Hi Moni! You have my sympathy. Whenever we visited DH's family in Pennsylvania, I never took the right clothing and was always freezing cold, even in July. More rain didn't fall, but it stayed cool, cloudy and misty. There's a tornado watch to our southwest, so I guess if that storm develops further and moves our way, we still might get a little more rain. We were in Dallas most of the day and drove home through a lot of rain but that rain stopped before we reached the Red River. Caroline, The maple is gorgeous. You have better color there than we have here this year. I hope the rain helped your pastures and ponds. Our pastures are still so dry and our ponds remain empty but eventually enough rain has to fall to start refilling them. A neighbor of ours who has a spring-fed pond says it is the lowest she has seen it in the 15 years or so that she's owned the place, and worries her spring may be on the verge of drying up. Lisa, I bet the rain was wonderful for the flowers you planted. Almost all my stuff froze on the night we went down to 25 degrees a couple of weeks ago, but the brugmansias in containers are still blooming. One of them, and I think it is Lemonade Twist, has 6 or 8 flowers open right now and another couple of dozen about to open. I am going to have to carry it inside before the weekend freeze, but it has handled a lot of cold weather already. We didn't get a lot more rain, but also didn't have any grassfires today....which is a change. I think there were grassfires every day last week. Of course, the dormant grasses will dry out quickly unless it rains again soon. Still, any rain is a good thing and this rain was a fairly slow soaking rain so the ground is not quite hard-as-a-rock now. Dawn

My one oxyphora did ok this year (my first year growing it). This photo was taken in mid October when it was blooming the best. It liked the cool late-season weather. It bloomed ok during summer, but intense heat caused young buds to die. Growth-wise, the plant grew more slowly and remained smaller than I expected. If I was going to keep it in that same spot, I'd plant two of them together to fill in the space better. However, I think that spot is too hot so the current plan for next year is to plant one oxyphora in a sunny, but less hot, spot about ten feet off the left edge of the photo and a second oxyphora in a shadier spot on the other side of the yard that gets only morning sun. It will be interesting to see which plant performs better. The two new locations are also easily viewable from the house so I'll finally be able to see if hummers here like oxyphora. The cuttings I took in late September and early October all rooted quickly. I have three of them growing in 4" pots inside. They grow like weeds, especially under the shoplight(two of them are now in the cool window to keep their growth in check). I've already had to cut a couple of them back. This post was edited by hawkeye_wx on Sat, Nov 9, 13 at 0:00

Bon, We have a deer herd that visits regularly and 3 or 4 of them are not as afraid of me as they once were (although the rest still scatter when they see me), but they still don't try to assert any dominance. This one was not one of those. Clearly it was a deer that figured out the stuff growing inside the fence probably is tastier than the stuff growing outside the fence, but I don't aim to ever let it have a chance to verify that for sure. We have an 8' high deer fence around both the front garden and back garden and they seldom breach the fence....and, when they do, it is because somebody left the gate open. The regular deer herd comes at night and checks the back compost pile for goodies. Sometimes on canning days, I know they are in the woods watching and waiting because I'll throw a bunch of stuff on the compost pile and go back indoors in the middle of the day. When I go out to the compost pile again late in the day, the stuff I carried out earlier already has been gobbled up. I wonder if they watch every day or if somehow they know when I am canning. It is a wonder I get any compost at all. If the deer start getting too needy I take a dog or two out with me. That puts an end to the deer problems for a while. Being chased through the woods and pastures by a highly energetic dog will make the deer lie low for a while. The two young dogs we took in around Thanksgiving are kinda on the small side of being medium-sized dogs and they love to run and bark and chase. They'll likely be a good deer deterrent for years to come. I think I hardened off all my plants 2 or 3 times. We'd patiently work our way through the daily process of increasing exposure an hour each day, and a big cold front or snow storm or prolonged rainy spell would come along and the plants would be inside for a few days. We'd start over again with the 1 hour on the first day, 2 hours on the second, etc., and finally be back about to the same degree of hardening off that we'd had the first time, and along would come another long weather disruption. I've never had to start over with hardening off plants as many times as I did this year, but we're finally at the point where everything is fully hardened off. It feels like it took me 6 weeks to get it done, and it may have. Krista, Seedlings aren't all that hard to raise once you understand what they need and you get it down to a routine. The problem is that when you transition them outdoors, they need to start with a low amount of exposure (I often put them in dappled shade for the first few days, and then give then 1 hour of sunlight the first day, two the second, etc.) and work their way up incrementally. IF we had weather that was half-way cooperative, you could harden off plants to outdoor temperatures, sunlight and wind in a week or two. But, with weather as erratic as ours is at this time of the year, it always seems to be a one step forward, two steps back kind of process. This year it has been more challenging because of the roller coaster weather. Some years it is a piece of cake. A lot of people pamper their seedlings too much indoors, giving them excessive heat, moisture and fertilization which produces big lush plants that have a much harder time harding off. I do the opposite. I close the HVAC vent in my plant-starting room to keep the room from being too warm and cushy, preferring to raise them slightly cooler than our indoor air temperature. I run a fan 24/7 so they get used to wind exposure. I water only enough to keep them growing, and to keep the soil moist, and never water so heavily that the soil is soggy. I don't feedseedlings at all until the plants are old enough that they clearly need to be fed. What I get is tough plants who haven't lived a real cushy life and are eager to escape from the house to the outdoors. I generally don't have much trouble getting them hardened off, but I am home all day and can watch them carefully and move them from full sun to dappled shade if the weather is too hot and too windy for the condition they are in at that time. This year it has been mostly the opposite problem----just finding them enough actual sunlight that they can harden off has been a challenge. The sign of success with hardening-off your seedlings? When you put them in the ground and that don't suffer transplant shock, don't look unhappy and don't struggle. That's when you know you had them in the right shape to go into the ground at the right time. I define the right time as the point when both air temperatures and soil temperatures are right for that specific type of plant. While hardening off this year has been much more difficult than usual, the plants did great when I put them in the ground so all the struggle to get them hardened off was worth it.

Oh, lo e the colours in sky. I always enjoy nature . This is bizarre Bec I took pics yesterday at 5.30 am while driving to work. I showed them to my kids Bec they never look up to enjoy anything so engrossed in their video games. First photo taken in the car when I was at red light. Second and third was as I was walking from garage to work . one side is different colour than the other as the sunrise is coming up. Last pic. on my back at 3.30 pm yesterday. My favorite was electric blue the early morning at dusk. jin