My daughter and grand daughter were over today, I always enjoy their visits. I told them to order any seeds that they might like to grow. I want to get them interested in gardening, and caring for nature. I am not sure what all I have coming, but I expect it to be fun. We will be ordering more seeds later, mostly flowers, I think. It looks like I had better get a light shelf ready.

How exciting, Larry! Get that light shelf ready. FUN!

Dawn, hope you had a good day with your little girls. What do they like to eat for breakfast?

I worked this morning and then met Mom for lunch.

Then made a couple of chili recipes for our friends who came over tonight. It was a good day, but I am ready to sit and relax with a glass of wine.

A couple of lettuces are sprouting on my light shelf and the Rainbow Lacinato kale. The other kale (Vates Dwarf Blue), spinach, and 3 other lettuces have NOT sprouted. Some of my seed was old, so I'm not surprised.

Tomorrow is supposed to be nice and it might be hard to stay indoors and work on stuff. My house is clean, though. Mostly. So, other than laundry and a dentist appointment...why not spend time outdoors. I could start digging up future flower/herb beds.

So...I have a question about my Chaste tree. I would like to make a large bed around it and plant annuals or maybe small perennials. Has anyone done anything like that. My Chaste tree is only between 3 and 4 feet right now. It did double in size since being planted last March.

Well, apparently today is NOT nice. Foggy and dreary. Oh well.

New lettuce choices have been made and ordered, along with a new kale. Thank you for your opinions (on last week's thread). Here they are:

Anuenue Batavian (pretty sure I never spell this one correctly. haha)

Drunken Woman

Jericho Romaine

Red Sails

Thai Oakleaf

These varieties should make a varied and interesting salad.

Also ordered Premier Kale. Anyone have an opinion on it? I've only grown Vates Dwarf Blue and Rainbow Lacinato.

I have another question. What exactly does self blanching mean? I tried to research it, but don't get it really. I also can't tell if it's a good thing or a bad thing.

Yes, foggy and dreary is right. I had planned on doing laundry (not a good option today, as line drying (no dryer) is not going to happen well) and then a bike ride, before more Bermuda removal. But, I am going to chase the vacuum through the house after a while, and thus, feel like I will be doing something worth while.

Meanwhile, I want to share what I do for conserving water... one of our most precious resources.

In order to have hot water at my kitchen sink, I save the cold... in these:

both fill up, before the water is hot. I later use that water whenever I need some, or pour it in my watering can that lives in my kitchen:

I then go outside and water something... at the moment, pansies are the lucky plants. :)

Prior to using those nice looking (but heavy) pitches I would use a juice bottle:

I decided to stop buying that... and to drink water instead. Great money saver and good for the environment. :) Honestly, I am surprised I still had one of these... must put it in the recycle container.

Have a nice day everyone!

Moni

Thanks so much for the tip, Moni! DUH. Your vases are lovely--and I had two lovely ones, also, that have spent their entire lives up to now, being shut behind glass cabinet doors! Liberated! Regarding the line drying, I've been wanting to do that. GDW didn't take kindly to the idea of putting up clothes lines. But I just figured out! I can have a line drying rack or two right here on the deck, Hahaha!

Larry, I got a couple of my young friends all excited about flowers by teaching them about butterflies. . . works every time with kids.

I've complete changed directions this year, Jennifer. I was excited to get a chaste tree a year ago. Now of course, I find out it's not a native and so am not nearly as excited about it. Besides, don't really have enough sunlight for it. Oh well. BUT now Garry is on the hunt for a pawpaw tree. So far everyone's out of stock, but we'll find one eventually. Have you all eaten pawpaw? What do you think of them?

I had a clothesline in Tulsa and loved it, but had to give it up when my allergies flared one summer. Then when I met Cliff and we adopted the pups, there was no way to use it without the mutts playing tug with my pants.

Cliff and I bicker about the recycling all the time. He sees no reason since OKC has specific rules about how and what can be recycled. So a lot of stuff ends up in the regular trash. And I have one coffee can I use for collecting used coffee grounds and eggshells, and he thinks it's gross. Gotta pick my battles...at least until we move to the country and I really need all those food scraps for the compost.

Hi all

survived the icy rainy mess from Saturday.

i am trying to figure out the best way to reclaim my fil garden space. Unused for years now it is weedy mess. I have access to tons of cardboard. It is going be huge this year. I gotta make up for two years of not gardening. I ma y just get a good hoe and get busy. As soon as the mud dries a l ittle.

tiny house living is okay. after my mom passed I had one week to move since my daughters house sold. It was a terrible time. One of the darkest times of life. I had no plumbing at all no insulation little heat. I took showers at my daughters and the rest of the plumbing issues well it was like camping and not much fun. Youngest son cane got septic water tub insulation wiring etc done. Now that I have new garden shed to store tools and lumber my little home is more homey.

i scored a water trough for four dollars and can’t wait to plant in it. May do lettuces. What do y’all think. It’s big oval maybe 2 1/2x 4 feet.

Hi Kim

No real fun camping in the winter... at least for me. I am glad you have a roof over your head.

Sorry about that awful week.

Good luck in your new to you abode and garden.

Moni

Larry, There's nothing better than sharing the love of gardening with the people you love.

Jennifer, Breakfast here, at least when the girls are here, usually involves Belgian waffles or pancakes with fresh fruit, bacon and fried eggs, cooked sunny side up. Tim is the breakfast chef and it is his favorite tradition with the girls---whipping up a big weekend breakfast. I think he enjoys making weekend breakfasts so much because on weekdays he is up and out of the house quickly for his long commute and his breakfast here at home is a protein shake and a cup of coffee at 5 a.m.

Your soil isn't too wet to dig? We had almost 3" of rain fall here on Friday, and our entire place is either a lake with huge puddles or a swamp. I just hate it. Our soil already was pretty wet from previous rainfall, and now it feels like we'll never dry out. I believe more rain is expected at the end of the week although that's the last thing we need.

We had a lovely weekend with the grandkids. Jana's birthday is this week, so we took the girls' shopping for birthday gifts for her, a little tradition we started a couple of years ago, and then they spent a long time at the dining table adding further decoration to her birthday cards and envelopes. I believe all coloring methods were used....colored pencils, markers, crayons and colored ink pens. Then they rummaged through their craft supplies (I have everything under the sun in the craft supplies) and came up with beads and waxed string to make her jewelry (bracelets and necklaces) to go with the gifts we'd bought her. Both girls love making homemade gifts for the ones they love. In the evening when she came to pick them up after work, we had birthday cake, and had enough left over to send home for them all to share with Chris on Monday. There also was time for lots of kitten play time and watching those 2 girls with the 4 kittens is pretty amusing.

I don't see why you couldn't plant underneath your chaste tree. I don't do it. Mine is fairly old and about 12' wide by about 15' tall and provides fairly heavy shade beneath itself, plus I need to be able to access it on all sides to prune it regularly or it would be much larger. Be sure you consider how you'll reach your tree to prune it and leave places between the perennials where you can stand with your pruning shears or pruning saw.

Self-blanching, with regards to edible plants, generally means the leaves grow upright around the main stalk, surrounding it, so you don't have to lift them up and tie them around it. You most often see the phrase self-blanching used with cauliflower plants. It is preferable to keep direct sunlight off the cauliflower curds. In the old days, this meant you used garden twine to tie the large cauliflower leaves around the stalk to shade the curd as it developed. Now, with self-blanching plants, the upright growth of the leaves covers the curds (mostly) for you.

It was foggy and hazy, almost misty, here all day long until almost 5 pm when the sun finally came out for a few minutes before sunset. I think today is going to be the same.

All the seeds I ordered (flowers and herbs) last week arrived today--ordered from 3 places the same day and arrived in the mail the same day. The Kitazawa seeds catalog arrived too. It usually is about the last one to arrive each year.

Moni, Nice containers!

Nancy, I love line drying, but the pollen season and my allergies have banished it from our lives. We also have so many wild birds flying around and dropping 'stuff' that it just isn't a good option here and I just hate that. One of the things I looked forward to when we moved here was that we'd have the space for a big clothesline, but things didn't work out the way I expected.

