One.

About twentyfive adults and ten children and at the last swap we had one stray dog.

I will bring a dish for about 4 to six servings. I will be by myself.

Moni

Moni

Thats good it is kind of hard to swap the left overs.

My wife and I are going to bring no bake cookies and a dish to be named later.

I hope to be there alone or with one or two - changes day by day.

Count me in! Plus one!

I'm bringing myself plus one long-suffering, non-gardening but very supportive spouse.

Dawn

I'm looking forward to it. One

3- self, DH and DD

Will bring myself. Jerreth has to use Saturday to prepare for a wedding shower for our son and future daughter-in-law. But she's alright with me going.

I'm a home body and it takes a bit to overcome inertia and get out there. On top of that, I'm WAY BEHIND with the garden and last night I probably lost most all of my tomato plants. I left them out, as it was 50 F. By morning it was 32 and they were encrusted in ice. I had a whole flat Baker Family Heirloom plants and it's probable that none will survive.

Okay, anyway, I think I'm going to come, unless something else comes up! I'll bring a cold dish and some seeds. If folk have little envelopes, could I ask they bring some? I'm out and it will be challenging to pass out seeds without them!

still in shock, in Tahlequah, OK

George

I'm coming but probably without DH. Will bring dish to share and other goodies. Oh, and some heirlooms for George.

Laura

George,

My, oh my, I'd be in shock too.

I can bring you some heirloom tomato plants (as many as you want) so if you want something specific, let me know and I'll be sure to bring those specific ones. You've got to grow something in the absence of Baker Family Heirloom. And I am so sorry to hear about your plants.

Last night, when I went out and started (resentfully, because I had other things I really needed to do, LOL) covering things up, I kept telling myself I was over-reacting. Of course, when I woke up to 35 and hard frost on the windshields and in patches on the plants, I at least felt like I hadn't wasted my time.

This time of year, the weather is so erratic any more (specifically, the last three years) that I hardly trust the forecasts these days at all. I just assume freezing temps and frost if the forecast is for 48 or lower. Even by my own very conservative and cautious standards, though, if I had heard your forecast of 50, I wouldn't have covered up plants. Who would have thought 50 would be 32? That just doesn't make sense. If it helps to know this, I am completely and totally behind on everything, all that is really growing well is the weeds, and the ground is so wet (not that I'm complaining 'cause we needed the rain) that I don't think I'll be able to plant before Thursday's rain falls.

Tell Jerreth we'll miss her, but I do understand how the shower preparations would be a priority for her. : )

You bring yourself and don't let anything (short of a family emergency) stop you! I'll bring little envelopes for your seeds.

Laura,

Can't wait to meet you. We have "spoken" so often online, I feel like we are old friends already.

Dawn

Poor George. I am very sorry for your loss. I'll be bringing you tomatoes as well.

Here's a copy/paste from heather38 in the Winter Sowing Forum. I was amazed she could find humor in her own tragedy.

At 9am this morning a peaceful neighbourhood in Connecticut was awoken to a sight of complete devastation, Frost had killed 3 sweet peppers outright and a egg plant and Tomato are on the critical list, Frost had fled the crime scene and believed to be heading for the Canadian Border.
Officials are said to be looking into the rumour that an incompetent Gardener may have contributed to the disaster by not following official guidance on the Health and Safety of plants.

"it has come to our attention that despite warnings that Frost was in the area, the gardener responsible for these innocent plants, did not follow basic safety procedures, in this instance the covering of her charges with a upturned 2 litre soda bottle, our investigators have found evidence that this equipment was just inches away from the beleaguered plants and they must have been tormented in their last few hours that the means to save them was so close" stated Artie Choke, lead investigator into the tragedy.

Sources close to the gardener have reported that on realising the dangers to her charges, attempted to save them and on getting to her door is said to have been forced to retreat back due the the cold, stating "its brass monkeys out there!"

The investigation continues and charges of negligence have not been ruled out.

Reporter Tom Mater, for Yukon Gold News Network

News update the Tomato and Egg Plant despite heroic attempts to revieve them, where pronounced officially compost at 2pm ECT

Seedmama (& heather38),

What a sad day for all and thanks to Artie Choke for the blow-by-blow. I'm sorry to say I'm just tickled at the story!

Hope to meet you Saturday!

& to Dawn,

I look forward to meeting you too! We are the same age (or I'm bit older) and tell my DH all the time about how very special you are to all of us!

Laura

& to Randy,

Are you coming to the swap? I owe you a jar of salsa!

I will be there with my other half.

