OMG, after reading Megan's post, I checked, I'm now set for *4* (goodbye flowers).

We have one of the electric fireplaces in the living room, Jen. It was very useful last weekend. I wanted one of the mantel surrounds for an "architectural" element, but this thing is cute (I painted it creamy white) and was cheap. At one point I was going to remove the heating/light part and put candles in it, but it has a pretty fake fire. So glad I didn't remove it all! Plus it's fun to decorate because we don't have a real fireplace.

Yes, what to do with old seed. My little kids are obsessed with seed, so we usually do lessons about seeds and growing things, etc. They play a match the seed to the plant game and they like to sneak some home in their pockets (that I'm sure go through the wash/dryer or are lost). Anyway, I use my old seed for that purpose.

Hope you are feeling better today, Dawn.

I'm sick about the pets who died in the fire. I am so careful to turn everything off when I leave. Almost OCD about it. We don't use heat lamps in our coop any longer. Obviously you have to use them with new baby chicks that aren't kept warm by a mother hen, but even then we zip tie and secure the cords multiple times.

I'm hoping that our power stays on this weekend. We lose it so often. If seems like if anyone's power is off in the Norman area, they have to shut ours off to work on the issue. I don't understand that.

Thanks for the reminder about the arp rosemary. I will cover mine too.

Got to my office this morning and someone had dumped a giant bag of Easter eggs on my floor. Are you kidding me?! I still have Christmas supplies to put away.

Thanks for the visual, HJ. now I have an idea for a prank on my husband. Now to get about a thousand easter eggs...

Wow about the house fires. So sad! In the quilt/art room I have a cheap electric heater with the coils exposed. It scares me, so I always make sure to turn it down if I'm not in here.

Yes, our forecast has also changed, down to 6. 22 mph winds and rain/snow. Yuck. This is not acceptable! :) I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn't get nearly that cold. I hope your power stays on, too, Jennifer!

I got seeds! I only have one more batch coming, I think. And more potatoes, the 4 lantana, and the sweet autumn clematis. I intended to take the angelonia seeds out of the virtual cart after you discussed them, Dawn, but forgot. So guess I will be trying to grow angelonia.

We were walking through Walmart yesterday and I spied these totes that were on sale. I got two kinda squarish black ones, 18 gallon capacity, and 2 15-gallon brown ones, also kinda squarish. I was excited. Garry said he'd put holes in the bottom for me. They look super sturdy. I hope they'll last 3-4 years. I'm getting rid of all the fabric pots this year. They're looking bad. . I'm going to start buying one nice container per year.

I've been looking at container plant ideas today. Fun stuff. Great ideas, and also now I have to get another blue hydrangea for a container, so I can make sure it stays blue! With the Ph in our soil, no way to have blue ones. . . a lot of work even to have purple.

Great news, we're upgraded to 12F as of this morning. I hope it's 15 by Saturday (lol).

So, before I launch into garden talk, here's some weather talk. Well, of course, weather talk still is interspersed with garden talk.

Remember those mild December and January temperatures that we have been having which have allowed all sorts of unseasonable sprouting and growing of plants that normally lie low (either dormant or as seeds in the soil) in winter? Well, that's about to end. I no longer have to debate with myself whether I'll cover up and protect the Laura Bush petunias, catnip and dill, for example, because now I know that I cannot and will not. There will be no point in trying to do some short-term plant protection unless I'm willing to do 4-8 weeks of longer-term plant protection, so I'm just going to leave the floating row covers in the shed and let the chips fall where they may.

While we were enjoying a relatively balmy winter, the polar vortex was splitting and preparing to send recurring cold weather patterns our way. This weekend's cold blast will be the first, but it won't be the last. The USA can expect from 4 to 8 weeks of recurring waves of very cold weather for the rest of January and well into February. So, that winter weather that's been AWOL? It is about to show up. I did some research this morning, reading several articles about the polar vortex, its split in December, and how that has set up the weather pattern for the next few weeks. It looks like we are in for a few tough weeks, even this far south. One advantage of being as far south as we are is that for a lot of us, the snow will be minor to non-existent. That doesn't mean the cold air won't find us or that future storms over the coming weeks won't bring us snow. I found several good articles just by Googling Polar Vortex 2019, and one I particularly enjoyed was by the Capital Weather Gang in the Washington Post. They had some good graphics and info from respected meteorologists who are NOT known to dramatically hype weather patterns. When these guys speak, I listen and take them seriously.

So, how does it affect us? All those perennials that never have gone dormant this winter? They're likely to go dormant now. All those bulbs that are putting up green leafy topgrowth a tad early? They're in a little bit of trouble. All those warm-season annuals that have sprouted and are growing? Oh, those baby plants are gonna die.

Taking a longer view at the situation, I'm not inclined to get in too big of a hurry to plant potatoes or onions and probably will be looking more towards an early March planting date rather than a mid-February one. There's no point in trying to fight the cold if the forecasters are right. If they are wrong? It also isn't hard to change my mind, go out there to the raised beds in February and do the planting fairly quickly and easily either. I just happen to think the forecasters are right and that the cold blast that is about to hit us is going to be a hard dose of winter weather reality. This is the cold weather I was expecting back in the autumn....you know, I was 'feeling it in my bones" and, since Christmas, I've been wondering if that feeling was right and if the cold was coming....or not. You know, as much as the cool-season planting might be delayed, this cold is good for us and it is good for our gardens. We already have grasshoppers out in January, including small ones (so small nymphs have been appearing recently, not just overwintering adults) and copperheads have been out sporadically in southern OK as well. The cold temperatures, with or without rain or sleet or snow or anything else, should take care of both those issues for a while. We have fruit trees budding that might have started trying to bloom in another couple of weeks if not for this cold, so it is good that the cold is coming to keep them from blooming too early and losing their crop.

And, of course, there is some precipitation in the forecast for a late this week and again early next week, so there is no danger of our current puddles drying up or our mud dehydrating.

I have not felt inclined to sow any seeds and get off to an early start on anything, and now I'm glad that I haven't. There's nothing worse than having rapidly enlarging plants indoors under lights that need to go outdoors while the weather still is too cold for them.

To prepare for the cold, I'll still give the Arp rosemary plants an extra layer of mulch, but prolonged cold still may be too much for them if the lows dip too low for too long. Even Arp has its limits in terms of how much cold it can take. I'll mulch the lavender a bit more heavily too since it sits there close to the rosemary. I expect everything else in my garden will look sad and pathetic, and probably frozen, when we wake up Sunday morning after a night with a low in the teens.

Jen, I guess I did forget eggs and toilet paper. I never think of them....we have our own egg factory in the chicken coop, and we buy toilet paper in bulk (30 rolls in a big package) at CostCo....so it is safe to say I never really think about needing to stock up on those two things as a storm approaches. Also, the weather guys down here just don't hype the storms, so we really don't have that 'run to the store and get it now' mentality. (I'm grateful for that.) I always do enjoy laughing at the OK Mesonet's Braum's Weather graphic when they put it up on the Mesonet ticker and FB page. I assume we'll see one of those popping up soon.

Our electric fireplace has an infrared heater and can put out a lot of heat if we need to use it. We just bought it this past autumn, and I have looked for one and waited for the exact right one for years and years. I was starting to thing we'd never find one. I really like it. Of course, our whole house is electric (by choice) so if the power goes out, there's no power to run it, but this doesn't seem like the sort of winter storm where we have to fear that the power will go out. We do have a generator if somehow the power does go out.

Your church retreat is going to be occurring in some brutally cold wind chills. Y'all stay warm!

Megan, I have noticed that at least some of the OKC metro area forecasters seem to hype things a bit, causing folks to run to the store and stock up as if they won't be able to go to the store for weeks.....that would wear me out....hearing about it, going through it, etc.

I hadn't looked at y'all's weather and didn't know they had lowered your lows. I think your garlic will be fine. Mine has survived temperatures as low as 1 degree (with mulch). If you still have autumn leaves, tossing them in a loose pile on top of the garlic will help insulate the plants from the coming cold. One thing working in our favor right now is that soil temperatures are pretty warm for January.

Our entire forecast is wrong, by the way. The partly sunny days they had in the forecast? Not happening. No sunshine yesterday despite a forecast of 'mostly sunny'. Ha, it might have been mostly sunny elsewhere, but we had thick clouds here and no sunshine at all. Our highs aren't going as high as they said. They've lowered our forecast highs and lows for the rest of the week. I think the forecast in general is sliding downhill.

dbarron, Yikes! That is cold. We will see temperatures that cold on average one night per year down here, and it hasn't happened yet, for which I am grateful.

Jennifer, Our fireplace is a creamy white with a white quartz fireplace surround. I've never liked the darker colored ones, and held out for along time, searching for one that would make me happy and that I wouldn't have to paint as soon as we bought it---so many of them are brown and black. I am glad we waited for this one to come along....I just love it. It does give the living room architectural interest, which is why I wanted it. I wasn't even worried about the heater part of it, and am surprised at how much I like it and use it.

Easter eggs? I am not ready for that. However, when I was putting up all the Christmas decorations, I got out the Easter decorations just so they wouldn't be buried behind the Christmas decorations. They aren't out visible yet....just in a storage tub that is in front and will be easy to access because it isn't hidden away behind the Christmas stuff.