If you're going to have a paw paw tree, you need two to get fruit. They are slow to fruit so you won't get fruit for years and years yet. They need to start out as understory trees because they are native to the eastern US where they grow in rich, humusy soil, often in areas with lots of moisture---drainage creeks and ditches and beside rivers where their roots tolerate (quite well) being flooded quite often and in the shade of older trees. They will develop somewhat more tolerance for direct sun after they've gotten older. What usually happens is that they happily remain understory trees until an older tree dies, opening up an area to more sunlight. By then, the paw paw tree usually is old enough at that point to tolerate more sun....in the southeastern US where they have plentiful moisture and lots of humidity. I don't know if they'll tolerate our summer sun as well here. Their flavor is unique. I cannot say it tastes like anything else and, to me, it is an acquired taste--either you like it or you don't. People describe it in many different ways---like a blend of banana and mango, which I don't think is how my taste buds perceive it, and some people's stomachs (I don't know why) cannot tolerate paw paws at all and they cannot eat them. You usually can find paw paw trees online. I know that One Green World and Evergreen Nurseries usually carry them, but those places both can be pretty pricey. You might check Almost Eden or Stark Brothers for them.

Jennifer, Our chickens made hanging clothes out to dry impossible...they'll roost on your clothesline poles and clothesline whether there's clothing hanging on it or not. I don't know if your chickens will do the same, but ours were very annoying and they still are...I cannot even spread out a jacket or a blanket, for example, to dry over the back of a chair outdoors or I'll find a chicken sitting on top it.

Our place is a mix of natives and non-natives that we've planted, and they all have their place. Of course, we started out with property covered in natives and were careful to not remove them, so I don't have to feel compelled to plant only natives to restore our land. I am careful to choose plants that will feed the pollinators, bees, hummingbirds and birds, whether they are native on not, and that means I generally have to avoid newer hybrid flowers as they often do not produce pollen that attracts anything. That frustrates me at times when I'd rather choose pretty, showy varieties over less showy old open-pollinated varieties, but I generally make the choice that is best for the wild things.

Congrats on getting organized---it does feel good, doesn't it?

Kim, I'm sorry for the worst and darkest week ever, and glad things are looking up now. Is your daughter moving somewhere else? To another house nearby or further away?

I think greens will work in your water trough, but they'll work best in shade during the hottest part of the day. I've grown virtually everything under the sun in a 4' round galvanized water trough that I've had at least 33 or 34 years now. The bottom is rusted out, but since it holds soil-less mix and not water, that doesn't really matter. Mine has worked best when situated in shade during the hottest parts of the afternoon. I've always filled the bottom 1/2 to 2/3s with hügelkultur materials---mostly old tree limbs that are half-rotted when I add them to it and topped it off with compost and a good soil-less mix on the top third, so it has a lovely rich, humusy growing mix nowadays. Last year we moved it from the back garden to the front garden and placed it, and my decorative windmill, right beside the garden shed in morning sun and dappled shade in the afternoon. I often grow sweet potatoes (ornamental or edible) around the edge of the tank so they can trail over the edges and shade the galvanized metal from direct sunlight. Some years when I have had it in full sun, I just placed smaller containers (5 gallon buckets worked fine for this, and so did cat litter buckets although they were not as attractive) all around it and planted stuff in them---this also helped shade the galvanized metal from the hot July and August sunlight.

Another dreary day awaits. January has got to be grayest, dreariest month.

Dawn

A long time ago I figured out the dryer shrunk my clothes. When you're fat, that is unacceptable. So I put an expandable curtain rod above the washer. It handles blouses on hangers and the occasional slacks. This has annoyed my husband for 25 years. When the kids moved out and the front bath wasn't used for showers I put a drying rack in the tub and I started hanging blouses on the shower rod. We have one of the umbrella style clothes dryers outside, but I get vertigo tilting my head to use it. Ron loves to dry sheets on it (I'm with you, Dawn, pollen). He sometimes dries his jeans on it. I have wondered if I put it through a hole in a table like a patio umbrella if it would be easier to use, but then, we need the tables.

Kim, I am so sorry you've been roughing it. I hope it's better now!

Your pitchers would go with my stonewear Moni.

I can't tell you if Ron and I are well yet. He wants to go for all you can eat ribs tonight. I have doctors appointments Wed and Thurs for other things, so hopefully I will do better. Mostly I have no stamina. I've been trying to talk myself into winter sowing, hasn't happened. I watched Tea with the Dames on Hulu yesterday. Famous British Actresses Maggie Smith, Judy Dench and 2 I didn't know, but one was married to Sir Lawrence Olivier.

Ron is discouraged with store bought lettuce. Every time we buy romaine (my fav) it gets recalled. He buys the "artisan" for a big price and it rots..or was already rotten when he got it. I HAVE to get some lettuce started.

3 or 4 years ago I bought a Meyer lemon and a Baress (?) Lime. Finally got fruit. They are both lemons. Not sure 4 lemons are worth the time and effort and space.

Hey y'all 3 days till the end of Persephone days!!!

I want a witch hazel tree (bush). Have you seen how they bloom in winter? And American Strawberry bush, maybe desert willow, rusty blackhaw. Maybe a sassafras tree. I've been looking at the white fringe tree. Ron wants redbud and a dogwood.

Have a good day.

YAHOO! The sun is shining!

:)

Moni

Amy, sassafras doesn't do well in Oklahoma (at least that was my experience and what someone told me)...ie mine died immediately all 3 or 4 times I tried it. I believe the reason given was ph.

Thank you all. I am getting afrig this week. Moving on up Next step water heater.

this trough is black plastic and I think I will put on the north side of shed number two. I will take pictures when I remember.

i will fill with sticks and rotting logs. Then I can get leaf compost from “forest”.

after living in the panhandle anything with more than 2trees is a. Forest.

As a kid, we had sassafrass growing on the chainlink fence around our playground at school. I remember the teachers would fuss at us for breaking pieces of & chewing on it every day at recess. That was in Grove, so maybe we just had the right type of soil for it there.

I figure I’ve been lurking long enough! Trying to keep up on reading is a little tougher with the way OGN has grown.

I saw the tomato grow list thread and will try to add mine soon.

My overall garden plan is going to be much smaller this year, in case I get busy like I did last summer. I finally got around to digging through my seed stash and about the only thing I need to order is a couple of tomato varieties. Vorlon, Sioux and maybe Cherokee Carbon?

Kim, if it weren’t for the distance, I have a small tankless water heater I’d just give you. I got it to use when I build my butcher shop/canning kitchen, but I’m looking at going a different route.

HI Kim. I'm glad your house is coming together. I'm sorry about your dark time. I hope you're feeling better. I am excited about your future garden. Have fun with your feed tub. I would put greens in it too. Something like that might be easy to cover with insect netting once those little bugs start eating on our greens.

Dawn, we didn't get much rain. It didn't even register in the rain gauge. Our little area is often missed. Sometimes we get too much, but normally only when everyone else gets WAY too much. I wanted the rain, though. Maybe we'll get it at the end of the week. It's a mess, but I would like my newly planted trees to have some.

It is a beautiful afternoon, but I spent most of the day doing inside chores. I'm trying to sort through everything and clean out. It's my winter project, although days like today make it hard to stay focused. I did go out and clean up the coop a bit.

Thanks for the reminder, Dawn, about leaving a place to do pruning on the chaste tree. It's in the middle of our "backyard". I want to get rid of the yard and make paths and beds (sorta like what you're doing), so thought about making a giant circular bed around it.

Shoot. I didn't tie up the leaves of my cauliflower plants. Never heard of such a thing. LOL

Curd is the edible part? The curds on mine have enlarged. I did find a stupid tiny little worm on one this morning.

I can see my jerk chickens lounging on the clothesline. They are having a hard time staying in their yard. And their yard is BIG. They have plenty of space to more around. We will work on it soon. I'm think about repurposing some chainlink from the dog's old yard. Chainlink will make it easy for Tom to weed eat around. It's a mess right now. I wasn't smart when I made that yard and used plastic fencing. Live and learn.

Amy, I'm with Ron on store bought lettuce. I'm tired of buying it. I must find a way to grow it year 'round. What lettuce seed are you going to order?

The only thing left I need to order is onions. I think I'll do the intermediate sample pack that Dawn talked about. Normally I plant at least 120 onions, but maybe I'll do fewer this year. As much as we cook with them, I should rethink that....

