen Smith and Oklahoma gardening, Antique Roadshow, Nature, Nova, Rick Steves travel shows, news shows (DH likes to watch BBC news because they put a different slant on on it than US media). Local programs, too. There is pretty much something for everyone. I was told at some point that there were many places in OK that didn't receive broadcast signals from the cities, but OETA made sure it's signal got to those people. We had cable briefly when # 1 was little. We didn't have it again until like 2010. My poor abused kids had to watch MTV at their grandparent's.

Ok, no ashes on the potatoes. Have fun with Lillie

Kim, 700 feet in an hour! Thank goodness you had help.

I watered yesterday, too. And my asparagus has not made it through the mulch if it's there. We've been having cold nights. Yum, can't wait for my own asparagus!

I don't understand "trashy" Nancy? Just leaves? I have chewed up pots and hose pieces and I think DH saved some dog food and chicken feed bags to plant potatoes in and Honey has freed them from captivity.

I don't really like the light shelves. They are in the front room, I don't walk by them enough. I think I lost some that dried out. Nancy's starts are in the south window next to me and stretching toward the sun. Maybe I'll plant them first and wrap a cage in plastic. Will my dog leave that alone? I must have a fence.

I am out of tissues, so I had a roll of TP sitting by my chair. I woke up this morning to DH yelling at the dog. She got the tp roll and was having a good old time. She likes to pull tissues out of the box, too. Sigh. Seems the old beagle had an accident by his chair, too, so he had a rough morning. Life would be so dull without animals.

I'm with you, Nancy, so glad I didn't start peppers and tomatoes in January this year. I'm already struggling for space--mostly vertical space. Then, one of my shop lights started making a weird noise and then smoking a little and made a smell, sorta like burning only not exactly. I unplugged it. That was this morning. Tom was about to leave for Fort Worth and said to just leave it unplugged (uh, thanks. I will.) So, I'm down another light. If I can get all of the greens planted tomorrow, that will free up some space. Tomorrow is supposed to be warm and cloudy as of last night. I'm hoping that is the case. I'm also hoping we get the half inch to inch of rain on Sunday that were talking about.

Dawn, I left one tray outside. Hoping that wasn't a mistake. I surrounded it with the Smart Pots and other pots--hopefully that will take some of the wind off of the seedlings. Honestly, I should just harvest those--I could really make a nice size salad with them.

Yes, it was time for Robin to move on. It would have felt weird for her to stay much longer. I'm glad she came to my house though. I have another bird story from last summer. I didn't tell y'all about my across-the-street neighbor, Ron. I only knew him for three years, but he was one of those special people--someone I connected with. He loved animals and would feed "his" birds everyday. And he helped care for our animals when we traveled. His wife wasn't well. His daughter died a couple of years ago--she was around my age--a bit younger. Her son moved in with Ron--he was in his late teens. Then his mother died shortly after his daughter. The grandson got very sick and was hospitalized for awhile. Then released. The Indian clinic told him to go back to the hospital--he was that bad. The hospital didn't admit him. A couple of days later, he died at home--very sad. He was so young. (This is a story in itself). Then, last May, Sherry (his wife) died unexpectedly. He was heartbroken--truly heartbroken. Then he died in June. Not exactly sure why, I think he just missed his wife that much. He has two sons and at the funeral one of them said, "he loved my mother intensely." I miss him so much. He was a good neighbor and a friend to us in the short time we knew him. "His" birds, including "his" ducks would circle every late afternoon looking for him. For about a week or so. ANYWAY, one day last June, I spent the day in the garden. A yellow bird and his female (I'm assuming it was a female 'cause it had more brown on it and the other was bright yellow), came to my garden and stayed all day with me there. I've never seen birds like those around here. Do we--in Oklahoma--even have bright yellow birds?

Hoping everyone is doing well and having a productive day.

NE Oklahoma has some, I think they're goldfinches. A friend of mine feeds the birds & i remember being over there and seeing all the yellow birds flocking to the feeder.

My bird story: our older dog has a plastic ball he plays with. One day I heard him barking furiously, so I looked out to see him barking at the bird that had perched on top of it. Eventually the bird got bored & flew off & the dog could go back to playing. Big tough pitty boy being controlled by a bird.

Yellow Warbler , Goldfinch, Prothonotory Warbler, there are more, but DH is waiting.

It has been so much windier than forecast. They said our max gusts would be around 28 mph (and I wasn't buying that, either) and so far we have gusted to 37 mph. The wind blew tomato plants in 5" pots off the table, so I moved all the plants that are being hardened off or that already are hardened off to a more sheltered location...sitting down inside a black feed trough that has side walls about 14" tall. The plants may blow over in the trough but they won't blow out of it. Our humidity is down into the teens and the air feels awfully dry. I don't like how it feels outdoors.