When I have old flower seeds, I broadcast sow them on the ground in the pasture. You'd be surprised how many sprout and grow there. Old veggie and herb seeds? I just sow them as cover crops as a way of using them up. Many seeds have viability for a long time though, so I don't have to deal with old seeds every year....just once every few years.

Oh, and I am feeling fine again. Glad it was just a minor little stomach bug and not all the respiratory illnesses that continue to run rampant through our area. I don't want to jinx us by saying that we're the only people I know down here who aren't coughing our heads off....so I won't say that.

I have noticed how often y'all have power outages there in Norman and have wondered why. I sort of wonder if that area grew too quickly over the last couple of decades and the power infrastructure maybe grew and enlarged too quickly. Yes, the loss of the pets in house fire is so tragic--a friend of mine there tried to save those dogs with CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, bless her heart, but they could not be saved. She was very distressed that they couldn't be saved.

Nancy, We have a couple of those oil-filled radiator type space heaters in the sunroom since it was added on later (much later) after the house was built and we didn't bother extending the HVAC system to it (now I wish we had, but I doubt we'll go back and tear up the ceilings in order to add duct work). Those oil-filled radiators are pretty safe with no exposed coils, but I still don't like leaving them on. They do keep the sunroom toasty warm for the cats at night though.

Occasionally we do have to use heat lamps in the chicken coop when we have a batch of chicks in the brooder. I hate it. We do everything in our power to make sure the heat lamps are securely attached and cannot be knocked down by chickens. We have been to so many fires started by heat lamps and space heaters over the years that using them at our places always makes me feel somewhat anxious. Usually, though, it is dogs that knock them over or knock them down and not poultry, so at least there's that. Normally, when chicks arrive at the feed store and Tim and Chris instantly get chick fever, I try to talk them down and convince them to wait, wait, wait....hoping we can wait long enough to buy chicks that most of the cold weather will be over before we bring home any chicks. I'd rather bring home new chicks in April than in February, for example.

The angelonia will grow, Nancy, just slowly.....or, at least, mine did. I didn't use a heat mat with the seeds, so I don't know if that would speed up the plant growth any.

We went to the grocery store yesterday afternoon to stock up on a few groceries. We actually did need bread because we forgot to buy it when we were at the store with the girls over the weekend, but we didn't have to buy eggs, milk or toilet paper. I did buy the stuff to make chili and stew, among other things, as we like having those to eat when the weather is actually cold. My plan is to not have to step foot in a store at all for the rest of this week or over the weekend.

As a side note, yesterday Wal-Mart's garden center employees were putting out rose plants....the ones you see sold in cardboard boxes or plastic bags. Yep, I am not so sure I'd put those out on display on shelves on the sidewalk with temperatures forecast to be frigid this weekend, but that is what they were doing. I am not sure how much cold those roses can tolerate when in packaging, lacking the insulation of soil and mulch. Luckily, our cold should be fairly short-lived.

Have y'all looked at your wind forecast? Based on our wind forecast here for Saturday, I think the weekend wind might be the worst of the forecast. You know, lows in the teens and highs in the 30s....those are typical winter temperatures and not that bad in the overall scheme of things, but if you combine them with strong winds, I think we are going to have wind chills here in the single digits at times. That is the kind of cold you can feel!

Wouldn't you know that we would have a mild November, a mild December, and a mild first half of January, only to then have real cold weather slam us in mid-January as we're all getting excited about seed-starting and planting? Oh well, I'd rather have the cold and get it over with now instead of having it arrive in April like it did last year.

Dawn

Thanks so much for the weather reporting, Dawn. Although it doesn't sound pleasant, it certainly is good information to have!!

I've been spending most of today thinking about container gardening plants and flowers, and about Japanese beetles and aphids. I decided I won't do any ipomoea this year in the flower beds because of aphids and Japanese beetles. I still have plenty of purple MG volunteers they'll take care of, I'm sure. I'm wondering if I should plant more ipomoea out in back and maybe draw them back there? At any rate, so this year, no sweet potato vines, no more morning glories, no sweet potatoes, no moonflower vines. There are so many choices for container plantings!

Our forecast for Saturday has changed, too. This afternoon it says 14. I like that better than 6!

What are some of your favorite container flowers, all? I think I'll order an ornamental grass--I don't have any out in the yard. I also will have lots of little marigolds and calendula; dusty miller, petunias, the creeping lantanas, maybe asparagus fern if I can get them to grow this year; maybe thumbelina zinnias, Persian shield, geraniums. . . It's strange growing situation on the back deck. The sun moves across the deck beginning about 2, and it's total shade by 4 pm. And the morning light is part sun. It gets Plenty hot there, so partial sun lovers often burn up. Really, full sun plants do pretty good. I don't think a dwarf canna would, though. The petunias do pretty well, as do the small marigolds. I think I can have a hydrangea there, but will have to put it in the shadiest early morning sun spot.

Oh now the seed-growing and choices have finally hit. . . I organized seeds this morning and set out probably about one third of my seeds (I don't have nearly the quantity many or most of you, I'm sure) for nearby Cookson Hills school. I need to get over there and see the place. I asked GDW if he'd take me over there one of these days.

Well, I have not done one single physically productive thing all day! I WILL at least fix dinner. We were tired of getting stringy and tough cube steaks for chicken fried steaks last year, so Garry asked if we could make a chicken friend hamburger! We DID and it turn out great; sounds like a heart attack waiting to happen, doesn't it? But they're sure good. :)

I've done those chicken fried hamburgers, and at least you don't have to fight with the sinews of the chicken fried steak, all over the plate and the breading escaping as you do.

Personally, I bought a food grinder last year, and I really like using it for hamburger and sausage. In particular I use the most coarse ground plate for hamburger, and it's a bit more like chili grind meat. I bet it would be better than store grade hamburger for the chicken fried idea. I'll have to try that.

That sounds good, dbarron--what cuts do you use for both? Or do you raise cattle and pigs? When I was growing up, my father was in the meat-cutting business with his brother, and when he left that and moved to a small town, he still had all his equipment, so cut up meat for the townspeople as a second job. I got sick of eating deer meat growing up (up there the mule deer all tasted like sagebrush), but was poor as a college student, so Dad would turn an entire deer into hamburger for me, using beef suet, which made it a lot more palatable.)

It looks like our Saturday low is now 20. It was 9. That's something. In a way, I have felt so behind this year on seed starting, ordering, and preparing, But, other than my experience last year and my busyness this coming spring, something else in my gut told me to just wait a bit longer. So I am. And that is lining up nicely with my life. So, there's that, I guess.

We are showing a couple of days with high winds. That also causes power outages around here.

Nancy, maybe you can help me. You mentioned ornamental grass. We had a clump at our last house. I loved it. It was giant--grew to the height of the house--and came back every year. Do you know of an ornamental grass that big? I'll try to find a picture of it. It was one of the few things I had at our last house and it was already planted when we bought the house. We had a curved "wall" of those boxwood type of shrubs that we kept short and I kept two large pots of flowers on the front porch. That was it. The first year we lived there, I tried to plant flowers in a couple of locations but soon realized there was concrete just 3 or 4 inches below the soil. AND, I bought a couple of giant pots for tomatoes, but couldn't keep the birds out of them. It took a long time to sell that house and I did have a plan for a garden in that very small backyard...and even a plan for a few chickens (which really wouldn't have been legal). Anyway, I'll see if I can find a picture of that grass plant.

I'm pretty sure in 2011 we had a big snow in February. That was 2 months after getting Kane. He injured his leg in that snow--bounding around like a maniac. That injury took forever to heal. THEN....look at the summer 2011 gave us! Yikes!

I'm supposed to work the OKC Home and Garden show with Dale and Carrie on Saturday. My only concern in walking to the building from the parking lot. LOL You always have to park a 100 miles away from the buildings at the fairgrounds. THEN, I can never find my car...so wander around the lot for hours (it seems). All of that in the cold doesn't sound fun. Maybe I'll Uber there. ;) He did mention free Smartpot products and seeds for volunteers. Nancy, my fabric pots are a little beat up too. Mostly, because Kane got a hold of them, dumped the soil and then they blew to the back fence. There might still be one of them back there.

My electric fireplace isn't fancy and it was cheap--purchased off of Craigslist. It was already white, but sort of a bright white instead of a creamy white. (who knew there were so many shades of white. I didn't until I tried to match the color of the cabinets at our last house!) I took a pic of it this morning to show y'all, but forgot to turn the fire on. Duh. I'll come back with the pic. And hopefully a pic of that tall ornamental grass.

Oh, one more thing. I'm thinking of taking a trip to 360 Farms to pick up some elderberry plants. I'm going to pay extra to get the plants instead of sticks. I'm so, so disappointed about last year's failure. But you already know about that because I complain about it at least every other month. :)

Nancy whatever our local big cuts (box10 is name) grocery store has in 10 lb packages. Usually chuck roast, but whatever, it's all hamburger ;)

Nancy, I'm a weather geek. I learned in our early years here that nothing affected my garden as much as the weather did, so I learned to watch it like a hawk. The more I watched the weather, the more I learned, and the more I learned, the better able I have been to work with it, work around it or at least protect the plants from it. I haven't had a lot of luck fighting the weather, so I just try to understand it. To the extent that anything I said helped, you're welcome.