Is anyone intrested in cattails? I have a pond for my ducks and geese and its getting to many cattails in it. We need to thin them out.

Seedmama,

Heather38 has a great sense of humor and is great at comedy writing too. I hope she had backup plants.

Laura,

Oh, we are going to have so much fun!

NJDJS,

You keep those cattails away from me! We have billions of our own and would prefer to have almost none. I like the way they look on a pond edge, but they sure are aggressive. Here, the redwing blackbirds nest in them though, so I tolerate them.

Everyone else--one cattail is all you need, and then, you too will have billions.

A nuclear bomb could go off and kill 99.9% of life on earth and what would survive? Cattails, Johnson Grass, Bermuda Grass, Ticks and Fire Ants. If you need anything on that list, I have it here and can bring you some. Well, except for the ticks. The guineas eat them all on our property, but I can go walk in any nearby pasture where my guineas don't roam and pick up a few ticks for you.

Dawn

I'll be there. Not sure what food what food yet, but for plants I will have my usuals plus a few others.

Also, if by chance it rains, the expect the swap to go on. One year it POURED and was cold but people still showed up. We mananged to get a fire going and had a great, if wet time.

Pink shamrocks
Orange daylilies
Star of Bethelehem
Iris- purple with grape fragrance (if I have time to divide)
Chives
maybe a few veggie seedlings (misc tomatoes, squash
I know there's more, but I just can't think of them now.

Happy Gardening!

LOL Okiedawn. If I knew what I know now, before I got the cattails I would have put a barrel in my pond with the cattails in them so they can't spread. Mine took about 3 years to get where I am ready to get them scooped out of the pond. YES Rich did try to burn them but they are comin back. They are like bamboo they take over if ya don't keep thinning them out. Rich wants bamboo but he said he wants to put it in the middle of the yard so he can mow and keep it in one area. Don't think that will work.
Ticks, I can bring ya some of those.My 5 dogs always find a nest of them. I need stock in the frontline company.
I have a guinea and a rooster left.They are the smart ones. THe redtail hawks ate my other guinea and chickens. Bobcat got one of my geese so have 3 of them left and 2 duck. OH I can bring lotsa flies for ya Dawn.LOL I bet you have a bunch of those too.

Hi Mrs. Frodo, Thanks for the reminder about the rain. I need to dig out my muck boots just in case and have them in the truck. : )

Dawn, We do have flies. Lots of them. We even have southern robber flies. Is that important? It might be. LOL

During the spring and summer, I leave the door to the screened-in porch propped open during the day so that the dogs and cats can come and go because they like to sleep on the screened-in porch in the semi-shade during the heat of the day. A lot of insects come onto the back porch and never leave. This made us very, very popular with our son's friends when he was in high school and they had to do an insect collection for biology. Any student could spend an hour or two in our garden/on our back porch and have the entire bug collection captured in no time. Then, all they had to do was identify them and mount them....etc.

Of course, being high schoolers, they left the "collecting" part until the week the thing was due, and it got rather busy here. Luckily, there was no shortage of interesting bugs. (I think their favorite was the big, green hornworms!) Then they got online and got out my insect books and figured out what they had. (If I knew the common name, I told them, but they still had to look it up and figure out the Latin name and all that.)

DS came into the room one day and said that the southern robber flies they'd all caught were an endangered species, and was that going to be a problem. I said I didn't know. So, they went ahead and kept them in their insect collections, turned them in and it wasn't a problem. I hope their teacher (and anyone reading this) knows that none of these students deliberately caught and killed an endangered fly for their insect collection. : ) Who even knew that there were endangered flies? I can assure you that we still have plenty of bugs and plenty of flies, and some of them are probably the endangered southern robber flies.

As for the cattails, we dig them all out once every few years. We dug the lily pond with sloping edges so the turtles could climb in and out. To keep the cattails out completely, we'd have to dig down two feet and do away with the sloping sides. Since we like the native turtles, we'll just put up with the cattails.

There's a glyphosate formulated and sold for cattails, but I won't buy it because of glyphosate's theoretical connection with deformed frogs. We like our frogs here so we don't want to harm them either.

We used to have a hawk problem, but then I started putting out cracked corn in one spot for the crows this winter. Guess what? Crows are VERY territorial and now they chase away every hawk that even attempts to fly over our property. Now that the Purple Martins are back they help the crows with the hawks too.

Dawn

I'll be there :) ...can't wait! My 22 yr old daughter hopes to be there, too (her hopes are that the couple she offered to help move already has the deed done!!)...I'm bringing a non-living door prize that I think all will like; not sure yet what food item - I'm inclined toward dessert, but I've eaten SO MUCH lately that I should bring only carrot sticks to munch on!