Without saying too much, I'll just say this. I refuse to be any fire department's enabler, so if the VFD at one end of our county that allowed a controlled burn in their district to be started this morning and then turned away firefighters paged to come put it out (because we aren't supposed to burn on Red Flag days, y'all) has any trouble with this fire later on, I will not be available to go. Period.

Nancy, I've been gathering up leaves that are blowing into the garden, but I think the wind is sending me more leaves faster than I can gather them up today. I want to shred them and use them as mulch, not have them blown in by the wind in their full shape/size.

One of our county's firefighters just sent us a GroupMe text message and video showing homes burning near his place of employment in another county. They look like old trailers, but he didn't say if they are occupied homes or just old unoccupied ones sitting out in a field somewhere. I never like seeing a home burn, whether it is someone's home or just used to be someone's home.

Amy, We did watch all those good shows on PBS when we lived in Ft. Worth, especially when Chris was little. I used to love The Victory Garden too. Now, it has been so long that I probably wouldn't even recognize any of the shows on there any more.

Your dog is a holy terror. Jet used to be that way. Forgive me for being overly sentimental as I watch him in the closing months of his life, but I'd give anything to see him have the energy and zest for life now that he had then. Getting old is hell, even for dogs. He was a little hell-raiser and he drove me nuts for years, but he slowly settled down more and more each year. Now, his primary activity is going outside to pee and then coming inside again. Oh, and stealing cat food. Any day he can sneak some cat food, he thinks he has won the lottery. Someday Honey will be old and gray, and I bet you'll look back on her puppy days with some sentimental feelings too (along with relief that she grew up and calmed down). I know that it is hard to tolerate her shenanigans now, but dog years fly by so quickly.

Jennifer, It might be the ballast on the light. A few years ago a ballast went bad in a greenhouse light and set an Ardmore plant nursery's building on fire during the night.

I hope your plants outside are okay today. I need to water some of mine before I go back to the garden. They dry out quickly in this wind.

My condolences on the loss of your neighbor Ron. He sounds like such a good guy. My heart was breaking for him when I was reading about his losses, one after another, and I sort of knew how it was going to end. His two sons also have suffered through so many losses recently. Sometimes that happens and it is mind-boggling when you see the same family lose one person after another if a fairly short time frame.

In addition to goldfinches, there's a few other birds with a substantial amount of yellow on them, including some kinds of warbles and some kinds of flycatches. It/they also could have been some sort of accidental bird (one that normally doesn't live in OK but might have strayed or gotten lost and ended up here).

Jen, That's hysterical about the pitty being afraid of the bird. Animals can be so funny that way.

I need to go back outside. I've been sitting here and monitoring my fire apps and see a lot of fires are breaking out nearby, but not in our county yet. I need to be out in the garden doing what I can while I can do it.

You know, 78 degrees feels hot now. It won't feel hot a month from now, but right now, in mid-March, it feels pretty hot. By July? We'd kill for a 78-degree day.

Dawn

That's so true Dawn, about the temperatures.

We came home from Tulsa and the door knob broke. We could not get in the front door. Could you all hear DH yelling? He has had a bad day.

We went to Trader Joe's. He likes their coffee and a few other things. Then we went to lunch at Lambrusco'z Deli across from Whole Foods. They are pricy, but good. Cost more to get salmon. We were going to go to Mecca Coffee, but decided to head home. I would have found too much at Mecca and spent too much time.

Dawn, Amy, thanks for your tips on keeping the cat away from the raised bed. Will tell DH about them, and we will see what supplies we need to get. We actually have a 6' tall fence around the backyard, but that is not enough to keep the neighbor's cat away. We kind of have a staring contest this afternoon before it slowly walked away. I threw all my potato cages on the raised bed yesterday, so there shouldn't be any space for the raised bed to be a litter box anymore.

Jacob, I wish it was my cat! I don't really dare to let my cat out because we don't really have much land, and I don't want her to be run over. Lucky she isn't as outspoken as yours. By the way, you stay near Bentonville right? DH and I (more him than me) love to cycle on the mountain bike trails there! And I really want to go to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art soon. Don't mind these random thoughts because I'm planning activities for every weekend for the next few months.

Kim, love your photos! What's the plant/tree with pink flowers? It kind of looks like the one in my neighbor's yard that I just saw while walking around the neighborhood. Cute photo of your little man and his carrots! I'm jealous you have a cute gardening companion!

