March 2018, Week 4, No Fooling......

6 years ago

So, we begin the final week of March in the midst of March Madness and with both Easter and April Fool's Day approaching us only one week from today. I feel like March flew by even more quickly than February, perhaps because we all were so busy and not hampered by heavy rainfall.

What is everyone going to be doing during the final week of March?

I'll mostly be working ahead on warm-season bed prep and such, having completed all the cool-season stuff. I wish I could capture the garden in time and freeze it in place today, with all the planted beds freshly weeded and mulched and looking so placid, happy and orderly. A week from now it won't be the same because something like bindweed, lambsquarters or Japanese knotweed will begin popping up through the mulch, and I'll yank out those weedy things and wish I had more mulch to apply more thickly to prevent future weeds. Eventually there will be more mulch, but this early in the year before regular lawn mowing begins, mulch is hard to come by and rather thinly applied.

If it rains a lot this week and I'm stuck indoors, I'll probably start some warm-season seeds in paper cups---maybe some of the new zinnia varieties, or perhaps icebox melons. I get really bored when rain keeps me out of the garden. Maybe I could just sit in the new garden shed with the door open and watch it rain on the garden. Or, I could clean house and do other mind-numbingly dull things that are not nearly as wonderful as spending a Spring day in the garden.

Today at Home Depot, while Tim spent an excrutiating amount of time searching for exactly the right bolt (how many bolts can they have there(?)---apparently lots and lots), I went out to the garden center only to find that summer had arrived. Yes, summer. Those certainly weren't just early springtime plants I saw being carted out of the store--they had kangaroo paws, annual salvias and other plants like New Guinea impatiens (full sized and in full bloom) that I know would not survive a late freeze here, ornamental sweet potatoes and the like, and people were buying them. They had asiatic lilies in six-packs. I've never seen those before. I wanted to tap everyone on the shoulder and ask them if they knew they were buying tender plants that would freeze, but my mamaw always said if you cannot say something nice, don't say anything at all. Since I couldn't decide if it was nice to question their judgement in a roundabout way, I kept my mouth shut.

It certainly wasn't me that you saw there carrying out blueberry plants in full bloom (shouldn't we tell them they have to pull off all the berry blooms this year?), full flats of tomato plants and pepper plants, squash plants and eggplant plants (I know, that is redundant) and New Guinea Impatiens. I was not the person buying starter cages (the likes of which I've never seen before) that were listed as cages for starter plants and were maybe 12-15" tall. What happens after the plants outgrow those cages in two weeks? Do you put a larger cage around the smaller one? I desperately wanted to ask the dad with his 12-15" tall cages, large-ish tomato plants and three young kids if he knew those cages weren't going to be large enough for those plants past mid-April, but wouldn't that have been rude? How often must we just bite our tongues and keep our mouths shut, or risk being banned from Home Depot's Garden Center? I just shouldn't be allowed to go into Garden Centers at this time of the year because I want to stop everyone from making questionable purchases.

I am an impatient tomato planter at this time of the year, but I still know better than to bring home New Guinea impatiens, ornamental sweet potato vines and eggplants before Easter. I had to bite my tongue so hard today that I'm surprised it wasn't bleeding. Then I arrived home to a garden full of cool-season plants wilting in the 80-degree heat at 11:45 a.m. For the record, our forecast high for today was 80, and of course we exceeded that. After a nice blast of water from the hose, all the lettuce and brassicas perked up and the wilting disappeared, and I started praying for rain to come sooner rather than later.

Want to pull a combination Easter prank/April Fool's Day prank on some innocent unsuspecting person? I saw this one on FB and it made me laugh. I like brussels sprouts, but I'd never do this to somebody else. It just would be too cruel. Plus, why ruin good brussels sprouts by dipping them into chocolate? I cannot imagine this would be an edible combination anyone would enjoy. Still, since it involved brussels sprouts, it seems sort of garden-related.

Easter/April Fool's Pranks

I face a bad combination this week. The Spring garden is planted, the Summer garden is started but I'm not willing to plant anything more just yet---never plant more warm-season plants early than you're willing to cover/uncover if cold weather returns. I'm actually caught up on laundry and pretty much on house-cleaning. Tim will be out of town and I'll be home alone, just me, the credit card and the opportunity to do online shopping on a rainy day. Hmmm. Seed shopping or a garden supply shopping binge might happen.

Dawn

Featured Answer

jlhart76

6 years ago

Last year's "trellis" was one of those cheap wire fences you stick in the ground. When we moved we needed something to block off my garden from the dogs. Our older boy wouldn't cross a rope if I told him not to, & our younger one learned quickly not to jump it (or at least not leave evidence he jumped over). I have a bunch of pvc leftover from the new fence so I'm going to mount an archway over the whole garden & run string or something to make a trellis for peas, beans, cucumber, squash & gourds. Then in the bed along the chain fence I just use the fence as a trellis.

I don't know if my dad knows his climate or just thinks it's been warm so it should be fine. He's lost plants several times, but still tries. I can't say much, I've been known to do the same thing. Sometimes I luck out, other times I plant again.

Sort by:Oldest

Comments (117)

jlhart76
6 years ago
Easter & Halloween are the same: if you dress up as princess Jasmine or Ariel, with bare arms & all, you freeze. The year you go as Cookie Monster, it's 80. For Easter, same thing. Sandals & shorter skirt it snows; heavier dress and we get a heat wave.
okoutdrsman
6 years ago
I'm hoping the weather changes and the forecasters announce this has all been an April fools prank! One can hope, but something tells me it's real.

At first I had trouble finding Megan Xennial's post, but it's there. I do know I've had a few that either didn't post or ended up somewhere other than intended when I've used mobile.

Yes, Megan is a pest, but I have to take the blame for inviting her to join GW. At the risk of disrupting the 'force' I'll say she's one of the few I've felt like would fit in here!

On a slightly different subject, would barefoot if used in an acronym be a 'B' or 'BF"?

Reading through all the comments it sounds like everyone is as antsy as I am about planting, SF and getting to see everyone that can make it! Oh, and the food! Has anyone mentioned Lisa's cornbread salad?