Folks, thanks for the offer of plants! I'm overwhelmed and yesterday I was just, still, well... numb.

We'll see what I end up taking. I like to plant at least 4 of a variety, in blocks, for seed saving purposes. I may end up doing a "mixed bag" planting, just for food. As of last night two of my Baker Family Heirloom tomatoes looked like they would survive (2 out of about 50). But then, I normally only put out 6. Roma is on the edge. But I can probably purchase Roma plants. Sioux, well, 5 Sioux might actually pull through, which is what I try to put out. We'll see. It'll be another day or two until I really know. What's amazing is that three out of four of my Tomato Rocky plants came through unscathed, and they were in the same flat with Sioux and Roma.

Okay, I have to run. Milking time!

George

George,

I have had in-the-ground tomatoes freeze to the ground and still resprout and grow, but I don't know if plants that froze in flats will be as resilient since the roots in flats have less protection than those in the ground. Still, you never know. And, of course, often tomatoes that freeze are less productive than those that don't freeze, but a lot of mine that froze in last year's late freezes here in late April and early May did regrow and produced just fine.

Rocky sounds tough, but then with a name like "Rocky", it ought to be tough. Any time I hear that name, I picture Rocky Balboa and hear the movie theme music in my head.

Dawn

Actually Tomato Rocky (known by everyone else in the world as "Rocky") is relatively temperamental. It's my first heirloom, inherited from my dad, who in turn received the seed from Rocky Mastrodomenico, a wonderful Italian friend of ours. Rocky Mastro, as we called him, visited a friend of a friend, in the seventies, up in Northern NJ, who had brought the seed from his family's homeland somewhere in Italy. The friend of a friend wasn't home, when they arrived. But in true Mediterranean manner, Rocky and his friend took a look at the garden. They were impressed with this tomato, which has very large, very intensely flavored plum tomatoes. So, Rocky picked up a fallen, rotting tomato and took it home for seed. Later he shared some with my Dad. It grew well for us for a couple years and then, for some reason it started suffering from blight every year, to the point that it wasn't worth growing. NJ has a very humid maritime climate, which probably caused this problem.

When Jerreth and I were in Northern Indiana, in grad school, we started gardening to provide for the larder. That's when we started getting interested in heirlooms. We joined the Seed Savers Exchange in 1984. I remembered "Tomato Rocky" as we always called it, and asked Dad for some seed. He gladly sent me some, and we discovered that it grew and produced WONDERFULLY in Indiana. It still has a loyal following in IN and IL. I haven't given it a fair chance in OK. But my seed is almost exhausted, so that was a priority this year. I'm so glad those three plants made it. I never plant fewer than three, when I'm saving seed.

The plant has kind of droopy, wispy foliage and it doesn't like to be pruned. I grow it in tall cages. When it does well, it does really well. When it doesn't do well, ... I'm lucky to get enough for seed. But it's OUR Heirloom and I really don't want to lose it. A seed saver in British Columbia offered to grow me out some seed this year, which is wonderful. I hope it does well for them.

George

George - I hope to make it to the "meet and eat", but it is not a sure thing yet. But............

I planted 4 Baker Family Heirloom and I will split with you. If your two make it, then that would give you four.

I also have Roma. Is six what you need?

I planted late this year so my plants are only about 3 inches tall, but if it will help, then I will be happy to share.

I'll be there but without my DH. He is planning on a weekend at the lake. This will be our first summer in this house and we recently finished putting in a couple of raised beds...so I don't really have anything to trade yet but would love to meet everyone! Haven't decided what dish to bring but I'll think of something. Looking forward to it!

Cindy

Carol, yes, six is what I want. Thanks!
I have a number of Jerusalem Artichokes I'm bringing for anyone who would like to try planting them. This strain produces very large roots, some as large as a softball.

George

George - Save me a Jerusalem Artichoke please. I had a plant (then more) in the corner of my garden in Colorado and we rather liked it.

Now com'on Dawn there has to be something that I have that you want. Ya don't want my cattails and ya don't want my flies. OHHH how bout those ugly red wasps?? I have a bunch of those too.Maybe a black locus tree? There just gotta be something I can bring ya. LOL

Well it is looking better for me to be able to come on Saturday. Unless my daughter decides to meet me there, I will be coming alone. I am going to leave very early so I can pick up ProMix before Estes closes at noon.