The weather is awesome today! Even managed to get my dog to have an evening walk with me. I saw some cigarette butts in my lawn and also along the road as I was walking around. Have a gut feeling it's some neighbor who drives and throws out his/her cigarette out of his/her vehicle! It is not something I want to see, especially when there's Red Flag Fire Warning.

Nancy, I haven't finish planting all my potatoes. I need to buy cheaper soil from Lowes/Home Depot to fill up the grow bags. Dawn, I kept thinking about how you slowly amend the soil you have. I hope that one day DH and I will actually own some land that I can garden that way. For now, we have way too many wires and pipes going underground in my yard. OKIE811 came and put down so many flags in our yard when we first bought the house. I will definitely look into that if we ever do purchase a new house. I have also been dreaming of a sunroom, mudroom and greenhouse! Haha, not sure if we can ever afford all of them but it doesn't hurt to dream big.

I spend the last few days trying to organize all the seed trays, so that our house would look more presentable. We have guests coming on Sunday. I really shouldn't have listened to my FIL and kept a few pepper plants from last year. Too many fallen leaves and they probably won't produce as much this year anyway. It's just too many plants squeezed into my small dining room. Maybe I will take a photo when everything is nice and neat.

Amy, sounds like you had a great day! I need to check out Mecca Coffee some day. I feel bad laughing but I think I would be yelling like your DH too. We had a very crappy front door knob when we first bought this house. Decided to get a second hand one from Habitat for Humanity since it looked similar. Well, it was a lot cheaper but it's just not working great. We may have to get a new one soon because I'm pretty sure the same thing would happen to us soon.

Also, may I ask what all these are? Thank you for helping me and have a great weekend!

Any of you on My Heritage? What a mess I have with them. I'm going to wait until Monday to get it all straightened out. Have 3 sites there, but one of them is under Nancy Smith Russell (me)--they were supposed to have changed that to Nancy Russell Waggoner last year, but noooooo, So I can't edit it or change anything. It's a mess. I was trying to get one of my grand-nephews access. . . but had to give him access to an alternate one until I get the mess straightened out. GRRR. And the whole thing got me discombobulated and now I can't remember all your posts!

Oh. Well here I am, back on OKGW. :) Yes! A glorious but windy day. Wind let up here about 3, and it really didn't interfere much with me before then.

I hadn't realized you spent the day with your little gardening buddy, Kim. What a treat for you both!

I have a jillion seeds to direct sew! I want to start some of them in here, but they want temps of 65-70, so I'm trying to figure that one out. Maybe they can go on trays on the floor, bet that'll work, since it's cooler there, and there aren't any lights beneath them to warm things up. (There are lights above them, however.) I spent the first half of the day indoors potting up and organizing seeds and seedlings, the second half outdoors mulching. Wow. Amazing what a whole bunch of mulch does in keeping weeds from popping up everywhere. I really don't have much weeding to do out there except for those last two I never did finish getting the Bermuda out of. Well knowing there are only two bad beds makes things easier.

Yes, Amy trashy with leaves. Go ahead, laugh at me. (We got no Honey. . .) Makes a difference, huh. How ARE you going to keep her out of your garden plants! Sorry about the door knob. Ouch.

I spent a lot of time this week with fishing line fences. Now THERE is a tedious task. Gets old fast. But so worth it. Mmmm, probably not as tedious as pulling Bermuda. I can see right now I'm going to have to go buy more hanging pots and containers, as there are LB petunias EVERYWHERE in WS and indoors. I was worried about how hard they were to seed. . . . hahaha.

Going to have to be ruthless in getting rid of seedlings this year. . . I'll be unloading them on whoever I can, I think. Which is a good thing, I guess.

And speaking of, best get in and give them their evening drink.

We're farther northeast of Bentonville, but close enough. Yes, the mountain bike trails are nice! I haven't been on them in a couple months- I'd like to say last January? A goal of mine is to ride the Back 40 sometime this year - 40 mile loop near Bella Vista. We've driven by the head of the trail before, and it looks very beautiful :-)

We have about an acre, and our cat could get ran over, but he's kind of the neighborhood roaming tom. When we moved to the house we lived in before this one, in Republic MO, in about 2009 or so, he just showed up at our house. He was probably around 3-5 years old at the time. The first time he came around I chased him away with the hose. Then the next time I threw a football at him. He kept coming though and we eventually just started feeding him. Then eventually he was allowed into the house. Then eventually he moved with us here in 2013. Now he sleeps all day. He certainly likes his outside roaming, and he hunts a lot. Many times gardening I will find squirrel heads under my plants or laying on top of the soil. I guess he's fertilizing lol.

I don't know what any of those plants are, Eileen. I really need to get better at recognizing plants and trees. I know it would prove very useful to me.

