No new plants here, from stores. How is that going to happen? Will not allow self to walk through gardening parts of stores and definitely not allowed to go to any nurseries. I've tried so hard not to scare GDW to death with my gardening illnesses. . . it's not like I didn't warn him, though. I DID say, "I have to tell you, I DO love gardening." Really. . . wasn't that good of me? Having said that, I do believe I have a relatively mild case of it compared to your more advanced disease, Dawn. In fact, just to prove it to GDW, I had to read him your story above of stuffing all the plants into the Charger. Did not know what datura was. . . seeing photos, guess I need some, eh.

I have a list of stuff I'm s'posed to bring for different people, none are a problem except for the bee balm. One cannot just hand off 1-2 bee balm plants. One must hand off a patch of at least a square foot. I know. Dish tubs! Ahh. Maybe foil roaster pans.

Hazel. . . your energy today made me go take a nap.

Yes, Amy, adorable picture. I wish I had little ones around occasionally to assist. My granddaughter in Mpls adored helping me garden from the time she was 3. She loved the flowers so much. My new 12-yr old great granddaughter likes the plants, as well. . . she conned me out of several seedlings when she visited last month. The problem was that they have free-range chickens. . . but I sent them on and wished her luck!

I ordered 5 15-gallon black fabric grow pots and had filled all five with emergencies (like the lilies I yanked out of the center everything bed, dahlias, GDW's avocado trees, stray tomato plant or two, . . . . so had to order five more for pretty viny trailing things. I had tons of petunias and verbena and lobelia in Mpls. . . here I don't have one single petunia. . . Dawn? LOL Verbena are all in the raised flower bed. . . No lobelia.

Okay, so maybe I do need to go to a store and buy a few container trailing things. . . was in bed promptly at 2 am last night and up bright and early at 7:30 (that IS bright and early for me); but had to do the Sudoku until it was late enough to be a good neighbor for mowing, and when one down the road began at 8:30, I figured that was enough to get me going. I mow, Garry weed whips. Did lots of other things, including pouring 4 gallons of my garlic/cayenne/cinnamon concoction down dozens of vole holes out front and a dozen or so back here; cleaning the deck and washing it down, blah blah. Yep, by 2 pm HAD to take a power nap. And had one of the kids and new hubby stop by for a couple hours after that. . .MAN this weed yard looks good when it's mowed!

What do you all plant after you take out your potatoes and onions? Last year I try planting corn and squash. Vine borers got the squash and the corn didn't do well. Maybe sweet potatoes?

Good question. My potatoe beds are in deep sandy soil, but the hottest portion of the garden. It's close to the tap so I'm thinking some more cucurbits.

The onions and garlic get a bit of shade in the afternoon. Sweet potatoes and some fall cole crops might work there. The sweet potato vines can craw into the sun while the cold crop seedlings get some relief from hot sun.

I'm going to wing this lol I've been trying to let grow/go; just seed, plant and go! Well, mostly.. hehe

I plant pumpkins after onions and southern peas after potatoes.

This is a cut and paste I saved from Dawn, of course. Usually I link the original thread, but somehow I didn't. Maybe it was from one of these long conversation threads. "Southern peas (that includes a wide range including Pink Eye Purple Hull peas, lady peas, cream peas, crowder peas and zipper peas), sweet potatoes, winter squash (not standard pumpkins that are C. pepo or C. maxima because you're likely to use those to Squash Vine Borers before they get large enough to produce a single harvest), icebox melons (which have more compact vines and shorter DTMs than larger melons), Armenian cucumbers, regular cucumbers, okra if it isn't already growing elsewhere, peppers, basil, or even fall tomtaoes. I succession plant all summer long. One crop I don't plant in June is bush beans. In my climate, 9 years out of 10, the summertime temperatures are already hot enough to cause bush bean blossoms to drop in June, so I only succession plant bush beans in March, April and sometimes early May. Then I take a bush bean planting break until mid- to late-July or early August when I plant bush beans for a fall harvest.

I start all my succession crops in plantable pots and try to have them ready to go into the ground on the same day that the earlier crop is harvested. My favorite method is to harvest in the morning, work in some compost into the bed if needed following the harvest, then transplant the succession crop into the bed in the afternoon (or early evening if that day's weather is sunny and blazing hot), mulch the new planting, water it and go to bed tired but happy. You don't have to start succession crops in plantable pots but I prefer to do it because it avoids having a bed that is empty and bare for a couple of weeks while a newly seeded crop is sprouting and it gives a harvest a couple of weeks earlier than a succession crop that is directly sown.

