Jen, How rude of your DH to bring home germs to you. I hope you get well more quickly than usual. Jennifer, I really think more and more than whatever you and I both had in November was the flu. I've been around so many sick people (despite my best efforts to avoid them all) and haven't come down with anything, so I think I've already had it and now have some degree of immunity. I really do believe that. Eva Purple Ball is a good tomato. The color really is a deep pink, not purple, and the fruit are very smooth and globe-shaped, and maybe weigh 5-7 oz. each. It produces a decent harvest here. Rebecca, Take care of yourself. Everything else can wait until you're able to breathe more easily again. I've noticed lots of folks in our area are having respiratory issues lately. Nancy, We fed the Daytimer lust by buying them and they were marvelous. I think that was in the 1980s, maybe the 1990s too. I don't miss having one now and y'all know if I had one now, I wouldn't use it. I used to always buy Tim one for either his birthday (which is in December) or for Christmas until he started keeping track of everything on his phone maybe 5 years back. If he ever loses his phone, he's going to be so disorganized. Lucky went out yesterday, stayed out all night, but was outdoors wanting to come in and screaming to be fed this morning, so I do believe she's here to stay. We have been adopted so many times by so many animals since moving here. I guess we are big suckers because we cannot turn away an animal that needs a home. Like you, I never forget the pets we've lost. I think of them with happiness and with sadness, and I don't want to forget them. I've learned the more love we give to these animals, the more we receive back from them....and the more love we have to share with the next animal that comes along. Sometimes people tell me they don't have enough love to expand to another animal. I think they are wrong---I don't think you have to stretch some finite amount of love to make it cover another animal----I think the amount of love you have to give just is infinite and just grows and multiplies. Don't freak out over the seed sowing and WSing. It isn't like you get only one chance and don't get a do-over. Be patient. Stuff will sprout and grow. You'll find places to plant it all, and if any varieties don't grow (assuming you didn't sow a whole pack of seeds), you can just sow more seeds. We have a long season and plenty of time to plant more and more and more..... If y'all were warm yesterday at 46, then today we were hot at 63 degrees---and sunny! I love it and think we will have a couple more 'hot' January days before the next wintery blast hits us down here sometime Thursday. It's supposed to rain tonight and tomorrow and maybe tomorrow night, and they mentioned the word 'thunderstorm'. The amount of rain expected is small, except for anyone who lucks out and gets a thunderstorm. If we are going to have a thunderstorm, I wish it would just go ahead and hail. That way, we can get our annual quota of hail out of the way before there's any plants out in the garden that it could hurt. Amy, I think God sends us replacement animals before an old one dies. It happens every time. Lucky had been hanging around for quite some time now, but lurking nearby---not coming directly to us. I saw her for weeks and weeks before Yellow Cat suddenly went downhill and died. She has taken his place in the spare room upstairs and acts like she's been here forever. Shady is the last of a couple of litters of kittens gifted to us by Emmitt and Midnight when we first moved here and they just showed up out of nowhere. I enjoyed raising kittens and keeping them together their whole lives, but we got Midnight fixed after her second litter because we didn't want to turn into crazy cat people with 247 cats or something. Since then, we get each cat fixed ASAP after it shows up or at the appropriate time after it is born. (This, of course, does not work when a mama cat shows up with a bunch of babies in tow. and you find yourself adopting 5, 6 or 7 cats instead of 1.) It must be lonely for Shady to have outlived all his litter mates. He is a good decade older than the other cats we have now, and he does act paternal towards them. I think he learned good paternal behavior from his dad, Emmitt. He loves on all of them, likes to cuddle and snuggle, and tolerates no infighting amongst them, just like his dad before him. He even sits in the exact same spot on the back steps where Emmitt used to sit and watch over the yard and its inhabitants. It is like Shady was in training to take Emmitt's place. Honey sounds so sweet, while at the same time being pure puppy and totally destructive. I love it when a dog has that sort of happiness just oozing out of her pores----no wonder we fall in love with them. I have found it very aggravating to garden with puppies, but they aren't puppies long and don't remember destructive forever. One day you realize they've settled down a lot, and then it seems like they suddenly, somehow, in the blink of an eye have gone from being settled down to old and lazy. I look at Jet now and think of how he aggravated me his first 3 years or so and think that I'd give anything to have one of those puppy years back. He mostly sleeps now, and I guess that is the stage he's at in his life now. He is still refusing to eat his Prescription canned food, and the dry is not due to arrive until Tuesday, but the medication seems to be helping him a lot. He doesn't have to go outside nearly as often and he seems like he even feels better. Kim, The story about the Pyrex cup being your coffee mug made me giggle. I'm glad Sophie didn't lose her pups. Rebecca, Our TSC usually has 3 to 5 good basic varieties selected just for OK, sold in bulk from large containers by the pound. They usually have them sometime in January or earliest February. A little later in the season, they'll have maybe 4 to 6 varieties of fingerlings in little bags like bulbs come in. I've grown and liked all the fingerlings, though they produce less for the space than full-sized tomatoes. Atwoods has seed potatoes, about the same varieties as TSC, and usually a little earlier, but theirs come in netting bags of maybe 3, 5 or 7 lbs. Our Wal-Mart usually gets seed potatoes in January (the common ones like Yukon Gold, Norland Red, sometimes Adirondack Blue or All Blue), some form of Russett, etc. and Home Depot usually gets them in February. I have ordered seed potatoes online a few times, but they are very costly when ordered online/shipped and I haven't bought them that way in some time since it really isn't necessary. I started doing it so I could try some of the fingerlings....but now those are available here, and I ordered online the last time so I could grow some of the purple potatoes---fun, but not necessary. Just relax. The potatoes likely will be in the stores by February, and I don't think I'd plant any early than February if I lived as far north as you do. I haven't been in any of the stores here looking for seed potatoes this week, but it would not surprise me if the potatoes are there now. If not, they'll be here in another week or so. If I'm watching for them, they never show up, but as soon as I forget about them and stop watching for them to appear, suddenly they are everywhere. It happens every time. If you buy any grocery store potatoes to use as seed potatoes, just buy them (now) and put them in a cool, dry place and they'll sprout and be ready to plant by the time you're ready to plant them. The only downside is you won't know the exact variety and they won't be certified seed potatoes. Certified seed potatoes haven't been treated with a fungicide to ensure they are not carrrying diseases, but in the years in which I have used grocery store potatoes as seed potatoes, I have not had any special disease issues with them either. Remember, the reason to buy organic is so they'll sprout---conventional grocery store potatoes are sprayed with anti-sprouting chemicals to prevent them from sprouting so, even though that stuff wears off and they eventually sprout, it can take months and months. I have bought seed potatoes from The Potato Garden and they arrived a little later than I had hoped for (but they have to work around what the weather is doing). The seed potatoes were small but healthy but grew just fine and produced well. Still, it was much more costly than buying local. I already had received the catalogs you got today, but the new ones that arrived here today were Willhite Seed and Richter's Herbs. Now, if there is a catalog that is going to have some things I simply cannot resist, it is Richter's. I always have fun ordering new (to me) herbs from them and growing them. I've never had a crop failure or germination issues with their seeds either. The stores here have a lot more seed-starting supplies this week than they did last week, and it does my heart so much good to see them. Irrationally, while we were in Sam's, I wanted to buy some MG Soil-less Mix---not because I have a need for it or a plan for it, but simply because it was there. I didn't buy any because if there is one word that describes my approach to gardening this year it is "restraint". (lol, and we'll see how long that lasts). Dawn

