Thanks, Jennifer. It has been sort of a tough week around here. You always hope and pray for the best for someone with cancer, as you know all too well yourself, but things just didn't work out for our friend. His sweet wife and family are hurting so much, and my heart goes out to them. For me, PA Dutch crookneck was not nearly as rampant of a grower as Seminole, but then not much else is. I have had some butternuts grow that rampantly, and many pumpkins that did so in the first 7 years here when I could grow any and every squash variety I wanted (and, boy howdy, did I!) before the squash bugs and squash vine borers found out garden. Congrats on ordering the tomato press. You'll love it! I don't have any special feeling about winter. I'd love a cold one, but we haven't had a good, cold, snowy one for so long that I have little expectation we'll have one now. I'd be happy if we did though. The only time I've ever seen anyone write about leaving the onions until the foliage browns was when Jim Shreftler (I'm probably spelling that wrong) wrote about it here over a decade ago, and a couple of times in Bruce Fasier's Dixondale monthly newsletters a few years back. I felt like he was quite perplexed that he even had to tell people to slow down and harvest later. I have found that 99% of people harvest before their onions are really done, and then those same people bemoan the fact that their onions only store for 2 or 3 months, never understanding that the storage issue is primarily related to the onion type but also to whether the onions were allowed to fully mature. Onions that are harvested with fully green foliage tend to sprout much more quickly while in storage. I like to let them fully mature so they'll store well. They're usable either way, so it is just a matter of somebody's ultimate goals. My ultimate goal is to have home-grown onions for as long as possible for cooking. Some people are eager to get them out of the ground and replace them with a succession planting of something else even if it means their onions only will last half as long in storage. Dixondale has Copra every year. You'll find it in the long daylength area along with two other long-storing types: Highlander and Red River. In Red River I finally found a large-enough red onions because a lot of the short day and intermediate day types of reds just never size up nearly as well as the whites and yellows. In the years when I plant short day, intermediate day and long day types, my harvest usually is spread out from May through the end of July, and then the long daylength types store forever and forever. It is raining here this morning. For a few hours we got all the lightning and thunder and not so much rain while they were flooding on the Texas side of the river from persistently heavy rain, but then the rain finally has shown up on our side of the river and now we have a little over 2" in the rain gauge, and about 1.75" of that is new this morning. It is such a relief to get the rain. I was looking at the wildflower meadow yesterday afternoon and thinking that all the flowers were drying out and surely would be going straight to seed soon. Hopefully today's rainfall will push them back into a blooming cycle and we'll get to enjoy the flowers a bit longer before they burn up in the heat. I also hope the rain heals the cracks in the soil. It is a relief to think I won't have to water the veggie garden this week. I sure do need to weed it though. I went outside a minute ago to check the rain gauge and there's already new fire ant mounds popping up above ground. One thing about the hot, dry weather is that the fire ants retreat back beneath the ground and we are not, at least, stepping in fire ant mounds. Larry, I hate when deer do that. In the last year in which they could jump the shorter garden fence and get into the garden, they ate literally every pumpkin, squash and okra plant (and most of many other types of veggies) right down to the ground, big prickly leaves and all. They devoured whole sunflower plants that already were 3 or 4' tall, though they never eat the native sunflowers that way. They drove me crazy. I lost most of the garden to them that year, but life in the garden returned to normal after we put up the taller fence. I've never regretted having that tall fence, though I surely hated spending all that money to put it up. Tim's best friend calls it my prison garden fence because it is so tall, but I don't care. It keeps the deer out, and if having a prison-like garden fence is the price I have to pay to be deer-free, then so be it. I wish I had a prison fence around our whole yard and I'm never going to stop wanting that tall fence to protect the plants in the yard. I have a husband