I'm still working on what to bring in the way of food, since Janet and I will be staying in Norman Friday evening and will be coming straight to SF from there. I'll be hauling plants to Ken and Paula's on the 26th, so possibly a refrigerated dessert.
Related Discussions
January 2018, Week 4, The January Thaw, Warmth, Wind, Fire, Seeds...
Q
Comments (101)
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
...See More
Feb 2018, Week 4, Planting (Maybe) & Welcoming March
Q
Comments (120)
Kim, You will be farming and gardening in a very unforgiving climate there, so perhaps their desire to wait for the rain comes from their knowledge of how tough Spring planting can be without the rainfall. I'm just guessing about that. I am sorry that your planting plans are a mess and aren't conforming to what you wanted, hoped for and expected. Please hang in there and don't stop believing.....even with a late start I bet you have a great year. It is unfortunate that your promised helpers are not available. Grrrrr. I hate empty promises. I wish you lived closer to all of us too. If you did, we'd caravan out to the farm and help you plant onions. Don't be too hard on yourself over the onion planting. Just do what you can do every day and be thankful for the progress you're making. I noticed that almost nobody in my area (or nobody who lives on roads we drive along so we're able to see their gardens) has their onions in yet, likely because most everyone here gardens at grade level, so their soil still is too wet. I am grateful for our raised beds because even though their soil also is wet, it was dry enough for me to get the onions planted last week, and today I'll be able to plant a lot of other stuff. So, even though I feel late here (and I am late compared to most years) apparently I'm ahead of everyone else who gardens around me. We all have to work with what we've got and, depending on one's location, it seems like we're either too wet or too dry.......sort of like Goldilocks and the Three Bears......it is hard to find that planting window when things are just right. Bruce, Our cats wipe out the moles and gophers, so they don't bother me either way, but it is stunning how many mounds I see on other people's property, particularly the ones with sandy soil. To some extent, our large amount of clay saves us from the moles and gophers, and the cats do the rest. If only that were so with the voles, but they tunnel completely underground at night, often hiding the entrances to their tunnels in adjacent woodland or areas of the neighbor's pasture with tall grass, so the cats have to hunt really hard to find the vole holes. I cannot let the cats out at night because of the coyotes, but I bet if the cats could be outside safely at night, they'd control the voles too. It would be tempting to use the poison for the gophers if only you didn't have grandchildren (or pets?). I noticed the sudden appearance of gopher traps, and all sorts of poisons and repellants on the store shelves in the last week or two, so clearly rodent season is underway now. For years, back when the garden fence was only 4' tall, we always had bobcats in the garden. I knew they were lurking there hoping to get birds, house cats, squirrels, bunnies or rodents, but I don't think I realized how many voles they probably were controlling until we raised the fence to 8' in height to keep out the deer. Since that effectively kept out the bobcats too, it was about a year after the raising of the fence that I realized we 'suddenly' had a huge vole problem. I wish there were a way to keep out the deer and allow the bobcats back in. It would sort of freak me out to drive up the driveway and see a bobcat just sitting there in the garden right in the middle of all the plants in broad daylight, but now that they are gone, I miss their varmint-controlling efforts. I don't understand everyone's obsession with moles either, but then, that's because our lawn is clay and we don't have moles. Maybe if we had moles tunneling everywhere in the lawn, they'd drive me nuts. I don't know. Also, we're rural and I could care less what our lawn looks like. We're not trying to maintain a pristine green carpet that impresses all the neighbors. I can understand that folks who live in suburban neighborhoods where there is a ton of pressure to have the standard perfect green carpet of grass would feel like the moles are ruining their lawn and, by extension, their lives. That whole obsession with perfect green lawns in housing subdivisions is a real thing, you know, and it amazes me how much time and effort people put into feeding and watering a green lawn and controlling the weeds just so they can mow it once or twice a week. It seems like a lot of work for nothing (by nothing, I mean that the standard green lawn doesn't produce food or flowers and doesn't support much wild life). When we lived in the city, we had the standard beautiful green lawn in the front yard, although I replaced as much of it as I reasonably could with ornamental planting beds. We had St. Augustine ('Raleigh') and it was so pretty, but I'm glad we aren't trying to keep a lawn like that green through all of OK's hot, dry, drought-filled summers. As our shade trees here get larger and larger, more and more of our bermuda grass lawn is being shaded out and replaced by ground covers, and that thrills me. That was my plan for the bermuda grass all along---to shade it out. I don't miss the green carpet of grass at all here. Our city back yard always was more garden than lawn grass and that was good---it gave me places to plant things that weren't green lawn, so I always spent more time in the back yard than the front yard even way back then. Nowadays I spend all my time in the garden that I possibly can, and resent every single hour of mowing that takes me away from my garden. It is funny how kids and grandkids take it so personally when someone else has offended their parent or grandparent, and those kids have long memories too! I guess that makes us stay on our best behavior when the little ones are around. Looking out the window I can see that it is dawn outside (pun intended). I've been waiting forever for the sun to come up, and finally that moment is about to arrive. Planting day at last! After today, the onions will not be alone any more. Dawn
...See More
April 2018, Week 4, Planting and Rain
Q
Comments (63)
Kim, If it is any comfort, hilling potatoes is not my favorite thing either. I don't do it. I just plant them 8-10" below ground in the first place, and then, once they have broken through the ground and it is time to hill them, I pile on the mulch instead. Inches and inches of mulch. Instead of hilling up a couple more times, I pile on more mulch. Insane amounts of mulch. If it means I don't have to hill, I'm all for it. I realize this works because my potato patch is small. There's no way at a place your size that you could mulch all those potatoes, which is too bad. I'd give you a 2 a.m. wake-up call except for the fact that I will not be awake at that time. Sorry. Hailey, Zinnias are great in our climate. I've grown them every year for as long as I can remember---dating back to my childhood in the 1960s. They love heat and tolerate drought well---I don't mean that they are xeric and never need water, but just that they don't need as much water as most other flowering plants do. They reseed prolifically. I just redid our zinnia bed this Spring after 15 years of letting it reseed itself because I wanted to add a lot of compost to the soil, and I wanted to start over with fresh seed in certain colors. After 15 years of reseeding, our flowers had gotten too predictable and were mostly the more common colors, so this year I added lemon yellow (a lot brighter than the yellow of other zinnias) and lime green. I think I added purple. Or, at least I added a mix that includes purple---let's hope that some of the plants from that mix actually are purple. Just be sure to give your zinnias good spacing. They need good air flow to avoid powdery mildew, which is about the only problem that I think zinnias have. Butterflies love zinnias too. Rebecca, Whatever you're going to do to the squirrels, we support you. More tomatoes, less squirrels, you know. Good luck with it. Go ahead and plant the cukes. I'd only hold back if powdery mildew is an issue with your peas, because you wouldn't want for PM to start on the peas as they near the end of their lives and then transfer to the cukes as they are sort of just starting out. Most years my peas don't get PM....so it isn't something I worry much about. If I see it starting up I just go ahead and yank out the pea plants to get the PM out of the garden before it can begin to spread. Amy, I'm laughing about Curious George. I loved those books. I probably wouldn't appreciate them as much now as I did when I was a kid. I think the violas will survive under the coleus. I just finished interplanting Lemon Yellow Profusion Zinnias with my pansies and violas today, with the idea being that by the time the now-tiny zinnia plants are taller than the violas, the weather will be heating up and the violas will be about done. My violas either come back every year or they reseed themselves....one way or another, they come back. I just saw seeds on a viola yesterday and was shocked. It seems too early for them to go to seed, but we have had some days with high temps at 88 or 89, so maybe the violas think summer is here and they are done. Yes, I think Elbon rye (or even just plain old winter rye grass like people use to overseed lawns) would crowd out the crabgrass if you plant it in the fall, but I haven't tried to do it. I do know that when we overseed the lawn with annual or perennial rye grass (both are annuals here, by the way) so we have a green lawn in bad wildfire seasons, all the summer grasses are late to appear because the rye grass shades them and keeps them from really getting going in the Spring time. I don't recognize your plant in the photo, but it looks vaguely familiar. Do the plants have square stems like the plants in the mint family? So what kind of gulls scour the Wal-Mart parking lot occasionally looking for food? Do we have a name for those. (grin) I love gulls. Feeding them at the beach was one of our favorite thing to do when Chris was a little kid. I suppose having our kids treat us like we are children is karma for the times we have treated our parents like they are children. Of course, we can look at it in a positive light and say that our children learned their nurturing behavior from us, but it does make me think "oh, he thinks we are getting old....". lol. Well, of course, we are getting older every day---all of us are getting older---us, our parents, our kids, our grandkids....our pets. I still maintain that getting older isn't that bad when you consider the alternative. Jennifer, Getting older is interesting. I don't like all the physical changes that come with it, but I do like the mental/psychological changes that occur over the years. It is funny when I look back at things I worried about in my 20s and 30s and now realize that it was just a waste of time to worry about them. I do think wisdom comes with age, so that's a plus. I know I am a lot more laid back now than ever before, and I think that's a positive. The body changes after menopause suck, but guess what? That's life. At least we're still here, still alive, still kicking and still gardening. I look at some of our older friends who are on the verge of being wheelchair bound and am so grateful that at least we still have our mobility (despite all the aches and pains that come with it). I'll probably color my hair forever. At least that's what I think most days. Then, other days, I look at my cousin who has lovely silver hair and think I wouldn't mind having hair like that. I think the hard part is to go from coloring it to letting it grow out to its now-natural shades of gray and white or whatever it would be. For me, that would be the hard part. Hailey, I agree with Nancy that your flower is an osteospermum. That particular one is Blue Eyed Beauty, sold by Park Seed. Osteopermums are cool-season flowers so generally don't last long here (at least in my part of OK) before the heat burns them up. They were in bloom down here in the Feb-Mar time frame...of course, March was warm, and then April turned back cold, so this year they're probably going to stay in flower longer than usual. Rebecca, Wear whatever is comfortable! Keep in mind that we'll be handling plants and eating, so white probably is not the best color to choose. (grin) Based on that reasoning, I ought to wear brown or black so that all the stains hide. I worked my fingers to the bone in the garden this week and planted, planted, planted. Weeded, weeded, weeded. Mulched, mulched, mulched. Still, in the end, at least it seems like I made progress. I hope to make more either next week or the week after. We'll see what life throws at us and what the weather throws at us as well. The problem is now that it is warming up, everything is growing like weeds----especially the weeds. I have been working hard to get the warm-season flowers in the ground so they can get off to a good start before the weather gets too hot. We still are rain deficient here for April, so probably will end April that way. It looks like May will bring more rain though, and with it, all the thunderstorms and stuff that we don't especially want. See y'all tomorrow. Dawn
...See More
June 2018, Week 4, Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head
Q
Comments (89)
Rebecca, Stink bug or leaf-footed bug damage on the tomato. I was wondering about C. diff too. My younger sister had it once a few years ago and had to be hospitalized for quite some time. Nancy, We've been hearing occasional fireworks for about a week already. I'm tired of them....and we aren't anywhere near the actual Fourth of July holiday yet. It makes the dogs crazy. Everyone is out mowing grass down short today. Between the heat, lack of rainfall and the fireworks craziness we always have out here in unincorporated parts of the county, people know the grass in the fields needs to be short in case fireworks set their fields on fire. Heavenly Blue is one of the latest MGs to bloom at our place, and they do better in full sun and poor soil than in part shade and good soil, so it helps if you choose them a 'bad' site to grow and don't baby them too much. Otherwise, they can just go on making new foliage forever and forever and forget to bloom for the longest time. Once they start blooming, though, they are so spectacular that you'll forget how aggravating it was to wait forever and forever for them to get their act together. Most of the basil I grow is for the beneficial insects. I ignore it and don't harvest it much, and just let it bloom for them. Our weather is awful again today. It was supposed to be around 97 degrees with a heat index of 103, which certainly sounded better than previous days. So, what have we had so far? An official high temp of 98 (so, very close to forecast so far) at our Mesonet station with a max heat index so far of 109 (oops, they were way off on the forecast for this). At our house is it 100 degrees right now. Our weather refuses to behave. Everything outdoors is just roasting. They had our Mesonet station (and Kenton's, I think it was) down for a while today, and when they brought them back online, both stations changed from a 16" soil moisture level of 0.14 to 0.40, so they either changed malfunctioning moisture sensors or they adjusted the data. Now I don't know what to think, but no matter what their data shows, the ground is miserably dry. The rain is bypassing us, moving from SW towards central OK, so some of you are likely to get rain. Hopefully, you won't get the hail. Jennifer, I hope the dinner is fun and that the animals do well without valium. Megan, There's so many neonics in use that I mostly just grow my own flower transplants from seed nowadays. I tried to buy some plants at HD this past spring, and they had Neonic tags in them (sort of hidden behind the standard plant tag, so if you weren't checking for them you might miss them) so I put them back on the plant racks. At least they are labeling theirs, which most places do not. I used to buy flats and flats of annual flowers in early to mid Spring for maximum impact, but don't buy many now. If I cannot grow them myself or find them at an organic nursery in the DFW metro, then I just live without them. It is hard for me to give flower seedlings the attention they need when I'm wrapped up in growing veggie transplants, especially during winter/spring wildfire season, but I'm getting better at giving them the appropriate amount of attention since buying them is less and less of an option because of the heavy reliance in the bedding plant industry on nionics. For me, growing transplants is easy if I'm not rushing off to fires every day, but almost impossible if we're having a bad fire season. We've been harvesting and eating tons of tomatoes for two months now, so you will not hear any whining coming from my lips. The fruit that set in March-April is mostly all harvested now. We had very little fruitset in May, but those are the ones that are still green now. With the heat cranking up, no rainfall in ages and tons of wind this week, the spider mites are flooding into the garden every time the wind blows and hitting the tomato plants hard. I'm now at the point where I look at the plants and think to myself that I'll be glad when each plant has ripened its last fruit and I can yank it out of the ground, thereby putting it out of its misery. I've been doing a pretty good job killing stink bugs and leaf footed bugs with citrus oil, but normally wouldn't spray it on the plants because it tends to burn the foliage. (Orange oil, at a high enough concentration will strip paint and varnish, so I have to be really careful to mix it up properly and to not spray it on any plant I don't want to risk losing.) It is just that with the plants declining so rapidly and drought officially in parts of our county now, I just do not care. I wouldn't spray it on the leftover tomato plants that I planted at the northern fenceline very late (to serve as host plants for tomato and tobacco hornworms found on the fruit-bearing plants in the main tomato rows) because they have not been hit by herbicide drift or spider mites yet, so they look ridiculously good and might survive until fall if the grasshoppers would leave them alone. I also wouldn't use it on the 8 new tomato plants for fall. They are in containers at the NW end of the garden, in as much shade as I can give them and still expect them to grow any at all. They can have more sun later after they grow and are established. I'm no longer dealing with tons of tiny grasshoppers in the garden. Now I have big huge ones flocking to the garden from the non-irrigated fields around us---thousands of non-irrigated acres. The differential grasshoppers are a huge issue as they really prefer forbs to grasses at this time of the year. I've started letting my Kong sunflowers wilt on purpose, which I'd rather not do, because the differential grasshoppers, which love sunflowers, will usually avoid wilting sunflowers. (Maybe the wilting impacts the leaves in some way the differential grasshoppers do not like?) So now, the dog's sunflowers that are self-sowing natives which border their dog yard are much more appealing to the differential grasshoppers than my garden sunflowers because I am not watering the garden sunflowers but am watering the dog yard sunflowers to turn them into an appealing plant for the differentials. Whatever it takes...... Tim just came in from the Great Outdoors and informed me it is hot out there. Thanks, I told him, I hadn't noticed. I think being at work 5 days a week somewhat skews his perception of the heat here because by the time he arrives home near 7 pm, we usually are a lot cooler than we were just 2 to 4 hours earlier. Today, for the first time in ages, instead of working on something at home, we went to the fire station and worked on various projects. I cleaned the kitchen, filled up the fridges with additional bottled water and Gatorade, inventoried firefighter snacks, etc. I noticed that, in our neighborhood between the fire station and our house, areas that are heavily shaded or that get shade at least half the day still look half decent. Areas that are in full sun? They look pathetic. My garden needs trees in it to shade the plants in hot weather, but I don't want the trees there all the time. Dawn
...See More
Nancy RW (zone 7)
6 years ago
I am thrilled to hear you slept like a log, Rebecca. I think many of us here feel blessed if that happens! (By the way, I've been sleeping pretty well lately, too.) I've at times had anxiety over fears of not being able to fall asleep, which makes it worse. But lately, I've been doing well; hope it continues. Perhaps that has to do with my lack of coffee intake. Almost certainly, I would guess.

AND, I meant to comment and laugh about your Roseanne comment, Dawn. I see there are some reviews about it being a re-hash. . . I'm thinking that's just for an intro for those who missed it before. I always loved the show, and look forward to seeing some of the new ones. One thing about that show, love it or hate it, it certainly broke new ground in many areas, didn't it?

It's cool. , . lol. We got 3.6" in our rain gauge this last bout. Great! Since we're so far from the Mesonet stations (in the far NE corner of Wagoner County on the Rocky Point peninsula), our precipitation is usually a combo of the Tahlequah, Inola and Porter triangle, so I guess our rain gauge(s) are about our best tools for measuring precipitation. And most often, it's nearest what Inola or Tahlequah measures. While Garry is dreaming about fishing, I'm dreaming about gardening. . . and looks like both of those are on hold for now, so might as well put in a couple cool weather things today, just because.

Megan, I did recognize you from the FB forum, so feel like I kind of "know" you, although I haven't been on much lately--nice to see you here now. I didn't absorb the generation nicknames, so don't have a clear idea of them. Although I loved the diversity training conducted by my workplace (we had SUCH good trainers/teachers), I balked at the "generation" training that was mandated within our own department, since it was led by an idiot who loved the cute little generation names and was determined to fit us all into our proper slots (sounds like an inflexible senior, right? LOL). Throughout my life, age and other dividers never mattered in terms of good friends. Bffs have ranged all over the diversity spectrum, for which I'm thankful. I AM keenly aware, however, that there are many younger people who think older ones are an aberration, and there are many older ones who ARE an aberration! LOLOLOLOL

Having said that, one of the biggest differences I HAVE noted between the 10-yr generations, is MUSIC--my son loved my music, and in turn, introduced me to HIS--if it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have been adding U-2, REM, Chris Isaak, Van Morrison to my list of all-time favorites.

Tough question, Bruce. B, no. BF? hmmmm. BFT maybe? Definitely BF or BFT. I'm not even thinking food at SF. Maybe I will. Maybe a finger food, a grab and go kind of thing.

Dining room is a mess from potting. . . may as well continue along that line today--plenty of little ones to promote to the next grade.