I like lemon grass as an ornamental grass merely because it is useful in the kitchen. There are lots of pretty grasses, but I like the ones that are multipurpose. Of course, we live in a grassland with head-high prairie grasses all around us by mid-summer, so I'm really not big time into ornamental grasses anyway. Some of my favorite container plantings are the most simple ones.....ornamental sweet potatoes, variegated Swedish ivy, sun coleus and begonias mixed together in very large pots in morning sun/afternoon shade. If they are in more of a full-sun or almost full-sun area, I skip coleus and use some sort of celosia or amaranth that can handle the sun and heat. Sometimes in that situation I use Cora annual periwinkles (and only Cora, because only Cora has the needed disease tolerance) or maybe pentas (except they attract those darn tersa sphinx cats that devour pentas). Japanese beetles aren't an issue here so that's one pest I don't have to worry about.

I did not do much that was productive either. Tim was involved in a motor vehicle accident on the way to work very early this morning, so I got a call from him that basically said "I wrecked the car". While he was waiting for the police to come to his location on I-35, I got Chris en route to help him (in case they possibly could tow the wrecked vehicle home behind Chris' truck, which they could not). After they made it back to the house, he and Chris shopped online for a new vehicle because we are pretty sure Tim's car is totaled due to its age (it won't be worth fixing that amount of damage as we're sure the repair cost exceeds the value of the 9-year-old car), but I did do laundry and clean the kitchen during that time. Our son is so good at online vehicle shopping---having helped Jana find her new car online last January and then finding his new SUV online after his pickup burned up a few months ago. He uses CarVana and picks up the purchased vehicle at the CarVana vending machine in Frisco TX. Other than that, I was sort of sleepy and tired and didn't do much. I would wander into the office every now and then to see how they were doing, or Chris would wander out to tell me to convince Tim to buy himself a good vehicle (he tends to be too much of a thrifty Yankee and will spend money on everyone but himself---getting him to buy himself something nice is like pulling teeth). Chris is a smart shopper and he was trying to ensure Tim found a good quality vehicle with a nice trim package, etc. while Tim was focused too much on trying to spend as little money as possible. (Eventually, Chris and I won that battle......) So, hopefully tomorrow Tim goes back to work and I can clean house and get back into the routine because he was underfoot too much today and messed up my routine. (grin) I don't think I realized how much I appreciate having nice, quiet, calm days while he is at work until today when the house was not calm and quiet. lol. I am starting to think that when he retires, he is going to drive me crazy. No, he won't, because I'll just be out in the garden all the time and he won't be.

I did tackle our house's big problem area....the laundry room's folding counter. There is nothing wrong with that counter....I love it. However, whenever anyone wants to quickly clean up clutter, they move the clutter to the laundry room counter. Then I go in there to fold laundry and there is no counter space available. So, I cleaned off the counter and put everything away in its proper storage space. To me, though it was a small area, getting it cleared off made me so happy, and it only took a very few minutes to do so. Tomorrow I'll tackle the mudroom.

dbarron, I was just thinking this morning that we haven't had a good chicken fried steak in such a long time. Now I'm really hungry for one. Thank y'all for making me crave a good CFS.

Jennifer, Our forecast has improved a great deal too. I hope it doesn't go downhill again.

I remember that happening in February 2011. That year we had horrible snow and very, very cold temperatures one day, and then within 2 or 3 days we were in the 70s. So, of course, now I had to go look it up on the mesonet. On 2-10-11, down here we had a low of 3 degrees and a high of 36. Then, on 2-13-11, that was forgotten (and the snow all melted away), when we had a low of 35 and a high of 76. It seems like we had a lot of warm windy weather after that, but also sporadic cooler temps and rain, so none of us knew that the weather would go all to hell the minute that June arrived, taking our gardens with it. I remember we were doing a week-long fire training thing at Lake Murray State Park (they were letting us use/tear up cabins that were slated for demolition the next week) and I would rush home and try to get more tomato plants in the ground every evening. That was Easter week. We were hitting temperatures in the 90s all of a sudden, and I just knew at that moment it was going to be a bad summer for tomatoes...and it was. When you're hitting those temps that impede fruit set before you even can get the plants into the ground, well....that is just a bad omen. Still, even with that bad omen in April, who could have known we'd be hitting 110-115 degree highs in July? Or that rain wouldn't fall the entire month? We surely do not need a year like that again ever. I also have not forgotten that the drought of 2011 was then followed by the droughts of 2012, 2013 and 2014. Four drought years in a row is a bit too much, and I hope we never see that ever again either. Then, Mother Nature tried to make it up to us by dumping almost 80" of rain on us in 2015. It seems like every weather year here is memorable for one reason or another.

I like your fireplace. I agree with you about all the different shades of white. In what might be the ultimate irony, after we bought ours, I wanted to figure out what color white it was in case we ever had to touch up the paint. Most of our house is very, very light gray or a medium gray, but we have white baseboards that are painted Swiss Coffee, which is a shade of white paint. So, I went and picked up a lot of white paint chips and brought them home and laid them out on the fireplace to see what shade of white best matched our fireplace and I found a perfect match......Swiss Coffee. How strange is that? I mean, really, what are the odds? It sort of freaked me out because we painted the trim with Swiss Coffee at least 4 years before we bought the electric fireplace.

I don't do photos, but I can link our fireplace from Lowe's. I think it is perpetually sold out here in the stores nearest us, but the image of it still is on their webpage.

The One We Purchased

We all have plant failures. I don't worry about them. I never consider a specific plant a failure here until I have killed it at least three separate times myself. Sometimes a plant or plants die because it is a horrible weather year or just not the right location for them. You have to try at least a couple more times with the elderberry to see if you can get a better result with them than you got last year.

No seed orders arrived today, so perhaps everything I've ordered already has arrived.

One new garden catalog arrived. It is from Nichols Garden Nursery. They carry the seeds of herbs, veggies and some flowers, but also have unique things like some essential oils, dried herbs, beer and wine making supplies, herbal tea blends, salt free herbal seasoning blends, and a few hard-to-find canning supplies like Clear-Jel and Pomona's Pectin, bulk yeast and sourdough starter. I always like it when you find some surprise items like those in a gardening catalog.

Today's weather was the first weather this week that remotely resembled the weather forecast. I guess that is a good thing. I hope we have sunshine again tomorrow.

Dawn

Hahaha, dbarron! I've never seen those boxes. What store has these?

I had to start a new seed list from Pinetree. SESE seeds are on their way and after that there'd be nothing much. How to prevent that sadness during these cold days? Easy. Order more seeds. Right? Guess I'm finally into seed orders.

They're both beautiful fireplaces, HJ and Dawn. Good job on Craig's List, HJ. I love it when I score like that. You know, I LOVE our place, love our grand fireplace, but I was envious at your two white ones, in light and airy houses. Our house is anything but light. If I had lots of money, I'd put floor-to-ceiling glass windows all across the back of the house--and it would STILL be a dark house! Oh well, at least I get to live outdoors for most of the year. I guess that's worth a whole lot, isn't it!

Swiss coffee--too funny!

The rest of us are so lucky you are a weather geek, Dawn. I tried to do some preliminary research after reading your report and thought, "Oh H___ no! You definitely do not have time to learn THIS." haha!

Maybe Tim's accident was a happy one. Sounds like he was due, and good for Chris and you! That's a long commute. He should have a wonderful ride to do it in.

The tallest grass I've seen was at a place near Rocky Point. I had to come home and figure out what it was. (I'm guessing it was 15-20 feet tall.) I decided it was Giant Reed grass. It's pretty spectacular, as is the pampas grass. If i grew either of them it'd have to be back behind the vegetable beds. Both plants are WAY too showy to be up front. Haha. And I am tempted every year to get some pampas grass.

Lemon grass! Thank you thank you, Dawn!!! YES! I am so excited! I've been meaning to order it for years! Plunk, into my next virtual cart you go, lemon grass!

No really...box10 :) https://www.10boxcostplus.com/

LOL. Okay. So there are exactly two of those in OK, apparently. Sheesh. Can't believe that's the name of a store!

I live in Springdale, AR now, but even if I were still in Oklahoma, there's one in Claremore (10 miles from where I lived before).

So I saw--Claremore and Ada. We have a daughter who lives in Claremore. Ahh, so you're east and just a hair north of us now. Are you still zone 7? Is it mountainous or hilly? Good land?

I remember the snowstorm of 2011, because that was the last year we had a real winter. It hasn't really snowed since Cliff moved here. (hmm.....maybe he's the culprit????) He moved to Dallas that year, just before they got that huge snowstorm. What are the odds that a Jersey boy would move to Texas the same year they get historic snow? I think that was the year Tulsa was without And 2011 was the year Nowata had a 100 degree temp change in less than a week (-31 to 75).

The leadership is already talking about canceling our youth retreat. Sorry, but after the last dozen or so "snow days" where I sat at home and watched it rain, I don't trust any of the meteorologists in this state. Calling it 2 days in advance is silly.

I live in a swamp (or it used to be)...drainage is poor. I'm still learning how to cope with it. So...everything is flat here, but it's not far to hills (5-10 miles). Technically I was z6b in Chelsea (OK), and am either 6b or 7a (depending on whose map you look at), but temperature wise, it's been a clear z7 in the five years since I moved here.