Don't know anything about sassafrass. Except it's fun to say!

Kim, prayers for you. Thanks goodness things are progressing for you. Yay for fridge and will pray that the water heater gets there sooner rather than later.

I have a large seed catalog library here--SO many catalogs. I'm going to contact most of the companies to tell them to take me off their catalog list. They're fun to look at, but such a waste of paper!

Thanks to Jen for the tomato and pepper seeds (and partridge pea seeds). She's an expert seed envelope maker. I am going to have a field of cilantro out in the raised beds, it appears. What fun that will be! It even jumped over to the next bed. And over where I threw the wildflowers, I've NO idea what's coming up. That'll be fun, too.

We've been getting more than our share of rain. We got just a little over 4 inches last Friday and Saturday. I feel so sorry for the Whitehorn Cove Marina--they just can't get a break. But I am thankful that we don't have clay right here and that it runs off well.

Speaking of rotting logs, Kim. . . I'm excited to build my first real hugelkultur bed with a bunch of the half rotten firewood the neighbor dumped off here. I'll haul it over to the sunny area near the raised vegetable bed area and begin working on it (or them) in March. Might take a while to get all the compost materials added to them.

Thanks for the information on the paw paws, Dawn. Guess we'll skip those! Next. Plum trees. What are some favorites from you all? Garry's two pear trees and apple trees are hanging in there just fine, though they haven't produced yet. Two or three little apples last year. . . This will be their third year. But he wants some natives now! Haha, I think I have created a monster--but I love it.

Lettuce. I have lots of lettuce seeds and despite the fact they aren't supposed to be viable long, I find they'll make it 2 or 3 years. I'm a sucker for red lettuce, or green with red streaks. I prefer romaine or a sturdy leaf lettuce. All time favorite is Chadwick's Rodan. Next is Black Seeded Simpson. I bought Mayan Jaguar. I have Muir from Johnny's to try. Last year I threw all the old lettuce seeds under the tomatoes for living mulch. Most went to seed, so I could have a pretty good stand in those beds if I can keep Ron out of them. I also have seeds for moshe, claytonia, tatsoi, chicory (which is a pretty plant even if you don't like the taste.) If you want summer salads, plant purslane (cover with netting) and I like Jewels of Opar leaves. I TRY to like amaranth, and I keep buying seeds for varieties that are "tender and sweet". I'll let you know if that is ever true. However, my chickens LOVED amaranth leaves. Egyptian spinach grows like gang busters here (also known as jute and melokia) but I didn't care for it raw. You can make herbal tea from it and it is supposed to be nutritious.

I believe we got about 2.5" of rain. The only thing growing in the garden is one kale plant I hope will look better when there is more light. I have one pot with ornamental cabbage and a red kale in it that has been pleasing me all winter.

I didn't plant garlic last fall and I'm not doing onions this year. I still have onions in the freezer, and they take up too big of a footprint. I have walking onions and I'll probably plant some scallions.

I have to go, I have a medical test today and we have errands to run. We'll see how I hold up.

Amy, I feel the same way about store-bought lettuce. We buy romaine, it gets recalled. Buy anything else, and it seems to go bad so quickly. It has been so warm that I bet lettuce seed sown directly in the ground a couple of weeks ago would be up and growing now, though always at risk on cold nights. (Row covers could solve that.) Now that we're turning colder again with weather more in the normal January temperature ranges for the next couple of weeks, I don't know that lettuce outdoors would have a chance. Maybe sow some seeds in a pot you can set outside to catch sunlight all day and bring in at night? January is such a tough month. I hate starting lettuce seed indoors. Even when I keep the flats very close to the lights, the lettuce tends to get leggy so fast, and that just drives me nuts. I hate leggy plants.

I understand the difficulty in getting one's energy levels back to normal after being sick. That flu knocked me for a loop. Last week I thought my energy level finally was back to where it belonged, but now it is even better this week so maybe this week it finally is back where it belongs. I had the flu right after Thanksgiving, so look how long it has taken for me to really feel normal again! I always heard that the older we get, the harder it is to bounce back after illness and I hate to admit how much I do believe that is true based on my experiences the last few years.

I love citrus trees and had a lemon, lime and orange for a long time. The best thing about them is the scent of their blossoms. I found production low and slow and don't really think they are worth the time and space so no longer have them. That doesn't mean that I don't want to buy them again....every single time CostCo has citrus trees in the stores in spring, I want to buy them. I usually talk myself out of it though.

I'm glad the Persephone days are about done! That is one nice sign that the growing season approaches.

Most of those trees you list would not do well for me, so I haven't planted them here, even though I want them. Your area likely is a lot more acidic than mine though. Sassafras, for example, needs acidic soil and I have extremely alkaline soil. Since you're east of I-35 and have higher rainfall than I have, maybe they would work for you if your soil is acidic enough. However, they don't like heat and need to be grown as understory trees in our climate, so do you have a place one could grow in the shade of a larger tree?

American Strawberry Bush isn't picky about soil pH as far as I know, but it likes part shade, does best as an understory plant and prefers a woodsy, humusy, moist soil. This is the part that gets me every time, because none of our soil stays moist in the heat of the summer. It all goes dry as a bone except in the wettest of summers...and sometimes even then. I love strawberry bushes and would plant one if I didn't fear I'd have to water it constantly in the summer. I am trying to landscape with plants that will grow on whatever summer moisture we get, so that future irrigation needs (at least once the plants are established) will be minimal.

Desert Willow has done well for me, though it really needs a soil that is more well-drained than the clay around our house. They are happier in a soil that drains more quickly than ours does.

Rusty Blackhaw Viburnum is one of my favorite plants. It is a tall (sometimes tree-sized), native understory shrub in our woodland. We don't have a lot of them....maybe a dozen or two scattered across about 10 acres of woodland. Their foliage is attractive and, when they bloom in springtime, the flowers are just gorgeous. I think they look attractive year-round, as even the bark and shape of the virburnums is attractive and quite noticeable after the leaves fall in autumn. The leaves are glossy and pretty during the growing season. It actually prefers a drier habitat which probably is why these work so well for us, so the places in the woods where we have them growing tend to be upland slopes where the soil drains away to lower land nearby. I think one of these could work in almost any part of OK, other than NW OK and far western OK.

I would think hard before planting a white fringe tree as they are being killed by Emerald Ash Borers. Unfortunately, EABs are found in northeastern parts of OK now, and perhaps in other parts of the state. Other than that, I know they need moist, understory/sheltered locations.

Redbuds obviously are native here. We have them as understory trees all over our property and I have a very strong love-hate relationship with them. They look incredibly gorgeous for the 2 or 3 weeks they are in bloom every spring and I love them during that brief period of time. The rest of the year, they have a tendency to get all sort of foliar diseases and look like crap, so I hate them and want to cut them all down (on our property, not everybody else's) during that time....which is most of the calendar year. I don't know that I'd ever plant one on purpose unless the breeders can breed or select one that doesn't get anthracnose and all the other foliar diseases. Redbuds seem like a magnet for fungal diseases on their leaves and I have little to no patience for plants that need regular applications of fungicide just so their foliage can be healthy.

Dogwoods are so pretty when they are in bloom. I love them and would plant them if they'd survive in my area. There's only one kind of dogwood that tolerates the soil and heat of southcentral OK, and that is the roughleaf dogwood (Cornus drummondii), which is native on our property where it only grows as an understory tree in part shade. It seems to prefer morning sun and afternoon shade much more than morning shade and afternoon sun. To me, it looks more like a shrub than a tree until it eventually gets really old and then attains a height of maybe 12-15'. As far as I know, it is the only dogwood that prefers alkaline soil. Since that is the only kind of dogwood that would survive our alkaline soil, alkaline water, poor drainage and heat, I'm going to love it. Actually I do love them---they have very pretty white berries that feed a lot of birds. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on viewpoint) the birds drop the berries and the roughleaf dogwoods spread everywhere along fencerows in the shade of taller trees and on the edges of woodlands. I am not sure if they spread as thickets from underground roots/suckers or if the thickets are from birds dropping seeds, but down here, if you have one roughleaf dogwood, you have tons of roughleaf dogwoods. So, assuming you have acidic soil and aren't bound by the same constraints I have, I bet normal dogwoods would do well for you. I have a friend who lives near us on a high limestone ridge where the soil is mostly limestone rock very thin gravelly soil and is highly alkaline---worse than our red clay. She kept raving about how gorgeous her huge dogwoods were in spring time, and I kept telling her that her soil was too alkaline for dogwoods. So, finally I went over to her place and looked at her huge dogwoods (downhill in the woods, so not on the worst part of the rocky ridge) and they were not dogwoods---they were very mature Mexican plum trees. They are still just as pretty, but I got the impression she was disappointed that they were "only" Mexican plum trees and not dogwoods. I don't know why---I'm never disappointed when I find a tree that does well enough here to naturalize and spread itself around. If you find your soil pH isn't right for dogwoods, a Mexican plum could give you a similar look in springtime.