Because I grow many different onion varieties, they mature and are harvested at different times. Because of that, I often plant a vining crop like sweet potatoes or icebox melons or winter squash into the area harvested first. By the time I'm harvesting the later onions, the first area harvested already is filled with vines that then can run into the area harvested later. When I am succession cropping something upright like pepper plants, when I occasionally harvest an onion for fresh use (you don't have to wait and harvest them all at once, I harvest them all along the way to use fresh once they are a usable size), I plant a pepper plant in its spot. If you carefully select your onions to use fresh, you can get all your pepper plants planted right into the onion bed a month or two before the whole onion crop is harvested. Then, when you take out all the onions, the pepper plants already are well established and spreading out. When I do that, there is an almost seamless transition from an onion-filled bed to a pepper plant-filled bed. After I harvest the onions, I fill the bare space in between onion plants with either vining veggies or hot-season flowers like dwarf zinnias, begonias or angelonia I always have flats and flats of stuff grown from seed just sitting and waiting for its turn to go into the beds as succession plantings.

Because I grow many kinds of onions, including short day, intermediate day and long-day length types, the onion harvest period for me runs from mid-May to about mid-July. If I am consistent about getting the succession crops planted immediately into the parts of the onion beds that have been harvested, no one but me even notices all the onions are out of the garden and replaced by something else at the time it is occurring. Once they do notice, it is a shock, like "where did the onions go?". lol. I tell them that the onions have been being harvested and replaced for two months and they just didn't notice. I like seamless transitions like that, and I like having as little bare space for as brief of a time span as possible."

Thanks Amy. <3 Awesome

Hazel, Do the beans emerge sort of like a straight spike and then (in theory) open up and produce leaves, or do they emerge with leaves and then the leaves disappear? Or, do the leaves seem to be eaten underground before the sprout pops up out of the ground? I'm trying to picture bean plants with no leaves at all.

Nancy, You do need daturas. They are night bloomers and the flowers are fragrant, and the sphinx moths love them. I always have the common white-flowered one often called Angel's Trumpets, Moonflower or Devil's Trumpets, although around here, the locals generally call them loco weed (they make livestock behave oddly if they eat them because they have hallucinogen properties) and jimsonweed (because the Jamestown settlers, desperate for food and nearly starving, used them in soup and then had hallucinations) and sometimes other daturas as well. The double purple one that I just bought is usually called Blackcurrant Swirl when sold as seeds and is just gorgeous. It isn't winter hardy here, but sometimes it reseeds for me. I don't remember if the double white and double yellow ones have special names.

I'll be bringing some of the white ones that reseed so prolifically here to the SF. Be advised they are poisonous and can be deadly if eaten or mis-used and should be grown in an area inaccessible to children, livestock and pets. I grow mine within the fenced garden. One particular datura, and I think is datura stramonium is illegal in OK if the intent is to use it to get high, due to teenagers who experiment with them to get high. Around a decade ago, some teenagers in Edmond used it for this purpose and nearly died. The law was passed after that incident I believe.

I like your containers for garden emergencies. We all should have something like that for emergencies, but I fear we'd just fill them up, and then order 5 more to have in case of emergency....and then fill them up, so order 5 more......this gardening addition is hard to beat.

I can bring you Laura Bush petunias to the SP if they hurry up and emerge and grow. My beds are very heavily mulched early this year since it warmed up early and I think that is slowing down the volunteer LB petunias as there's only a handful up and growing so far.

We mowed today too, and mulched several garden paths with the clippings. The yard does look good when it is freshly mowed because you cannot tell all the weeds from the grass like you can when they are taller. Today while mowing, Tim noticed the woodland has advanced the final 10' to the edge of the garden fence, wiping out the corridor we used to use as walking space to walk between the north garden fence and woodland. He was shocked, mostly because he always mows this area and now he cannot mow it, which to him is a tragedy of epic proportion because he loves to maintain law and order by controlling the height of the lawn. I am just shocked that he didn't notice this last summer, though it is much worse now. We are going to have to get out there and limb up some of the tall, old trees and cut back some of the understory ones, and also remove the half dozen or so that are swallowing up parts of the garden fence.

baabaamilker, Since Amy cut and pasted an old answer of mine, I'll just add that it varies from year to year. I believe that last year I planted some pole beans, lima beans and pole southern peas where the onions had been. The beans were planted along the northern edge of the east-west running beds well before the onions were harvested in order to ensure they could bloom before it got too hot here. We were lucky in that June was mild and rainy and so we got tons of beans. Down here, being much farther south than most of you, my short-day onions are harvested in May, so I still sometimes can get pole beans out of the onion beds if I start those beans while the onions are still growing. Since I usually grow around 7 types of onions, the harvest is prolonged and I have tons and tons of space to fill as the different varieties are harvested. I can squeeze a lot into the space once filled with onions.