Might as well forget things that like sharp drainage. My lantanas struggle and fail to thrive as well....I had huge bushel basket bases on lantanas in Oklahoma, I struggle to keep one alive here. Purple coneflowers are absolutely dealt a quick death here whereas they thrived in Oklahoma.

However, many things thrive that like the more moist conditions. Crinums, lycoris, coreopsis (had a hard time with coreopsis in Chelsea), passionflower. Spring ephemerals like trilliums, shooting stars, jacob's ladder, ferns are doo much better here. Strangely I did better with hibiscus and swamp milkweed in Chelsea (though both should love conditions here I'd have thought).

Gardening is constant adventure and experimentation. I have slowly learned where I can put some more drainage sensitive plants that they *might* make it.

Originally forecasted for 4 degrees here, now 14? Weird stuff going on. Looks as if the next couple weeks, at least, will hold a lot colder due to the polar vortex split. Winter has been VERY mild so far, lowest temp 12 degrees.

We didn't live here in 2011, but I've read of a storm in 2011 that dropped over 2' of snow locally with temps around -20 some degrees or so depending on the location....-31 in Oklahoma just a little west of us. Our record low is -29 F to give you an idea. https://www.weather.gov/tsa/weather-event_2011feb9

It used to snow a fair bit here, for this central part of the country. The last 4 years we're lucky to get an inch, so I'm very skeptical as to anything in the forecast. We're in a "snow drought."

Dawn, I'm becoming more and more of a weather geek, but you are a lot more technical than I am at the moment.

Was looking through National Weather Service logs for Drake Field airport down in Fayetteville as well as my own logs, 45 days at or above 90 degrees last summer, just 11.5 days above our average of 33.5! Highest temp at our house was 98 degrees, lowest -6 on January 16th 2018. 104 degree difference! Last frost was mid-late April last year at our house, first frost mid Oct., but my garden wasn't hit until early November, being high up.

Onions growing in my cold frame now, insulated with 6" leaf pack around the sides. Received soil test results today. All mineral and nutrients are at the ideal level, phosphorous and potassium above optimum. pH is 6.9. They recommend that I don't use any fertilizers but possibly some nitrogen fertilizer applied sparingly before planting. Well, I've got a lot of chicken manure on my garden at the moment, so that shouldn't be necessary.

I took down my back garden fence a couple days ago. I remember putting that first garden in a couple years ago, so excited to plant my first garden. Of course, I had no idea sunlight impacted plants, and I was disappointed to find that my 600 square feet was half full shade, half 4-6 hours of full sunlight. I'm going to plant a pumpkin patch in the partial shaded area this year, as pumpkins do really well in shade for me. I'm going to trial pepper spray in the back garden. I'm putting up an electric fence out front.

Reading through all of your posts.

dbarron, so you're in Springdale! It appears I'm just north of you near Pea Ridge.

Nancy, Winter seed-ordering therapy is very important for the mental health of us gardeners, I believe.

My husband is a thrifty Yankee. Once a vehicle is paid for, he won't replace it until it dies a natural death and is beyond all repair. I told him that maybe the wreck was God's way of telling him it was time to buy a new car. Oh, and for him, new isn't new. He usually buys one that is 2 or 3 years old....letting someone else take all that initial depreciation that occurs with new vehicles. Our son is the same way, and I have to admit it is a smart financial strategy.

I understand about the darkness inside your home, but I also envy it in the summer. I just have to keep our blinds and curtains closed all summer long to keep the excessive heat and sunshine out of the house. Also, the sun's UV rays fade carpeting, furniture and even some kinds of flooring....so darkness can be a good thing if it is keeping the UV rays out of your house. Having said that, I like our home's interior a lot more since I repainted everything a very pale gray (it is called Platinum and really is whitish with just a bit of gray in it) from the previous pale brown and green. Everything does look a lot lighter and brighter.

dbarron, It sounds like a great store. We have no great stores here. There really is only one local grocery store here and I won't shop there as there has been a persistent issue with vermin in the past. A few years back, probably with a previous owner and not the current one, the health department shut down the store completely to force its owners to deal with the rats. Enough said.

Jen, That was the February that Dallas hosted the Super Bowl. A huge snowstorm forecasted for Super Bowl week for OKC and central OK went 100 or so miles south and hit the DFW metro, dumping huge amounts of snow and messing up all sorts of Super Bowl festivities. It was our last real winter, and our first/last real snowstorm here. I forget how much snow we had at our house---about 8-10". I kept going outside with a broom and sweeping the snow off the roof of my garden shed, which had a fairly low pitch, because I was afraid the snow would make the shed roof collapse. I loved the snow but it really complicated Tim's and Chris' workweek at the airport which already was crazy busy because of the football game and really didn't need the complication of all that snow. It also made the long commute to and from work very complicated.

I'd love to have a real storm like that again, but doubt we'll ever see 8-10" of snow fall here like that. It is a big deal if we get an inch of snow here, and in recent years we haven't had anything more than a tiny dusting of snow that might as well be frost because it is so light and skimpy.

I agree that forecasts here change too much to put real faith in a snow forecast. Perhaps they are more worried about the bitter cold wind chills being an issue at the youth retreat than any possible snow?

dbarron, So, your soil is a lot like mine. Even in raised beds, plants that need great drainage struggle at our place. I finally have won some battles and can keep lavender, lantana and rosemary alive by planting them in the 22" tall raised beds lined with hardware cloth to exclude voles. These beds were built for the protection of root crops like carrots and potatoes, but I filled them with a very sandy-silty-somewhat humusy mix of soil, so they have ended up being perfect for plants that need perfect drainage. I cannot keep coneflowers alive for very long either---I have two that survive in the first raised bed at the highest end of the sloping garden, but it would be a stretch to think they are thriving. They never have gotten much larger from their initial size and they don't reseed. I am sure the seeds rot before they can sprout in the clay. Maybe I should move my two purple coneflowers to one of those tall raised beds. I'm willing to grow less potatoes and carrots if I can have some of the flowers that otherwise fail to thrive here. I also, like you, have trouble getting hibiscus (even swamp hibiscus) to thrive and survive here. They do okay in an average to very dry year, but then a wipe year either kills them or sets them back so far they might as well be dead. It drives me crazy. Oh, and we have a swamp. It is downhill from the house and garden, and once was spring-fed, but the spring that fed it dried up in a drought year. Still, if we are getting a lot of rainfall, it does stay swampy most of the year. I can grow swamp hibiscus there.

Jacob, I personally hope the forecast lows keep climbing. I'd like to think the silly warm-season annuals that have sprouted in my garden might be able to survive, if only the forecast lows would climb a bit higher.

My garden wasn't very shaded when we planted it in 1999, but we knew the nearby woodland would begin to encroach on the garden at some point. Well, it has happened and my front garden now is less than half the size it once was. I have found that plenty of plants thrive in a half-day of sunlight here, but I've given back tons of former garden land to the encroaching woodland because the half-day of sun eventually becomes less than a half day and then less and less and less as the trees get taller. We need to move in the north garden fence and concede more shady space to the woodland. It now is a perpetual battle to keep the trees from moving into what is left of the garden.

Megan, I grow a lot of lemon-scented herbs (lemon grass, lemon balm, lemon verbena and lemon basil to name a few) and do think I have less issues with mosquitoes in the garden because of them, but the minute I leave the garden, those skeeters find me. The natural/organic repellents don't seem to repel the skeeters either. I did start taking a B-complex vitamin daily after someone in one of our FB gardening groups said that she no longer was a skeeter magnet after she started taking one. I was skeptical, but thought I'd try it. Well, it worked. Once I was taking a B-complex vitamin tablet daily, the skeeters completely left me alone. I was shocked. At one point, we ran out of the B vitamins in late summer or early autumn, and I thought maybe I'd just stop taking them for the rest of the year. Well, the skeeters descended upon me en masse within a very few days, and I resumed taking the B vitamin. I don't know why it works. I don't know if it works for everyone. I do know it works for Tim and I, and we could not be happier.

A cold front has passed through here and our wind has shifted. Oh well, having the wind out of the south was nice for a day or two as it was a lot warmer and helped break up the clouds. The north wind here now will not be so kind to us. This is supposed to be "our last good day" before the weather deteriorates according to our local TV met this morning. Well, since they dropped our forecast highs for today and tomorrow from near 70 to only the mid-50s, it is hard to think of it as a good day compared to what it was supposed to be.

Is it spring yet?

Dawn

An old family friend used to swear by the B shots. He spent every day outside, working or fishing, and never got bit by mosquitoes. I've tried it with marginal success (they only sporadically bite me instead of seeking me out in a crowd).

I'm very happy to see the low for Saturday revised yet again. But see the high has been revised too (lowered). Well we'll see what happens. It is NOT spring yet, Dawn. And so I'm doing the seed therapy that you approved. I'm sure it's officially sanctioned somewhere in the annals of mental health records.

And you are right, you are right, the dark log house is mighty nice in the summer--especially since both the front and the back have roofs over the porch (in front) and deck in back.

We don't typically have many mosquitos at our place (which seems strange to me since we're near the lake), but I guess we'll be ready if they do show up. We began taking a B complex vitamin a couple months ago.