Moni, Hooray for the sunshine! We still have fog and clouds, but are expected to eventually have sunshine sometime later today.

dbarron, Exactly! I'd love to have a sassafras tree but they'd never survive down here, so I look at them in photos and long for one every year.

Kim, I bet it is good to be around more trees again, and I am glad that the water heater is next on your list of improvements. Just keep plugging away and your tiny house will be what you want it to be eventually, and hopefully sooner rather than later. Rome wasn't built in a day.

Bruce, For as much time as being Admin for the FB groups takes, I don't know how you have time to do anything else.

Jennifer, We often are in the same boat with you, getting missed by the rain, but not this year (or last year, most of the time). This rain was supposed to mostly miss us and I was relieved that our forecast showed us only getting somewhere between 1/10 and 1/2 of an inch. So, naturally, we got 3", and most of that fell in a relatively short period of time, leading to flooding and flash flooding. I wish it wouldn't rain again for the next two months so we could get the sod cut and removed for the landscape renovation, etc. You cannot use a sod cutter when the soil is too wet, and our clay stays too wet for far too long. Now we are playing the waiting game waiting for puddles to dry up and the soil to dry out and, instead, there is more rain in our forecast for Thurs-Fri.

Yes, the cauliflower curd is also known as the head and is the edible part. It is not too late to tie up your leaves. If you don't blanch, the world won't necessarily end---the cauliflower heads just will have a stronger flavor, hopefully one that still is acceptable. If you found one caterpillar, there undoubtedly are more, so you might want to spray the plants with Bt 'kurstaki'. Those caterpillars will be just as bad on cauliflower (and your brussels sprouts) as they are on broccoli and cabbage. Usually at this time of the year, there's not many caterpillars around, but it has been warm enough that perhaps you already have the cabbage moths laying eggs there. I think army worms will prey on these plants as well. I know they were on my brassicas last spring.

Nancy, I've liked pretty much every plum tree we've ever grown, but am especially partial to Methley, Ozark Premier and Santa Rosa, which all are Japanese type plums. I don't grow the European plums. Be sure you do your research and figure out if you are planting Japanese varieties or European varieties because they bloom at different times, so you cannot depend on the two different types to pollinate one another. The Japanese varieties bloom earlier, and in my yard the three I listed all pollinate each other. The European varieties bloom later, so if you have more than one European variety they would pollinate each other but not the Japanese, except maybe in a weird year when they all pollinate together (and I haven't seen that happen often in my lifetime). My dad grew European plums and I didn't like those for fresh eating nearly as much as I like the Japanese plums. As with all stone fruit grown in OK, getting a harvest is iffy here because of our erratic spring weather. The plums tend to have their chilling requirements met pretty early in the season, making them more prone to burst out into bloom during winter warm spells, only to lose their flowers and fruit when the typical colder weather returns. I prefer native sand plums to all of the above because they only get fooled by a warm winter spell very rarely, making them more likely to actually produce a crop. With stone fruit crops in OK and with our erratic spring weather, I usually get a great peach and/or plum crop about 1 year out of 3, no crop 1 year out of 3, and a fair to middling crop about 1 year out of 3. In more recent years, let's say maybe the last 8 years or so, I think it has been harder....maybe a great crop 1 year out of 4, a fair to middling crop 1 year out of 4 and no crop 2 years out of 4. When we renovate our landscape, the last of the fruit trees we planted 20 years ago are coming out. They are getting shaded out and sickly, not that productive any more and will be replaced by something else. I don't think we'll plant any more fruit trees in any other location either. We'll just rely on our little thicket of native plums for enough fruit to make jelly. As our climate becomes seemingly more erratic in winter/early spring, it seems like the fruit trees are struggling to produce and I think our best production is a full decade behind us.

Dawn

Dawn, we had a redbud at our other house. I don't like the seed pods. But Ron really wants one and they support a large number of insect species, so there's that. The east side of the front yard is shaded by the neighbor's large maple tree and a @%&$# privet hedge, so I think it would work as an understory area. In the back on that side it stays wet, so if that pattern is maintained, it should be pretty wet there, too. Ron is also enamored with dog woods. The lady across the street had one in basically the same position, though I don't know if it has survived. Maybe I could convince him to add a Mexican plum...or a sand plum, but I don't need a thicket. Nixing the white fringe tree will save me money and I've seen those ash borers, so I know they're here. I'll probably try an American Strawberry bush, on the east side. The west side of the front yard is full sun and hard to water. It will take something tough, and short since there are power lines there. I want to get something planted because we took out bradford pears and I don't want them to regrow.

I think established lettuce is hardy down to 25* and you can throw a frost blanket over it for a few more degrees. But there has to be light. 2 more days now ;).

Went for my appointment, a bit too much walking, but that is the point, I can't breathe. Then went to the bank, then Braums. I'm tired now, but at 4 we pick up a grandkid from school. I'll sleep tonight. I just want to take my "public" clothes off. It was nice out, though.

I saw chickens on my clothes line a couple of times, but I had a lot more sturdy roosts for them that they usually chose.

Bye for now.

Amy, I don't care for the redbud seed pods either, but after a while I don't notice them because I'm looking at all the horrible fungal leaf spots on the leaves. lol. If they weren't so pretty in spring, I'll go out with a chain saw and cut them all of them. As it is now, there's only two close to the house---one the southern edge of the woodland near the front yard and one in the front pasture that needs to be cut down because we try to avoid letting trees establish in that wildflower meadow and we've been ignoring this one for 3 or 4 years now. All the others are in the woodland and I can ignore those---I only notice them in spring when they are blooming.

Do you have room on the west side of the house for a vitex? They are median trees in Texas where they get no care and they do just fine, even in brutally hot weather. When I was a kid in Fort Worth, somebody in our neighborhood planted one in their front yard, down near the street, attempting to hide the fire hydrant in the corner of their yard there. Well, it never really hid the bright red fire hydrant but it eventually got big enough and wide enough to really block a lot of the view of the house from the road, which made it sort of an unplanned "privacy hedge" even though it was just the one tree---it spread out twice as wide as it was tall. Probably they were pruning it back almost to the ground every few years, but if they were I wasn't paying attention because I was just a kid. I did love it when it was in bloom.

Lettuce this early outdoors always freezes so I don't bother. Maybe I would if I like lettuce more than I do, but it just isn't worth it, especially since chickens love lettuce. That's a hard enough battle to fight with them when the weather is nice and I'm out daily.

I remember how hard it can be to breathe after a lung infection. Hope you get back to where you can breathe better soon.

It is rainy and icky here today. I am so tired of it. Even on the good weather days we mostly had fog and low clouds and very little sun even though at least we did have warm temperatures. They are saying 1-2" of rain for us over the next two days. Ugh. We don't need it. The ponds and creeks are full, there's puddles everywhere, and needless to say, there's deep mud. Bah humbug. Who needs all this mud and rain in January. It has rained so hard a couple of hours south of us in the DFW metro that some areas, especially in Fort Worth, had flash flooding earlier today when the rain really got to going pretty good. I hope these storms rain themselves out before they move too far into southern OK. So far the rain that has fallen here has been light rain and that's more than I want at this point. At least we aren't under a Winter Weather Advisory for ice like parts of western and northwestern OK.

I try to send dogs and cats out to play in between rain showers. They aren't thrilled with the wet ground, but they are immensely bored indoors too. I could spend all my time mopping up muddy pawprints off the floor, but I ignore them for a while and have stopped trying to keep the floors spotless because it simply isn't possible.