I have not known what to bring (other than tomato plants for George), but I do have another option. I have never before grown Balsam Impatiens, but I like the way the pictures look. It seems I have a lot more than I will be able to put in my yard, so I can pot up a few of those if anyone is interested in having one. These are not like the shade loving impatiens that we normally buy as bedding plants and are grown in sun to partial shade. If anyone is interested, I will bring some of those. I understand they reseed easily so that may be a bother for some.

I will also bring a few flower pots. They are just plastic, but will give you one more place to plant something, or hold it until you are ready to plant.

And food......Guess that depends on how busy my Friday is.
Carol

Soonergrandmom, Sounds to me like you are bringing a lot. I have very little, and it's all spoken for. How about I bring double food to cover you, and we'll call it good? I'm closer and it's easier for me to bring food.
Seedmama

Seedmama, you are so sweet. I really don't mind bringing food, but I am just not ready to commit to naming it yet. LOL I like to cook and I can always bring something in a cooler. I talked to my daughter and both of her children have tournaments this weekend so she can't come.

I don't feel like I am bringing much at all. George gave me the seeds for Baker's Family Heirloom so I'm just giving a couple back in a different form. I wish I had planted more, but I only did four. One failed to germinate, but another pot must have had two seeds sticking together so I got four after all. I don't even like Roma's much, but my DH does. I will gladly share those with George because I have plenty. My plants are still very small though, because I was determined not to "plant and cover" like I normally do. I guess they are strong little plants however, because the night George lost his, I just slid mine under the shed that had a piece of plastic on the front of it. Our temps went to 31 according to Mesonet, but I didn't lose anything.

One of my carpenters told me today that everytime I get my yard in shape they come and mess it up again. I think this is the last time though. They had a bobcat for this project and it made some pretty deep ruts, but they also graded it out to make the water flow away a little better, so all and all I think I will benefit. They poured the final concrete today for our safe room/tornado shelter, but we still have a lot of work to do. It has been an interesting (although stressful) process. Tomorrow they are ordering siding for it and with a little paint it should just look like another room on the house. They are also ordering in the metal to match the house roof. That should take care of the outside but we have the finishing on the inside to take care of. We probably will leave that until the roof is on. The roof is just to make it look like the house and to make the water flow off, because it has a thick reinforced concrete flat roof already. I will have to explain it to you on Saturday, because it has been an interesting project.

The flower pots are just lightweight plastic, but they are big enough for small plants. I grew lettuce and peppers in some of them last year and they were plenty big for that. I have oodles. If I could trade one for a plant, any plant, I would be happy. LOL

I have the room where the shelter connects about 2/3 painted and that is my last inside project, then I am moving outside for the summer. LOL It always seems like I have so much to do that I think my neighbors must be frustrated from looking at our home, but they always just say, "Look how much you have already done, and how good it looks". Guess that's what happens when you buy an old house. The work never ends.

Thanks again for your offer to bring food for me, but I am indepted to you already for all of those flowers I have growing that came from your seed stash. Hope to see you on Saturday. Carol

I'll try to be there 12 sharp. Will probably have to leave a little early. I told Jerreth I'd do both morning and evening milking (6 AM & 6 PM). I preach on Sunday, so I need to be in bed early Saturday.

The kids (at least one or two of the three) are coming home this evening, since it's my B-day (I know, my GW profile is wrong). So, there is still a slight chance that the family may out vote me on this trip. On the other hand, one of our parishioners is in the VA hospital in OKC. So I can kill two birds with one stone by going : )

I'll bring my new spading fork and the hoe I got for my B-day. Both are from Lee Valley Tools and both are really great.

George

Happy birthday George!

What a great day! I have a wonderful 2 year old granddaughter today! Although I won't be bringing her to the swap, she will be out helping me plant in the next days. I plan to raise her well! I do hope we get to meet.

Laura

George,

Happy Birthday! Ooooh...a new spading fork AND a hoe. What a wonderful and useful gift. I'm glad you're bringing them so people can see the quality of Lee Valley tools!

Laura,

Happy birthday to your 2-year-old granddaughter. What a fun age!

Dawn

I won't be there.....I was supposed to bring name tags.

Could someone pick up a pack of those stick-on name tags and take them in my place.

Have fun everyone!

Lynn,

I'm sorry you won't be there. We'll (I'll) miss you.

I will bring name tags. I have a few left from previous swaps and can get some more.

Happy Gardening.

Lynn,

We're going to miss you!

OK, y'all it is 9:04 a.m. and we are leaving our home here in Love County in the next 10 minutes. See you all soon.

Dawn