Reading about your properties, Dawn and dbarron, I'm reminded once again about how dramatically different our growing conditions can be or are. Just crazy. I agree, it is a constant adventure and grand experiment.

Jacob, it is nice to "see" you! Good luck with the electric fence. Let us know how it works.

Dawn, I was raised that one always buys 2-yr old cars, so that's what I did all my life. I doubt whether I'll ever have a "new" car again. When Mom sold me her little Honda civic for a song, it never occurred to me that it'd be the last car I ever have. It's a 2002 2dr coupe, and has lived in a garage all its life (as opposed to outdoors), and has 28,000 miles on it at the moment. How funny is that. It might be fun to have a new car with some bells and whistles, but how could one justify getting rid of a car that's hardly been used!? I can't. (Besides, I actually like it and think it's cute.) Since moved down here, about the only time it's out is for long trips that I've taken. Well, just in the past few months, I've begun taking it to town every once in a while, just to keep it from getting rusty. lol

Oh yeah, I'm having fun on my new seed order. I have never liked kale. But since it's so good for us and I discovered it freezes so well, I'm going to learn to like it. I am so thrilled I can pack it into our blueberry smoothies and one would never know it's even in them. I LOVE that. And it's year 3 for our blueberry bushes, I am so excited to see how many we'll get. So kale and Swiss charge (Bright Lights--that's some crazy-looking Swiss chard!) and all kinds of greens, here we go! Now if I could only grow bananas. But at least I know now I can buy them, throw em in the freezer and take them out to make the smoothies. I feel like I have a whole new lease on life with this kale stuff.

Oh dear. . . I suppose I should do some work now. . . .

That's really interesting about the B vitamin, Dawn. I'm going to take it as a sign that you have lots and lots of energy - well I guess your gardening proves that. My body doesn't produce enough of the chemical it needs to properly break down B vitamins and mosquitos usually leave me alone, unless they're starving, which leads me to believe that having lots of unmetabolized B vitamins in your bloodstream is what would deter them, since taking a B supplement would also add levels of undigested B to the bloodstream. Surely there's an answer out there in the chasm of google knowledge, but I'm happy with my hypothesis. I'll have to talk to the pediatrician about a B supplement for the kiddo because she is like chocolate cake to mosquitos as I've mentioned here before.

Our forecast has been a moving target but at last check, our lows are now predicted to stay in the low 20s which anything I was worried about will tolerate. I will cover my kale but there's not a lot to cover and the frost cloth is already out there, just pulled to the side. Speaking of, can frost cloth go through the washing machine? Since I'm trapped indoors on weekdays I don't pay a lot of attention to the expected highs or how much sun we'll have, just to how cold it will be when I get up in the morning and maybe precip chances. The latter I don't pay too much attention to since it changes so frequently. If it's raining or looks like it will be, I'll grab an umbrella. All that to explain why I'm not sure how much our forecast has changed aside from the change in expected lows.

I promised myself yesterday that if it was at least 40 out when I got up this morning that I would walk the dog. It was 41 when we started, a little breezy but drizzly which felt pretty cold on a just awakened face. It was 39 when we got back, so I narrowly avoided an excuse to get out of it. Haha. We survived the first early morning walk since my surgery! Jack was pretty excited to get the fresh air and to prove it he ran around the house like a maniac when we returned. Once he calmed down he decided to nest in the throw on the back of the couch. Well the couch cushion fell over and he ended up between the back of the couch and the cushion while wrapped in the throw with only his head sticking out. It was pretty funny. There's a picture on my personal instagram (not the garden one) if you're interested.

I feel like someone in the OKC area has mentioned that they have bamboo but I can't remember who it was, my brain is saying either Lisa or Moni maybe? Does anyone know? I won't need it right away but it would be nice to have at the ready when the temps are warm enough to start building some cages with it.

Even though there's a Wx Underground station within a mile of my house, I've also been thinking of getting some thermometers to record the temps at my exact location because I feel like I might have a slightly warmer microclimate. If I do, that would certainly save me some plant covering headaches every spring. Definitely interested in any of those recommendations.

I brought a house plant to work with me today because it was being neglected and I'm in the dark house camp along with Nancy. My one and only south-facing window is in the kiddo's bedroom - fahgetaboutit. I am glad though that we only have the one because her room stays significantly warmer than the rest of the house, even in the winter, and even with a large return air vent in the ceiling outside her door. Anywho, I have a west facing window at work so I know the plant will be happier here. That, of course, has me thinking that I'll bring more of my houseplants up here. I don't have many due to the darkness in the house and really need the space for things I'm overwintering indoors.

Speaking of overwintering indoors... does anyone grow campfire plant? Mine's a wreck and super leggy. Wondering what my options are and advice would be appreciated. I'm wondering if I should have put it in the garage where it is a little colder to halt growing. I didn't because it can dip below freezing in the garage but other things in the garage that shouldn't make it through a freeze are doing better out there than this thing is doing indoors - with a grow light.

I should be working too, Nancy. But thought I would catch up here. Just a couple of things...

Try kale in a veggie (and/or meat) saute or in soups. Throw it in at the last. It wilts down and you really don't notice the texture. Even Ethan and Tom will eat it that way.

I like my "light" house, but I do enjoy darker and cozy homes too. In fact, I prefer my bedroom to be that way. When and if we can ever remodel the rest of the house, I've considered leaving the darker wood in the bedroom. It feels sorta gypsy-like, comforting, and cozy. And, honestly, I like my friends' homes who seem to have a lot of knickknacks, books, and art all around. Especially if those items are personal to them. It's also very comforting. However, in my own house, I like the living room and such to have a more minimal feel. At least right now. that might change someday. My brain/life is currently so busy and cluttered, that I like simple in my surroundings. For now.

Okay. More to say but it's after 2 and there's work to be done.

Megan, we have loved our min/max thermometer. Ours is Outdoor Home, but I'm sure any of them would be fine--we got it from Amazon.

Also, I had never seen a "campfire" plant before. I must have one! Gorgeous!

Okay, I'll try, HJ. I know Amy does that. I don't hardly ever make soups, but can do the stir fry--but we only have stir fry once every 3-4 weeks. I tell you, the smoothies are SO nutritious, I really don't mind making them every single day. They're so delicious, it's hard to believe they're also packed with nutrition.

Jen, Well, any improvement in how many skeeters attack is improvement, right?

Nancy, There are days that I wish they'd just tell us the truth.....something like....models are not in agreement with one another so we have no idea what is going to happen. I'd be okay with that because at least then we'd know how uncertain the forecasters are. The NWS now has raised our high temp for tomorrow from the mid-50s back to the upper 60s. I don't know whether to laugh or cry, but it is back now to almost exactly what the Sunday forecast showed for Friday. I think they left our Sat forecast the same, but now they have raised our Sun nite low temp 5 or 6 degrees and I won't complain about that. They also now have our worst wind overnight Friday instead of during the day Saturday. That can only be a good thing.

I am going to ask everyday if it is Spring yet, until someday somebody says yes it is. Since you are near the lake and yet do not see many mosquitoes, I suspect you have plenty of beneficials eating them (birds, reptiles, other insects, etc.). That is just the most logical explanation for the lack of skeeters.

My dad always bought slightly used cars too. I think it can be very smart to let someone else take the depreciation. Why not? After Tim's dad passed away in 2004, his little Mazda 626 was handed down to Chris. It was probably 5 or 6 years old by then. Chris drove it forever. Maybe 5 or 6 years. I don't even remember what became of it....if we sold it or if Chris traded it in or whatever, but it was old with tons of miles on it by then. Chris bought himself a new Jeep Liberty, took a ton of depreciation on it, had tons of trouble with it, and hasn't bought a new vehicle since. He quickly learned the art of finding a good used vehicle in great shape with low mileage and that is all he buys nowadays. So many people trade in cars every couple of years because they always seem to have to have a new one that there's tons of great, late model, used cars out there. I know guys who buy tractors the same way.....

I thought I had received all my seed orders, but then my order from Park Seed arrived today. So, now I think I have received them all.

Megan, Some frost cloth can go through the washer (and dryer). The ones that I have washed were the ones that are 1.5 and 2.5 oz. per square yard. They washed and dried perfectly fine. I haven't tried it with any of the lighter weights. I have a front loader type of washer and that might make a difference as opposed to a top loader with an agitator. When I washed mine, they came out bright white and looking as good as new.

Mia is the OK garden forum member who has bamboo and she does live there in the OKC area somewhere. Now that she has two small children, we don't see her here often, but she is a member of our FB groups so you may see her there this spring.

I don't know anything about campfire plant, but if it is a succulent, it might need more light than it is getting.

This afternoon the sun came out again in mid-afternoon. I'd like to say it felt warmer, but it didn't. It still felt really cold, though I am sure our temperature today was probably average for January.

There were a gazillion seemingly starving birds here today eating like crazy. I bet there is some way they feel the cold weather approaching because they always show up in huge numbers and eat like mad as big cold fronts are coming in.

We're supposed to possibly start out foggy in the morning and have sunshine later in the day. We'll see. Tomorrow we could wake up with a completely different forecast since it seems to be changing nonstop.