I am going stir crazy from the winter gloom and mess. I intend to go shopping this weekend. Not exactly shopping for anything specific, just shopping to get out. We do have to go to Costco, so I'll find places to drop in and look around while we are down in the metroplex. Maybe we'll go to Central Market. We haven't done that in a while. I always try to stack shopping on top of planned Costco trips so we are being efficient and getting the most out of the time and gas spent driving down there. Maybe someone will have gardening stuff of some sort in the stores. Nobody here around us really has anything yet---they still have too much Christmas clearance stuffed into the garden center aisles to have put out much spring merchandise yet.

The outlook for the next couple of weeks continues to show us cool and wet, just like January ought to be, whether we like it or not.

Dawn

I like the glossier redbuds, which I am given to understand probably means the Texas Redbud (Cercis canadensis var texensis), though I don't know if they are any better with pests. Sometimes Redbuds (driving by at distance) do better than others..sometimes they look purely sickly (in my yard for instance) (lol). Though I've certainly grown lovely Redbuds too. Roll the dice?

Well...I don't have much to talk about.

All the newer lettuces have sprouted. None of the older lettuce has sprouted. Both kale varieties are up. And about a third of the spinach is up. I'll probably throw out the old lettuce seed. There's no reason to keep it. I have the new stuff coming in from SESE soon. My friend gave me several more varieties too.

If I can't plant it outdoors in March, I'll eat it from the light shelves. The smell of seed starting....ahhhh!

We are getting our rain now. It is cold and miserable. I feel like sleeping quite honestly.

Dawn, have fun on your shopping trip. Our stores have the Christmas cleared out finally and there are seed racks out. Obviously, no plants, other than the few house plants.

Y'all were talking about fruit trees. It really is too bad that fruit trees do not do well here. What a dream to have tons of fresh fruit. My poor little columnar apple trees haven't bloomed or made fruit in 2 years. They didn't make many apples, but the ones they did make were so tasty. Even the smell...delightful. So...because fruit trees don't do well here, I should look into other types of fruit. Blackberries maybe? And more melons.

I feel jealous of the featured gardeners on the facebook page, Humans Who Grow Food. So many of them have nice fruit trees. They get loads of food.

Maybe some hot tea and a hot bath?

Hi all. . . . yes, cold and miserable here, too--but thankfully like January should be. I told Garry even though I don't like this weather, I was glad it was being January again, after yesterday. Yes, a hot bath sounds good, Jennifer--maybe a hot toddy instead of the tea. :)

The kitties were even glad to spend nearly the whole day inside, for a change. I'm supposed to go into town first thing in the a.m. but am not sure I'll make it, as forecast shows 29 and rain. Guess we all know what that means. Plus I'll be feeling sorry for myself because it'll be cold and rainy. Plus I don't like to go anywhere first thing in the a.m. LOL

My SIL in Wyoming and I have started something that is really a lot of fun! I told her I wanted to get rid of plastics this year. She liked it. At first we were just talking about how we should be better at living sustainably. Then I sent her a link on laundry sheets, then she sent me a link on shampoo and conditioner "bars," as opposed to bottles. Then Moni sent that deal about the water pitchers by the sink--and I happened to have to great pitchers, so promptly got them out.
At any rate, now we have turned it into quite a fun game. I'd love to invite you all to play along. Garry and I have a smaller footprint, in general, probably, than many, since we're not big shoppers, and since I don't like going into town. I've unplugged everything in the house that we didn't use. . . and now unplug most of the rest of the stuff if I'm not using it. I think my most fun thing is seeing ways to not use water. I pretend like its rationed out, maybe a few gallons a day. Have any of you put a brick or stone or something in the toilet tank to use less water? And paper towels! Those are going buh-BYE. I never ever used paper towels til I moved down here. Now I need to get GDW to see it's quite possible to live without them. Worst of all, baggies and garbage bags. I know there are biodegradable garbage bags, but some are not as "biodegradable" as others, so will have to do research into that. Baggies have me stymied a little--suggestions? I especially was using a lot of them for freezing purposes.

At any rate. . .I've been quite preoccupied with sustainability/creation care/saving-the-planet issues. I find it to be SO rewarding.

Now you lettuce freaks have me wanting to run out and plant it now! LOL. But I won't, Dawn. Listening to you is often like listening to my better angel. How about that! First we had you pegged as a kind of Tinker Bell. . . now you're a better angel. WOW! And indeed, you are both.

Our yard is SO ugly right now, but isn't it always in January. I was out in the 68 degree weather yesterday and just DREADING the clean-up that is to come. But seeing henbit up everywhere, crazy tickled at all the cilantro here there and everywhere, new parsley and oxalis hardy upstarts. Ditto, fennel, everywhere. I'm thinking about letting fennel just for the most part HAVE that center bed, along with hyssop, some zinnias, the St. Johns wort and echinacea-- and ripping out all the lemon balm, an otherwise fierce contender, I will rip it out and confine it to a container.

I love gardening for all the new things to learn, for all the challenges, for all the open-ended questions and experimentations. And now, for tending God's gardens.

I might be making a trip to Shawnee soon ;) it’s only 2 1/2 hours.

thank you a ll for the well wishes. It’ was so strange knowing my mom was leaving me and yet when it happened I was completely unprepared. And my siblings were so distant with my mom I had no one who could truly understand the depth of the pain. I was the only one with her as she passed and it was an honor for me. My son tried to get here in time from the panhandle.

she loved that I enjoyed gardening so much even tho she did not understand why anyone wanted to get dirty and sweaty on purpose. So now the seed catalogs including baker creeks new market gardener catalog are all over my table and I can’t focus on anything else. Bulk seeds!!! I am going to order purple pac choy. For sure and maybe okra. Forgive me if I repeat myself. It happens allot lately.

Nancy a hugel bed sounds awesome. When I have my own land I will experiment so much more.

Dawn natural grocers in Denton carries Nice selection of all organic produce. And Saturday I have samples from 1-3. Just saying☺️

Kim, we always miss the samples window! LOL We need to plan our shopping trip to NG better.

Why are you going to Shawnee? It's only a half hour from my house. Ethan went to the opening of Monk's Market yesterday. I didn't know he was going or I would have had him pick up some honey for me. He said that had honey and fresh eggs.

Nancy, our property is overwhelming ugly too! And the warmer temps have weeds everywhere. (even though it's so cold right now!) I also have a carpet of cilantro. We've used it quite a bit this winter in recipes. The parsley too.

I love all the things you're doing, Nancy. I try to be more mindful of most of that as well. Like I mentioned a few days ago, some of the things I want to incorporate into our home will not be okay with my husband. He will always want paper towels. He will always want toilet paper. He will always use trash liners.

He does take reusable bags to do our shopping. He hates it, but he will do it.

For my peace of mind, I've just let some things go. I can't stay in that state of being upset because we could be doing better. I can get very stressed about all the things that we should and ought to be doing. Then I can't sleep and have a racing heart...and just in general upset. My heart has started skipping beats, which I will check out with a doctor soon.

Okay...now that bath.

It always cheers me to find new things growing, so yesterday I went on an exploration and found:

1) The Lent Lily (first daffodil to bloom in my neighborhoods) just emerging from the ground.

2) Winter aconite stems about half way to bloom. Depending on temperatures I'd say within a week or two to golden buttercups. Amazing that by end of March, they'll be dormant again for another year.

3) Cyclamen coum flowers showing color. Two weeks or three.

4) Hellebore oriental hybrids showing color on buds. Month or so.

Spring is coming, and hopefully winter doesn't come back in full blast and ruin it. Delay is ok, but blasting buds is not.

dbarron, I've always wonder if the Texas redbuds would do better and would resist the leaf diseases, but I haven't wondered about it enough to get motivated to plant one and find out. I do think they look gorgeous in the nursery. I love redbuds in bloom---it gladdens my heart to see the trees scattered throughout our woodland as understory trees but, up close and personal, that foliage is ugly when covered with fungal spots the rest of the year. I cannot get past the ugly foliage, and I have no desire to grow trees that need to sprayed with fungicides.

