You're absolutely right, Friedajune. The right way is the way your mother, may her memory be a blessing, made it! And the way my father does. We treasure every Pesach he's with us to make it. I found a kind of dark picture of the table, though not the food (that's the box for the books in the background). The tablecloths come with the tables and chairs so I get a different color every year. It's so warm and Springy this year, hence the pink: I did make the pastry cream and raspberry sauce, finally, and put together the douzaine de crêpes (is that the right way to say it? It's certainly not the mille crêpes I was originally aiming for). The top crêpe in the package turned into a frisbee, but the rest were just fine, but only 13. Given that they had some problems to start with. Judicious stacking and patching actually made for a fairly round cake, I used a bit of pastry cream to ice the sides to make it look better, then ringed the whole with raspberries and edible flowers. There may be unevenness, and some overbrowning, and it's more cheesecake high than cake high, but it tastes great, and the raspberry sauce is awesome. Using arrowroot starch was expensive because I didn't have enough and had to buy it in a little glass jar, rather than the pound bag. Sigh. It made for a divinely smooth custard, however, that was still strong enough not to ooze under the weight. I took it to a family dinner, and this is the remains on its way back in to the fridge.

Bruce, The location you found sounds fine to me and I am sure we all will chip in to cover the cost of renting it. Lisa, Yuck! You could have composted it, but then there would be that smell.... And you do have to watch out for those OGN moderators! (grin) I agree it needs to warm up so stuff can sprout or I'm not going to have any volunteers to dig up, pot up and bring. This is the slowest Spring I can remember in quite a few years. I think mid-April is fine. Surely we'll be warm by then and, if not, we'll just make it work. Go ahead and reserve it and I'm sure we'll all fall into line and just be happy about it. Dawn