When I ordered from Park Seed, there was one tomato variety (Purple Boy) I really, really wanted and everything else I ordered, except the broccoli and lemon yellow zinnias, was just impulse buys. So, today the order arrives and the one thing not in it is the Purple Boy tomato, which is on back order. That just figures.

Dawn

Bless you, Megan. After I wrote that, I thought, "Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen one in a store." Thank you thank you!!

Here's how my mind works. I hate going into town most of the time, you know. Well this afternoon, I was working on my spreadsheet for this year, and it is very tiny. I'm proud of myself. But I was looking at last year's grow list and thought "Oh my gosh, I forgot to order tomatillos!" So I quick went to my growing Pinetree list and sure enough tomatillos weren't on it. Added. Then thought , "I MUST have tomatillos for chile verde and salsa verde." And then remembered Lopez's amazing chile verde that I ordered last time we were there, and I jumped up and ran in and said, "Honey. . . would you mind if we went to Lopez's tonight?" He laughed and said he was going to ask me earlier today if I wanted to go there.

So we went and it was delicious and we had a good time. . .and all because I realized I hadn't yet ordered tomatillos.

FYI, squirrels here are hauling leaves up to their nests like they will never find more leaves ever again. They are very, very busy.

Oh dear. They must have heard the weather forecast.

Either yesterday or the day before, somebody posted a photo on FB of a squirrel here in OK ripping the stuffing out of a lawn furniture cushion, presumably so it could carry that white poly fiberfill type stuffing back to its nest. The squirrels here are not doing anything like that with either leaves or the stuffing from our lawn furniture cushions, but then we aren't expected to get as cold as those of you who are further north. All the squirrels are doing here is eating, eating, eating. We have some fat squirrels.

Nancy, There is nothing with the way your mind works! Eating great dishes made with tomatillos just inspires you to grow your own right? I hope your dinner at Lopez's was yummy.

I was thinking tonight that last January's weather was also cold right in the middle of the month, so I looked it up on the past data stored on the OK Mesonet, and found that in mid-January last year, we dropped down to 2 degrees one night and 9 degrees the next, so we are quite a bit warmer this week than one year ago, even with this big cold blast that is about to hit us. Last January overall was warmer than this month overall so far though.

I'm dreading the wind. I don't mind the cold so much when the air is still, but when the wind is roaring and howling, the wind chills can be so miserable.

Tonight I got a shipping notice that my Purple Boy tomato seeds had shipped. Why in the world they ship the whole order minus one packet and then ship that packet alone one week later is beyond me. I wouldn't have cared if they had held the entire order for one week in order to ship it all at the same time. I guess that's not how they do things any more.

Our weather is so crazy. Maybe it is just unpredictable despite their best efforts. Our forecast low for overnight was 39. So far we have dropped to 34 since midnight, which is not even close to the forecast. However, it already is warming up again, so I guess it is possible we have hit our low temp near midnight and maybe the temperature now will slowly rise overnight.

This approaching storm really slammed California hard for three days. The upper part of it is going to hit more northern states really hard, with some areas perhaps getting 40" of snow. Maybe we all should just count our blessings that it is going to be a sort of hit-and-run storm that flies through here with only a relatively minimal impact. I think that when we look at our current forecast now compared to what it looked like 3 or 4 days ago, the impact for most of us will not be nearly as bad as initially expected.

Megan, it’s funny how it seems so cold when I first wake up, but then the same temps almost seem warm that evening. Early morning walks are not nice in the cold. We used to have a black/white dog named Scout that I’d have to walk every morning, warm or cold. Cats (some) are just so much easier than dogs. I like not having to walk mine. However, we used to have 2 cats who would not even bathe themselves! My dad had to shower them in the bath tub, because they refused to clean themselves whatsoever, and they would get nasty. They eventually became outside cats because of it.

Nancy, I grew kale all summer last year. It’s very tough, and it’s one green that the deer don’t ever touch, but it’s just not my favorite. Consequently, I’m not planning to grow it this year but to grow more Swiss chard instead. I don’t really understand how people can say that Swiss chard makes a good lettuce substitute in the summer, but I’d say it makes a delicious cooked green during the summer months, when spinach is impossible to grow.

Interestingly, a lot of the Asian farmers around here sell bolted spinach all summer long at the farmers’ markets. I don’t particularly like bolted spinach raw, but it still tastes alright cooked.

I’m also going to try more summer lettuce this year. I had thought summer lettuce was a no-go in our area, but then I saw my grandma growing butterheads in 90+ degree heat. What?! I’m going to try Marvel of 4 Seasons for this year. Rouge Grenobloise performs remarkably well in the heat in my garden, but it gets bitter rather quickly, as do most batavians I’ve tried.

Jennifer, I like a dark house. Our house has no southern windows and is very dark. However, we do have a western window that gets quite sunny on summer afternoons when the sun is high, in the living room.

Dawn, I don’t know if I mentioned before that I placed a seed order with Victory Seeds a few weeks back after reading about your experiences with them. The order arrived last week, and I’m quite satisfied so far. They even included a paper manual on the best seed preservation techniques for best germination rates. Their service is great, and the prices are so reasonable. I was expecting a high shipping cost due to the fairly low seed prices, but this was not the case. With my $40 order, I only had to pay $4 shipping.

All of the onions in the cold frame look to be up and growing. Winter is still looking mild for me, showing various days in the 50’s over the next 7 days. Our winter has been a very mild one so far, and I almost have a hard time seeing it get any colder, even with the polar vortex split. I just have a feeling we’re in for an interesting spring. I guess every spring is interesting around here.

Have some hollyhock seeds on their way. Hopefully I can find time to get them in jugs so maybe they will bloom this year.

We are researching electric chipper/shredders for small limbs and shredding up leaves. We have a big gas powdered one, but I want a smaller, easier to use shredder. Any suggestions??

Patti

My hollyhocks are still alive, Rebecca--are yours? (You planted some last year, didn't you?) I have no idea what they do down here, though some of you have said. Nothing like growing them oneself to find out, eh? I have been astonished they're still alive, just like the rose campion.

Haha! Couple tiny leaves are good. Fun story, Megan. My brother was a succulent freak. He had so many cool ones. If I had a place to overwinter them, I'm sure I'd be a freak, too. As it is, I have quite the little collection in the quilt room. I bought a large terra cotta turtle planter from a nursery lady here that is a succulent planter.

Thanks to Amy, I have enough greens to last a lifetime, I think. And I ordered Bright Lights Swiss chard, Jacob--my first time for that, too. So two different kales and the Swiss chard. I'll do spinach and lettuces and the pak choi and tatsoi. . . Pinetree and SESE got all my business this year (except for the lantana plants and autumn clematis.) I was tickled that Pinetree had so much of what I wanted.

Waiting for tomorrow's weather feels like someone's holding a hammer over our heads. I'm glad it's not going to be as bad as first forecast. But I also note the high keeps getting lower and lower. Now the high is supposed to be 30. A good day to stay indoors, I'd say.

Patti - Unfortunately I don't know about electric ones, but wondering where you were when I could have borrowed the gas powered one this summer! I'm even close to Cresent. LOL I don't think I mentioned it before but my parents lived in Cresent when I was born - out by the dam, I think. My mom was in full blown labor by the time she realized she was in labor (if only it had been that easy for me) and they barely made it to the hospital in Kingfisher in time. Apparently, Hwy 33 is quite bumpy when you're having contractions 2 minutes apart. They had moved to Kingfisher by the time I was old enough to remember, and I grew up there. I live in southwest Edmond now, not far from Quail Springs Mall.

Y'all, I should be singing this song right now... Babydid a bad bad thing, by Chris Issak. Can you guess what the bad, bad thing was? If you said ordered more seeds, you'd be correct. Dagum Totally Tomatoes just had to send me a dwarf tomato seed sample and I couldn't just read about them when I looked them up online. I had to read about all the pretty little things and now I'm not sure how many dwarfs are on the way or where I thought I'd put them all. Oops. Hopefully, the seed packets are pretty because I think that's all I'll have space for. Just packets, no plants.

However, unneeded seeds are far cheaper than the money I spent last weekend at the Container Store buying stuff to organize the "bill paying station" built-in in our kitchen. Organizing is my other current jag. That "station" ends up a mountain of stuff we don't want to deal with. I organized it a few years ago and it was apparent pretty quickly that wasn't working but I kept telling myself and the family that we needed to be more disciplined about it. HA! I think what I've done will work better. I was at an advantage this time, because I knew how we're actually using it. When I organized it the first time it was largely an effort to find space for the my stuff I brought to add to the his stuff when the hubs and I consolidated households.

Well, I'm off to go plan a baby shower for my college roommate. She's been trying to get pregnant since I was pregnant 10 years ago. Neither of us were supposed to be able to have kids, but she was the one trying and I ended up pregnant! We've laughed at that and the fact that the year she finally carried past the first trimester is the year I evicted my baby hosting bits. I'm in charge of the shower decorations. I wonder if Pinterest has ideas on how to use tomato seed packets as baby shower decorations? I've heard of seed packets as wedding favors... Ha! Like I'll part with any of them. Oh, well.