Well, for sure I better do SOMETHING, as tomorrow will be, yippee, doc's appt and groceries.
luvncannin
6 years ago
Bruce I say the more the merrier. I was so confused. I kept thinking am i supposed to know her cuz I do not remember. But I didn't want to admit I had no clue who she was. Especially thinking she has been here for years. Well Megan if you band with dawn to pick on Bruce you are good people lol. Sorry Bruce :)

My head is not hurting today thank the Lord I would have had to go to er if it did. Off to do some potting.
Megan Huntley
6 years ago
Eileen - I really like Roark Acre's honey. I saw all the creamed honey at the Bartlesville Farmer's Market and had a hard time controlling myself. They also sell Tuckerbee's honey at that market and I have some of it too. There is someone who sold wildflower honey at the Edmond Farmer's Market last year and since that is more local to me (Edmond), I hope to see them again this year. My 94-year-old grandmother lives in Bartlesville and is still very mobile and active though since she's no longer driving she gets cabin fever. Aside from church, the Farmer's Market is her time to get out of the house and she visits it as religiously as she goes to church. An aunt lives with her but still works full time at Lowes - so if she isn't able to take Grandmommy, someone in the family always makes sure to be in Bartlesville for the weekend so she can go. Of all the OK markets I've been to, Bartlesville is my favorite.

hazelinok - don't get me started on Prince. I'm still sad! I'm also very, VERY, offended that they're playing grunge rock on the oldies station. That station is for Three Dog Night, not Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots.

luvncannin - or if I'm reading Dawn's post correctly, Kim, I met Bruce in a Facebook group and he invited me to this one over a year ago. I hung out some and kept mostly quiet, searching through posts for answers to questions and only occasionally chiming in when I didn't find answers. I got away from this page, and also from the Facebook group where I met Bruce because I was tending to some health concerns. I'm feeling a lot better - medical issues are as controlled as they'll get - and now that I also know Dawn in addition to Bruce I've felt more comfortable in the mix. I probably should have introduced myself. Here goes...

Hi, I'm Megan. I grew up on a farm just outside Kingfisher and started gardening pretty young. My first memory of gardening, I was a few years younger than 10 but not sure exactly how old, when my dad commandeered my red, radio flyer wagon to haul "just right" manure from the pasture to plant under tomatoes. I remember being unhappy with my wagon being used that way, but became more okay with it as I watched the tomatoes flourish that year. My dad worked in the oil field so he was only home when it was dark and mom didn't want anything to do with the tomatoes besides eat them. So my brother and I were tasked with "weeding" - we had fun with our little shovels digging up small plants while building castles - and watering. We rented the house, not the farm, so around 10-11 years old, I started working as a Farmhand for the man who owned the place. I made an impressive $5/hr - which was more than minimum wage at the time, with the caveat that if I was paid the same as the adults I better work as hard. Which translated into getting the jobs the adults didn't want and later the motivation I needed to get a bachelor's degree so I only had to work that hard when I wanted to! Through my teens, I was still moved by the success of the tomatoes that first time and would work hard to get a vegetable bed ready, start plants from seeds, get it going and like you would expect from a teenager - lose interest because it was taking too long. So usually by late May my dad would take the mower to my garden. I'd be ticked but not have much room to argue! LOL I went to college in Ada earning a degree in communications - ironic because while in college I also learned I'm dyslexic so those of you reading Tolkien blow my mind. I went to work at Channel 5 in OKC for a couple years and then moved to St Louis (Fenton, if you're familiar with suburbs there). I was on a bluff near the Meramec River so I had great soil until I hit rock. I finally got to start gardening again while living there and managed to stay interested all season! LOL. I had WILD success with zucchini which I don't even grow here due to bugs. Discovered that I CAN grow bell peppers even though I'd never seen a single fruit on my plants as a teen (I know why now). Of course, I kept up with staples like tomatoes and okra. After close to 10 years I moved to the Memphis area (DeSoto County, MS but still the metro). I was only there for 2 years and arrived at the end of summer so I didn't have a lot of time to amend a spot in the yard to get a good garden going, though I tried. We were also in a low spot so stuff stayed waterlogged and I didn't have the means to haul in enough dirt for a raised bed before I ended up moving back to OKC. In 2013 I left a bad relationship and came back to Oklahoma so my daughter could get to know her family. I ended up connecting with a high school crush almost immediately and the rest is a bit like a storybook. In Oct. 2015 we were married in his mom's backyard - which is literally around the corner from our house but she's a good MIL so I don't mind. Better yet, she's a gardener too so hubby (Ben) is completely unphased by my backyard shenanigans. He just has 2 rules - because we're on a slope I can't cause the water runoff to flood the house and beds need a border he can run the weedeater along without getting beaten by mulch! We have a 9-year-old little girl named Keegan (on paper Ben is stepdad but he's dad period in our books) and a 1-year-old Parson Russel mix named Jack that we rescued from the Humane Society. Jack is super cute which is good because he isn't great at keeping the rabbits away from my garden! I live in SW Edmond - as the crow flies, 1.5 mi north of the Acme brick plant so you'll hear me lament my awful red clay pretty often. I also work fulltime in Public Relations. Besides gardening, I walk or sometimes run (slowly), did my first yoga class last night and might just stay with it, crochet, sew/quilt, can, research genealogy and occasionally cross-stitch... any excuse to ignore the housework. I'm gluten and onion intolerant so I also cook almost everything my family eats from scratch but for me that's a chore not a hobby, and I'd rather do the housework, but such is life. ;)
Nancy RW (zone 7)
6 years ago
A quilter!!! Yay, Megan! Last quilt I made and finished was a year and 3 months ago. I'm afraid quilting for now has taken a back seat to gardening. Still, it is one of my main three time-intensive loves, along with gardening and painting. And absolutely--anything to divert from housework! LOL
Megan Huntley
6 years ago
Well Nancy - you're a better quilter than me! Finishing!?! What's that? I do a lot of fabric hoarding. :)
Nancy RW (zone 7)
6 years ago
LOL. Yes, I occasionally DO finish them. But have many UFO's to finish, still.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
6 years ago
Kim, That man sounds exactly like my old farmer friends from our early years here---they only wanted to know enough about what I was doing (and weren't really interested in the reasons why, but just the 'how') so they could pick it apart. It drove me nuts but I figured God sent them to me to teach my patience...or something.

I'm so happy you got the rain. I hope it fell in a sufficient quantity to help the plants.

Dorothy, It is so good to see you here. I had been wondering lately about you and Glenn and about how his Parkinson's Disease was progressing. I know those drives to Houston must seem unbearably long, but I don't think y'all could find better medical care anywhere else. There's so many great hospitals and medical personnel there. I hope that the deep brain stimulator works well and helps Glenn once they turn it on.

I am sorry to hear that y'all are going to have to move, but certainly understand the reasons behind it. I just cannot imagine y'all not living on your place, so can only imagine how hard it must be for you two to accept that you need to move somewhere else after all those decades there. Well, y'all always will have the memories of living there and raising your children (and many, many bountiful gardens) there. Your granddaughter sounds as helpful as ever, and I love that she apparently has her grandparents' love of gardening instilled in her. All those years you were raising a garden, you were raising a gardener too.

I know why you planted so much, and think it goes beyond habit. I know that gardening is just a part of who you are and you simply have to do it. As gardeners, we simply need to garden and to have our fingers in the dirt. You know that I chose those words deliberately based on one of my favorite books about life and gardening in Oklahoma!

Hey y'all, if you are newer here and don't know Dorothy, I recommend her book highly. I knew her for years here on this forum before she wrote it and I read it, and I think this book shares the most wonderful stories of Dorothy and Glenn and their life together gardening (and more) in the hills of eastern Oklahoma.

Keep Your Fingers In the Dirt

Kim, I imagine Mrs. Boss was thinking about how hard it will be to stay caught up on picking 450' of peas when she decided she didn't think y'all needed to plant any more. The planting is the easy part, you know. It is the keeping up with the plant maintenance and harvesting that requires so much time later on.

Jacob, Down here it seems like we almost always get some sort of wicked cold weather around Easter. I'm not blaming Easter for the weather, but I do know never to turn my mind away from weather-watching before Easter has come and gone. Our weather is so erratic here that we really need to be watching for a very late freeze through at least May 3 or 4 anyway, even though we try to ignore that fact. Some years we have had snow the same week as Easter, and some years we've been hot and in the 90s during the week before or after Easter. You just never know what sort of Easter weather to expect. Our forecast seems to change every few hours, but at the present time we're expecting temperatures in the low 40s on Thursday night/Friday morning and again on Sunday night/Monday morning. The low 40s are close enough to the upper 30s and frost that I'll likely cover up the tomatoes and emerging bean plants with a medium-weight row cover that gives 8 degrees of temperature protection. I don't think I'll drag out the heavier 10-degree one unless our forecast deteriorates. Our soil is nice and warm now, so a couple of cool nights won't hurt much as long as the plants are protected from potential frost.

I hope your Easter cool spell is not too cruel and that y'all warm up quickly after that.

I also hope no one was injured too badly in that accident behind your house. We had a bad fatality accident in our fire district last year just immediately off a state highway. There also was a ravine and large rocks involved that made it very hard to reach the patients and, later on, to get the car out of the....hollow. That area was so overgrown with brush and trees that until our firefighters got down into the ravine, we didn't realize how rocky it was---some of those rocks were the size of medium-sized vehicles. While I knew that this area near us (and a road there as well) was called Wolf Hollow, I never thought about the actual geographic makeup of the hollow itself. While we were there, one of our firefighters who had grown up here told me..."you know Wolf Hollow? This is the beginning of it..." and then he gestured off behind the spot where we were to show me where the hollow runs. Since then, state and/or county workers have done a lot of work to make it more obvious to drivers that there is a rocky hollow there and a steep drop-off and such, but the area still remains dangerous....just marked a little bit better now with yellow poles and reflectors and with a lot of the brush cleaned out so you can see the hollow a bit better. Now I'm wondering why it is Wolf Hollow and not Coyote Hollow or Bobcat Hollow. I know we don't have wolves here.....Oh, and if you're from here, which we are not, it isn't a hollow....it is a holler....and that is one of the things I love about living here....people are so authentic and just are who they are, if that makes sense.

Keep enjoying your spinach. You've earned the right to enjoy it and to talk about it and to brag about it. Spinach overwinters easily here and I think it produces better in our area from a fall sowing for a fall/winter/early Spring crop than it does from a winter sowing for a Spring crop. We just don't get cold enough down here to hurt it, or to even have to think about protecting it.

Jennifer, I totally understand. Indoor lighting encourages leggy plants despite all our efforts to avoid it simply because even the best indoor lighting is many times weaker than sunlight. Even on a totally cloudy day, the plants get better light outdoors than indoors. For better or worse, all my tomato plants are too tall now for the light shelves, so they are outdoors 24/7 although I'll probably bring them back indoors on Thursday night and Sunday night with temperatures expected to be in the low 40s. I probably could leave them out on the table where they sit all day, but why risk it and them if I don't have to?

Usually by the last week of March, I'd have more tomato plants in the ground than the 7 I have now and would be working to get the rest of them planted, but with the late cold nights and the delayed green-up, I haven't felt like it is quite the right time to plant more. Maybe soon, though. I do think this week's rain is controlling that decision somewhat too. Had I not been stuck indoors while it was/is raining outdoors, I might have been planting more tomatoes this week.

Our rainfall in our gauge never matches the official recorded rainfall, and sometimes the difference is measured in inches. Rainfall can vary a great deal even over a small area....there's been times we've seen a difference of an inch or more between the amount captured in two rain gauges just a couple hundred feet apart on our property. Another time, I sat and watched as it rained on our next door neighbor's property, and not on ours at all. Rain is weird that way. Oddly, with this particular batch of rain the last few days, the OK Mesonet's radar-indicated rainfall, which usually is either very close to what our gauges record or vastly short (for an operational reason I do understand) is showing we receiveds more rain than we've actually received. I always trust the rain gauge that I can see with my own eyes more than official rain gauge totals or radar-indicated measurements. We've lived here so long and are so used to how slowly our clay absorbs rainfall that Tim, Chris and I always can estimate our rainfall very accurately just by how big the puddles are immediately after the rain stops. It is fun to look at the puddles, guess how much rain fell and then compare our guesses to what is in the rain gauge, and often we are very close to correct with our guesses. Once we're over about 4" of rainfall, though, it gets harder and harder to guess because the puddling/ponding of the rainfall maxes out and the excess just rolls downhill.