Nancy, I expect it will take a while for the house to feel normal again. We had gotten used to the screeching of the tropical birds, the sounds of a lot more feet going up and down the staircase, etc. Yesterday I came into the living room and automatically turned the TV on to Nickelodeon just out of habit because I'm so used to having it on for the kids to watch the cartoons. It was on for a minute or two before I realized there were no children here and switched it to The Weather Channel to see what was going on weatherwise. lol. We had a lot of rain considering it rarely rained hard but was mostly just a steady light to moderate rain that came in waves as the storm rotated around the low pressure center. We're back to being a colossal mud pit again, but I have high hopes that maybe it will dry up fairly quickly in the drier, warmer weather we're expected to have for the next few days. I believe rain and the chance of severe weather return mid-week. Centaureas in general don't like our clay, especially when it is wet, so I don't grow them much. I think I've grown Sweet Sultan only once, and it was in a very wet and cold Spring and didn't do well here. Mullein does fine but tends to be invasive when happy so, believe it or not, I avoid it because I do not want for every single plant in my garden to be an invasive one, and I have too many of those types already. I have no issues with tropical milkweeds and think it mostly is just a pawn in some sort of power struggle between different factions in the gardening-for-monarchs segment of the gardening world. When I have grown it, the monarchs seem to ignore it for the most part---perhaps because we have fields and fields around us with wall-to-wall (or maybe I should say fence-to-fence) native milkweeds in season. The monarchs always seem to prefer the natives, so those are the ones I try to grow for them. I do love the colors of the tropical milkweeds as they seem to blend nicely with a lot of the hot-colored flowers we have in bloom in our garden in summer, including Pride of Barbados (Caesalpinia pulcherrima), Cape Honeysuckle (Tecoma capensis), Texas lantana (Lantana horrida, a name that always makes me laugh), miscellaneous other forms of lantana, and Yellow Bells (Tecoma stans). Because of our heat, our summer plants tend towards flowers in hot summer colors of yellow, orange, red, coral, etc. I might feel differently about tropical milkweed if I lived in a coastal area where it undoubtedly is overplanted and probably in bloom far too late in the season. I can understand why it probably should be cut back near the end of their migratory period so the monarchs will keep on heading towards their overwintering grounds in Mexico. If disease builds up on it, then obviously that is an issue we don't see as much with the native milkweeds that are not as long-lasting each season. Jennifer, Oh those cages and sheets sound like a mess! I would imagine the trees would have been fine uncovered. Our cats finally have calmed down and stopped nibbling plants so much, but to some extent, it always has been a problem. It is just as they get older, the prefer sleeping in the sunroom to devouring my plants. When they are outdoors it is not such a big deal, maybe because there's a large area to roam and they don't focus overly much on the garden, other than coming in there meowing to find me when they need to be petted or to have their tummy rubbed or whatever. After they get a little loving attention, they run off to play again. It might help that we grow catnip, catmint and catgrass in the garden for them. I don't know. One thing they've never outgrown is nipping the bean sprouts and eating them, so when beans are sprouting I try to keep the cats away from them until they've leafed out a bit more and no longer are so appealing as cat snacks. Our chickens lack the sense to come in out of the rain too. We combat that somewhat by only opening their door to go out into their chicken run instead of letting them free-range. They'll get bored if they aren't free-ranging and often decide to just go back into the coop after a while, thereby staying dry more of the time. Yesterday while we were covering up plants, the winds rose into the 40s and the trees were waving and the wind was sort of roaring and it scared the rooster. He started having a big fit...the sort of loud screaming he'll do when there's a coyote, a hawk or some other perceived danger. We couldn't find any reason for his distress, other than the loud wind, so Tim just herded the chickens into their coop and closed the door leading out to the chicken run so they would feel safe and sound. It was only a couple of hours earlier than they usually would put themselves up, and it probably was good for them to get inside out of the moisture. I think the most frustrating thing yesterday was that we are so used to being outdoors and being busy on the weekends. It was really hard to stay indoors. We rarely have days like that where it literally rains all day, and I'm glad. The weather news is just so dismal this morning. The Franklin TX tornado and the others that hit about 100 miles from Franklin killed several people and the one near Alto tore up the Caddoan Mounds museum there during some sort of festival. Then there were more tornadoes last night and this morning, all of them destructive and some of them deadly. I hate severe thunderstorm and tornado season. It doesn't even take a tornado to do massive damage---large hail stones and strong winds do a lot of damage too. The propensity for severe weather makes April and May less enjoyable, weather-wise, than they otherwise would be. Last night's weather was odd. We were down to 40 degrees by around 9 p.m. with an overnight forecast low of 39. Then, before midnight the temperatures begin rising again and didn't drop again, so the time we spent covering plants was in essence wasted time. Oh well, that probably was it for this year and I'm glad. We just as easily could have gone colder than forecast, so it probably always is better to be safe than sorry. Last night a cardinal was perched on a little ledge up underneath the roof of the back porch when the dogs went outdoors one last time before bedtime. Poor thing. I think it was just trying to stay warm and dry. I imagine all the songbirds would like for the cold to back off a bit too. It just seems so bizarre (yet it happens every Spring) to have highs in the upper 80s or lower 90s and lows in the 30s all in the same week. Maybe the new week's weather will be kinder, but I do see possible severe weather in our forecast for mid-week so maybe it won't be. Dawn

Parking will be on asphalt and the pavilion is on concrete. It isn’t really that wet anyway, but I’m sure if one ventured closer to the lake you could find mud? The pavilion is large enough we shouldn‘t need additional shade. There are tables, electric and water. There are a couple of grills at one end if anyone wants to do s’mores. I’m bringing a bag of charcoal, lighter fluid and a lighter. I’ll also throw in a few pieces of oak and pecan if we want a little more than coals. A fire sounds a little less needed than two weeks ago, but? Jen, there is a slight chance of rain early that morning, but it’s like 20%? Signs probably aren’t necessary. It‘s basically a matter of going north at the big sign that has Clear Bay on it to the first crossroads, turn right and follow that road all the way to the end. Or, I think the roads are marked. Take Clear Bay Ave to Little River State Park turn right and go to the end of it.