I got out yesterday with a good friend (another "enabler") & got some bargains...ornies at Target 50% off...which is ok by me...cause I buy some for next Christmas' exchanges. And a plaid cotton tablecloth...which will work for red t'scape, too! Ohhh, the Christmas dishware killed me...cookie jars, platters, etc. etc. I love my Winterfrost Pfaltzgraf beautiful Christmas dishes so I left them alone...but had to go back later in the afternoon & buy 4 salad plates & 4 soup/cereal bowls...they were called "Birchwood Chalet" holiday 2010..spent $19. I'll post a link...loved them, of course, cause of the simplicity of pine branches & cones...yikes, I'm "jeannespines," remember! T'scape coming soon! The reason I went bk was meanwhileb at another specialty store I found a beautiful cookie jar ... called Woolrich Winter White...the ladies booth had 50% off everything...so I bought it for $10...thought it would be WONDERFUL with the dishes at Target...so stopped & bought them. But I broke it as I had unloaded to the stairs & knocked over a wonderful "iron" angel I had bought for my gardens...needless to say, I now have a "bowl" ...not a cookie jar! I wanted to cry! So, that was my after Christmas shopping...exchanged a few things...DH got me new flatware & used it on Christmas & it spottted & changed color in dishwasher (altho said dishwasher safe)...they took it back, no problem & I picked out an Oneida Portfolio "Tortola." ... washed a place setting last night in dishwasher & came out fine.... Ok, I'm rattling on too much...been w/o good Internet contact over the holidays...now is fixed by Qwest & phone lines, too! Happy New Year! Jeanne S. Here is a link that might be useful: Target Birchwood Chalet

Justgotabme - Ha ha! Sadly I wasn't much better before I had kids. At least not about getting organized and staying that way. But I did have more energy to just stay up an extra half hour and tidy up so it didn't get quite so crazy. The good news is that after I wrote my pity-party posting last night I did get up and pick up the scattered mail, any trash on the floor, DD's books and got the toys back to her zone. Some of the stuff is gone off the couch too, mostly just the trash stuff though. Looking at what I just wrote about not being able to get organized and stay that way... I'm not sure that's true. I don't think I have EVER been organized. I have gotten my house neat and clean, but I think I can't keep it that way precisely because it is not organized. On the other hand, I think my kitchen is fairly organized and everything there that belongs there has a home... but it doesn't stay neat because other things like to camp out on the kitchen counter and table. I don't think most of my house is unorganized because I have too much unloved stuff (though that's certainly true of the garage), we do haul stuff to Goodwill several times a year and there's an ongoing goodwill pile in the garage. But I'm sure if I started digging through my closets I could find more to haul away.

I play bridge three Mondays of the month, two Tuesdays of the month and Mexican train twice a monthâ¦â¦they're all different groups of people. This month it's my turn to have Monday bridge and this particular group plays at 9:30 and then the hostess serves lunch. Usually 3 tables of duplicate but this month we only have 8 players so I won't even have to put a leaf in the dining room tableâ¦YEAH! In between, I play 18 holes of golf 3 days a weekâ¦â¦.77 and going strong!!

Allie Szot: "As for the ground being moist, you think mulching would somewhat help fungus grows since it does keep it somewhat shaded, warm and a moist environment after your water (funny how a lot of people advise other to mulch lol when your creating somewhat of a hospitable environment for disaster)!" Everything in gardening (and in life, really) is about tradeoffs and context. Principles in gardening are not necessarily in opposition just because they are contradictory. Which one is right at what time often depends on the back and forth between all the factors that affect your garden. Seemingly contradictory principles can both be true depending. Mulch could harbor bad microorganisms, sure. It can also provide a hiding place for pests that can chow down on your tomatoes. However, soil, if it has been well cared for, is biologically very active (lots of competing, complementary, etc. organisms keeping one another in check and keeping conditions healthy) and there is much less risk of something harmful growing out of control in it vs. the very likely risk of unnecessary stress on your plants if lack of mulch causes weeds, soil temperature fluctuations, and soil moisture fluctuations. In addition, the above-ground tomato plant is not the wonderland of microorganisms that the soil is, and destructive organisms can propagate out of control much more easily up there. That's why mulch on the ground as temperature/moisture/weed control and as barrier between organisms in the soil and the above-ground tomato plant is almost always a good practice. Could this be the time that mulching is the bad thing to do? Sure. Freak events, unlikely events, happen in the world. All we can do is try for best practices and try to balance risks and rewards in our favor. And sometimes, our choices will have been the wrong thing to do in hindsight but still a sound decision at that time, with what was possible to know at the time. It looks to me like the person being hard on you is yourself. Are you depending on your tomato crop to survive nutritionally or financially? If not, then maybe try to have fun and just enjoy the learning process. As someone who likes to geek out with her hobbies, I try to enjoy my failures as much as my successes because it all teaches me interesting stuff. I don't consider it a waste of money if it means that I come back next year with more wisdom. There are no guarantees. But the consensus of the experienced gardeners on here is a good guideline for now. And for those topics where everyone, no matter how experienced, has a different philosophy or for issues that are highly dependent on the individual characteristics of everyone's microclimate and garden conditions, you get to have the fun of experimenting to work that out yourself. For those topics where there is strong consensus from more experienced gardener, consider the consensus seriously.