I think your chickens will be fine with a light for a little heat. We raise ours in the coop from Day 1 under an infrared brooder/reflector light if the weather is really cold or just a regular light bulb if the weather is just cool and they are fine. They know how to keep themselves comfortable by moving closer to the lamp, or further away from it, as needed. Once they feather out, which as you know occurs while they still are very young, the infrared light has to be replaced with a regular bulb or they will stay as far away from the heat lamp as they can because they don't like too much heat by that point. I wouldn't be the least bit worried about 5-week-old chickens in the coop in late March or early April. They can handle whatever the weather throws at them---they are tougher than they appear. You'll know if they are too cold because they'll huddle beneath the light so closely together that you'll just have one big hunk of chickens. If they are comfortable, you may see them beneath the light enjoying its heat, but not clumped up together in one big pile.

I hope the meeting with the potential new cat goes well.

Nancy, There are many answers to your question, but for me the most basic answer is because we have to. We just do. Sure, some will say that we don't have to plant so much and that we merely choose to plant so much. I suppose that is how it appears to someone who is not a plant-obsessed die-hard gardener. But, for those of us who suffer from this peculiar gardening affliction, lol, we plant so much simply because we must. How many plants are enough? Well, that's easy---no matter how many we plant, we must have more. Or, in other words, too much is never enough. As long as there is one bare inch of unplanted soil, we still need more plants.

Rebecca, That's a lot of rain. Too bad the squirrels don't live underground because then we could hope that maybe the rain would drown them. Okay, so it isn't possible, but it is a nice dream.

Lee is a meteorologist so, of course, he likely is looking at the same weather models that Travis uses....and even more data beyond that. Lee won't admit it because he is so humble, but his weather knowledge is incredible and his skills are vast. I know his job keeps him incredibly busy and yet he always manages to come here and warn us when he knows we need to be watching the weather extra closely at this time of the year. I admire and appreciate him so much for that. He is thinking of us and our planting obsession even when he is extraordinarily busy at work.

Jen, Ain't that the truth! I remember way back in the 1960s when little girls (and big girls too) still dressed up and went all out for Easter---your Easter outfit that you wore to church was sort of your declaration that Spring had arrived (whether or not the Spring weather actually had arrived or not) and that you were onboard. What I remember most about those years, beyond silly little Easter hats and gloves, and shiny patent leather white shoes and Easter purses, was that the dresses might have short sleeves or might even be sleeveless in north central Texas, but that there also was a matching coat or jacket so you were prepared for a cold Easter if that was the weather you got that day. Some of the older ladies at our church were just as decked out for the Easter weather in matching dress/coat/hat ensembles that were impeccable---something you'd see Queen Elizabeth wearing. I don't care if it was snowing (and occasionally it was), those planned Easter outfits were going to be worn on Easter Sunday.

When we were kids, Halloween was the same. No matter how cute your costume, you knew it likely would be buried beneath a coat when you went door to door trick or treating.

Y'all mentioning sandals reminds me how much I miss wearing them. I had to give them up after we moved here. If I ever, for any reason, step out of the house with any shoe (not necessarily a sandal, could be just a shoe with exposed toes or heels) that exposes any skin, either fire ants or a scorpion will find me in less than 3 minutes, so that's a lesson I've learned the hard way. It could be worse....could be that a snake would find me, so I don't even buy sandals any more. I miss them.

We have heavy clouds here and there's still a high chance of rain in our forecast for today, but nothing is falling right now. We only have 1.3" in the rain gauge so far since whenever the rain started falling a few days ago, and I'm happy with that. It is enough without being too much. After today, the rainfall chances taper off a great deal and very quickly and then we'll be dry again for a few days. I'm itching to get out into the garden but, realistically speaking, I cannot do much out there now except, maybe, put the row covers over the plants tomorrow evening. At least the mulched pathways are usable, so being out there won't be as messy as it was after the February rainfall when I simply couldn't step foot in the garden for ages.

Dawn
Rebecca (7a)
6 years ago
Garden weirdness. I have 2 peppers and 2 okra up, even with the cool weather. Glacier tomato (one out of 3 seeds) went from two leaves to a couple inches tall since last Saturday. Jet Star is lollygagging around. Strawflowers are going nuts, pansies are behind schedule.

Think the rain made some of the undsprouted pea seeds pop up out of the ground. Had to replant them. Found pill bugs in the peas, so I hit everyone with Sluggo. I figure the slugs will be out soon anyway. There was a small garter snake out in the cold, too.

More potato sprouts in all 3 early bags. How tall should they be when I start adding soil?

Fence estimate was about $200 more than I budgeted. Decisions, decisions.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
6 years ago
Bruce, The cold front feels real, and with Lee comparing it to the April cold spell of 2007, I felt a chill run up my spine. That was the worst cold spell I've ever been through in my life as a gardener and it was only 3 days of frantic low tunnel building (winging it, with no supplies on hand) that saved my garden. After a frantic trip to Home Depot for 6 mm plastic and duct tape, I built tunnels over everything and it miraculously worked. If I hadn't been watching the weather closely, the whole garden would have been lost. This is one reason I have all those $$$ invested in frost blankets and hoops nowadays. I've always hoped we'd never have another April cold spell like that again, but here one comes now.

I plant differently now too. The hoops go over the beds when they are planted, so that it is easy to run out to the garden and cover up plants if anything pops up fairly suddenly. Even if I never have to use the hoops, they're in place. I don't take the hoops down until the plants are so tall that they are taller than the hoops. Neighbors driving by can see how the planting is progressing in the garden by noting how many raised beds have hoops over them long before they can see the plants from the road.

Megan and all others: I don't know what is happening with posts, but every time I come back here, I see 1, 2, 3 or more that I didn't see earlier. It is bizarre, and it has been going on for a while. I think they are trying to drive us all insane. For some of us, it might be a short trip as we're already almost there.....

Rebecca, I add soil to the potatoes gradually---always leaving enough leaves visible that photosynthesis can continue occurring. I might add a couple of inches of soil to fill in the trenches once the plants are several inches tall, so probably am covering one-third of the plant at the time I do that, and I do it every so often until the trench is filled in. Do what feels right to you, but if you're going to drop below freezing, cover up all you can to protect the foliage during the Easter cold spell. Potato foliage can and will freeze, but the plants usually come back. It is just that if the leaves freeze, energy goes to regrowing them and that energy otherwise could have gone to making potatoes. I'll cover up potatoes, tomatoes and beans on the 2 cold nights I see in the forecast, but everything else ought to be able to tolerate whatever cold we get here. Remember that containers lack the insulation of grade level beds or slightly raised beds and that means we consider them to be growing one zone colder than they are. So if you're in 6b, your container plants are growing in 5b conditions. Remember that during this cold spell....if y'all are going to be cold enough to make any sort of difference. Oh, I forgot the little pineapple sage volunteers. I guess I'll cover them up too so they don't freeze.

Megan, I love your story about reconnecting with Ben, your wedding and the family you all have become together.

You can lament your clay all you want and I will understand. I could use my red clay to make flowerpots. It is that dense. Finally, after almost 20 years of constant amending, we now have a loamy clay within our fenced garden area (and horrid clay everywhere else), but I'll never forget the first few years where it seemed like all we did was break every garden tool we stuck into the ground, and even the big, heavy rear-tine rototiller wouldn't bite into the soil...it just bounced off the top of it. I was sure we'd never get that soil fixed, but it is so much better now. The great thing about red clay is that its high mineral content makes it very fertile, so at least there's that. Before we moved here from Texas, I had dense black clay, so all I did was trade colors I guess. More recently, I found a band of sandy/silty soil out back some distance from the house and built a new fenced garden plot there. I have to fight voles in it, so it isn't the perfect sandy loam soil I thought we'd have after amending---it is just a vole factory, but some years we get pretty good yields from the back garden before the voles start eating up all the plant roots.

Kim, I'm glad your headache is better. I wonder if all the dust in the air contributed to it. I hope you're not working too hard today.

Nancy, Roseanne made me laugh out loud last night, which isn't easy. It reminded me a lot of the early years of the show, not the last couple of years when it wasn't so good any more. I especially loved watching Roseanne and Dan doling out all their prescription meds.....it seemed really true to life for people the age they presumably are now on the show.

I don't know how you can paint or quilt with Tom and Jerry in the house. I assume they must be locked up in a separate room when you want to paint or quilt. I gave up cross-stitch long ago because the cats attacked the needle, the thread and my hands endlessly.

This has been the longest day. The moisture outdoors doesn't bother me, but the lack of sunshine makes me climb the walls. So, here I sit, seeding flat after flat of warm-season flowers and herbs so I can fill up the light shelves left empty by moving everything outdoors. I'm going to have a ridiculous amount of warm-season plants to transplant one of these days, but that's a problem for another day. I don't think much if any rain has fallen today but we have looked foggy or misty all day long. It is like living in the Pacific Northwest. Gloomy. I don't much like gloomy.

Dawn
hazelinok
6 years ago
I read everyone's posts. Very interesting. I'll never be able to comment on all the things I want to comment on.

I'm currently trying to post a pic of my new kitten. But, it's not working so well.

:)
Eileen S
6 years ago
HJ, I usually use my phone to attach photos in my posts here. Somehow it works better than on the computer.
baabaamilker
6 years ago
So many posts to try to read through as I don't get on here often. I skim read many of them.

Dawn, which warm season herbs and flowers are you planting right now?

We put in 5 4'x8'x12" raised beds in the front this year. I pulled a lot of random perennials out of the ground from our winter sowing escapade last year. We've got them in the beds now. We didn't start nearly as many winter sowing jugs this year. My 10 year old loves butterflies so she likes to winter sow flowers that will attract them. We get bluestone perennial catalogs and she has more things circled in that catalog than I do.

My 12 year old is planting poppies her 3 year in a row. It's a carpet of little poppy seedlings growing out there right now. She's already thinned them out once and I think she'll need to do it again.

I was so excited last Friday for more than one reason. My daughters boyfriend wanted to propose to her at a spot at the lake by our house. My daughter often goes there at the end of the day for a little quiet. She works as a para at our public school working with an autistic boy. My daughter needs the time between kid laden places for a little time to herself. Anyway he wanted to propose to her there. Since it was her spring break she kept trying to run off and visit friends and family. We had to twice call folks and thwart her plans to keep her here. Then when I finally managed to get her over to the lake she decides she wants to go running. I'm supposed to be either taking a video of this or pictures. There's no way I'm going to be following her around running. So I offer to walk with her instead. Her poor young man wanted to come up and surprise her from behind. It took a bit of jogging and dodging behind trees as the trail wound back and forth. He finally managed to come up behind her and surprise her.

In my attempt to hide him and his car out of view I happened upon about 15 piles of woodchips that must have been dumped there last year. The little guys have been helping me get a few loads to mulch with. I'm very excited about that.

Maybe soon it will feel like the right time to plant tomatoes.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
6 years ago
Jennifer, Congrats on the new cat.

Denise, I love poppies and usually have a lot in a corner of the front garden (about 6' wide by about 15' long) where they've reseeded forever. Last week I sacrificed all the ones that had sprouted so far so that I could work tons of compost into the clay soil at that particular spot---which is the least improved soil in the front garden. I always mean to get around to improving the soil in that corner, but then the poppies and larkspurs sprout before I can start and it never gets done because I don't want to disturb them. So, I bit the bullet last week and over the weekend and worked in a lot of compost, but that dislodged all the young larkspur and poppy seedlings. I'm hoping more will sprout. Surely after all the soil I disturbed with working in that compost, something will sprout and I'm hoping it will be flowers more so than weeds, but the odds probably are against that.

Congrats on helping your daughter's boyfriend propose. I am laughing trying to picture you keeping her from running off so that she'd be where he expected. Great job, mom!

The piles of wood chips are a wonderful find. We rarely can find any here because any time the tree trimming companies do trimming here, they either leave the trimmings on the ground where they fall (since it is rural and rural homeowners don't mind the wood chips) or they have prior arrangements with people who've "let" them dump wood chips on their property for years and years.

This week I have sowed seeds in six-packs for the following warm-season flowers (warning, it is a long list because I have a lot of former tomato space to fill since I cut back on tomatoes in order to have more flowers):

The following all are zinnias, so I'll say that first and then just list variety and color: Profusion Yellow, Profusion Lemon, Profusion Double Yellow, Dreamland Yellow, Magellan Yellow, Art Deco Mix (a blend of pink, lavender, red and royal purple), Benary's Giant Lime, Dreamland Pink, Dreamland Rose, Dreamland Red, Pinca Mix (cactus flower type mix in shades of pink, yellow, mauve, violet and orange), Profusion Coral Pink, Profusion Double Hot Cherry, Profusion Red and Zahara XL Pink.