Sweet corn planted that late tends to not do well for the same basic reason that tomatoes stop setting fruit in hot weather----the heat denatures the pollen. It isn't necessarily common (it happened to me in 2011, though, when we were hitting the 100s in June before the corn silked), and some varieties of sweet corn are more sensitive to heat than others. Other types of corn like field corn, popcorn and flour corn don't seem to have that same heat issue.

Today I had my fourth and fifth snake encounters of the season in the garden. I'm tired of those little serpents and wish they'd go away.

We also had a first today (a dubious one, not meant to be celebrated)---the first slug seen in our garden....and we have lived/gardened here since 1999. I knew they would show up eventually because snails, long missing here as well, showed up several years ago so I've been expecting them, but I'm not happy about finding one. That slug is not in our garden any more. I am trying to take the appearance of snails and slugs with a grain of salt---their appearance surely means our soil has greatly improved from the dense red clay we started with, but I could have gardened for the rest of my life without seeing either one of them and I would have been okay with that.

The rain is missing us so far today/tonight, though it is grazing more northwestern and northern parts of our county.

If it doesn't rain tonight or tomorrow, I guess I'll water. The NWS keeps putting a decent chance of rain in our forecast, and the rain keeps missing us. That's just a bad sign when it misses you over and over and over.

Dawn

I hate it when the rain misses you (us) over and over and it's so close, but not at my house.

Slugs and snakes. Yuk!

About the bush beans, Maybe the leaves are eaten before they pop up? I can't tell really. Something isn't right, I think. Or maybe it is. I'll try to post some pics tomorrow.

Y'all, the strawberries look so good this year! Really good. I've fed them every week.

All but 8 peppers are planted. I still need to find a place for them. I have a row of Mystery Peppers that weren't marked on accident.

This has been an eventful past 24 hours. I won't go in to all the details. Kane (dog) got into the shed and ate fertilizer. Luckily it was an Espoma product. He had..."stomach" issues, but he will live. Honestly, he's so crazy he would probably eat it again.

And I accidentally peeled my Easter eggs that were meant for coloring. After I made a special trip to Natural Grocers to find some white eggs that meet my standards. And I peeled them! It happened during the cake process when I realized I was out of cooking oil and it was 9pm and Tom had to go find some and I was trying to be productive with my time. As I was peeling the last egg, I realized, CRAP! These were going to be dyed. My hens lay brown eggs except Stella, but most of her eggs get broken before I can get to them. This is the first year in almost half a century (my life) that I haven't colored eggs.

First, I got a rain gauge a week or so ago, and planted it. It said we got 1 1/2 inches during the night and early morning today! The rain didn't wake us up until 7--both of us, and then it poured for about 90 minutes. Good stuff!! Woo-hoo. I noted this afternoon mesonet recorded .5-.6 in Wagoner County, but it's 20 miles away from us. . . the other one, in the county next to us, and closer to us, said .9-1 inch. I saw someone else from about 3 miles away from us say her rain gauge said 1 1/2 inches, so I have reason to believe our new gauge is somewhat accurate. I know the rainfall can vary dramatically from nearby place to nearby place. Last summer we saw Wagoner, Choteau, and Muskogee get tremendous amounts of rain. Right at our house, we were like the Red Sea. The storms parted, almost like magic, and avoided us in this immediate vicinity. We finally got to just laughing. We'd watch the active radar on weather.com and sure enough, time after time, the clouds would separate just before reaching our house (cept when the mini-tornado hit us last July--not predicted in the forecast, of course). But today was perfect in every way--spiritually, family bonding, and weather. I'm overwhelmed by our blessings. The weather, magical. . . 80-ish, largely overcast, and like a sauna. . . I swear all the plants felt as if they were at the spa. . . and they were! We were away from the place except for a brief layover before journeying on to a family get-together, but both then and when we got back home by 5, the air was heavenly heavy with moisture.