I did do some mulching today for where my potatoes will go. I'm running out of leaves, believe it or not, partially because I'm avoiding a walnut in the bottom of the yard. The leaves I'm putting on are from maple trees, hickory, and oak, and dogwood, all the rest that are in our yard or on the edge of the forest. I'm hoping I can get enough to get us by until the lawn starts growing next month. I'll get grass clippings then.

Interesting idea to keep the cat out Amy! I may try that.

My greenhouse is really filling up. I'll be putting out collards in a couple weeks, probably the first crops other than peas. I have never even eaten collards before, so I'm excited to try them. Gardening opens up a whole new world related to food, as I keep finding that I can grow so much more than you see at the supermarket.

You're sneaky Nancy, posting as soon as I do.

Jen lol @ your bird story!

Dawn, that is scary about the ballast causing a fire!! What if I hadn't been home? Does that happen often? Good grief. Maybe I should only leave the lights on when I'm home.

Thanks for the condolences. I didn't tell y'all about him earlier 'cause it's sorta weird. I hadn't known him for long and it's difficult to explain how much you can miss someone you've only known for a short time. And it's not like we hung out all the time. But, I did enjoy talking to him fairly often. He was just a comfortable presence. I'm glad I had the opportunity to know him...even if it was just for a short time.

Luckily, the seedlings left outside survived. I think they are ready for the garden.

Do y'all remove the mulch from your asparagus beds so the spears have an easier time coming up? I think I made a mistake mulching my garlic so heavily. The area where the mulch had blown off, has healthy looking leaves. The area under the mulch, not so much. Skinny leaves or nothing.

Sorry about your door knob, Amy. It's always something.

Don't forget to add a chicken coop to your list of wants, Eileen. lol

I bring in soil too, Eileen. And have brought in Norman compost a couple of times. And have bought Black Kow compost once. BUT, I also make my own compost and use leaves and my soil has improved a lot in three years. It's exciting to see. The area with the onions, is just my amended soil. I've added lots of compost over the past three years and it's really so encouraging to see so much improvement. Now, if you dig down a few inches, it's not so amended. The tomatoes were there last year and they did great. I tried to plant just directly in the ground my first year out here. The combination of bermuda and clay was awful. It took me a week to plant one row of peas. My hands have still not fully recovered from the damage I did to them that week. Of course, I could have just tilled and planted, but I had a vision of removing all the bermuda stolons...and it just was too much. I don't regret bringing in soil. It's made it so I can start growing food, but I also have the thrill of amending the soil in other areas.

My friend had a board game that she marketed a few years ago. She has a ton of flat plain cardboard boxes that she is getting rid of (the board game wasn't a huge success sadly) that were the shipping boxes for the game. They will be perfect in the pathways in the garden. Tom will be so excited to see them all stacked up in the shop. LOL Not really. I have a cardboard hoarding issue. I only got half the stack and will go back to get the rest on Sunday.

Well, if anyone wants leaves, you can come get them out of my flower bed and take all you want. Today's wind has blown every stray leaf in the entire city into my previously clean flower bed. No planting can take place until I clean it out again, and it's covered up the spring bulbs that are blooming.

All I've done in the past 2 days for the garden is order PEPH seeds. Tomorrow on the list is getting down on the ground and cutting stuff from the underside of some shrubbery. Good thing I also have a cardboard hoarding problem, because I'll be laying on a piece to see underneath.

Hope no one in our virtual group is caught up in the Osage county fires.

Jacob, let me know how Back 40 is if you ride it! I don't know if I can ride the trail. Some parts look too difficult for me, and it's definitely way too long. Haha, do you know which are the best beginner MTB trails around Bentonville? We have only done the Slaughter Pen flow trail two years ago. I have a lot of catch up to do to get back to the fitness level I was at. That's my aim this year! Got so excited watching YouTube videos on the MTB trails that I'm posting now. (We sleep really late coz of DH's work schedule.)

I also need to get better at recognizing plants and trees too. It would be so helpful. Too bad the gardening phone apps are not really good. And yes, gardening really opens up our diet! I bought lots of greens from Kitazawa and Amy gave me more, so I will be trying lots of new food this year if I successfully grow them. I don't think I have tried collard greens before, but they sure appear on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives very often.

HJ, haha yes, a chicken coop! I need chickens to eat up all the bugs for me. I've been working on my compost. Not sure if I can use them this year. Will at least make compost tea this year.

Can't wait to see Nancy's yard later today! Honestly, I wish I can see all of your yards in person. In the summer of course. She's passing me some peonies. Hopefully I can grow them well at my place. One of my peonies here has sprouted.

Jennifer, I love stories of connections we have crossed paths with. The story about Ron is too touching and heartbreaking to grasp. Unimaginable, the depths of pain he experienced. May God rest their souls, and thank you for sharing.

