Jay, So, are your cold nights close to ending or do you have a couple more weeks where freezing nights remain a possibility? It is much better here, thank you. The firefighters cleared from our big fire around midnight last night, I think. They kept trying to clear and kept finding "one more" fire to put out, but when they cleared at midnight, I switched the radio over to the "pager" feature and stopped listening. I am not leaving the house or garden today unless something is on fire on my road. I am going to plant today, period. Someone else will have to feed the firefighters if they are out today. I hope you get rain. I hope we do too. It OUGHT to rain hard and hail here tomorrow because I am planting tomato plants today and that always causes either a tornado, a hail storm or snow. That, of course, leaves me inside cringing and listening to hail pounding the roof and asking myself why I didn't wait another day or two until the threat of hail had passed. LOL Since snow seems remote at this point in time, we have to assume that the planting of somewhat tender tomato plants will only result in tornadoes, thunderstorms and hail for Love County this weekend. I hate whining about the lack of rain, but we have only had about 3.7" or so this year and we usually get a lot of our rain in March, April and May. March wasn't too bad, but April has been dry. Our pond has been dry forever, and some of the creeks have been dry for 3 years except for a few days in the spring/summer of 2007 when they carried some rain runoff away....but it didn't stay in the creeks....it ran down to the Red River. If it rains, I'll be deliriously happy. I just hope we get real rain and not thunderstorms that bring dry lightning strikes and high winds and little moisture. OK, I need to get off the computer and out to the garden now to play in the dirt. Dawn

Hi Ilene, I'm kind of amazed y'all didn't have a frost because it looked pretty cold up there on the weather map. The green tomatoes I left on the vines are just sitting there and sitting there and sitting there. I don't think they are going to change colors and ripen until the sun shines. Supposedly we will have sunshine here on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. I'll believe it when I actually see it since that also was our forecast last weekend and we had no sunshine and lots of cold instead. I think in the last two weeks, we've had a couple of times where the sun came out for 3 or 4 minutes, and last Thursday we had a hour or so of sun early in the day. It got our hopes up for a sunny day, but then that tiny bit of sun vanished. I saw an article on the website of either the Fort Worth or Dallas newspaper that said as of yesterday they were on their 11th straight day of clouds/no sunlight, so even that far south they are having about the same weather as most of us. The good news is that most of Texas has had a lot of rain and their drought conditions are receding. When the new Drought Monitor map is released tomorrow, we'll see a lot of changes.....I know that, not because I'm psychic, but because I have already looked at their KBDI map this week on another website and it shows great changes. Don't those Crocs have holes in them? I can't wear anything like that, including any sandals or open-toed or open-heeled shoes, that let the scorpions or fire ants have access to my skin or they'll take advantage of it. I learned that the hard way and have tried pretty hard not to slip up......if there is one fire ant in the yard and I go outside the house in sandals (I do wear them indoors), that one fire ant will find me the instance I step off the porch and onto the ground. We do have fire ant mounds popping up in a few places, and I still have some organic fire ant killer, so if we get a couple of dry days, I'll treat those mounds. Our puddles even have puddles, Ilene. The dog yard is a muddy mess but we've spread a couple of bales of straw there and that is helping. I think we need to get a couple more bales of straw and put out even more. When I walk in the garden, it squishes. I suspect this long, cloudy spell is a taste of the kind of fall/winter weather we're going to have this year. Usually October is one of my favorite months with its bright blue, clear, sunny skies and moderate temperatures. This year is a whole different story though. Dawn

The less expensive way into your house, if you have a basement, is to break the glass on one of the basement windows, unlatch and remove the casement window ( most have a provision for lifitng off the hinges ) and climb in. There are a few caveats, however. Pick the right window, the one that where it is possible for you to get in and drop to the floor without hurting yourself or wreaking the sewing machine that was sitting under the window. You have to be able to fit through the window! Don't do it if the drop is too much for you to handle - we don't want to break anything. The other good location is the BACK door to the garage. If it has a window, break it. Its a lot cheaper to repair. However, at my house, entering the garage would not get you into our house. You would find a fire door between the garage and house and that it most often is locked when we leave the house.

I had a busy morning for a Saturday. Georgysmom made me feel guilty posting everything she accomplished yesterday ;0 I scrubbed and baked those 3 huge baking potatoes I got at the store for .83 and when they cool, I'll make twice baked potatoes and freeze all but one, which we'll have tonight. Did two loads of laundry and changed our sheets. Then I took everything out of my spice/baking cabinet and washed all the shelves and--now get this--arranged all my spices in alphabetical order. Isn't that OCD? I bought a thing called a Spice Stack. It is a metal box with 3 shelves that pull out and down so you can see the spices. Each shelf holds 9 jars, or double the amount of those little jars. It's really cool. So no more rummaging around and taking 15 jars out just to find the one I'm looking for. I was surprised I only had doubles of 3 spices. That was pretty nice so I cleaned the pantry, too. Oh, Phyllis, I wish you hadn't mentioned the "G" word (garage). Ours is a disaster. Marie-ndcal, did you flood again? Didn't you have bad flooding this spring, too? Bless your heart, you have every right to feel bad, but wish you felt better.