My own plans are dictated by growing space--I mean, lack thereof. My property is small, and because it was filled to make it level and the fill seems to be mostly rock, the soil is thin. All my vegetables, as well as annual flowers, have to grow in raised beds or containers, and all edibles, furthermore, have to be fenced, even those that deer don't like, because fawns will try everything and often pull the plant completely out. This year will be my first try with peas, in the largest raised bed. I'm going to be away in the middle of the time seedlings would be growing on indoors, so everything will have to be direct-sown or purchased as plants just before planting time. My garden has two (slightly ridiculous) parallel raised beds, built by the previous owner, that are each just a foot wide, with about a foot of space between them. It would probably make sense to fill in the gap and have a 3-foot raised bed, accessible from both sides, but this year I'm going to use the gap for pots of annual flowers. The narrow raised beds are gradually being replanted with herbs and a few medicinal plants (echinacea grows stunningly well here). I'm also adding large containers to the front of a south-facing patio that gets little use.

I have started to harden-off pretty much all my tender crops. If all goes well, I'm just about done with my grow lights for the season. Here is a Habanero and a Gold Currant tomato. These have been out longer than other seedlings and now get full morning sun and dappled light later in the AM. Here are the two overwintered Biquinho. I think there may be a couple of pods on them. They still have some scraggly looking foliage from the winter, but should start to look better soon. These are roughly 2 gallon pots and their final summer home. Here are my four Rocotos in 5/6 gallon pots. I'm not certain how well they're doing. One seems to have normal new growth coming in, while it looks off-colour and brittle on a couple of them. It's kind of the same issue last year's overwintered plants had. Here is the rest. The leftmost tray has 8 HHW, the next one 8 Jwala, then 10 tomato plants of 4 varieties and the smaller tray on the right has 5 more HHW, later starts, as well as one straggler Hab, two Biquinho, basil and thyme. These are now getting full morning sun for a bit and full shade afterwards. Night temperatures still drop to ~2-3°C every few days, though we haven't had a real frost in quite a while. It doesn't go below 10°C on a good day, so I'll start leaving everything out when the forecast shows so. I'm in no hurry to get anything out permanently. I'll probably wait about 2 weeks to get these peppers in their 5 gallon containers and 2-3 weeks to put the tomatoes in the ground. The 5 extra HHW seedlings will go in the ground, in a spot where I usually have late-season success with Jwalas, we'll see how these do. Other than that, my overwintered spinach is bolting early and most of it, as well as the new spinach, lettuce and several radishes were eaten by what I suspect may be mice. I've set out traps, but caught nothing. I've protected a couple of smaller beds with mesh and plastic and have limited further damage. All my beds are essentially full of radishes in different stages right now. I'll be eating lots of them soon.

Two of my flowering crabapples (all volunteers) have fruits now: Some aren't quite ripe yet: Winterberry fruits are turning red. They'll be more dramatic when the leaves drop, before the robins decide they're ripe. Pokeberry continues to ripen. You can sort of see miscanthus and panicum behind the poke. Panicum 'Cloud Nine' next to a miscanthus, in front of the winterberry: Cotoneaster fruit are turning red: And Yucca 'Color Guard' always looks good with the cotoneaster: All of the miscanthus seedheads are wet and stuck together so I haven't tried to photograph them. Sitting here on the deck engrossed with the posting, I just noticed that Viburnum 'Summer Snowflake' still has a blossom. My other doublefile viburnum is way gone by so there's nothing to pollinate the Summer Snowflake. I'd love to have more viburnum fruit now. I wonder if a second Summer Snowflake could pollinate the first one. Claire