Now that I look at that list, I think I need more orange zinnias. I'll have to get a packet of orange zinnia seeds. Most of the above are bedding plant size, chosen because they stay compact and can be intermixed with veggies and herbs easily. I already have tons and tons of tall zinnias that have been reseeding in our garden for many years, but what I needed to add was some of the shorter ones. Over the years, the pinks and corals have reseeded most strongly so I am going to use the Art Deco and Pinca mix to get some other colors back in the mix. I also realize that the beginning of the list makes me look yellow zinnia obsessed. I am, and then again, I am not. Last year I saw the brightest lemon-yellow bedding type zinnias in a store one weekend and couldn't get them off my mind. I wished I had bought some, but I don't like buying bedding plants at stores since so many of them are sprayed with a systemic insecticide (neonicotinoid type) that stays in the plant forever. Then, after that one weekend, I never saw that hyper-bright yellow zinnia again anywhere. So this year, I am on a quest to find that color, hence all the yellow zinnias....and I think Lemon is the one that I saw last year if the catalog/website colors are true to how the plants really look in real life.

Then, for non-zinnia flowers, I sowed seeds of the following in flats: Gomphrena globosa 'Las Vegas Mix', Hummingbird Sage (Salvia coccinea) 'Forest Fire', Cuphea 'Diablo', Rose of Sharon Mix, Agastache rupestris 'Sunset', Calendula 'Orange and Lemon Twist', three kinds of Balsam: camellia-flowered mix, Peppermint Stick and Blackberry Trifle. There's three kinds of marigolds: Lemon Gem, Tangerine Gem and Red Gem.

All the above are for the front garden. I'll start more seeds in another week or two. I still have a lot of seeds to sow, although I might just direct sow most of the ones that will be in the back garden. So far, all my work has been focused on the front garden, as always. I usually don't touch the back garden until the front garden is pretty much done, since the back garden has sandy soil and is ideal for a lot of the southern heat lovers like southern peas, okra, and melons of all kinds. I still have a lot more seeds to start for the front garden too but didn't want to start more flats than I had space for on the light shelf.

All the above will be used to fill in space in some beds I saved just for annual flowers and also to fill in between/around perennials in a couple of perennial borders that already have an assortment of various autumn sages, crinum lilies, daylilies, red yucca, a couple of kinds of Russian sage, verbena bonariensis, Malva sylvestris (aka French hollyhocks), Homestead Purple verbena, hardy hibiscus 'Luna', and reseeding annuals like daturas, violas, tall zinnias, moss rose, and Laura Bush petunias in shades of pink and purple. Some of the flowers get mixed into veggie beds, except for the beds where I grow brassicas under netting to keep the caterpillars off the plants. I no longer mix in flowers in those beds because the butterflies and bees get frustrated that they cannot circumvent the netting to reach the flowers mixed in with the brassicas.

The only warm-season annual flowers in the garden so far are the pansies and violas that bridge the cool/warm seasons until we just finally get too hot for them, and various zinnia, Laura Bush petunia and datura volunteers. I am waiting for the last few cold nights to move on before I put any other warm-season plants in the ground.

For those of you wondering, the only warm-season veggies in the ground so far are 7 early tomato plants and 4 varieties of beans that are up and growing, but mostly so far just have their cotyledons. I think a few are putting out their first true leaves today. Those four bush bean varieties in the ground are Royalty Purple (because it tolerates cool weather really well and blooms earlier in cooler conditions than other bush beans), Provider, Contender and Bountiful. I'm undecided about whether to cover up the tomato and bean plants tonight and Sunday night, both of which have a current forecast low of 43. If I could be sure we'd only drop down to 43, I wouldn't cover them up. However, in our low-lying microclimate we could drop lower than forecast, so I think it is likely I'll drag out the row covers late this afternoon and cover up the tomatoes and beans.

With the very slow green-up and warm-up, there's still not much in bloom for the hummingbirds, bees and other pollinators, except for wildflowers in the yard (henbit finally is blooming in the yard, about 2 months later than usual), some pansies and violas in the front garden, and some of the comfrey in the back garden. Thankfully there's lots of flowers still available on some of the shrubs and trees, including several types of hollies now in bloom and the redbuds, which are nearing the end of their bloom cycle here. Tomatoes are flowering, but the insects and hummingbirds don't pay much attention to those flowers when hollies are blooming. I do have the hummingbird feeders out for the hummingbirds, so it isn't like they are starving but they seem to prefer flowers to feeders if they have a choice.

We have sunshine today! Hooray! We started out with fog but it burned off pretty quickly. Today I'll have to watch all the plants that moved out from the light shelf to the Great Outdoors earlier this week because so far they have had only cloudy skies and no sun, so after a couple of hours of direct sunlight I'll need to move them to shade.

I probably won't get much gardening done today since it still is muddy but might walk through and just look stuff over to see what is blooming. We are supposed to have one of the grandkids here, beginning this evening, so I suspect that we'll be dying Easter eggs, decorating Easter cookies and the like. That's okay. The garden is pretty muddy anyway.

I have 18 tomato plants fully hardened off and awaiting planting and my soil temperatures are staying in the 60s, so I could plant them any time. I've been watching the two cold nights in our forecast (Thursday night and Sunday night) as their forecast lows have varied from 39 to 46 and currently stand at 43. I'll probably play it safe and not plant those 18 tomato plants until next week at the earliest. I sort of hate waiting because the 7 I already planted are flourishing---growing well, blooming, and setting fruit, but then they were larger and further along (store-bought plants) than my 18 raised-from-seeds. After those 18, there's 4 flats of smaller ones, lots of those destined for the Spring Fling, and they just came out from the light shelf to the outdoors this week, so will be hardening off for a while.

I want to plant corn, but have heeded Lee's warning about the cold spell and am waiting another week or so at the very least. My pepper plants are still too small to go into the garden and the nights might be veering back towards being slightly too cool for them anyway.

This is one of those difficult time periods in the garden---slightly late to add any cool-season plants here in our location at this point, but not quite warm enough to go hog wild with the warm season plants. Yesterday or today is my average last freeze date, depending on whose data you use, and that makes me happy. I'm not stupid though---even once you hit your last freeze date, there's still a 50% chance of a freeze and/or frost, so I am careful to not throw everything into the ground too early. While it is possible to plant early and cover up plants on 'late' cold nights, it can be tedious and I get tired of covering and uncovering plants, so try to plant late enough that I won't be having to cover/uncover plants very often.

Here's the OK Mesonet Average Last Freeze Map as a reminder or you can go to the Climate section of the Mesonet webpage, find your local county data, and get very specific data for your specific county.

Average Date of Last Freeze

In general, it usually is considered 'safe' to put your tomato plants in the ground two weeks after your average last freeze date. I rarely, if ever, wait that long because we can go from too cold at night for flowering/fruitset to too hot during the day for flowering/fruitset in a remarkable short time....sometimes almost overnight. Luckily, this just doesn't feel like one of those years. My gut feeling all along has been that we're going to have a long, cool Spring without the early onset of too much heat, so I have followed my heart and planted twice as many cool-season plants as usual and haven't been rushing the warm-season ones too much either.

The insects must know the weather is staying cool too. For the past several years (I'd say dating back all the way to 2011), we have had cucumber beetles all over the place as early as February and sometimes January, and I still haven't seen a single one yet this Spring. Since I said that, I'll see them today of course. Insects I am seeing? Bees of all kinds, red wasps, black wasps, yellow jackets, several kinds of butterflies and moths, including the dastardly cabbage whites, a few white grubs but not many, one and only one cutworm so far and, ooops, he was squished to death by a trowel. There's been two squash bugs, one of which got away and one of which was cut in half (actually, cut into quarters) by my handy garden scissors. There's been a couple of crickets, and a couple of grasshoppers in the yard, but neither of them in large numbers. We do have a billion lady bugs, both natives and Asian ones, out looking for food. I hope they are finding and eating mites and aphids as soon as those suckers appear.

That's all from here, where the sunshine alone today makes it look like early Spring whereas yesterday's clouds made it look like late Winter.

Dawn
Nancy RW (zone 7)
6 years ago
Yes, you need to keep on the hunt until you find that one special yellow, Dawn. LOLOL Oh my gosh, you are so funny!

But the past week, I have had 3 things on my mind, so I know what you're saying. Diablo nine-bark, more Incrediball hydrangeas, and wild ginger. Wild ginger, probably to no avail; nine bark and hydrangeas, elusive for now. Will have to wait til demand goes down, so I'll check periodically through the year. We went to Muskogee Lowe's yesterday, more out of boredom than anything else. . . we had to pick up shop lights, since I stole one out of the garage to put in the everything room. Hard to see in the garage without lights. And surprising how often we both walk in there. So, while GDW was supposed to be getting the lights, I did a walk-through in the gardening center, focused solely on those hydrangeas and the 9-bark. Nada. So I only came out with two moneywort small pots. And was in there for like 20 minutes. I looked all around for GDW, and finally went to the lights, with little expectation--there he was. He'd first stopped to get a giant bag of bird seed and 2 new feeders. Awesome! He was flabbergasted that I had only two little pots of green stuff.

By the way, my four o'clocks have been popping up for four days now. Have lots in the yard right next to where they're supposed to be. Not so many IN the bed.

It is unbelievably dank and dreary, gray, drizzly and chilly, at 51. I just did a walk-around and came gladly back into the warm house.

We have a clear 4" in the rain gauge, so dumped it. The lake's up and it's too cold to fish. My legs ache and I know it's the weather, so chugged a couple ibuprofen. We are in a big holding pattern for now. . . it's okay. Doc's appt this morning in Coweta. . . though everything is greener, still the trees are holding out along the way.

I can hardly wait, Dawn, until I have all kinds of self-sowing seeds coming up everywhere. . . more this year than last; more last year than the year before. It's happening, and the perennials. Nicotiana, bee balm, cleome, snapdragons, coreopsis varieties, penstemon varieties, echinacea (yay!), gaillardia, catmint and the rest of the herbs, tradescantia, and many others. Don't DARE set any warm weather plants out yet.

I (brashly, perhaps) am not really worried about a hard freeze; Sunday it will get close to freezing. . .

Frankly, Dawn, at this point, don't think I could paint or quilt without shutting the cats out, either. Perhaps a little later this year. I was doing my Sudoku this morning, put it aside for a while to check here and FB; came back and couldn't find my pen. Got up to see if I left it in the kitchen, and GDW was laughing. He asked me if I was looking for my pen, and held it up. He said Jerry came trotting out there with it in his mouth.

Congrats on your new wood chips, Denise, and I too loved the story about your daughter and her fiance!

And, Megan, I enjoyed the brief bio of where you've been in life. Your Ben story is similar to my Garry story, albeit with a greater time delay on the Garry story.

It WAS good to see Dorothy here! I bought, read, savored and loved her book last year. Keep Your Fingers in the Dirt. . . what a wonderful picture of her life gardening here. Loved it a lot, Dorothy, and yes, cannot imagine you two moving. . . but your surroundings aren't you.

Glad to hear your comments on borage, Kim and Dawn, I will go forth boldly and without trepidation! Ha! What is invasive to one is not to another, as we know. Bermuda is invasive BAD. Anything you tell me that is like Bermuda, NO. Morning glories are invasive but no big deal. I can do borage, no prob. :)

I couldn't in good conscience, plant peas yesterday. The raised beds, along with everything else, 90% water, 10% soil. As you know, drains off a lot faster here, so in a few days, barring more rain.

Well, off to sulk or to do something. Not sure which yet. Cheers!
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
6 years ago
Nancy, There might be another yellow variety that is a possibility. I was flipping through the Territorial Seeds catalog aimlessly the other day and two words jumped off the page at me "fluorescent yellow" and they were in a zinnia description. I don't remember the variety, but I do remember thinking "I don't think I have seeds of that one yet, do I?" So, who knows....maybe that one is the one. I haven't ordered it yet, but we all know that I probably will.

If your four o'clock volunteers are popping up, your soil temperatures must, at some point each day, be getting pretty warm. Often, in many years (but not all), I won't even have four o'clock volunteers popping up in time for the Spring Fling at the end of April. Of course, then they promptly pop up the following week.

I moved all my plants except for the two oldest flats (everything in them is fully hardened off) to the front porch right up against the wall of the house and I am going to leave them outdoors overnight. I'm just tired of carrying the flats in on cool nights. (I sure wish we'd had time to replace the greenhouse plastic because then they all could be in there.....). I am going to throw a piece of row cover over the porch plants before dark, and the two oldest flats can spend the night in the mudroom. I don't know if I'll cover up the stuff in the garden or not. I'm not real worried about 43 degrees, especially if we stay cloudy.