who hates fences though, so we're in our 22nd year here and I don't have a tall yard fence yet. I'd settle for one six feet tall, but I'm sure the deer would jump it so it wouldn't do what we needed it to do. It really is going to need to be 8' tall and it will be...if I don't die before we ever get a taller fence done. Amy, Your garden looks great and your red-headed garden helper in his Little Tykes Cozy Coupe is just so adorable! Nancy, Some years I have a great garden all summer. Some years the heat and drought dry it up. The very first year that I surrendered, stopped watering, closed the garden gate and just walked away kind of broke my heart. At the same time, it felt good to not be out there fighting the drought and heat every day. You can get to the point where no matter how much water you pour onto the garden, you just cannot beat the weather conditions. I no longer regret surrendering to the weather if I think that is what I need to do. Last fall I bought landscaping plants for the landscape renovation that heavy rainfall prevented us from doing in the winter/spring months, so they've been tucked into a "nursery bed" (formerly known as raised veggie bed #1) in the garden and look so good. It has been nice to see how they grow, bloom and perform in our weather before I actually put them in their permanent beds up around the house. I was telling Tim yesterday that I'm tempted to go on a buying binge right now (because the stores near us just got huge new shipments of plants like they normally get in late May) and fill up more raised beds in the fenced garden with plants-in-waiting for the new landscape. If I did that, I could have everything growing and getting larger in nursery beds while awaiting the sod removal and soil prep in the permanent growing beds that will be needed when we take out the large mature hollies. We find ourselves in the peculiar situation where it is either much too wet or much too dry to rent a sod cutter and take out the Bermuda, and we never can catch the sod at just the right degree of soil moisture. I am watching this week's weather carefully, thinking we might get enough rain to soften the baked-hard-as-a-rock clay, and then maybe it could be dry enough by next weekend that we could rent a sod cutter. We are so lucky that we do not have Japanese beetles down here. I have seen maybe 4 or 5 total since we moved here as they apparently have not yet migrated this far south and west. I kill every single one that I see because I never want for them to have a chance to get a population established. I like all the summer squash, and the Korean ones ended up having better flavor than I expected. I still think yellow summer squash has its own special and unique flavor, but the Korean varieties all are close seconds. Honestly, when I cook them, no one call tell which is which in any given recipe. I like to grow yellow straightneck or crookneck early in the season before the pests hit. Once the pests arrive, I just yank them out. I can get locally grown yellow summer squash (I am sure it is not organic) all summer long at the grocery store/meat market we frequent in Muenster, TX. We were just there yesterday buying steaks for Father's Day and Lillie was entranced with the locally grown veggies which she said looked just as good as something from the garden---she could tell the special display of local veggies was different from the regular produce section and seemed excited to see it. At a young age she already is learning a love for gardening and appreciating that they are harvesting their own produce from their potager garden and bringing it into the kitchen to prepare it. I try not to hate on unruly plants that are butterfly host plants because at some points their caterpillars show up and do all the pruning needed and more. Our bronze fennel is getting awfully tall and wide, so hopefully the swallowtail cats show up soon and do their thing. Yesterday afternoon we were out with a To Do list and a desire to just get everything done and to get back home so Lillie could swim, so I didn't plant shop since it was our last day with her. I did notice there were tons of new plants in the HD garden center when we stopped there to get a new water filter for the refrigerator, and Lillie and I walked through it briefly while Tim was indoors getting the filter. They had all the usual hot weather type plants they normally get in the stores in late May, so I guess they are late this year, but better late than never. Tim and I agreed that today would be all about planting shopping and nothing but plant shopping, except for the fact that we plan to grill steaks for dinner. Even I cannot imagine I'd shop for plants the entire day, but maybe for a