I will SO miss the trhriving garden. My body hates cold weather. I think the worst part is lack of light. I'm with you, bah humbug!

My body does not like cold weather either. The only thing I have left that is producing is peppers. I have been harvesting them and sending to the food bank. My cover crop is already in and the deer are helping me harvest that. I planted some of the same stuff in the pasture, but I guess the garden cover crop taste better. ( no weeds in it)

I don't know how cold it got here in SW OKC, but I have tropical hybiscus blooming like crazy. I would think they would have stopped blooming by now. I heard from a friend of ours that if the Persimmon tree fruit is shaped like a spoon it means a lot of snow that winter. Has anyone heard of this little tale? They said the seed is spoon shaped this year, so lots of snow!!!!

Stockergal, that is a 4 letter word. Quit cussin!

:D Personally, I think it's going to be a wet winter. Hubs thinks it's going to be c___.

I have heard of the Persimmon seed having the spoon in it this year, which means more moisture, and maybe more snow. I have never kept track of how accurate the persimmon seed is. I plan on keeping more generator gas and diesel this winter, but with my 91 year old mother living with me now I want to be a little more prepared.

Our native persimmons aren't any good for eating until after a frost or freeze has hit them and blackened them (it removes some of the astringency), so I haven't cut into any yet, and I haven't compared persimmon seeds to weather over the years to see if there is a correlation either. Still, a lot of those old folk sayings seem to have some basis in the truth.

With it being an El Nino winter, I expect winter weather that is wetter than usual. We'll probably be slightly cooler than usual, but in some El Nino winters I remember, it seems like we were only average or even slightly warmer than average. I'm going to keep hoping for a winter that is warm and wet, but feel like it is more likely to be cool and wet.

A little over a week ago, Bob Henson blogged at Weather Underground about NOAA's Winter 2015-16 Forecast and I learned a lot from his comments. I'll link his blog entry below for anyone who wants to see what he says about what NOAA's forecast indicates. His blog entry does include NOAA's precipitation and temperature maps showing their probabilities for Winter 2015-16.

Snow? Y'all can keep the snow up there. We don't want it down here. I like snow as long as I'm sitting indoors looking out at it for that first day or so, and then I'm over it. Stomping around in boots and coats doing winter chores is not fun, and I miss the sun when it is not shining. I also hate being cold.

Bob Henson's Blog on NOAA's 2015-16 Winter Outlook