Our first frost or freeze has happened on Halloween so many times now that I just carry that day in my head, but few of them have been this cold. Usually I can wrap things good and they will keep going for a few more weeks, but even if I had still had things worth saving I wouldn't have tried with this forecast. We were below freezing for 10 hours and dropped to 24.

I have a friend who lives south of me, close to the Mesonet station and her garden is usually gone 3 weeks before mine. I think the lake normally protects us for awhile but not at last nights temps. She called yesterday and asked if I could use some peppers because she was taking out her garden before the freeze. I took her some squash that I was removing from my garden, and a loaf of homemade bread and we traded. LOL So I have peppers, green tomatoes, and squash to take care of today. It's not a huge amount, but will keep me busy today.

Larry, We hit 28 degrees at our house last night (I think our Mesonet station dropped to 26) and had a heavy frost in the shaded areas. I didn't go outside until after 9 am, so don't know if the sunny areas also had frost. If they did, it all melted before I went outside.

Our weather seems to swing so wildly from one exrteme to another that it seems like it is getting harder and harder to even know what normal is. Our first hard freeze usually is around mid-November, but we've had it happen at the end of September and as late as mid-December

With this morning's heavy frost and the temperature low enough to qualify as a hard freeze, our garden is toast. That's okay. I have enough harvested produce to keep me busy with its processing for the next week. I did harvest about 25 green and/or red tomatoes, so we ought to have tomatoes to eat for the rest of the month----if all the green ones eventually ripen.

I'm tired, It was a long, hard drought-plagued garden year and I am ready for a break. Even though I really didn't want for us to have a freeze this year, once it seemed inevitable, I just accepted it and did my best to strip the garden of all usable produce. Last night, I went out at sunset and took one last long look at all the beautiful foliage and flowers because I knew it all would be brown, blackened and/or mushy this morning. Saying good-bye to the garden always is bittersweet.

Dawn