Jennifer, I am going to lure Tim out for a leisurely day of shopping by suggesting lunch at Red Lobster, which he adores. We went there for his birthday and he kept saying why don't we eat here more often, so one of my goals for 2020 is to make sure he gets to eat there more often. We do tend to get in a rut and just keep going to the same place over and over. Now, it isn't my fault if the Red Lobster is close to places I want to shop, right?

Fruit is very frustrating in Oklahoma. We got lucky and had a great first decade with fruit trees here, but most of those years were drought years or on the very dry side of normal years. It was wet in 2001, 2004 and 2007 but otherwise mostly dry. Why does this matter? Well, oddly, it seems like dry winters, which generally do warm up early, just don't have the really cold weather come back and slap down the trees after they bloom early. In wet years, or years where we are alternating wet and dry a great deal, there always seems to be one more cold front sliding in at the end of spring to freeze back early bloomers. These last few wet years have been awful because there's a late cold spell every time. Twice in the last 4 or 5 years even the native sand plums bloomed too early and lost their fruit, and that is fairly rare overall. The native fruit and nut trees tend to have evolved to bloom later which is why they do so well here, at least most of the time. I don't mind winter weather at all if it would just stay wintery. But it doesn't. We'll have a high of 50 degrees and a lot of 30 and that is winter. Then, three days later we'll have a few days with highs in the 60s or 70s and lows in the 50s and that definitely is not wintery enough. No wonder the trees get all wound up and burst into bloom early.

Blackberries can do very well here. I used to grow a lot of them. Then the voles began eating my plant roots underground and I gave up. Had I know voles eventually would show up, we would have built raised beds with hardware cloth lining for the blackberries, but the voles didn't really show up for the first 10 years because we always had bobcats in the garden due to the lower fence. If there is anything that I hate about having the 8' high fence to keep deer out of the garden is that it keeps bobcats out of the garden so voles come into the garden a lot more now. It is frustrating that the solution for one problem created a whole new set of problems with another pest.

Nancy, We have henbit everywhere here now and I am glad. It is one of the plants that will nurture butterflies in winter and early spring before much else has begun blooming. I just hope our persistent puddles of water don't kill it all. Our January rainfall so far, in only the first half of the month, is a little over 5" and normal for us at this time of the year would be 1.75" for the whole month. Since the soil is heavily saturated, none of the water is draining away. When the big puddles sit there for weeks and weeks, everything they cover dies, so I hope they don't kill the henbit.\

Kim, It is the oddest feeling. We were sitting right there with Mom, and had been for days, and we knew the end was near and was likely that evening. Yet, when it happened, we were stunned....not that we thought it wasn't happening, just that...I don't know....it did happen? Maybe we expected something more dramatic, but she just stopped breathing and that was that. Chris (who, of course, is a firefighter/paramedic) was the first to notice, and he stepped quietly towards her and said "Granny?". I knew in that instant from the soft tone of his voice that she was gone and the he had picked up on it even before the hospice nurse sitting there beside her bed.

I always think that we will stop by Natural Grocers on our way home from Costco, but here is what happens every time....by the time we are through and the car is packed, we have on blinders and have one goal in mind....to get the heck out of the metroplex and get back home away from all the buildings, the big roads, the concrete, the traffic, all the people, etc. It happens every time. Even if we say we are going to stop someplace else, we don't. We mean to. We say we will. Ultimately, though, our general distaste for the craziness and noise of civilization and our longing to get back home to the middle of nowhere wins out every single time. It is almost laughable how much we're in a rush to get home, and having dogs cooped up indoors that we know really and truly do need to get outside to do their doggie business just aggravates that general feeling that we need to hurry up and get home. One of these days, though, we are going to stop by NG on our way home.

Jennifer, Our place is ugly too. I never cleaned out all the weeds and grass that crept in around the garden fence and through it and into some of the beds while Mom was sick and dying, and now I dread going into the garden and dealing with that. And, as long as it is so incredibly muddy, I can't do anything anyway, so the ugliness will last a bit longer. I'd love to have a nice, warm, sunny weekend with no rain and no mud. I'm pretty sure this is the third rainy Friday in a row at our house, which means the third muddy weekend in a row too.

dbarron, You have more signs of spring there than we have here, but then the river valley gets oddly cold at night sometimes even when the days are nice. I feel like we're going to get another big blast of cold. It is just too early in the year for it not to happen at least one more time. I'm hoping, for the sake of your early plants, that the cold blast isn't too bad.

Rain, rain....go away. Enough is enough already. Our ground is so wet now that I bet it won't dry out enough to use the sod cutter until March, and that is driving me crazy. I was hoping we could start removing grass sod and improving the soil now, but that isn't going to happen, not now and not anytime soon. You cannot use a sod cutter in extreme mud and, even if you could, then the sod you cut is too heavily to pick up and carry away. I was hoping for a dry winter and this one definitely is not that.

Dawn

Nancy, tell me how the bar shampoo works for you. My question is, is it soap? I am convinced soap leaves a film. I tried baking soda, didn't like that. There is a yucca that is used for soap (but it's the root, so you end up killing it.) There are soap nut trees. I have a shampoo ginger on my Companion Plants list because it is really pretty. There is soap wort which my husband keeps killing. I always thought soap wort would be the best option. Soap nut trees (soap berries?) Are native to OK.

We have paper towels, but they aren't used often. We use the flower sack tea towels for most things. I could never give up toilet paper. While Ron uses hankies, I use tissues.

I don't put anything in the toilet. Tried it, but it doesn't flush well and if you have to flush 3 times you have defeated the purpose. What I do is I don't flush every time. (If it's yellow, let it mellow....) Of course, you have to run flush the toilet if you have unexpected company.

I don't run the water while brushing my teeth. We do use reusable shopping bags. Baggies are hard. I bought some reusable plastic containers for freezing in. Ron was trying to use glass, but of course the jar broke on ME. They do sell silicone, reusable zip locks. Pricey. We do take things to the recycle center.

It's been raining all day here. Mesonet said Tulsa was at 1.5" a while ago. Yes, the dogs are bored. I have a 75 pound lap dog on me as I type this. That is because the cat was there first and she hates for the cat to sit on me.

Dbarron, I will look for TX red buds.

My favorite thing from Red Lobster is the champagne vinaigrette salad dressing. Last time we went we bought a bowl of it to take home. I don't like their food as much as I used to. I don't like lobster as much as I used to. Taste buds have changed.

I hope my mom was aware she was at home and we were there, but I don't think she was. The home hospice woman really fell down on the job, she wasn't there. I wish Mom could have been somewhere where her discomfort could have been treated. We don't know if she was in pain or sick to her stomach, both symptoms she had been fighting. I am sorry Kim. I know how hard it is.

Today is the end of Persephone days. Yay! The sun could have come out for THAT! Tomorrow is my youngest's 30th birthday. I feel old.

Dawn, I feel your 'Get out of Dodge' urges. I have them too. I'm not quite as bad as a friend of mine, who literally will do only one thing then flee back home. I can hold out for 2 or maybe 3 stops (lol).

Also, yes, that's how my mother passed, the entire family gathered that morning in the nursing home, chattering away. I suddenly noticed mom had stopped breathing. I think it was mainly a sense of 'something has changed'.

Nancy

I think that is sooo cool,
that I encouraged you to conserve water like I do.

How old is your house?
Mine is from 1952, and I found, I was wearing the outlets out. Now,
I have power strips almost everywhere, and can just turn the power
off there instead.

No, Dawn, I don't have the
cheap power strips, and I don't plug a lot in to them, just use them
to turn the power off.

I am also totally the
person to turn the lights off when I leave a room... and to open the
blinds in the morning as soon as it gets light outside, instead of
having the electric lights on everywhere.

I started watching Doug
and Stacy on youtube, and am fascinated with all their ideas... and
laugh at some...

I grew up doing so many of
the same things... it was/is ingrained from a young age.

Nancy I am glad you kept
writing about that book “bringing nature home”. I am reading it,
when I sit in the sauna. ;)

Kim, please let me know,
when you go to Shawnee, cause I would LOVE to drive over and meet up!