significant portion of it. Well, Mother Nature has a sense of humor, so we still are as dark as night here at almost 9 a.m. with intermittent heavy rainfall and thunderstorms. I am going plant shopping today even if I have to shop in the rain wearing muck boots, but now we need to wait for the flooding on the Texas side to end before we drive down to Gainesville. This year it seems like it always is something. Yesterday afternoon, after we got home it was endless wrecks and fire calls including two separate wrecks that shut down part of the Red River bridge, and Tim had to leave to go some of them but he didn't go to all of them because he wanted to spend time with our granddaughter while she was here. Yellowstone, the TV series, returns tonight and there is a marathon of last season's episodes running all day today, so I can get my fill of western drama if it rains most of the day. I'm determined to get my fill of plants too though. I have been patiently waiting to buy plants long enough. I intend to come home from shopping with the back of the SUV fully loaded with plants, which probably is Tim's greatest fear. lol. I need to get him hooked on watching Yellowstone. He'd love it if he ever could stop what he is working on long enough to watch it. Oh, and Covid-19 plagues Tim now at work and follows him home from work, metaphorically speaking. His first employee tested positive and went out sick with it about a week ago. Then a second, the work partner of the first, became ill at midweek, has been tested and is awaiting his test results. That was Thursday I think. Now, after a phone that wouldn't stop ringing yesterday, last night and this morning, Tim thinks his group is up to 7 potential cases. In fact, there are so many on a particular shift that the lieutenant in charge of that shift cancelled her vacation and came back to work, planning to vacation later in the summer instead. I admire her dedication. With every potential case you have, you have to do contact tracing to be ready to notify everyone at work if a person's test results come back positive, and that is time-consuming for the supervisors because they don't know every other employee a person might have made contact with on any given day, so there's a lot of research and investigation involve. I think I would have gone ahead and gone on vacation, but she also is conscious of the fact that she may have been exposed, might be an asymptomatic carrier, and doesn't want to travel and give it to anyone else. She's a really good person. This morning Tim said it might be as many as 9 cases. They will have to wait for test results, but it is hard to work around that many employees out on sick leave on one shift so they have challenges ahead I betcha I know how the plant shopping will go. We'll go to the store. I'll get a big metal nursery cart and Tim will be pulling it along behind us while I fill it up with plants. His phone will be ringing nonstop and finally I'll send him to the car to handle his calls while I plant shop. You know, if you are walking through a store and you're on your phone discussing who seems to have Covid-19 symptoms and who needs to go for testing, people look at you in fear and almost flee from your presence, so he is better off just going out and sitting in the vehicle where people cannot overhear his work-related conversations. I am almost positive this is exactly how our day will go! Dawn

Jennifer, I did not check the turnips and beets today. The guy that baled the hay and ran over the beets and turnips was here today working on the baler and hauling hay. I did not want him to feel bad about a crop being in that mess he ran over, plus my grand daughter came to visit, the rain also kept me in the house a long time today. I don't know how much rain we got, but, it was at least .3 inch. The rain, hail, and wind was a little rough on the tomatoes. I was so proud that I was doing a much better job keeping them tied up, but I fell off the wagon and they got out hand in just a few days. I tied some damaged plants up today, and hope to do more tomorrow. I harvested our first pimento pepper today, and I have a sweet banana pepper ready for harvest. All the peppers are green, I wont expect any ripe ones for a long time. We are getting a lot of squash and cucumbers, but I don't thing we are getting many customers at the produce stand yet, but this is only the second day the stand has been open, and they are trying to sell the garage sale stuff out first. I hope to get up in the morning and pot up the last of our sweet potato slips. We have a few late slips, which I may try growing in hay. I have got to quit gardening, and start working on equipment, it seems like everything I own is broken down.