Eileen, you are a dynamo! My idea of exercise is to garden. Yeah, that's about the extent of it. :) I loved swimming, no chance here. I loved riding herd on cows, or just riding, period. That's not going to happen. I only love exercise if I'm doing something I love in conjunction with it. Which is apparently the case for you. I actually like carrying big ole bags of chips or soil preparation stuff, or hauling tarpfuls of leaves and mulching, all that kind of stuff. All the while I'm puffing and panting or using extreme muscle power, I'm thinking of how good it is for me. :)

The first 3 years here, I hoarded cardboard, too, and loved our daily Tulsa newspapers. I used them all in lasagna beds. Now all of a sudden, I have a garage full of newspapers and cardboard boxes waiting to be broken down. And I realized I'm not going to be using hardly any of them this year. Yikes!

Yes, the last ones are "weeds," Eileen, and the second one--help, weed expert). What are they, weed expert? :) Our little 3-yr old granddaughter thinks they're "bootiful flowers." I was just laughing. We have the salad right outdoors now. . . between purple dead nettle and henbit, no excuse for not eating greens! By gosh, I believe I'm going to give it a try!

I have identified a new defect in me. Try as I will, I so far have not found many greens that are palatable to me. Their allure totally escapes me. The closest I can get to tolerating wilted greens is tossed bacon/spinach salad, which I adore (I DO actually love spinach, whether in salads or wilted), or fish florentine.

Your cat looks like such a pampered prince, Jacob. Looks are deceiving sometimes. Who knew he's one tough old bird with a lot of life experience. :)

Size is so relative, isn't it? I was thinking of your acre, Jacob, and our 1.5 acre. In town, these would be enormous yards. In ranching terms, they're a grain of sand. Where we live (like where you live, in kinda rural but not really, neighborhoods, that have a country feel, but really there are lots of people nearby and around) it's not town, it's not country. Kind of a hybrid. To add to our feel of country, we have no neighbors to the east or west of us, but rather, uncleared parcels (I hope in my lifetime, they're never cleared and built on) that lend to the feel of being in the country.

It's going to be a good day! We get to go to our Mexican restaurant with Larry and Eileen for dinner. :) I hope their best cook is working. He should be, on a Saturday night.

I just did a walk-around in the yard, and I was thinking about what you said regarding 78-degree temps, Dawn. It was 49 for my walk-around, and I had a heavy-ish long-sleeved knit top on. Brr. I recall in January when we had a high of 49, I'd venture out, but not without a warm jacket. And absolutely, if we have 78-degree temps in July and Augusts, we'd think we all died and went to heaven!

Okay. Onto chores. I hope you all have a good good day!

I never did see your earlier post Hazel. That's a sad story, but kind of a peaceful one, in a way, as well. He's with his family now.

It is neat, isn't it Nancy? The road behind the forest has really begun to get busier in the last year or two, sadly. We used to hear hardly a car, but anymore it's very loud. Of course, when the leaves are on the trees, we hardly hear it at all, so at least it's only in the early morning and evening hours during the times when people go to work and come home from work. It's certainly much better than being directly in town. We would like to find a bigger piece of property around here that would not only allow us to do more, but also allow us to have a house in the middle of it, with complete privacy, our we're all very content with where we live. It really is a hybrid neighborhood.

In the car headed to MO to see my grandparents now, so not much going on in the garden today. I pulled all the plastic off my low tunnel and replaced it with fabric so everything gets some cold protection/ wind protection and doesn't fry during the day.

Eileen, in Bentonville, I've only rode the Slaughter Pen trails. I had always liked one entitled Razorback Ridge. It's part of the Slaughter Pen system, but kind of out of the way. Lake Atalanta in Rogers in a nice system as well. There's also Lake Leatherwood east of us, but I've never been on that. I believe Fayetteville has an assortment of trails as well. Honestly they're everywhere- I believe you can ride from system to system, from town to town, on the paved "Greenway", for the most part. I use that sometimes to get around.

Dawn, I saw some Fire pics on Love county FB from yesterday afternoon, did you go to that fire? They think Arson started the fire in Osage county. :(

Eileen, we have an electric right of way on the east side of the yard, a water right of way to the south and we have to watch out for sewer lines to the house. The phone line was buried under the power lines. We had 3 little raised beds under the power lines when we first started. DH pounded a fence stake in the ground by them and our internet and phone were dead for 3 days. The phone company charged us $250 to fix it. Mutter, mutter.

DH says we have to go finish shopping now so he can cook his corned beef for tonight. :P Not a fan.