Jacob, That is very peculiar cat behavior. I've never seen cats that won't groom themselves, except occasionally a very old cat (late teens or older) that is getting old, tired and sort of sickly and just kinda does stop grooming when they are in the final months of their lives. I have one 18 or 19 year old cat that I have to bathe now because that's the stage in his life that he has arrived at. He is shrinking down to nothing....like very old humans do. Since he generally took care of his own grooming for almost his entire life, it takes two of us to bathe him---one to hold him so he doesn't escape and the other to bathe him in the tub or our deep farm sink in the kitchen.

I hope your seeds from Victory Seeds do well for you. I have purchased tons of seeds from them over the years and have been very happy with them. They are extremely dedicated to preserving heirloom varieties.

I am watching the weather closely. Y'all know I go on instincts that I jokingly refer to as the voice in my head. Well, the voice is my head is cautioning me to go slow and to not get in a big hurry to do anything, so I'm trying to comply. I just feel like we haven't had enough winter yet. Often, when we have a warm January, we have a bad March and April. Well, so far, January has been pretty warm overall. Right now it is almost 9 p.m. here and the outdoor temperature is 61. That seems so odd to me. We just aren't cooling down. I guess when the cold front gets here, our temperatures will fall like a rock.

Megan, Trial and error gardening is true gardening...and the best kind of gardening....where nothing is guaranteed and anxiety levels build as you wonder if what you're doing is what the plant needs. So, I hope it works for you. I think back to my dad's generation (he was born in 1919) and to his dad's generation before him (born in the late 1880s I think) and I wonder how they farmed and did everything they did with....no internet, no gardening shows on TV or the radio, very primitive agricultural universities that did publish occasional ag bulletins, very few books available to dirt poor farmers, etc. Where did the know-how come from? I suppose it was handed down father to son, etc., but also bet there was a ton of trial and error involved.

Nancy, I agree that it feels like we are waiting for someone to drop a bunch of bad weather on our heads. What if it doesn't happen? What if everything sort of fizzles out as it blows through? I suppose I wouldn't mind and I wouldn't complain, because it would be hard to be unhappy if we weren't as cold as expected or as rainy/snowy as expected or as windy as expected. At least it seems like this weather will race through here pretty quickly and won't linger here for days and days. It can only help that they have raised those overnight lows a lot higher over the last few days.

Today was oddly warm. I don't know what to make of this weather. We hit 66 degrees, and had south wind and sunny skies until some clouds came in late in the day, and now it won't cool down. I am not complaining, just trying to understand why it doesn't want to cool down at night. Last night was pretty warm all night long as well. I guess that changes overnight sometime after midnight here.

Megan, I am so happy for your friend. I can only imagine the great joy she is feeling now. My wish for her is a smooth pregnancy, an easy delivery (well, it never is easy, but you know what I mean) and a healthy baby. I cannot think of a single way to include tomato seed packets in a shower theme.

Nancy, You need to be distracted by other things so you won't fixate on gardening during this hostile weather time of the year. Here is how I distracted myself today....the thing that I did to push my focus to something other than gardening and then, in parentheses, the thoughts that were running around in my brain so you can decide if the distractions worked.

Lillie came over to spend the day because it was a school holiday for her. (We have a whole day.....we could work in the garden together.....her name is also the name of a flower. Still, it is foggy and cloudy and chilly, so not a day to garden with Lillie.)

We went to Frisco TX to CarVana to pick up the new Acadia SUV. On the way down, we discussed everything among the four of us (Tim, Chris, Lillie and I) from school to work to vehicles to friends and pets....you name it, we discussed it. We did not discuss gardening at all. (This is what it is like to be in a car with three non-gardeners. Boo hoo. Not one word about gardening. I was dying.)

Lillie and I were the least bit interested in talking to the car guys, test driving the vehicle, discussing the extended warranty, etc. because as long as Tim was happy with it, we were going to be happy, so we got the guys to drop us off at the nearby IKEA, which is our happy place. What did they have? Oh wow, some new Boho type patterns on pillows and some lamp shades and fabrics. (Boho? Flowered prints and paisley. Bright colors. I was in heaven.) Then we walked through a bunch of furniture (who cares) but spotted some lovely new vases (for cut flowers, of course, I said to myself). When we got closer to the Marketplace, they had fake indoor plants, plant stands, hanging planters, vases, self-watering pots, watering cans, more plant stands, a ladder that leans against the wall with little pots hanging from it (would be perfect for succulents....I want one), etc. There was outdoor furniture, outdoor storage units, etc. (Gardening! IKEA is into gardening now. Spring is here. My life is complete! I am so happy.)

Ring....ring....ring.....all too quickly, my phone was ringing and it was the guys to say they were headed our way with Chris in his vehicle and Tim in our new one. I mean, it was in the blink of an eye. Lillie and I weren't even a quarter of the way through the store yet. Panic time. With hope in my voice I asked if they wanted to come inside and meet us there or if they wanted us to come out. They suggested we come out so we all could see the new SUV, figure out what all the buttons and dials and crap do, etc. etc. etc. Since that was the purpose of the trip, I agreed to come out the same door through which we had entered less than a half-hour before, and Lillie and I rushed our way through the infernal maze that is IKEA because I know all the shortcuts. (I was lamenting the fact I hadn't grabbed a cart and thrown all the gardening stuff in it as we looked at things, because I honestly want a lot of it......).

Outside I called them and asked what row they were in. They said halfway between I and J. (I? Ice plant. J? Jasmine.......now I've got plants on the brain......it is not my fault. I blame IKEA for having such a lovely selection of garden enabling stuff.)

The SUV was beautiful and gorgeous, leather seats and all sort of fancy stuff that Tim and Chris love.....heated seats (in case I get cold while hauling home bags of mulch in early Spring). I wasn't thinking about the vehicle. I was thinking about how much gardening stuff I could cram into it. (Hmmm. Fold down the back row of seats and we can fit anything in there....a new wheelbarrow.....bags of mulch.....how many bags of mulch? Maybe 12? Fold down the middle seats and we can probably get 16 bags in there.....or more. Hmm. How many flats of plants can we carry to the Spring Fling with the second and third rows of seat folded down? That is the sort of vehicle-related thoughts that were running through my mind.)

We went to On The Border and ate lunch. (On the Border. Border? I like borders. I love flowering borders on all four sides of the garden filled with flowers and herbs for the wild things. Borders are nice. Food, wait, food? You guys want me to stop daydreaming about flower borders and order lunch? Okay. Fine. Be that way. Clearly you all are fuddy duddies who only want to discuss vehicles and the football playoffs when, clearly, people in a restaurant called On the Border should be discussing flowering garden borders. Whatever. I do not fit in with you people---I am from a different tribe. Where is my tribe????) We ate lunch. (Restaurant tomatoes. Ugh. I want real home-grown tomatoes.)

Chris headed off the bird seed store and Tim, Lillie and I headed for CostCo. We hurried through it, since we have shopping there down to a science. There was all sorts of gardening stuff there now, but I didn't even stop and look because we had a long To Do list of places to stop and shop on the way home and I just wanted to get it done and get headed north out of the DFW metroplex before rush hour traffic began. (Don't worry, I consoled myself, you'll be back here in 2 or 3 weeks and they'll have more gardening stuff in stock and you won't be in such a hurry. You can buy what you want that day.)

We stopped at Sam's Club to pick up two items (specific brands we like) that CostCo doesn't carry. It was a very quick in-and-out, but guess what I saw. Gardening stuff. (Hmmmm. Roses. I wouldn't plant those until February. Packaged perennials. I need to buy those now before they sit in the plastic bags too long and rot. I got a great bag of lilies here last year for Lillie. Bags of soil-less mix. Oooh, I always need some of that. Planters. Tools. Raised bed kits. I am in hog heaven. I hope it takes Tim a while to find the Cat Litter. Darn it. He is back already. What is the rush....) and out of the store we went, all too soon.

On to Gainesville on the endless trip home. I did the only thing a smart woman could do when making a trip to the feed store. I said "We'll just sit here in the car and try to figure out what all these buttons do" (I did this on purpose because I didn't want to buy potatoes, onion, seeds, etc. with a big winter storm bearing down on us. See, I use the brain God gave me sometimes. I am not totally garden obsessed. Not really. Not too much. Not much at all. Hmm. This vehicle's back door can be opened with the remote.....I can have a flat full of plants and still open it, virtually hands free, and put the plants in the area behind the back row of seats. Cool! No. I. am. not. gardening.obsessed. Why do you ask?)

Home again. Driving past the garden. Looking at all the green. Thinking how it might not be green by Sunday evening. Proud of myself that I hardly spoke about gardening on this trip.....not to Tim, not to Chris and not to Lillie. (Whew! What a relief. I didn't torment the three non-gardeners with lots of garden talk. See there. Distraction worked. We didn't discuss gardening at all. I didn't even buy a gardening magazine and Sam's Club had 2 or 3 of them on the magazine rack. I am so proud of myself. Nobody but me knows that my mind wandered away from the conversations we were having and thought of nothing but gardening no matter where we went.

I have concluded I can be externally distracted from gardening stuff, but internally.....that is where my mind goes. Is this normal? It is normal for me. Is it normal to carry on an entire conversation about non-gardening things with other people while you are carrying on a gardening conversation with only yourself inside your own head? And those other people have no idea your mind is fixated on gardening? Am I nuts? (Hmmm. Nuts. We grow nuts here. Pecans. Hickories. Black walnuts. Ooops. Sorry. My mind 'went there' for just a minute.)