Jennifer and Nancy, it is
easy to quit paper towels... just don't buy any... ;)

I never had any in this
house, till my daughter stayed with me for a while... and now, I am
using them up... but it will take me a LONG time, as I much prefer to
use a dish cloth. ;)

Dawn, I totally get the
blinders on thing about driving home from COSTCO. I do the same
thing, when I drive home from Albuquerque... I never made it to see
Kim... or anything... I just get on I-40 and drive till home. ;)

I went to the Home and Garden show. Made it through without taking any freebies, nor buying anything. I am so proud of myself. :) Last year I bought that infrared sauna... but I do have to say, I really enjoy it.

I better close this.. before I get really chatty...

Moni

Moni, if I didn't buy paper towels, Tom would go get them. And would probably buy a huge pack of them at that. haha. I try to ration them and I always buy the "select a size" ones. I can't control him, though.

I've watched Doug and Stacy a few times.

Moni, did you see Dale and Carrie at the home and garden show? Normally I help them out and work at their booth which I've always enjoyed. While they're giving talks and demonstrations, I help out by answering questions when people stop by the booth. Sometimes people just want to talk gardening and that is always fun. Usually Bill from Prairie Wind shares a booth with them. He is an interesting guy to talk to. They didn't ask this time. Maybe I should have asked them. Come to think of it, I haven't talked to them in months.

My SESE seeds came in today.

Our property is a lake, so we got plenty of rain last night and today.

Nothing exciting to talk about. I'm planning on doing my exercises and eating leftover soup. Then watching the new episode of Servant. That's my exciting night.

Moni. . . . I started laughing this morning. Do you know what? I NEVER bought paper towels before I moved down here. AND, a great source of amusement to my kids in Mpls and me--they forbade me from using their paper towels. Seems I just pulled and yanked. If 3 came out, that's what I used. So I was cut off. Nancy not allowed to use paper towels at their house. I never used them at my place. . . just never ever did. Too expensive. I used hand towels.

SO, as I was laughing about that this morning to Garry, I told him I promised not to say a word to HIM about using or not using them, but I was going to quit. It'll be easy for me since I never used them before.

Moni. . . if you come up with other great ideas, you can pm me on FB.

Garry picked the copper-colored stainless straws up in Walmart the other day. We both got a laugh out of the fact that he thought to do it.

Cute pitchers, Nancy!

We do the reusable straws too.

What do y'all use to clean mirrors and windows? Just old rags? Or a certain type of cloth? Also, what do y'all use to clean up nasty stuff like pet accidents or vomit? Towels? I think if I were home more, I could do that....and did back when I stayed home when the kids were little. I would have a load of laundry going all the time, though. Then that brings up the issue of water usage and laundry soap/detergent usage.

My dad always had hankies. I remember Mom washing them and I would fold them. I've had "crunchy" parents send hankies to school or church with their children. It does seem like a good thing....but when their noses are super runny....it becomes a nightmare. We try to go with the parents wishes, but often those saturated hankies are being flopped around on desks, tables. I want to isolate those kids, actually, so their snotty hankies aren't touching everyone else's space/pencils/worksheets/etc.

Building up strong immunities over here! lol

Amy, I just saw the cute pic of your giant baby!

My friend uses shampoo bars and likes them just fine. But, I don't know how they're made. I worry about my hair and shampoo bars. My hair is difficult to tame. I'm not opposed to using them...but because I do work outside the home, I can't always look like freak with fried and frizzy out-of-control hair. It doesn't matter on the days that I'm home. In fact, I've taught my hair to only need to be shampoo'ed twice a week.

And, Amy, I agree...freezing food is hard without plastic baggies. This year I've used glass container and haven't had any bad incidents, but I know you did.

Y'all, though, it is so nice to pull that garden produce out of the freezer. Those fowler green beans are still tasty in January. And I don't have to buy beans from the store which are usually bagged in plastic OR cans.

That's just it, I guess. Most of us are trying to do our best for the Earth...and it's difficult in this time. If you're eating out at a restaurant or fast food...it's not best for the Earth. If you use toilet paper, it's not best for the Earth. If you buy most of your food at the grocery store, it's not the best for the Earth.

Most of us aren't willing to go off grid and cut off water and electricity. I'm not.

However, we are all (here) trying to balance that out with being careful where we can be careful.

I’m not giving up toilet paper. No way, no how.

Actually given how poorly toilet paper cleans, I'd rather have a bidet, (I've never had one..but I know that TP isn't very efficient/effective).

Dbarron, at one time in a past life with a past husband, we bought a lovely house in Mpls. Not a mansion, not a fancy house. But a lovely house. It had a bathroom with a bidet. I'd never seen such a thing.

Walmart sells a box of those microfiber towels. I got them when my poodle was having accidents from old age, and they work for cleaning up yuck. I also use old sheets (we go through a lot thanks to puppy nails ripping them) for cleaning. And ratty tshirts are great for cleaning windows.

For windows--I use water with just one drop of Dawn and about 1/8 or so of vinegar. There is no magic recipe for it, though I'm sure google will HAVE the magic recipe. lol And for the wiping tool--NEWSPAPERS!!! Yep. Best ever. I used to be a "professional" house cleaner (40 years ago--was the best-paying job for a woman in Wyoming at that time, and mostly only rich people hired housecleaners. So I made some good friends, who happened to be wealthy. Great job.) At any rate, somehow found out about newspapers, and though have once in a while used other things (like old rags made from old used cut-up towels) for glass-topped tables and mirrors, still use ONLY the newspapers for windows. I converted my DIL and son, and now Garry Dean. They are true believers.

For that matter, I only have vinegar (and a drop of Dawn) for 90% of my cleaning needs. What a colossal waste of money "cleaning" supplies are. Someone (here?) told me to use Pam for cleaning stainless appliances. Magic. I don't use Pam, but had an unused can in the back of the cupboard. WOW. Thank you for whoever told me about it.

Silicone, microfiber stuff. . . . A lot of the substitutes for plastic really aren't great--it's tricky, researching. For example. . . https://www.microfiberwholesale.com/info/2011/04/is-microfiber-green/

I think back to when I was 10 years old. A lot of the stuff we used then is still MUCH better than what is used now. We NEVER had baggies then., . . so thinking what we DID use. We didn't have clothes dryer, microwaves, blenders, food processors, plastic laundry detergent containers, oh so many things. . . anyone who knew about cars could fix their own (unlike today when cars have computer components).

AND, BTW, Amy regarding jars (that is, canning jars). I use wide-mouthed pint sizes. The wide mouth enables the contents to be poured out more easily and not likely to break. When freezing, only fill jars to 1-2 inches from top. Don't put immediately into freezer. Wait until contents have cooled a bit. THEN when taking out of freezer, let thaw for a couple hours, and then I speed up the process by putting microwave at defrost for several minutes. Or I thaw by putting jar in a quart sized pot filled with water, put on the stove with warm setting.

The main thing that got me going on this were the cat litter plastic buckets, laundry detergent plastic containers, and plastic Folgers containers. That's when I went over the edge into crazy "no plastic" year. I am DONE with them! Means I'll be paying more for coffee. That's okay. Maybe I'll drink a bit less. I'm excited to try the laundry detergent "sheets," and cat litter will be in boxes rather than buckets (though it's still in plastic "bag" inside bucket). I'll be trying out a host of non-plastic products since now it's a game I'm playing with SIL.

Most of all, I don't want to put anyone on the defensive, not one little bit. For my SIL and I, it's a super fun game.

If you all want to continue talking about this kind of stuff, we should start a new thread, right?

I believe the answer for paper is hemp. Bamboo is also used for paper and wood substitutes. I absolutely use something disposable to clean up dog vomit. I also think disposable tissues are better for germy kids (we call them petri dishes). I am practical.

Bidet: do you air dry? Is it warm water? Once again, water over paper?

Windows: get a miracle cloth/microfiber (this is a synthetic, does that make it bad?). it will clean with just water. You ruin it if you use fabric softener on it. (Which, BTW, I never use.) I have used vinegar on mirrors.

I hate crowds and traffic, too.

Sasquatch was looking out the window for squirrels. She looks kind of tough here and she can do a big girl bark that sounds pretty tough.

I keep getting distracted, need to post this before it goes to internet limbo.

This could be a fun thread--ways to be more earth friendly! OR we could just discuss it on the weekly threads while we're waiting for the gardens to warm up!

Nancy, great minds! I just saw you suggested the same thing. Hopefully no one feels defensive. We all are trying...and can do different things, for sure, at different levels.