I never used to be a big fan, Amy, though love reuben sandwiches. But just 2 years ago, I made my own (well, no I didn't. I cheated. I found one that had already been corned. I just tweaked the seasonings they included and cooked it). Garry and I both were swooning. I'm sorry you weren't invited to the corned beef party, like I wasn't invited to the wilted greens party! LOL What does your DH serve with his corned beef---cabbage, right? Do you like cooked cabbage? (I do love THAT "green" boiled up and in nearly everything!)

I had to get up early and go retrieve my phone that I left at work last night. Grumble. But, I had to get gas, groceries, and hit up Lowe's anyway, so. Lowe's has MG potting mix at 2/$12 if anyone needs any. My back is NOT impressed with the 50lb bags of Black Kow. I'm going to have lunch and go out for awhile now. I should be able to transplant more lettuce today.

Squirrel got hit by a car in front of my house. Am I a bad person if I'm not sorry?

I'm going to use some of the windfall tree branches from my yard in my big grow bags this year. Need to add some extra N, per Dawn. What can I use that won't make the veggies any more attractive to squirrels than they already are?

So, I'm off to the garden. Have hedge clippers, will travel.

We're back. Front door opened and everything. ;) went to Dollar Tree for ONE thing. $32 later...but got Easter basket stuff and copious amounts of Easter candy, Easter cards for the grandsons and the trays I use in the windowsill (which is what I actually went there for). Then the 4 things I needed from Aldi's turned into a cart full. Can't take DH into a grocery store.

Collards. Jacob, you and Eileen will find plenty of recipes on line. If you like cabbage, you will probably like collards. I'm not a fan of cooked cabbage. I never used to like collards, but our home grown collards are good. When they bolt, the buds are tasty, like sprouting broccoli. I like stir fried greens. But collards need more cooking, so if you or Eileen try stir frying collards, try blanching them first.

I would hoard cardboard, but DH gets tired of it and takes it for recycling. :(

Out of curiosity Rebecca, where did you order PEPH seeds? I have gotten them at Worley's.

Nancy, I can tolerate a little bit of corned beef. I'm having leftovers of steak from Thursday night. Oddly, my half Irish father did not ever request corned beef and cabbage. We had ham and cabbage, but not corned beef. As I said, I'm not crazy about cooked cabbage except in egg rolls. I like stir fried greens or greens in soup. And truthfully I like them better cooked in chicken broth than ham.

Rebecca, funeral dirge for dead squirrel. Probably not one of YOUR squirrels, because they're too smart for street crossing.

I got a lot done today. Didn't get to start amending and filling grow bags, but that's ok, I'm not behind on that at all. I did plant a couple jugs each of calendula and painted daisies, because they were going to bust out of their jugs otherwise. I know they prefer cooler weather, so this way they can bloom sooner. Already recycled the jugs for okra and various summer flowers. Started a pot of oat grass for Audrey. Planted the last potatoes. Cleaned out a few containers. Worked on the shrubbery. More brush killer on Godzilla. Planted even more spinach (can't grow enough to keep Mom happy). Transplanted more lettuce, forked the pots to keep the critters and birds out.

I keep forgetting to soak my morning glory seeds. Must put that on my calendar so they can be started next weekend.

Amy, I ordered them from David's Garden Seeds through Amazon. I've had good luck with his seeds, and I think he's the guy Dawn recommended.

I am sorry y'all. I cannot comment intelligently on anything y'all wrote and which I did read, because I'm so sleepy and tired that my brain is not functioning. I'll try again in the morning, hopefully after a good night's sleep, no pagers going off, etc. I am just brain dead tonight, and my body is almost as bad.

Amy, I was out at the All-Page fire in our county yesterday so I missed being home when Lillie arrived. Tim took her out to dinner without me, but I made it home in time for a late family movie night with the two of them. Today, we had another All-Page and I stayed with Lillie while Tim went to some fires (not today's All-Page, but a different one at about the same time---we had fire calls stacked on top of fire calls today, on a day when fire danger should have been fairly low). We had stacked fires like that yesterday too---multiple fire calls in the middle of an already-hectic All-Page. Life is getting kinda crazy, and it makes me fear I'll get so far behind on planting that I can't catch up. Y'all know that I always complain about how the peak fire season and Spring planting season collide with one another every year and give me headaches....well, here we are again, second verse the same as the first. (grin)

As far as fires go, most counties had them yesterday, and some were awful and some led to evacuations of some parts of some towns. I feel fortunate ours were out in pretty rugged territory with few homes endangered. County Strike Teams were going to the aid of firefighters in other counties, and OFS was dispatching all sorts of help from water-dropping aircraft to dozer crews to additional firefighting equipment and personnel. It was crazy all over.

