Hmm, I never encountered this place (or don't remember the name)...since I don't live there anymore, I guess no point in asking you where. However, I do rejoice in your continued feeding the gardening habit, Amy!

I bought some too! In fact, 3 perennial lantanas were in the mix and a couple basils. I haven't planted any of them yet. :) but I have them!!

Lisa you're going to need bigger flower beds.

Don't feel alone. So did I....Atwoods needs to quit with the 69 cent sales! I came home with 2 full flats of flowers, 3 rosemary plants and a banana tree!

trust me we wont scold you only encourage and enable you. Next time I get near a city I will be getting a few things too.

I've fallen victim to so many plant sales that it looks like I'll have plants to offer up at the spring fling after all! And I haven't even STARTED shopping for ornamentals...

I told her I wasn't ready for flowers, but I bought some anyway, LOL. The one without a tag is a sunpatien, hybrid of impatien. Smashed Thumb is on Yale right off hwy 75 at 116th Street North.

I need to get started buying and planting, but every time I do, it rains just enought to get the clay wet. Now we have rain forcast for the next 7 days. I just hope we get enough to do us some good not just showers. I may be planting in June. HA, done it before!!!!

I too bought some plants today! A couple of huge hostas (winter snow), several purple huecheras, and a bunch of annuals. I want to pick up a couple of russian sage plants, too, but I guess it's still too early for them. No one has them in stock yet. :(

Miraje -I'm digging up my Russian Sage - dividing and moving. You oughta come to the Fling and I'll share with ya!!!

Alas, we're hosting the in-laws that weekend and I don't think they're much into gardening. If you have any left after the Fling I'd be happy to take them off your hands, though! :D

I am going to Amarillo Thursday. The day after payday, you know what that means.

uh-oh, Kim....I know ALL too well...and now you've got even more room with the other place!!! Be sure to save room for the Chickasaw plums!

I was just looking at the fence line and realized there is a lot of empty ground out there!

Yes, you know...I've noticed that, when my palms begin getting itchy to plant something, I always seem to find some space.

Y'all are making me feel like I'm behind on buying plants. I had hoped to go plant shopping today, but flooding in the part of Texas where I wanted to go changed my plans. Maybe tomorrow.

Kim, I know exactly what that means.

dbarron, I agree. When there is a plant that needs to be planted, a spot just seems to open up. For me, the limitation is that unless I want to risk something being eaten by our large deer and cottontail population, I have to plant within the fenced garden areas. We only have minimal landscaping around the house, mostly trees, shrubs, vines and groundcovers plus a few rose bushes. Oh, and a few containers planted with annual color. Some sort of animal always seems to feast on anything ornamental that's not protected. I tried to fight them for years, but finally gave up. Unless I am going to sit on the front porch 24/7 with a gun, the animals will be out in the yard at night and they will be feasting on my plants.

I was driving home from the cattle ranch one evening and down the road there were two calves in a fenced front yard. One was standing on the porch in front of the door munching on a rosebush. The grass is always greener. I wondered if some one got in trouble for leaving those calves there.

Yeah, and I don't see multiflora roses being nibbled when in pasture :( It is greener if it's not on your own paddock.

I was surprised it went for the rose bush, probably just testing everything. I was more impressed with it standing at the front door.

Clearly it was waiting for someone to open the door and let it in. It wanted to see what kind of food it could find inside the house.

Maybe a neighbor put the calves inside that yard to keep them out of the road? Two points regarding that: (1) the rancher is financially liable if one of their animals is in the road and somebody hits it, so here in our neighborhood, most people will usher escaped farm animals into any fenced area they can find just to protect the owner by getting the animals out of the road before someone hits them, gets hurt or killed, and subsequently either they or their survivors sue the rancher. It happens. (2) When a vehicle hits a large animal, the crash scene is not a pretty sight. More often, the animal is so badly injured that someone has to shoot it to put it out of its misery, and occasionally, a person in the vehicle suffers significant injuries and/or passes away. So, most people would rather incur the wrath of an irritated gardener or resident than leave escaped animals roaming the roads, especially in the dark.

Dawn, I completely agree with you.

The rest of you guys stop buying all the plants!!! Ha!! I will have to go to Witchita to find plants.