Yeah...I'm not giving up toilet paper either, Rebecca. My husband for sure will not give it up...and I'm pretty sure I don't want him to. LOL Doubtful we'll be installing a bidet either. although that could be a good choice.

Amy, I'm like you with dog vomit--I'll clean the major chunks with disposable paper towels (I'm weird and save the ones that are barely used--like if my husband wipes his mouth with one, etc.) and those are good for scooping up the nasty. THEN, I'll get an old rag and clean the remaining yuck.

Yes. Tissues for sick children ALL the way.

Nancy, we don't get the newspaper! I have heard of that trick, though. I cleaned houses when we lived in Arkansas City. It was a good job for me at the time. I only had Mason then and she would color, draw, and watch TV while I cleaned. She was no issue at all even at age 3. I took old towels and washed them at home. I did use paper towels to clean bathroom mirrors....but then would use those same paper towels to wipe the floor around the toilet.

Another good cleaner is soaking citrus peels (if you use limes, oranges, lemons, etc.) in vinegar. Makes it smell good. I also like to make one with witch hazel and several essential oils. Sorta based on the "four thieves" story.

Nancy (and everyone), I'm going to post a short video that you might like. It's about a women building a cobb house. It's super interesting. I would love to do that. Doubtful I ever will...but wow!

Ron used to bring home the big foldgers containers from work for me to use as pots. At least they got recycled. They've switched to different coffee now. Our cat box is in the garage and Ron buys clay grease absorber from Auto zone in a big paper sack. It might be plastic lined, I've never looked. The cat tolerates it and since it's in the garage there is no extra odor treatment needed. The cat has a cat door between the house and garage. I always preferred my laundry detergent powdered in a box, but I haven't seen it that way in ages. I made my own laundry soap for several years, until one day I discovered the build up in my washer and I thought if it's on my washer it is on my clothes. If you can find a soap nut tree, you can do laundry with those. Just don't order some from India on line, I think the shipping would negate any earth friendliness. I also have never tried soap nuts and I have no idea how they clean. The soap wart is used in Europe when they want to wash antique linens. I don't wash windows much, other than to hose them off a couple of times a year and, sorry Nancy, I hate newspaper on glass.

If I was wealthy or young enough to do it myself, I would do cobb. I would have an earth sheltered house with cobb on the inside.

I will let y’all know Moni when I come up to shawnee. A meet up would be so awesome

Amy, just conjecturing here. . .but I am going to go out on a limb and guess you won't be cleaning windows with newspaper. Wish we had GIFs here. . . it would be the girl spewing soda out because she's laughing so hard.

I got some unexpected seed today, I am very happy. THANK YOU. They will have a good home. All the seed I have received from this source have been hardy and productive.

I also received the seed that my daughter and grand daughter ordered, except for the Partridge peas,

I patched up one shelf on my old grow stand, I now have room for 4 flats, with 6 T8 tubes above them. Now, if I can talk Madge in letting me bring it into the house. I made the stand some years ago out of scrap lumber. It has been sitting outside a few years, and really looks rough, It never looked good, never painted and the light were hung with binder twine, but it really worked well.

I am still having my young helper over. I am trying to help him with some of the things he is studying in school, but I am afraid to go too far because some things may not be taught the same way today. We have touched on measuring and Isometric drawing. Nearly everything is done on a computer now, but I can teach him the old-fashion way, it still works for me. We cut some metal today, tomorrow we will weld it up into a frame to modify the mounts on a broken tractor seat.

I did plant a few winter peas today. I just tossed them out onto the mud and stepped on them. I put them next to the collards I tossed out a few weeks ago. The collards have come up, but grown very little. The greens in the garden are growing, and I still have some cabbage alive and growing, but I don't expect anything out of them.

I am having an evening concert going! Yup, an owl hooting. Soo cool...

Nancy super cute pitchers

My reusable straws are stainless steel. How do you wrap them for taking with you, when you eat out?

No need for paper towels for really yucky messes... no pets here... and yes, in that case I would have some paper towels I think.

I still use plastic. I am weeding it out... sort of... I don't buy plastic bags... but I re-use plastic. Such as bags from frozen veggies, I just put them back in the freezer... and when I want to take a piece of banana nut bread with me on a bike ride, I put it in the veggie bag.. doesn't hurt a thing. ;) Also, the bags from sunflower seeds, raisins or chocolate chips work well for this, even bags from pasta!

Newspaper is GREAT for windows... I get mine from a friend, once he read them. LOL, but to first clean them, I use old fabric, cut up t-shirts, sheets, towels what ever... once it is way past its prime I use it as a one use rag.

Jennifer, that was a cool video! Thanks for sharing.

I ran out on Thursday and put some cardboard down, where I want to continue to dig out Bermuda. It worked mostly... not to wet today, for some digging. ;) But I left it open for now, to dry out a bit. Sometimes I feel like I am making progress, and other times I just can't see any...

Owl is still tooting. So so cool.

Moni

Moni--I have my handy dandy new straws that Garry bought all wrapped up in a gallon-size baggie, stuck in my purse.

Trying to remember what I used for things like pet vomit up when I never ever used paper towels in my whole life, till I married GDW and moved down here. Thinking. . . Oh! Got it. Toilet paper. Toilet paper's a heck of a lot cheaper than paper towels.

I just got my first set of stainless steel straws. I like them so far, but there’s the transportation problem. I don’t usually carry a purse anymore, unless I’m out all day or will need to carry storage. I just grab my billfold and phone. Straws don’t fit all the way. Going to have to think on that one. Also, some of Audrey’s favorite toys are the red plastic straws from QT and Sonic.

Amy, I still buy powdered detergent. I think it works better than liquid and doesn‘t gunk up the washer. Walmart and Target have Tide, Cheer, and Gain powders. Sometimes I pick up Ariel at the Mexican market. Mom used Cheer powder exclusively when I was growing up, so it invokes good memories here. I also use only hot water, because cold water doesn’t get anything clean. If it did, our dishwashers would run on cold water, and we’d shower in it. Nope, I’ll stick with hot. Grimy gardening clothes, you know.

I‘m a terrible housekeeper, but I do like vinegar for cleaning. It also works well in the rinse aid dispenser in the dishwasher.

I need my paper towels for cleaning up cat barf, and when she commits insecticide. I have major issues with cleaning up anything yucky with regular towels. Same with Kleenex. And toilet paper, actually. All messy, gross stuff should be disposable. I was making progress in avoiding plastic bags until last fall. I have plenty of reusable containers. I try to avoid containers that aren’t reusable or recyclable. I recycle a lot. I even recycle my winter sowing containers after they become too brittle to use.

Audrey likes Arm and Hammer litter that comes in cardboard boxes, so I recycle those too. Although, I often wish I had the plastic buckets for planting. I tried the recycled, green, environmentally proper litter, and all of my cats over the years have rather dramatically rejected it.

Gardening: I have milkweed seeds in the freezer and I miss tomatoes.

There was a straw in my water at the restaurant last night. When I attempted to drink from it I dumped water down my front. So I was already wet when #1 son spilled his tea all over the 2 yo grandson, so he sat on me and I got wetter.

I will have to look for powdered detergent, Rebecca, though can you use it in those stupid low water washers? We got one used and have been very unhappy.

Moni, I'm ok with reusing the bags you mentioned, but I was appalled when my mother had me get ice from her freezer she had put into a frozen chicken bag. Frozen raw chicken. I think she said "well, I washed it out."

Owls are mating and nesting this time of year. You may have a pair near you.

We have stainless straws we use in the Yetti cup and my Walmart cheap version, which is lost. I am not supposed to drink from a straw, and I prefer not to, hence the water incident last night. Why are the stainless straws so skinny? They rattle in our cups. Give Audrey a hair tie. (I suppose those are bad, too?)

We made the weather station work yesterday. It wouldn't read rain, or wind and said it was -40 outside. Brought it in and played with it and it finally started reading correctly. I wanted it set for a frequency other than A (you have an option for a, b or c). All the cheap thermometers are set for A and they pick one sensor to read (this annoys me). So we had tried c. A was the only frequency that worked. ::eyeroll:: Now I have to figure out how to download data. Fought with that for a while and gave up.

I guess we're going to Bartlesville today. Hmmm, I bet there's a new thread since it's Sunday.