I love cats! They are so precocious and curious. I lost both of my big guys in the last 2 years and I miss them and their antics so much.

I planted quite a few herbs before the rain started, trying to weigh the probability of survival by planting when it would be overcast and wet versus hot, sunny, and dry. Then former won and the dill, chives, parsley, cilantro, lemon balm, tarragon, thyme, catnip, and sweet marjoram are in the ground. I also planted some salvia, Tahoka Daisies, Burgandy Gaillardia, and tuberose that survived in a pot over winter.

The lettuce is big as is the arugula. The snap peas are wimpy, so doubt I will get much, if any, harvest, from them.

In the kitchen the other day, I caught something moving across the floor out of the corner of my eye. It was a small toad. How did that happen? I scooped it up in the dish towel and took him outside. I put him under the shrubs so he could hide out til nighttime.

Susan

Turtle rescue, I love it. I have not seen a turtle in the garden yet, still waiting!!,

little man and I planted all the containers this morning. Then came in for lunch and he ate and ate and ate sloppy joes, then he had ice cream. I don't know if I can afford the help!, ha ha

still have a lot to plant this week end, my help is in pre school till noon so I'll be on my own in the morning. I was giving the ground a couple of days to dry out a little before I try to plant in ground.

when I moved all the house plants outside last week I had two toads to round up, guess they spent the winter with me??. You know it's kinda hard running down a toad in an empty room. Ha ha

Susan, I'm so sorry you lost your two big guys. In the last few years, we've lost 4 old dogs, and a couple of old cats. The loss of beloved pets sure does leave a hole in your heart. Because we live in the country, though, and horrible people drive out and dump pets "in the country" all the time, as if the poor things can take care of themselves, we always have abandoned animals showing up needing a home, so we never run out of cats or dogs. Still, just because a couple of little dogs showed up needing a home and needing to be loved and we took them in....that doesn't make me miss our dearly departed old dogs any less, and it is the same with cats. Our oldest cats that we have now are around 15-16 years old and I know they won't be with us all that much longer, but we have had a few cats live to be 18-20.

It sounds like you've been busy planting. My snap peas stalled for a long time during that time frame when the weather was too hot, windy and dry and everyone was having wildfires. It was not pea-friendly weather, but they are doing great now even though the plants still are shorter than they'd be in a year without such a prolonged warm, windy spell too early in the season. Maybe the recent rain and cool weather will make your peas step up their growth and produce a harvest for you.

I love the toad story. Do you have any cats or dogs that could have carried it inside? We had a cat who used to bring in bunnies, birds and voles (sometimes dead ones, but mostly live ones) through the dog door, which is the reason we got rid of the dog door. I like for the wildlife to be outside, not inside.

The frogs have been croaking like mad the last few days. With all of last year's and this year's moisture, we have the most frogs this year that we've ever had. They are just everywhere.

Stockergal, What fun it is to have a little helper, even if he is eating you out of house and home!

I did plant tomato and pepper plants yesterday in a raised bed and the soil was still very wet, but not so wet that I couldn't transplant plants into it. All that is left now is to fill in a couple of places in the cucumber bed, which also is a raised bed, and then to deal with the grade-level soil at the low end of the garden. I hope to do that today, but much will depend on how wet the soil is at the low end of the garden. Because of all that rain, it wouldn't surprise me if the soil at that low end is still unworkable. If that's the case, I'll move to the back garden, which has had big puddles standing in it.

I know the back garden is going to be a mud pit, but I'd like to get a lot done before next week's rainfall. I noticed yesterday that the back garden's puddles are gone. Luckily, most of it is sandy-silty soil and it dries quickly, so either today or tomorrow the part of the back garden that has been rototilled ought to be plantable. I am hoping that the part that isn't rototilled yet can be rototilled on Saturday late in the day after it has hopefully dried up enough, or maybe early Sunday. With rain in the forecast for Sunday, it seems like I'll be weeding and mulching on much of Saturday while Tim is mowing and bringing me grass clippings. We mowed several acres last weekend, but you cannot tell it now by looking at them or at the yard. Everything has grown so much, it is like we never mowed.