On the down side. . . as if a premonition, DAWN, the vole talk. In the front yard, which is shallow, rather small--I'd guess 20 feet x 70 feet--I am guessing there are approximately easily 500 vole holes. . . it is UNBELIEVABLE. If one were to find a silver lining, it would be that the voles must have run the moles out. PLEASE, moles, come back! I can't walk 2 feet without a vole hole. I DID notice that in the rock-lined bed (where the peonies and jonquils are, only 2-3 holes were. My conclusion is that somehow the rock borders help a bit. I am certain they cannot like cayenne, cinnamon and garlic tea being poured down their holes, and so am intent on that. Every day I fix up 3 more gallons of the stuff. What I'm expecting is that next they'll find the back yard, where ALL my plants are, and so I'm pouring my concoction mightily down those few holes as well. But what I'm hoping is that they'll head for the nearby foresty stuff or to the neighbors who don't have gardens. Well no doubt about it here, it's a banner year for voles. Major bummer. Haven't lost any plants yet, but am expecting the worst and hoping for the best. Not worried about our raised beds much cuz they're all on gravel beds with gravel all around them, but our back yard is for the picking. Oh well, c'est la vie. Blows my mind. Paradise, plants going like crazy. . . and voles could bring it all down. Such is life.

Here's what I just spent the past hour doing, reading all our posts on this thread. I was thinking how precious all the posts were and thinking I must capture all our conversations for my journaling, and then. . . what a great book each month's comments would be. What a truly remarkable group you all are.

Large hail here north of Grove tonight.

Nancy, I hate that tornadoes can be sneaky and quick. Reminds me of a craiglist talk I saw not too long after the latest Moore Oklahoma tornado written by a Hawaiian scolding us for not having predictive meteorology. She thought they were like hurricanes on radar. Someone had to explain .... I hope you didn't suffer damage from that small tornado.

Carol, I was wondering if you were hit when I was looking at the radar. I hope there's not too much damage. Hopefully, the storm will pass quickly.

I rushed out to plant some bush bean seeds before the rains and then came in and viewed the radar and thought of you. I went back out and watered.

Dawn, I'm sorry the rain keeps missing you. I know you need plenty to get out from under the growing drought.

bon

Nancy, I am expecting a lot of vole issues. We had a banner year in terms of the mast crop from the oak trees, and a huge vole year always seems to follow a large mast crop. Trapping, trapping, trapping and trapping work better than any concoctions you pour down their holes or over the root zones of your crops.

Normally, at least in our garden, the voles are not a huge problem until the weather gets hot and dry, so our garden can be sailing along with everything going nice and smooth and then, along comes the usual hot, dry weather in June, July or August (dryness depends on when the rain stops) and suddenly plants start disappearing, or they wilt and die. You go to touch a wilted plant, and it lifts right up out of the ground because they've eaten all its roots. One year, they got all my cucumber plants in the back garden that way, one by one, night after night, and then they did the same thing with the southern pea plants. After they had eaten most of 5 different varieties of southern pea plants, they started eating the watermelon plants. I don't fight them really hard when that starts up because I have found that the repellents that contain castor oil are of limited effectiveness in drought. I think if the voles are truly hungry in the hot summer months, nothing repels them so why waste money trying.

In the springtime, they only seem to be a big problem if (a) there's a huge population explosion and the usual things they eat cannot sustain it, or (b) the weather is cold and miserable and nothing is greening up, except what a gardener is planting and watering. In that case, the garden just beckons to them since it is the only thing offering nice, edible plants at the moment.

They are not as big of a problem in the front garden, which is mostly clay-based soil, but when they come out of the woods into the front garden, the sandier soil at the western and northern edges is appealing to them. That's why I only grow root crops in beds lined with hardware cloth. At least that way (so far, knock on wood), we get our own potato and carrot harvest instead of the voles getting it. I think we started building the hardware cloth-lined raised beds in response to voles eating potatoes underground in 2012. They didn't get them all, but I found vole tunnels when I went to dig potatoes that year, and they had gotten plenty. I vowed 'never again'. We only have 3 hardware-cloth lined beds, but plan to add a few more over the next few years.

They don't seem to bother garlic or daffodils, so one long term strategy might be to plant tons of daffodils around areas you want to keep vole-free, sort of like a living barrier to repulse them.

Carol, I hope the hail wasn't too damaging there.

Bon, Thanks. You know how it is....sometimes you're in the doughnut getting the rain, and sometimes you're in the hole. Lately we've been in the hole and it has been missing us. This is not shocking news, is it? We had incredible rainfall in all of 2015 and in the first half of 2016, but you know that such luck doesn't last forever in this state. We're lucky it lasted as long as it did, but I think we were "owed" that rainfall after the 4-year droughty period of 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014. We'll be alright. Since the weather is not insanely hot, though the mid-80s does feel pretty hot for mid-April, at least when I do water, I feel like the water is helping the plants. In the summertime when it is dry, it often seems like you cannot water enough to keep them really productive, but in springtime even watering just once a week does make a difference. Because of the dryness, I'm trying to put the plants that matter most in the front garden and am going to use the back garden for stuff that it would be nice to have if the rain falls, but that I will not irrigate heavily all summer if the rain doesn't fall. I guess what I'm saying is I'll make the back garden more expendable.