Jerry with a pen in his mouth is an image that made me laugh out loud. Cats do the silliest things!

I'm sorry the rain was too much at once. Been there, done that, just last month, and whined about it constantly as you know. I hope your soil drains more quickly than ours does and that you can get your planting on track as soon as possible. It is so frustrating when real life interferes with planting.

I need to go back to housecleaning and at least get the sweeping and mopping up of muddy dog and cat pawprints and human footprints done. It isn't my most favorite task, but the house looks so much better afterwards....until someone walks in through an exterior door, at least.

Do you know what the problem is with cleaning one room and making it all shiny and spic and span and clean? Every other room looks less clean by comparison. I need to go finish cleaning so no one room looks neglected.

I have a lot on my mind today. Chris' girlfriend's nieces and nephews (5 of them) lost their mother to cancer last year. Today those kids lost their father/stepfather in an auto accident. He'd been raising all 5 kids alone since their mother died. Such a horrible second loss following a horrible first loss, all about a year apart. I just cannot even imagine what those children are thinking and feeling right now. My heart sure goes out to them. Sometimes life just is not fair.

Dawn
hazelinok
6 years ago
This is Finbar.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
6 years ago
Finbar is precious.
Rebecca (7a)
6 years ago
He is adorable, HJ!

I'm fine with cooler weather, but I really need sun if I'm going to have anything to bring to SF. Talked with Boss Lady about the date, she said 'don't worry about it', so I'm not going to, lol.

They are talking about mid to low 30s for Easter, so I guess I should pile leaves over the potatoes, calendula, and painted daisies? I do see a few things have reseeded in front. The only ones I'm sure about are the bachelor buttons, but there are others that I can't identify yet. Something is munching on the lilies, though, so I got the Sluggo back out. Can't see anything, but some spinosad might not hurt.

Question of the day is, did I seed dill yet, and if so, where?
luvncannin
6 years ago
Okay 2 long posts and 1 my phone died and 2 apparently I for got to hit submit. I can't catch up now but will try to remember a few thing.

Megan glad you made it over here. Loved your history. Hope to see you here more.

Dawn you sound kind of addicted to zinnias lol. That list reminds me of tomato lists.

HJ sweet little kitty. How old is he?

Fb reminded me again today that my plants are horribly behind compared to other years. Thanks Fb

I will post updates later.
p_mac
6 years ago
I'm soooo sorry I haven't gotten anything up yet about the SF!!!! This is the first night in a week I've been home before 8:30 PM because we're helping #1 DD and family move out of an apartment after 14 years. Yes, 14. Don't EVEN ask.

I promise I"ll start a thread soon. I'm just about finished tweeking the intro that the newbies need to read. And I"m looking at my seed starts knowing they need new shoes soon!!!!! There's so many more than I need!!!! Must focus.....
hazelinok
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
Eileen, I agree. Normally it's much easier from the phone, but for some reason our phones (data) are running slow. Not sure what's going on with that either, but finally got a pic posted.

He's about 4 months old and very sweet and very playful. I slept better than I have in a long time last night. He slept next to me. I cried most of the way to pick him up. He was in north OKC. I left work to get him at 10, and then brought him back to the office to stay the day and evening with me there since Wed. is a long day. Anyway, the tears were about Charlotte. Then, Spotify spit out a song called Shannon. Supposedly it was inspired by the loss of one of the Beach Boys' dogs, an Irish Setter named Shannon, who liked to play in the surf but drowned. The song is goofy and sad...

Anyway, he's doing very well. So far he is a perfect fit for us. I wonder if he misses his siblings and foster m

Denise, congratulations to your daughter and family.

I'm in such a dilemma with the tomatoes. I won't even say anymore about it tonight.

I started working on getting the chicks used to being a little cooler. They still had their heat lamp until this morning, even though it was a few feet from them. So, now they just have the regular warmth of the house. Then, I'll move them to the coop/shed brooder during the day and then a warmish night....and then they should be ready. I think the real trick is helping them go from very warm to very cool in a gradual way so it's not shocking. They are still quite small, but feathered.

My brain feels like mush. This will be a busy weekend. Maybe once it's over I can "reset" and get organized again.

Can't wait to see you all next month.
luvncannin
6 years ago
My brain is mush too. I don't know why but I think I need to get away for a day or two. Since I have no where to go for Easter I may run to Denton.
Nancy RW (zone 7)
6 years ago
SO cute, HJ. Love the expression in his eyes. I'm so glad he's sweet and playful, he apparently has had some socialization! I also cried thinking of Daff with the two new little guys in her room. But oh do I love the sweet loving little brats.

Sunshine today--might be one of the few in the upcoming couple weeks. Setting cool stuff out, potting others up, and they're going to spend their time outdoors during the daytime, for the most part. Gotta run to town and get some more bigger pots. Hope you all have a good day.
AmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years ago
Very cute kitty, H/J.

I've been AWOL, cleaning. I've read everything, but I knew if I posted I would take too long. I post from a tablet, so hunt and peck on virtual keyboard takes longer than a real one.

We were talking about spring Easter dresses. This memory came up on FB today. I had scanned a bunch of picks of my kids.
I made that dress. Lace ribbons with panels sown in. The bodice is just the ribbons attached together. There was a plain underdress. I went snow blind working on it and I think it was my last sewing accomplishment.

Jason, you and Nancy and the Hobbits. I saw the movies, but the hobbit language confused me so much I couldn't read the book. #4 had trouble with reading when he started school. (He was the athletic, rather be outdoors one of my kids). I came home one day and found him reading a Harry Potter book. I was thrilled. I suppose it wasn't so much that he couldn't read as that he didn't WANT to.

My garden has been neglected. The seedlings need water. Most cool season stuff ain't happening. Sigh.

Have a good weekend all.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
6 years ago
Kim, If you drove to Denton, I hope you had a nice drive and are having a pleasant Easter weekend down there. I noticed today that Denton is a lot further along that we are in terms of the Spring green-up. Even the mesquite trees are leafing out. I didn't see any bluebonnets in bloom near Denton or even south of Denton all the way down to north Fort Worth, but then on the way home found a big patch of bluebonnets blooming alongside I-35 near Gainesville. There's something about bluebonnets in bloom in Texas that makes it feel like it is Easter time.

Nancy, It sounds like your weather is going to deteriorate a lot more than ours and that's too bad. We're supposed to have sunshine tomorrow and be near 80 degrees (the kind of weather you hope for in Spring) but then Sunday turns back a bit cooler. We aren't going to have many, if any, of the cooler nights this far south that would worry me, but I'll be watching closely just in case anything changes. I covered up nothing last night. Our forecast low was 43 and we dropped exactly to 43, with Burneyville going down to 38. As always, I'm grateful we stay slightly warmer here than they are, at least most of the time.

All the flats of plants are on the front porch to stay until I start planting again. I think they're safer there as they'll only get a half-day of sun. Some are fully hardened off but others are only half hardened off, so I can leave them on the porch and just not worry about them until after Easter when Lillie is back with her immediate family again. We're busy this afternoon (okay, she is busy and I am supervising) filling up the plastic Easter eggs with 'surprises' for Sunday's egg hunt. She won't really be surprised since she knows what is in the eggs, but she's happy that she was able to choose the goodies to fill the eggs. In a minute we are going to decorate Easter eggs with icing and sprinkles.

I guess another trip to the store looms in our future, perhaps tomorrow morning, because we forget to buy chocolate bunnies. Who can have Easter without a chocolate bunny rabbit? I cannot imagine what we were thinking because we were talking about chocolate bunnies as we walked into the store. Apparently we all have short memories.

Amy, The Easter dress is darling. I can only imagine all the hours of work that went into it.

I cleaned house yesterday and finally had all the floors cleaned up of muddy paw prints until I let the dogs go out and come back in. Apparently they decided to dig in the soft clay and run inside with big clumps of clay flying off their paws. (sigh) This is why my floors are spotless for only very brief periods of time.

My garden itself is not neglected, but the only areas that look really good are the ones I've already planted. I don't clean up an area until I'm planting it, so the unplanted areas are sprouting weeds.

The hummingbirds are back and are enjoying the feeders. From the things you all keep saying about the cold weather, I'm thinking they may stay here in extreme southern OK for a while before they fly further north.I probably would do that if I were a hummingbird.

Dawn
Nancy RW (zone 7)
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
Amy. . . can you believe you actually made that dress, and it fit? What we don't do for loving our kids! It is quite beautiful! Did she love it? WHAT an accomplishment--do you still have it? Needs to be enshrined. Hahaha regarding Tolkien. I am sort of a believer that different books are perfect for you at different ages. Moby Dick was a perfect example. Even though I was an (English) lit major (after I switched from instrumental music), and even though I had supposedly read Moby Dick once in high school and then in American literature, I skimmed through enough to pass the tests--and hated it. I picked it up when I was 41 and was riveted by it, declaring it the greatest American novel ever written when I finished, and maintain that to this day.

If hummingbirds are smart, they'll stay at your place for a good long while, Dawn. And though I understand what you're saying about the 4 o'clocks, I'm thinking I just have dumb 4 o'clocks. Can't imagine the soil was warm enough. . . well maybe just in that one little spot. The four o'clocks in other spots aren't up. :)

I DO see one day that is supposed to be sunny (besides today) in the next 10 days. Woo-hoo! But cool cool cool. . . I may have to end up throwing some tomatoes away. I'll make a few calls before I actually do that--likewise, peppers. I'm glad I have many hardy annuals planted, and haven't planted any of those that do well with direct sowing (well maybe a couple, just out of ignorance--like the poppies, for example.) At the rate our weather is going, I'd probably be better off to start all over again with tomatoes and peppers! lol

I'm not really upset with our chilly weather or cloudy/rainy days coming up, so much as I am intrigued. Well. Seeing a different side of my relatively new home. I suspect my weather is more like Jacob's than like those of you in OKC or south, like Dawn. S'all good. . . not sweating the small stuff. If I have to throw away warm season plants, I can do that.

I'm not at all unhappy about the rain, as it DOES soak in fast--certainly has greened things up a bit.

Dawn, you didn't hear the rest of the story regarding Jerry taking off with the pen. I'm not happy to share this, but many of you know, anyway. Although GDW has gotten off cigs finally and completely, I am sure, I haven't been able to conquer it yet. If y'all wanna pray for me, go for it! I have cut down considerably but understand that's a temporary fix. So to the story. Yesterday after GDW saved my pen from Jerry's jaws, an hour or so later I took a cigarette out, but was trying not to light it up. So I lay it on my nearby notebook. A couple minutes later, I saw Tom dive for it, and I was too late. Off he went like a bat out of hell, even had the filter end in his mouth, with the rest of it hanging out, just like a person. I finally got him to stop in the middle of the living room, where GDW was able to take in the whole scene. We both just about died laughing. Tom gave it up, reluctantly.

On that note. . . off to dinner.

I was just re-reading posts and caught the paragraph about Chris's girlfriend's nieces and nephews, Dawn. How tragic. How old are these kids; do they have any other adults in their lives? I'm with you, I cannot begin to comprehend their loss and their situation. Oh my................... it's so beyond sad. Keep us posted if you learn more, please.
luvncannin
6 years ago
I still have not decided of I am going or not. If I do I will get up at 3 on Sunday go straight to my home church in Newark then to Denton. And then come home. We are planting tomatoes Monday if the plastic comes in. Plus I can't leave the greenhouse too long. It's 5 hours drive so not unimaginable. I would rather do that then stay home alone.

The greenhouse is doing great. So much stuff is up and doing well I am happy with that. The pro mix is good stuff. I repotted so much stuff the other day and still didn't put a dent in the bag. Much of my soil was compact like clay and the little seedlings were really struggling. Hopefully I can get them all fertilized tomorrow and watered well and they can hold their own one day.

In the fields we have kale, turnips, beets, golden beets, radishes, all up and looking amazing. Onions have 6 inch new growth and 2to3 new leaves. I am really settling in and have learned a few things.

I can not wait to see you all and hope your gardens are flourishing as well.
hazelinok
6 years ago
Amy, I am so impressed with your sewing skills! Beautiful little dress.

Are you feeling okay, Amy?