See there, Nancy, if you just get out of the house and go do other things, you can make it through the entire day without buying one single thing related to gardening and without saying one word aloud about gardening. You won't order seeds or plants. You won't pick up a few things while you're in the store. Why, you'll hardly have gardening on your mind at all. I know this because I did it! Those random garden thoughts that roll through our minds? Nobody can control those and I don't even try.

I'll try to think of other things to distract us tomorrow because I fear the weather will pin us down indoors, merely because none of us like to have frostbitten nosies and toesies. The wind chill is supposed to be brutal. Remember, y'all, wind chill only applies to fauna and not to florals.......so our plants only have to endure the wind and the cold temperatures, but aren't, technically speaking, affected by wind chill itself.

Is is Spring yet? I cannot remember if I already asked that question today. Oh, and the answer is no, it is not. Luckily for us, we can start planting in late winter.......Crazy? No, I am not crazy.

Dawn

I just sorted flower seeds. I don’t need any seeds. But I’m probably going to order a few anyway.

Today I have tried to get all gardening-obsession thoughts out of my head, after realizing they took over my brain yesterday.

We had roughly 1" of snow on the ground this morning, falling from the nighttime's little band of snow that rolled in sometime after 3 a.m. and brought delightfully huge wet snowflakes---the kind that even stick to the sides of the trees and coat them in snow.

We had been up half the night after the fire pagers went off, so slept in super late, went out to a very late breakfast (could have been lunch just as easily), went to Home Depot and bought a new bathroom vanity, sink, faucet, mirror, etc. for the upstairs hallway bathroom, which is shared by the occupants of the two guest bedrooms. I never mentioned plants. I didn't think about plants. Nor seeds. I didn't want to get distracted from this weekend's planned home improvement project. Well, planned wouldn't be the right word. While eating breakfast, I said something like "we need to do something to that terribly outdated bathroom before I get busy with the garden planting season" and the project quickly evolved from there. After 20 years, that bathroom needed some sprucing up and Tim might not have been on board but then I reminded him "this is the bathroom our granddaughters use when they come to stay overnight", and he instantly was on board.

While waiting for the guy in the paint department to mix up the paint we'll need to touch up spots after we take down the old lights, mirror, etc., I wandered over and looked at all the bags of planting material lined up in the main aisle near the paint row. Since I was standing there waiting for paint, I really couldn't avoid that stuff. So, at HD, they had it all: potatoes, onion sets, garlic, asparagus crowns, the small bagged fruit plants like blueberry and raspberry, strawberry crowns/roots, and then all the little bulbs like freesias, Dutch iris, iris, hollyhocks, glads, and such, as well as peonies, bleeding hearts, lily of the valley and the semi-tropicals: many kinds of cannas, caladiums, colocasias, alocasias, etc. They also had tons of indoor tropical plants, not-so-helpfully identified as "indoor house plants" with nothing having its specific name on it. Then for the outdoors, in mostly small pots they had primroses, pansies, candytuft, cyclamen and various ground covers in very small starter sizes. I am assuming they had seed racks and seed-starting supplies, but I never ventured far enough from the home improvement aisles to see what they had in the indoor part of the garden center.

They do have all their patio furnishings in stock because, you know, we're all dying to rush out and buy patio furniture and accents in January when there is snow on the ground.

We have warmed up all the way to 34 degrees and have had sunlight most of the day, so some of the snow has melted, while some of it was lost earlier in the day to sublimation. All this really means is that our mud is slightly muddier than it was before the snow fell. The roadways are 98% dry though, so even if stuff refreezes tonight, it mostly will not occur on paved surfaces.

At the present time our overnight low sits at a forecast of 23 degrees, so whatever plants in the garden cheerfully endured the snow and barely freezing temperatures and still looked good today are likely to look not so great tomorrow.

So, Nancy, there's your answer---I am combatting the urge to start seeds and to buy plants by redoing the upstairs bathroom. Usually we squeeze home improvement projects into the hot August-September time frame when it is just too hot to spend much time in the garden, but this one is going to happen in a cold January when it is too cold to get excited about seed-starting. I really, really feel like the cold is going to hang on and I don't want to start any seeds too early.

And I got my small SESE order today! Now all I've got left is my second order from Pinetree that I just put in a couple days ago. Well this was so fun, I may have to order a few more here and there. Like Megan. Either than or buy another book or two. Now we all know which would be cheaper.

I was so excited to get my SESE seeds. Garry said he didn't know why, there was snow on the ground so I couldn't PLANT them. I said holding them in my grubby little hands was almost as good as planting them. Right??

Isn't that funny that you got your snow, Dawn! And what a masterful idea, remodeling the upstairs bathroom! Yes, that'll keep you successfully sidetracked, I'm sure! And it sounds like fun!

I kept myself busy today by reading a good book all day. GDW actually has watched TV much of the day, which is unusual for him. My gosh, you'd think neither of us had ever seen snow, as we are both big sissies!

So far, High Mowing, Seeds n Such, and Swallowtail. So much for not needing seeds. We can still have a plant swap this spring, right?

I liked the idea of finding a big park or pavillion. Anyone else thought about this yet?

Got any new and exotic ones, Rebecca? Tell me tell me. Mine are pretty ho-hum but gotta have em for backups--more petunias, more 4 o'clocks (Don Pedros mixed colors), lots more nasturtiums, tithonia, balcony petunias. Dusty miller. Angelonia, Bonfire salvia. And ordered 16 different kinds of tomatoes and some more lettuces/greens. That's it. About 1/5 of what I ordered last year.

Noth particularly exotic, Nancy. More lettuce. Cape daisies. Cucumbers. Poppies. Carnations. 2 new new zinnias. Jambalaya okra. Bella Rosa tomato. Basil.

High Mowing is a nice cheap fix with good seeds. Free shipping over $10.

I‘m also being lazy and ordered Pei Wei for dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow. Because cat.

What about using Whitehorn, Nancy?

We didn't have snow, but I'm pretty sure they had some in the west Moore area and there was a tiny amount at the fairgrounds. That was a cold walk--to and from the parking lot to the building. I actually got an app that helps me find my car in the parking lot. LOL. It works. I didn't wander around. Seriously considered calling Uber to drive me from my car to the building door. haha. Dale and Bill had a good turn out both last night and this morning. (I left after their first class). Got me a new Smart Pot and Bill gave me a mojito mint. I was going to pay for it, but he said no. Very nice. He's an interesting guy. I recommend making a trip to Prairie Wind. It's worth the drive. He had several varieties of herbs there, but I didn't load up on them for several reasons. It was SO nice to be surrounded by plants for those few hours. It is good to see the considerable number of people of all ages who are trying to start growing food. I enjoy talking to the ones who are already gardening, though. It's fun to share stories. Apparently EVERYONE from every area of Oklahoma did NOT have the best tomato year last year. I got tomatoes, but not the number that I've had in the past. And the plants just weren't healthy. Anyway, I enjoy helping at those events, but this time it was particularly enjoyable for some reason. Maybe just the large number of people who were truly interested in gardening made it more enjoyable.

Hopefully it will be less windy tomorrow. There is crap blown all over the property. A friend gave me some of those large lightweight pots and there is one that blew all the way to the back fence. There's also an empty Smart Pot back there. And lots of other stuff. I was too cold to pick it up today. It was all I could do to take the dogs for a 10 minute walk this afternoon.

How is it already 10? The day flew by. I made a sorta complicated dinner. It wasn't hard, just a lot of grating and chopping and stuff like that. I have found a way to cook the pork chops that both men enjoy a lot. No leftovers--not even a small piece. Also a brussels sprouts/quinoa casserole that was also very much enjoyed by everyone in the house. It does have a lot of cheese--3 different kinds: gruyere, fontina, and parmesan.

Also, got another coat of paint on my desk drawers. Painting with cats is always interesting, but with these two...you just can't do it unless they are shut in the bedroom. I have an idea of how I want the third bedroom to look now.. I can use some of my old stuff, but bought a new quilt. It's plain...I would call it bisque. Target has a lot of dusty rose/salmon colored items that will look cute too. BUT how to add all the plants I want to add and keep the cats from chewing on them and digging in them?!

Speaking of cats, Finbar is watching me closely. He knows I normally take out the dogs at this time and he's waiting for an opportunity to dart out the door.

Can you believe that I have not ordered any seed yet? I'm planning on doing it on Friday--payday, you know. I really must get my light shelf cleaned off, but it's hard for me to do specific tasks when there's other people home. I wonder why I'm that way...

Stay warm people!

Nancy, I bought dusty miller too!

Rebecca, have you grown carnations before? Are they easy to grow here? They are great cut flowers when I was learning floral arrangement a few years ago.

Dawn, we are going to remodel our guest bathroom this year too. We will get professional help to replace the bathtub and have tile walls instead. Not sure if we will have enough budget to add tile walls for the shower in our master bath too. I am thinking of staining the master bathroom's vanity and change the vanity top too, but I doubt we can do all of that this year.

I need to figure out my grow list soon, and winter-sow some milkweed. I'm still trying to catch up on all your posts. Hope all of you are doing great. Stay warm!