Mostly I just need a good night's sleep. I know that will help a lot. I'll be back tomorrow to attempt to identify the plants in Eileen's photos and to respond to various comments and questions. It tried to rain here this evening, but we only got a few drops of rain---so everyone is antsy and worried about lightning in dry thunderstorms starting more fires. It is almost enough (I said almost) to make a person wish for snow.

There are seven deer out in the yard and I think they're looking at the cool-season crops in my garden and trying to figure out how to breach that 8' tall fence.

I'm headed off to sleepyland now. I hope when I reread this in the morning, it makes as much sense as I think it does right now.

Sleep well, Dawn.

So...the first two trays of seedlings are now in the garden. We will see. We will see. Broccoli, cabbage, kale, mustard, arugula, turnip, collard, and lettuce. It's up to them now. I watered, fed, and prayed over them--don't know what else I can do.

Also, sowed (is sowed a word? It doesn't look right) radish and turnip seed.

Removed mulch from a few beds. That's not really a fun job.

Oh, took a trip to Atwoods (no, I didn't bring home chicks although they had Rhode Island Reds) to buy chick and hen food, but also picked up an artichoke plant. I have NO idea what to do with an artichoke plant, but plant to "google" it. They had Red Dirt plants for .79 today. The broccoli didn't look much better than mine I don't need any more tomatoes or the other things they had. But, the artichoke is intriguing. I do love some artichoke hearts in my food.

Guess what? I still haven't planted potatoes. What in the world? Normally they are planted on St. Patrick's Day in our garden.

So, fire pagers went off for a horrific wreck on the interstaten a few minutes ago, and my heart breaks for the families of those involved. I expect Tim will be out there for a few hours. Since we don't take Fire Rehab drinks/food to wrecks on the interstate....but I'm wide awake after Tim got up and left for the fire station.....I figured I might as well be here. Maybe now, in the quiet house in the very early morning hours, I can catch up. My dream would be to do so and then to fall back asleep, but falling back asleep is not something I'm good at doing.

Jennifer, Thanks, and I was sleeping well until suddenly I wasn't. Still I actually do feel rested. Don't worry about the potatoes going in a tad late. You're doing fine. We can be so hard on ourselves when sometimes we ought to just celebrate the fact that we're managing to get the garden planted.

Congrats on getting all your cool-season greens and brassicas in the ground. I planted some of mine last week, but have a lot more to do this week before I can claim victory and say I'm done. I 'think' the ground finally will be dry enough to plant them Monday or Tuesday, but only if we don't get a lot of rain today/tonight (and we shouldn't). I used a trowel to turn over the soil at first, and then a shovel to get deeper soil flipped over to the surface so the excessively wet mud can dry out some. Since we had a few very windy very warm days, that soil has dried out a lot the last 3 or 4 days. It is about time.

Now, just watch for anything that wants to dine on your fresh green plants. Wild birds often attack my young lettuce seedlings with a vengeance, and in rainy springs, the pill bugs and sow bugs prowling the mulched beds require the use of Sluggo or Sluggo Plus to keep those little crustaceans from eating the brassicas and greens.

Sowing definitely is a word.......

Artichokes are gorgeous plants and each one is like a piece of sculpture in the garden. When I grow them, I like to put them in the northwestern corner of my garden where they are in morning sun until noon or 1 pm and then in dappled shade the rest of the day. They take up a huge amount of space, so plant accordingly. Since we have such a long growing season, I prefer to space most artichoke varieties 4-5' apart. Does yours have a variety name or was it just labeled generically as an artichoke?

Rebecca, I do really like David's Garden Seeds. I always try to support small businesses in our region because regional seed suppliers have become so rare and we're lucky when we find one who carries the right varieties for our part of the country. I believe David's now has a brick-and-mortar store in San Antonio too.

You did get a lot done! That's terrific. I'm just like your mom with spinach. I like it so much that no matter how much I plant and grow, it never is enough.

Amy, Congrats on the front door opening and everything! : )

I can relate to not being able to take DH into a grocery store. Yesterday we stopped in at Central Market to get 2 things--Dr. Bronner's lavender soap and some fresh fruit for Lillie. I really just wanted her to see their amazing produce session (which did impress her with its huge variety, though she pronounced some fruit, like the Sumo oranges, too ugly to buy and eat). So, I was aiming for a quick walk-through. It didn't really happen. Our cart wasn't quite full (we had one of the small mini carts) but we bought a lot that wasn't on my mental list when we went into the store. Our downfall was the bakery area, which impressed Lillie even more than the produce section. Somehow we left the store with Lemon Ricotta cookies (blame that one on me), a loaf of sourdough bread, a cherry pie (Tim) and a Maine wild blueberry pie (Lillie). We consulted one another and decided that as long as they baked goods contained fruit, we were 'eating healthy', (grin) This always happens. If I run into a store alone with a list, I usually can come out with only what's on the list.