Lynn, thank you for typing all that out. I think you've mentioned that product before. When we get back from Oregon, we're going to have to get serious about getting rid of them. They're so annoying. We've had what I call the "regular" ants get in at our last house from time to time. It seemed mostly seasonal, and they were fairly easy to get rid of. But theses suckers are a pain...and so persistent. They are very, very tiny. You almost don't notice them until they are all congregated around a crumb that someone didn't wipe up. You can't even see their features to identify--they are that small. I got a magnifying glass out and they look like Pharoah ants in appearance and also in behavior. Pharaoh Ant I am not a slob in the kitchen, but we do use our kitchen fully. All three of us. We mostly eat at home. Constantly washing dishes and wiping counters. They aren't interested in my compost bowl, which is mostly E's coffee grounds, veggie scraps, and toilet paper rolls. They are interested in the butter. Butter is too expensive to allow ants to get into it. We like to keep it on the counter. Rambling. We got nice rain this morning. Super happy about that as it will save a lot of time watering the gardens. I'm pleased with our gardens so far. I sure wish the aphids would leave us alone, tho. Other that squash pests, they are the biggest pest issue here. I would rather deal with hornworms than aphids. Hornworms are easy to remove and deal with as long as you're paying attention. Aphids are not. They destroy plants at our house, especially the green peas....and even southern peas and noodle beans. Ugh! I sure hope the ladybug and lacewing eggs hatch quickly and take care of them. I'm always taking my phone out to the garden with me to identify things. This is a woolly aphid. When we get back from Oregon, we'll have a lot of work to do. Potatoes, onions, and garlic will all be ready. Honestly, some of the onions are ready now. Same with garlic. I just don't have time to deal with it all right now. Also, Rick's green beans will need to be tended to. Tom and I prefer frozen green beans, but Rick might want to can a few too. We're getting some here, although there's fewer plants and they are bit later. I picked a quart ziplock bag of them last night. The plan is so push those off on one of my relatives as we won't have time to cook/eat them. There's still a refrigerator crisper drawer full of asparagus. It's limp but still tastes good. I'm going to try to push that off on family as well. We've been eating it a couple of times a week. Honestly, I've just let it go over the past few days. Had I harvested it better this past week, it could have easily gone a couple more weeks. But....there's only so many hours in the day. As soon as all of those green tomatoes ripen up, those will need to be dealt with as well. We use quite a few diced tomatoes in our cooking, so we'll probably just can them again. Pretty sure Rick needs to restock his as well. Peppers look good. So happy that I have 5 actual jalapeno plants! Our peppers did very little last year. What a strange year. We have family coming for an early supper today to say goodbye to E. I've had so many other things on my mind, that forgot it's my BD until FB friends wished me HBD. And Tom gave me some little gold hoop earrings early this morning. Duh. It's my BD. lol. We walked our neighbor around the house and property yesterday to show her how to care for the animals--I feel like we're nearly ready. It's such a big thing to leave so much stuff behind that needs cared for...including the garden. It doesn't help that I've made all of our animals spoiled brats. I own it. One needs this food bowl, another needs to drink out of a fountain waterer. And...I care too much about them all, including the chickens. This house isn't going to clean itself. (wouldn't that be a dream!) Company is coming. Hope everyone is getting some rain.

Larry, thanks! I'm trying to figure out growing sweet potatoes in our clay soil. Next year, we're planning on growing things in the Survivalist Garden that don't require canning. Sweet potatoes are on the list. We've talked before about how we interchange sweet potatoes for winter squash in recipes. Becau se winter squash/pumpkins are so difficult here (dumb squash bugs!) sweet potatoes could be a great alternative. It's something we would use....and that is important to me. I like to grow what we'll truly eat. And can what we'll truly eat. I worry about our soil, though. I'm really looking forward to next year. I'm finally going to work on some garden things that I've been putting off for awhile. We have a ton of beans and diced tomatoes in the pantry, so we won't need to can any of that next year. We're just not eating as much of those things right now with it just being the two of us. We don't make a lot of pasta sauces or soups and chilies any longer. We will do some.... but it's different without our son here. He could eat a LOT. I always feel like I need to say.... If food becomes scarce, plans will change of course. Although, honestly, we would probably focus on growing meat. I've been very privileged to enjoy a vegetarian lifestyle.... but if things ever got bad, meat has calories and whatnot. I just finished up getting everything/one ready for our trip. It's been a crazy day with work, watering for two hours, and getting the animals situated. Oh, and packing. And texting with all the various parties. Daughter and son-in-law went a day early, so they're already there. Got the rental car and checked into the Airbnb. Ethan's gf's family is very different from our family. We are planners and....they're not so much. Hopefully everything will go smoothly. It's gonna be hot and dry for the rest of the week, so hopefully the deep watering today will sustain everything until I can water again in a few days. Kim, there were several grasshoppers out here. They weren't as active, but they're around. I planted pansies last night. It was fun. The Vego beds are ready to start adding cardboard and compost items. The Greenstalk is still sitting empty. It will keep until next year. I love October and want to fully enjoy it again someday.