Dawn, have fun with your Eastery things. I so miss having a little one around these things. We didn't even buy Easter clothes this year and won't have time to do that. (I really need to buy Ethan "concert black" clothing since the last time I did that was 2 years ago). However, it's going to be so cold that I'll probably just wear boots, a scarf, things like that. I want to look nice because I'm teaching a church-wide, family style class on Sunday, but they'll just have to look at my old clothes. Tomorrow is our egg hunt (thank goodness it's not Sunday), so I'll be busy with that, but hopefully can spend some time outdoors in the afternoon before it gets cold again on Sunday. (Notice how I COULD go shop on Sunday afternoon but have made outdoor time my priority.) We do have some cooking to do Saturday night for Sunday lunch at my Mom's house.

KIm, I hope you're able to go to your home church and to Denton to take a break at least for a short time.

My computer is having issues, so I'm going post and then restart it.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
6 years ago
Kim, I'm glad everything is going so well. Your soil must have hit some magic temperature and so now the seeds are happily emerging. That's wonderful. Five hours sounds like a horrendously long drive to me---anything more than 2 hours and I start losing my mind. I hope you make it down to Denton and back and that your plastic arrives on Monday. If not Monday, then perhaps it will arrive on Tuesday.

Jennifer, It has been fun, but at the same time there is too much Easter everything nowadays....I guess that is the USA way....market every holiday to death. We've tried to focus more on doing fun things than on buying stuff because, honestly, a person probably could spend $500 on Easter crap in any of the big box stores where American shops and still barely scratch the surface of what's available. It is just too much. One thing I know for sure is that trying to keep up with an active 9 year old who is a bundle of energy is wearing me out! I'm too old for this.

Tim appears to be coming down with a cold, so even though he is here, he is sort of lurking on the periphery of all the activity, taking cold medicine and just trying to chill.

Check your forecast wind chill on Sunday afternoon before you make the choice about whether to spend that afternoon time indoors or out. Somebody, and it might have been Damon Lane on FB or our local guy on our local TV station, was showing forecast wind chills for Sunday at 4 p.m. and they were absolutely brutal. We were going to be incredibly warm down here compared to folks further north....incredibly, incredibly, incredibly warm and our wind chill was supposed to be 47. For central OK, I think the wind chill was in the 20s. There's pretty much nothing in the garden that I want to do, have to do, need to do or would like to do EVER that would require me to be out there working with wind chills in the 20s. When I was in my 20s, 30s, or 40s, I was out there in all kinds of weather, but once I hit my 50s and now that I'm close to my 60s, I've become real picky about how much heat or cold I'll put up with in order to be out there in the garden. I've decided I'm only willing to suffer up to a certain point. : )

Does buying Ethan concert blacks require his presence? Because, as I remember it, shopping with teenagers can be torture.

I hope the new kitty is settling in well.

Dawn
jacoblockcuff (z5b/6a CNTRL Missouri
6 years ago

I've been flipping through these books I found on our bookshelf this evening with my tea. What gems. My mother says they were her grandma's. Copyright dated them to the 90's. Is it me, or are books like this just not made as much anymore? It seems many companies have become very politically motivated, rather than gardening.

My grandma has shelves full of old gardening books, from flowers to vegetables, a great majority being from the 30's-40's era.

Its been a while since I've checked in here. I need to catch up a bit.
AmyinOwasso/zone 6b
6 years ago
Jacob, your grandma probably bought or subscribed to Organic Gardening Magazine. They sent me regular ads for books like that. I expect they still do. Rodale is the parent company for Organic gardening and Prevention magazine.

H/J, the dress was a modified heirloom sewing project (I guess I like heirloom everything). It was kind of trendy among sewing magazines back then. I made quite a few dresses for my daughter in those days, but that was the most elaborate.

Kim, I'm pretty envious about all the stuff you have going.

Dawn, I hope your weather stays warm. Dale posted something about wind chills in the teens Sun. WTH. Have fun with your young lady.
luvncannin
6 years ago
Ha Amy you wouldn't be if you saw how much work it is. You would just say no you are crazy.

I went to see my farmer friends greenhouse with his daughter. His plants are sad. They are yellow and 12 to 18 inches long and can't even stand up on their own and he thinks they are so healthy since they are tall. Several of them were broke over. I am not going to say a word except how hard he has been working but I can't lie and tell them they look good. He grows them in standing water. I have never seen a setup like his. He flood irrigates so maybe he thinks they have to say in water all the time. Bless his darling heart. He works so hard at it.
Nancy RW (zone 7)
6 years ago
Are you all having Easter festivities and meals? Kim's not this evening, maybe tomorrow? We have nothing planned in terms of company, except a lady from the FB OGN is coming with her husband to harvest some rocks. LOL They're coming from the Bartlesville area--they REALLY want rocks, I guess. I am ready to be amused at THEIR labor. :)

I've been puttering around a lot today--though it's overcast, it is surprisingly warm, which is nice. I planted peas and more lettuces; potted up more stuff. Almost done with that little chore for now. I hope you all are having a blessed weekend.
baabaamilker
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
Not much in the way of gardening today. I will do a little watering in the raised beds. Other than that I'll cut some grass and mulch the onions with.

We baked some pies for our church family get together tomorrow. My daughter Becky has been making red bud jelly and dandelion jelly. She's experimenting with using Pyure as a sweetener for those of us avoiding sugar.

I started sourdough loaves and will bake those tomorrow. We have friends with gluten intolerance. We are trying out the sourdough on them to see if their tummies do OK with it, so far so good.

I dread the possible freezing night temps coming up. This is the first year my fruit trees have flowered so well
jacoblockcuff (z5b/6a CNTRL Missouri
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
I still have butternut squash from last year's garden in the garage, and it needs used soon. Roasting some for dinner to fry with some onions and spinach. Going to be good.

I love Sourdough. I like to make it with about 30% rye flour and 70% white bread flour for my total flour mixture- the rye adds a lot of flavor. Sometimes I add some red wheat too, but it's a bit bitter. I grind all of my whole grains because I can get the berries much cheaper in bulk. I usually order 50lb bags of different grains and keep them in the pantry. Last time I ordered was probably Thanksgiving of 2016, and I haven't ordered any since, other than some rye. They keep forever because of the phytic acid, which is also an inflammatory compound that leeches nutrients from us- but the bacteria in the Sourdough starter break that down for us so everything is digestible. Good stuff. Sesame seeds are good too rolled on the outside of it. Mine used about 600g of Sourdough starter (I make my starters really stiff) for 3 loaves, and it rises on the counter for 2 hours before going in the fridge for 16-20 hours.

It's especially good with gravy!! I have that for breakfast frequently with my 3 eggs and few slices of bacon. Every breakfast has 3 eggs and at least 2 slices of bacon, 2 slices of Sourdough, and a cup of tea. I don't feel right without any of it the rest of the day. Sometimes I do oatmeal instead of toast though. This morning I had fruit with it all- depends.

Looks like we have some very chilly lows coming up so I'm going to cover my brassicas outside with mason jars and tarps as well as my covers. We'll hit mid 20's Id say, and some sources are calling for 1/4" of ice tomorrow. Spring sucks
luvncannin
6 years ago
jacoblockcuff (z5b/6a CNTRL Missouri
6 years ago
Wow!
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
6 years ago
Jacob, Those old books are absolutely the best! I still have them on my bookshelf too and prefer them to many newer books. Some of my favorite Rodale books date to the 1940s or 1950s. They were so much more in-depth, not at all politically correct (in fact, that were the total opposite of political correctness for that day and time) and no-nonsense. The old Organic Gardening magazine from decades ago was better than the newer versions too.....it wasn't worth a hill of beans after Mike McGrath left, and I don't care for its latest version, now called Rodale's Organic Life. It is much more of a lifestyle magazine (which I totally understand is probably the only way it survives at all) than a gardening magazine. I tried it for a year or so as Organic Life and just gave up because it didn't appeal to me at all. I love the old copies from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and even the 1990s. Seems like it totally lost its way, bit by bit, after McGrath left.

Amy, Our weather forecast changes every few hours. Our overnight low for tomorrow night has varied between 37 and 43. It seems like they have the higher temperature in the morning forecast and the lower one in the evening forecast. It makes me crazy. I'm pretty sure I'll cover up the plants just to be safe no matter what the forecast ends up saying by, let's say, 2 p.m tomorrow. Our wind chills during the day won't be that bad---on Damon Lane's map that Dale posted it was showing 47 at 4 p.m. I can handle that because all the Easter fun is going to be over by then. I'll probably be out in late afternoon covering up the rows of beans and tomato plants, and the porch lants eitehr will be covered or carried back indoors for the night. Then, on Tuesday night/Wed morning, we've had the exact same sort of fluctuations in the forecast. I imagine it will be a repeat of tomorrow. So, I'm just going to go with the flow and do whatever seems right at decision-making time around 3 or 4 p.m. tomorrow.

Kim, His plants were exactly the way you expected them to be, right? Because they were exactly what I expected based on what you'd said in the past. Lots of people confuse tallness and vigorous growth with healthiness/hardiness/suitable for planting. I'm the opposite. I try to keep the tomato plants short and stocky for as long as possible, although once they're outside hardening off, it is warm enough that they tend to grow rapidly and get taller than I'd prefer because of that....but they aren't leggy!

Denise, I think Becky is right on track with the Pyure. I like it and use it quite a bit.

Oklahoma weather + fruit trees lead to a lot of heartbreak in March and April. Hopefully y'all won't stay too cold too long. Some years I lose all the trees' blossoms or young fruit to late freezes or frosts, some years I lose none and some years only lose some. It is what it is. Our weather is just too erratic, which often sets off early blooming followed by late cold. That's sort of the boat we're in this year.

Jacob, The photo of the food is awesome and is making me hungry. I hope your weather is as kind as possible to your garden. Even down here in OK, some freezing precipitation is not out of the question---not statewide, but at least over a portion of the state. Everyone in that area is preparing for it as best they can.

Nancy, Our only Easter festivities are with Lillie and are of the decorating eggs, hiding eggs and finding eggs type. She is 9 years old and super-excited about hunting eggs tomorrow. I'll try to remember to tell y'all tomorrow night about the brussels sprouts and the golden egg. I don't want her reading over my shoulder while I'm typing right now and learning what prank lies ahead. Her mom will pick her up tomorrow after she gets off work, which I think is at 2 p.m., and that will put a halt to our Easter fun but also will allow me time to cover up plants in the garden. We '*might have* been gnawing the ears off our chocolate bunnies here this afternoon while Tim's cold medicine had him knocked out and sleeping, but neither of us intends to confess to nibbling the chocolate Peter Rabbits one day before Easter.

This afternoon we ran up to Ardmore (well, actually, we drove because running that distance would have been a marathon) to the Goddard Museum to see a piece of her art that was on exhibit with hundreds, no likely thousands, of other pieces of art completed by local school children in this region. We stayed a long time looking at tons of art completed by students from Pre-K through 5th grade, and I am astonished by how much more sophisticated their art work is now compared to what ours was like in the 1960s and 1970s. There was almost every genre of art represented and the diversity of it all was mind-boggling.

Right now we're dying eggs and have only one left in this batch before we switch to a different batch with different colors and different transfers. I know you all are jealous and wish you were turning your fingers into multicolored masterpieces here along with us. I hope this stuff comes off pretty easily.

Dawn
jacoblockcuff (z5b/6a CNTRL Missouri
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
Wow cold front starts rolling through early early tomorrow morning and we'll only get up to 30-40 degrees they're saying now tomorrow afternoon. Now they're only calling for 1/10" of ice tomorrow evening, but tomorrow is not the only cold day. On Tuesday evening we have a low showing in the mid 20's, but looks clear so we'll probably drop quite a bit lower not being in town. Looks like a nice week after Tuesday in the 50's but next weekend back to freezing temps.

This is really quite typical spring weather. I think the last year or two spring was just so early this year seems odd. To be honest I'm kind of enjoying it though. I'm enjoying a nice long, cool spring. I do hope it won't become like the 2013 spring though. Waking up to a couple inches of snow on May 3rd SUCKED.

I don't think we'll drop below freezing until early tomorrow afternoon and no ice until tomorrow evening so I'm not covering tonight. It's currently 61 F outside, raining, and the wind is blowing.

Im pretty sure any fruit trees near us are screwed!!