I hoard cardboard too and everyone in this family, except the cats, know to leave my cardboard stash alone. Chris, being a great gardening enabler, often saves up his cardboard and brings it to me. I might be the only mom in American who is thrilled when her son brings her empty cardboard boxes.

Rebecca, My back doesn't like 50-lb bags of anything. It really doesn't even tolerate 40-lb bags well any more. I've been hauling a lot of wheelbarrow loads of compost and mulch lately and my body really feels it. At this time of the year, I just cannot find a way around doing things that makes my body hurt, and know that I am not alone in this.

I don't know what you can do to keep squirrels away. I don't remember if you tried sprinkling red cayenne pepper on the soil in your containers to keep them from digging in the soil last year. If not, that is worth a try. Did you try spraying your fruiting plants with Hot Pepper Wax? I would hope that would deter the squirrels but am not sure if it will. A smallish yappy dog like a rat terrier can help some people keep their garden free of small animals like squirrels and rats (and aren't squirrels really just rats with big fluffy tails?). However, with your Teenage Mutant Ninja Squirrels, I'm a bit worried they'd terrorize a smallish dog and possibly take it hostage and carry it away. For extra nitrogen, have you considered blood meal? It might attract buzzards (it does here) but it is a nice high-nitrogen organic product. For something with a significantly higher N amount, you'd have to get one of the pelleted, slow-release lawn fertilizers that is nitrogen only.

Eileen, Collards are an old-fashioned southern staple that's certainly having their moment lately on cooking shows. I grow a lot of them some years, and less in other years. This year I have a lot.

Jennifer, Ever since I saw that news story on the light ballast fire, I turn off our grow lights when we leave the house. It probably slows down the growth of the seedlings, but I don't care. It gives me peace of mind. Honestly, I don't think ballast fires are that common, but they do occasionally happen.

Jacob, I hope you're having a nice visit with your grandparents. Our neighborhood was so very quiet when we moved here....still had a dirt road, not many neighbors, and a bridge north of us was being taken out and rebuilt so we had very little traffic for a couple of years. So, flash forward almost 20 years and now we have a barely-paved road (basically loads of gravel and tar poured on top of dirt road), a perfect bridge, a few more neighbors and tons, tons and tons of more traffic than I ever thought we'd have here on our roadway. We tried to move far enough out into the boondocks that growth wouldn't catch up with us, but it has. We aren't moving again. At least all our closest neighbors live on acreage, so new folks who move in still aren't too close to any of us. I'm not opposed to people, per se, but just prefer a quieter lifestyle. Livestock (cows, horses, goats, chickens, etc.) still drastically outnumber the people here, but there's a lot more human beings around here than there used to be.

I'll try to ID the weeds on a separate post. This one is getting long and I don't want for it to suddenly disappear mysteriously, which sometimes happens on my computer. I don't know if it is the computer or GW, but I'd hate to lose this and have to start all over.

Dawn

Eileen, I think they are all weeds, though I'm not sure if I can name them all. For me, the flowers are almost essential in order to get the proper ID, as many weeds resemble one another while young. So, ID'ing them before they bloom can be iffy. There's thousands, if not millions, of weeds that yours could be, and I don't care enough about weeds to learn the names of all of them....or even many of them. I just yank them out of the ground and move on without ever knowing what their actual proper name would be.

A weed is any plant that is growing in a place where you do not want it, and presumably did not plant it. I yank out weeds with extreme prejudice even when I don't know their exact name.....I do know a weed when I see one, though.

I think that photo 4 is either shepherd's purse or hoary bittercress. The plant in photo 1 could be several different weeds and it is hard to tell without the flower. It most likely is creeping buttercup. The one in photo 2 is something from the wild carrot family, and there's tons of possibilities. I don't think I have that one in my garden, though I do have to yank out the similar Queen Anne's Lace every year. The one in the third photo is nameless to me, but I had a lot of that in the first few years after we broke ground for our garden. I just kept removing them and now we don't have them any more. I know the vague IDs are not very helpful, but if you want for me to be able to identify your weeds, you need to have the exact same weeds in your garden that I have in mine. (grin) Right now in my garden, I'm removing lots of hoary bittercress and shepherd's purse, poa annua, field bindweed, bermuda grass, Johnson grass and chickweed. Oh, and the dreaded pink evening primroses, of which there are hundreds. I haven't seen much Queen Ann's Lace yet, but remove those as soon as they start appearing, which might be a bit closer to April.

Dawn