I am looking at a few bare spots in the perennial beds and trying to decide what to put in as replacement plants. We now do know, apparently, which plants can survive 78" of rainfall in one year in amended clay, as well as which ones cannot.

Dawn

It never occurred to me that the warm temps caused the peas to stall out. But obviously that's it. Little green caterpillars are munching on them, too, but I don't want to use anything to control them....even BT.

Oh, yes, the loss of my Georgie last year was really devastating. He was my buddy and very active for an older guy (17). The girls let him out of the house at night, accidentally and he was injured beyond fixing. Don't know what actually happened. We do love our pets. Right now I still have an outdoor kitty that someone abandoned when they moved - yes, it happens in the city, too - and he is my garden bud. He follows me everywhere I go. I feed him, because otherwise he eats the birds and squirrels, lol!

I still have a few tomatoes to get in the ground - Stump of the World, Prudens Purple, and Black Cherry. I already put out SunGold and Cherokee Purple. I had to restart Large Red Cherry because the initial sow did not germinate - go figure! This second sowing came up quickly, though, so I'm thinking that I just "thought" I threw seeds in that container. Oh my, I must be getting old.

We don't have a cat or dog that could have carted in the toad - just one indoor cat that is petrified of the outside, and an outdoor cat. Its a mystery, but we will check the house to see if there is a way it could have gotten in and fix that. Toads I don't mind - it's the "other" possibilities outside that kinda worry me. LOL!

Susan

Poor Georgie! I just hate hearing that. I am sure the girls felt just terrible about it.

My best garden buddy is Pumpkin, an orange tabby who is only a couple of years old. Chris found him, meowing his head off, in the bar ditch by our front gate when Pumpkin was only about 2-3 weeks old. He was so tiny he liked to sleep in a Puffs tissue box. We and our vet had to work really hard to save him because his body kept rejecting all food. He'd eat and throw up endlessly. We finally got him through that tough spell and now he is my little garden buddy. He stalks every bird, toad, lizard, snake, turtle, etc. endlessly. He's good at catching dragonflies, but he knows he'd better not mess with butterflies or moths when I'm around. He knows he is not supposed to catch birds, so he'll leave them alone, but he still watches them. He likes to go off into our neighbor's pasture, which never gets mowed so is in pretty rough shape and apparently filled with rodents, and bring back a vole or, even worse, a rat. He carries it alive into the garden and turns it loose so he can chase it up and down the pathways. It drives me crazy, but except for that he is a good garden cat.

I've got 6 tomato plants left to put into the ground and will do that this afternoon. I have had a very prolonged tomato planting season---the first plants, already with fruit on them, went into the ground in early to mid-March and already have produced a harvest, and the later plants have been going into the ground over a long, staggered planting season. I'm now essentially out of room in the front garden, so am just squeezing one in here and there. I noticed today that the "Teton" spinach, which has lagged behind the "Bloomsdale" spinach all year looked just horrible. I do remember thinking yesterday its color looked a little off. Well, today it looked truly awful, with something that might be downy mildew. So, I quickly yanked it out and threw all those plants into the wheelbarrow to go to the compost pile, but you know that I was sort of saying "poor Spinach" in one breath and then quickly calculating that I could squeeze in 3 more tomato plants in the space where that sick spinach had been. Having a place for more tomato plants took some of the sting out of having half the spinach planting suddenly turn so sickly.

We also have an indoor cat who is petrified of the outdoors and never has stepped foot outside since he was born in our son's house, which was under-construction, last summer, and then carried up here to our house with his mom and 2 surviving siblings when Chris found them. Sometimes Chip will look out the front door but if you try to get him to go out, he runs upstairs screaming all the way and hides under the bed in the guestroom. I'm starting to think he'll never go outside, and that's okay. I'm afraid that if he went out, he then would be scared and not come back in. Cats that do not come inside at night don't last long around here. Since Chip doesn't seem to handle transitioning from one area to another well, maybe he's better off as a permanent indoor house cat.

It is so gorgeous today, and my long, late lunch is over and I need to get back out to the garden and get those last tomato plants in the ground. Then I still have to figure out how and where to squeeze in 2-4 tomatillo plants. It is always something.

Dawn