We lost a chicken yesterday. Our best rooster got left out overnight (completely my fault. I checked them before it got dark, and they were all in the run, but I did not check them after dark like usual), and with the rain became hyperthermic. He was in rough shape yesterday morning and awful muddy from the rain. We cleaned him up and kept him in a box with some food and water in a container in our garage where it was very nice and warm, and he recovered. He's much better now and has been out with the hens. Problem is that our second rooster noticed he wasn't up to his usual self and was upping his game. The two fight a lot, and we worried that if it turned into a full blown fight it could end badly for our favorite rooster, LeRoy, considering we recently cut off LeRoy's spurs. We've been meaning to get rid of the second rooster for a while, as he causes a lot of trouble, and I've caught him beating the hens up before. Of course, our favorite rooster attacks him if he does that, and he's wound rather beat up sometimes after that has happened. We can't have that, and we certainly don't need two roosters, so we butchered him yesterday. LeRoy looks very healthy today and they free ranged all day. Lesson learned: I certainly need to be more on top of getting them put up at night.

I might add that we've had a sick hen recently that I've had to put up at night. I figured she cracked an egg inside of her, as she showed classic symptoms of ones that have done that before. She was not doing very well by Thursday night and she just didn't want to perk up. I believe the reason LeRoy stayed out was because of her, as he was laying next to her this morning. She was about dead, and very lethargic. Nothing would help her and so we put her out of her misery. Of course, we knew not why she was sick, even though we assumed it was a cracked egg, so we are not eating her.

Sad day yesterday but all is well.
Rebecca (7a)
6 years ago
I had time to spend outside today, but really spent less than an hour. With the cold front coming in, I was just too sore. I did chop more on Godzilla and applied more brush killer, fiddled with jugs and cloches and flats, and started a few remaining seeds, but I wasn't up for filling my new grow bags, which is what I really need to do. Things are just so far behind. Except the pecan trees. The buds are just right there, ready to pop but haven't yet. If we were going to stay a bit warmer, they would. I have plenty of dead leaves to cover things up tomorrow, but looking at the forecast, I should have done it today. We will be in the mid-30s by the time I get home from brunch tomorrow.

Jacob, bread and gravy is totally a country thing! My grandmother used to make that for me sometimes, with leftover fried chicken gravy and plain old white bread. That was way longer ago than you can probably comprehend, lol.

Dawn, I guess you will be making egg salad after Lillie leaves?
jacoblockcuff (z5b/6a CNTRL Missouri
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
Oh hey, I uncovered my spinach/lettuce bed earlier to do some weeding and got a picture
white stuff is some rock dust/limestone
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
6 years ago
Jacob, I am sorry about the loss of the chicken, but glad the rooster got better.

The weather is more typical of a normal Spring, but that doesn't mean we have to like it, right?

Don't beat yourself up too much about letting a rooster stay out all night---it happens to all of us upon occasion. Sometimes they flat out hide and you cannot find them even if you know that they are not inside the coop.

Rebecca, I think brush killer won't work in temperatures this cool. Well, wait, how warm were y'all today? Cause it was 80 degrees here, so if I'd used a brush killer today, it might have been absorbed and taken up quickly enough by the plant I used it on....but then tomorrow the weather probably would be all wrong for it. I blame Mother Nature for all this craziness. I wish we'd be hot or cold instead of hot one day and cold the next.

Your pecan trees totally baffle me. They are the one tree that is doing nothing here---even the mimosas and post oaks are ahead of them....and mesquite trees too.

I suppose we'll have a year's supply of egg salad, but she's had such a ball decorating eggs that it is worth it. Her uncle was killed in a car wreck a couple of days ago (and his wife died of cancer last year) so she's really bummed out over his loss and worrying about her 5 cousins losing their dad. I just mostly tried to keep her distracted because that's about all I could do in terms of helping her deal with it. She doesn't want to talk about it much but I know it bothers her even though she's only 9. Chris and Jana were off work today and were going to go visit the 5 kids and check on a couple of other family members and were helping someone move furniture, so Lillie was just happy to be able to hang out with us and do Easter type stuff. She's still the age where holidays (any holiday, every holiday) are just magic, so we worked hard today to make some magic happen. Or, at least to prepare for a magical egg hunt tomorrow, assuming it doesn't get rained out, and then we'll just move it indoors.

I think the brutal wind and cold don't reach us until late in the day. I hope that's still the case. Our forecast seems to change hourly now, and is trending colder...which might be the price we have to pay for having such a lovely, albeit windy, day today.

Dawn
Rebecca (7a)
6 years ago
Dawn, I've been using the brush killer because I figure if the plant is alive enough to bloom (or have the size flower buds on it that it does), it's probably able to absorb the stuff adequately. I haven't been out working on days cooler than about 60 as well. I do think it's working, as some branches are setting buds and others aren't. So I just keep chopping and applying.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
6 years ago
Rebecca, I imagine you'll defeat Godzilla eventually, right? Keep on chopping and applying. There's very few plants that cannot be killed eventually, somehow, someway if a gardener is determined to win the war. Too bad Godzilla cannot take the squirrels with it when it leaves.

The eggs are done and my fingers are hardly stained red, blue and purple at all. I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. It was worse than trying to get your hands clean after a long, hard day in the garden. Right now, thanks to the colors of dye that are on my fingers, they look bruised. lol. Hopefully the dye wears off soon because I about scrubbed off all my skin trying to get rid of it. I am getting better at wearing out this child. Each successive night that she stays here, she goes to sleep a half-hour earlier than the night before. When she returns home tomorrow, I hope they appreciate that I am returning to them one very worn-out child. I have forgotten how much energy a child that age has and keeping up with her or staying a half-step ahead of her is wearing me out too.

Dawn
baabaamilker
6 years ago
I at least have two dig trees quite happy to remain in their winter quarter, tightly wrapped in their bark. This is my first year with most fruit trees and the figs worry me, no sign or peep at all from them I also have a cherry trees that is just starting to peep out from a bud. The apple blossoms are about to burst too. I walked by and told them to stay in there just a little longer.

Is there a peach variety that's content to wait till later to bloom? I really would be heartbroken over peaches, I just love them bit they were the first to spring out of their winter quarters.

We were able to get some more old fence panels burned yesterday. My husband can be a bot of a junk collector (he thinks treasures), so when a friend was having their privacy fence replaced my husband took the panels intending to build a play house put of them for the kids. They've sat around for about two years now. We had begun to collect quote a bot on our organized junk pile.

I told him I didn't think folks would want to buy any of our goat milk, cow milk, or eggs if they thought we treated those things the way we do our front yard.

He also took a 14ft stock trailer full to the dump. There some larger items from our kitchen remodel and an old chest freezer that quit a year ago.

I don't think I ever did shared a picture of the cabinets my husband is in the process of building for me.

He even made the countertops!

Happy Easter to you all, the day of celebration of our Lords resurrection!
Nancy RW (zone 7)
6 years ago
Beautiful cabinets, Denise, just beautiful!

Looks pretty chilly statewide. 36 here, wind chill makes it 27. I noted that Buffalo, WY is 41. LOL Wow.

I just had my WY/MN parka on, did a walk-around. My hands still got really cold. It's kind of sleeting. The plants in the yard are all looking perky. . . I hope they continue looking that way!

I hope you all are having a blessed Easter.

How many eggs did you dye, Dawn! The dyes will go away eventually. . . .

I am bummed I didn't get more spinach in yesterday after seeing yours, Jacob. Well, tomorrow will work. Gravy and bread, an old standby I still like once in a while. I can't help but think that was a leftover from my parents' depression days.

As long as you had to have a chicken die, I'm glad it was the bad rooster, not the good rooster! Stay warm over there.

Other than watering seedlings, no gardening activities here. I may have to order something online for a little treat today. Looks like my Tulsa friends and everyone east of there is having the same temps we're having here.
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
Original Author
6 years ago
Denise, Fig trees are pretty late to come out. Just be patient with them. It is not unusual for them to die back completely to the ground and then to be late to show new growth. It is just one of the frustrating things about growing figs here. The good thing is that once they start regrowing from the ground, they grow quickly.

Two of the latest blooming peaches (they have chilling hour requirements of 1000 hrs or more) are Contender and Reliance. I don't see Contender in stores here often, but do see Reliance from time to time. Both are available from Stark Bros.

Those are lovely cabinets!

Nancy, The sleet part doesn't sound good, nor can it ever be good when Wyoming is warmer than we are in the month of April.

Oh well, I just keep thinking "Lee warned us....". Because. he. did. (grin)

We only dyed two dozen eggs---a dozen with a blue/purple Galaxy kit that had rub-on transfers of the stars, the Milky Way galaxy, etc. and a dozen in pastels that have a pearlized/marbelized finish you apply after the dye dries. I didn't think that dye ever would dry. We also had 60 (says Tim and Lillie, and I say 61) plastic eggs to hide. Tim says he hid 60. He counted. Lillie says she found 60. She counted. Yet, when I went out to the garden to throw row cover over the two beds that include tomato and bean plants, I found a plastic egg at my garden gate. So, I say 61 eggs. Regardless, the Easter festivities are over, our temperatures now are dropping (we were 64 at midnight, and still 55 until about 4 p.m., but no longer....) and it is sort of misty/foggy but maybe with not quite enough rain to call it light drizzle.

Our prank was to fill Lillie's magical, mystical golden egg with brussels sprouts. Let me explain. She has gone on and on about how we have to hide the golden egg (my reply: what golden egg? why? we never had a golden egg when Chris was a kid) for a couple of months and it has to have a spectacular surprise in it. Oh, and how she must be the one to find it, and with no help. Hearing about it daily about drove me out of my mind, until I finally started teasing her on being fixated on a golden egg that we didn't have, weren't interested in and weren't going to have. She still went on and on and on about it endlessly. So, a couple of weeks ago I told her that I was so tired of hearing about it and that if she didn't stop talking about it, I'd buy a golden egg and fill it with brussels sprouts. She kept emphasizing it had to have a great surprise in it. I told her that brussels sprouts would be a great surprise. It all was a long running joke that she wasn't taking seriously until we bought a bag of brussels sprouts at the store yesterday. The look on her face when I put those brussels sprouts in the grocery cart was priceless. At home, she took a new approach, begging Tim to hide the golden egg so well that she'd never find it. Apparently she decided I am a woman of my word and that there really was going to be brussels sprouts in the golden egg. Guess what? She was right.

I am not cruel. When she sat down her basket and started taking out the plastic eggs to open them up, I suggested she first take the golden egg (only a bright yellow egg) and put all those brussels sprouts in the fridge before they started smelling up her Easter basket. She promptly complied and, when she opened the fridge, sitting next to the brussels sprouts bag, there were two "LOL Surprises" toys on the shelf. So, she got the spectacular toy she loves and had hoped would be in the golden egg, and we got the fun of seeing her react to brussels sprouts in her actual golden egg. It was hysterical. She promised solemnly that there would be no talk ever again of a golden egg at future Easters. We'll see.

Our forecast low for tonight has dropped to 38 and for Tuesday night to 35. Tim and I covered up the two raised beds that have some tomato plants and some green bean plants in them. We might not have needed to, but with a 38 in the forecast, I figured better safe than sorry.

Tim is sicker and sicker. I told him I think he has the flu and not a cold. He won't admit it. He thinks that because he had the flu shot last fall, he couldn't possibly have the flu. I think he is wrong. He is just too stubborn to admit it. He is not planning on going in to work tomorrow morning.

This is going to be the longest and most boring first week of April we've had in a long time. rere's not much that one can do out in the garden in this sort of weather. I brought in all the flats of plants from the front porch, even though lately they've been staying out 24/7. I'll probably put them outside tomorrow and bring them in again the next couple of nights. We will be cold, but not nearly as cold as places further north.

We have had small numbers of hummingbirds recently, about a week or two earlier than usual. Suddenly we have a lot more. I suspect a bunch were arriving here on their way, just passing through on their way to points further north, and the cold front hit. So, here they are, feeding like crazy at the feeders. I'll refill the feeders with fresh nectar tomorrow.

I am tired (apparently I am no match for a 9 year old's energy) and am planning to go to bed early. I'm trying to stay awake long enough that at least it will be dark when I go upstairs to go to sleep. Really, I don't care if it is light or dark, but even when tired find it hard to fall asleep before it is dark outdoors.

I looked at the garden while covering up warm season plants and there's hundreds of warm-season volunteers uncovered. Either they'll sink or swim on their own, and it doesn't really matter. If they die, more will sprout. More always do.

Dawn
baabaamilker
6 years ago
Jacob, I'm glad to see someone else does sourdough. We love it at our house. In fact it's hard to get the kids to leave it alone and let it cool. Thanks for sharing your recipe. I used rye as my starter in the beginning and transitioned it over to red wheat. My bread is typically 70% all purpose and 30% red wheat. We also grind our own grains here.

Dawn thanks for peach tree recommendations. I'm still in the process of adding more peaches so I may seek them out.