I wish that were true here Dawn. My son has hit cows 2 different times 2 different trucks and here they said we are under open range and so they are not responsible. I think ranchers would be quicker to fix fences if they had a law making them responsible.

A dead cow, particularly a pregnant cow, may be the difference between profit or loss for the owner. Most don't want to lose any animals. There are always some people who are irresponsible. And there are some animals crafty enough to find a way to free themselves no matter what the owner does.

Kim, It is unfortunate Texas has open range laws, but I am not surprised. OK has laws that hold the operator responsible for animals that get out of their pasture. A friend of ours had a complicated situation where his land abuts I-35 and the fence along I-35 apparently is maintained by the state, and not by him. When his cattle escaped due to the state fence being in poor repair and one or more of them was involved in a motor vehicle collision, he still was the one who got sued.

The people I know all are very conscientious about keeping their fences in good repair, but as Amy said, crafty livestock will find a way.....

Sometimes I think the cows are psychic as they often escape when their owners are out of town. That leaves friends and neighbors scrambling to put up the animals and to figure out who's doing the feeding while the ranch family is out of town so that we can let that person know that the cattle are getting out.

Amy, Some of the ranchers I know insure their cattle and when we first moved here, I wondered if that was necessary. After seeing some of them lose cattle repeatedly to lightning strikes, I came to understand that having the cattle insured is an important part of their business plan. Otherwise, the losses sometimes incurred in a year full of thunderstorms could put them out of business.

Dawn

One of the guys I worked with claims nothing will eat a cow killed by lightning. Ever heard of that? I was going to say I highjacked the thread, bu I guess since I started it I will let it slide. I really hadn't thought about cattle for several years. I was a city girl when I went to work there. I did a lot of things and learned a lot of things at that job. People would freak out to learn I had a nitrogen tank filled with bull semen in my office. And a refidgerater with a tiger's head in the freezer.

I would have been one to gasp.

ok I can get it back on topic .. I only bought 4 packs of seeds, no Malabar spinach, and 6 plants . it was nice to get to the city and see what the garden centers had now. Last time I went was February.

I've heard the statement but also have heard otherwise, so who knows. Regular predators like cougars, coyotes and the like prefer to kill their own and then eat it. Cougars will cache the rest for later so I guess they'll eat food that's been dead for a while if they killed it themselves. I'd expect that they wouldn't eat a cow or calf killed by lightning because they aren't scavengers. However, I'm not sure that savengers wouldn't eat it---skunks, vultures and the like. Often those birds and animals that eat carrion are opportunists that eat whatever they find, but I don't know if they eat animals killed by lightning strikes. Next time I run into one of our ranching friends who's lost cattle to lightning strikes, I'll ask him what he does with the carcass and whether anything feeds upon it. I've heard that the ones killed by a direct strike often smell really bad, and I think we humans would extrapolate that to indicate the flavor also would be untasty....charred or something. I'm not sure if the ones killed indirectly have the same burning and charring, so don't know if it would affect how they taste.

Oddly, a person in our county was struck by lightning this evening as the storms moved in. I hope that person is going to be okay.

I didn't go anywhere and didn't buy anything, plant, animal or otherwise. I might go plant shopping tomorrow or Monday. It seems like all we do lately is run home from here or there to get inside before the storms arrive.

I will not buy more plants.
I will not buy more plants .
I will not buy more plants ...

I am so glad to hear that I'm not the only one who buys plants before I have a place prepared for them. My weakness is Lowes' markdown racks at the back! Can't wait for Spring Fling!

I'm worse...I have people in Oklahoma buying them for me...now I have to drive to OKC next month and get my ummm fix...err shipment.

I am also touring a couple of gardens, where I will appropriate owner-sanctioned cuttings...woe is me.

There's nothing wrong with buying plants, you know. (grin)

I have been severely shopping-deprived this year. I don't know what is wrong in our lives that I cannot find time to shop for plants. That's never been a problem before. I think maybe it is the rain. If it isn't raining, we're generally trying catch up on mowing and edging, and catching and spread the grass clippings as mulch. Then, when it is raining....who wants to go shopping for plants in the rain?

I did raise most of my annual flowers and herbs from seed this spring, so avoided buying a lot of flats of annuals. Still, there are lots of plants in the stores now and I need to buy some of them. Maybe tomorrow. It isn't supposed to rain tomorrow.