Since the onions are off to such a great start with no real cold to slow them down, I'm hoping they produce as early as the daylength allows so that I can get the succession crops in pretty early. Right now they look great and on schedule, but they cannot bulb up until daylength hits the right length and they won't bulb up very big unless we get a lot of rainfall, because I'm watering enough to keep them growing, but I'm not watering enough to produce giant bulbs. The potatoes are the same---they seem a bit ahead of their usual schedule, and I'm not complaining about that for sure. We've got blooms in two of the three potato beds now and I am always happy to see them bloom because I think their flowers are lovely. The brassicas have responded well to being watered and there's no pests on them yet, which is a little unusual, but nice to have happen. I do expect the broccoli pests will show up any day now because they always do.

That is hilarious about the Hawaiian not understanding that we DO have predictive weather services to forecast tornadoes, and clearly that person lacked understanding of weather systems that are different from what they experience there. I think our weather forecasters surely are the best in the world here when it comes to predicting tornadoes, but all they can tell us in advance, of course, is what places seem most likely and what the most likely timing will be. I think that is incredible when you consider all the conditions that must come together for tornadoes to form in the first place. Our weather here is not for the faint-hearted, that's for sure.

I spent several days trying to regain control of the unruly northern and western edges of the garden and made huge progress. I've dug out two big black garbage bags full of Johnson grass roots, and uncovered a bunch of small garden snakes and a few frogs. I don't have the whole area under control yet but another day or two of digging will completely clear out everything that invaded after I abandoned the garden last summer, except for the trees in the fenceline that may require removing the fence to get them out, and then replacing it. I expect to have this area planted by the end of Tuesday, unless some big flooding rainstorm appears out of nowhere today and ruins my plans. I still have poison ivy and Virginia creeper to dig out of the western fence line and garden edge, and that may occupy me for all day Wednesday. Every day I try to weed the raised beds and pathways when I see weeds pop up, so that once an area is planted and mulched, it is kept as weed-free as possible. When you stay on top of weeding this way, things never get out of control, but the areas already out of control from last year are a bigger challenge. Upon removing all that Johnson grass, and the constantly invading pink evening primrose plants, I am finding little dill seedlings that were buried under taller weeds, and I've tried to not disturb them and to just leave them wherever they are because the swallowtails will need them.

Tim was able to mow to his heart's content yesterday and he actually brought more grass clipping mulch to the garden than I had bare space that needed covering, so now I have a pile of mulch-in-waiting near the potato beds and will be able to use it as I plant this week. The queen anne's lace weeds that pop up everywhere were about to bloom and give us another trillion seeds so we'd have even more of them next year, but he nipped that in the bud by mowing them before they could bloom. I am incredibly happy about that, though I suspect we have enough pre-existing seeds in the soil to last another 50 years.

It appears that Bryan County is getting rainfall this morning, and they need it. Their four inch Plant Available Water was at 0.07 when I looked at it yesterday morning. Ours was much better, at 0.38. You're supposed to water when it drops below 0.50, and I have been. I don't know if a person can water enough to make a difference once it drops down to something like 0.07 so the farmers, ranchers and gardeners in the Durant area need every drop that is falling there this morning, and they need a lot more than they are likely to get in one day.

Supposedly (and I say supposedly because the rain keeps missing us) there is heavy rain coming at the latter part of this week, so I'd like to have all my planting done by then. We'll see what happens.

Dawn

You probably didn't get flooded, because we probably got it all up north of you. Nearly 2" at the local meso, but it all came down very fast. Even if it kills plants, I'm grateful. Anything to inch further away from drought. You nailed it. After those years, we deserve a reprieve.

And then the rain came pouring down.....it started about 40 minutes ago, and some lighter rain is still falling. The whole county isn't getting rain from this storm, but our part of it is. I don't think we'll get close to your 2" Bon, but maybe we'll get a half-inch out of this storm. We had more thunder and lightning than rain probably, but the rain fell hard for a few minutes.

I'm glad y'all got a lot and hope you get more. It takes so long, and so much rain, to pull out of drought. It would be nice to see all of OK make it out of drought before summer arrives...because undoubtedly we'll see drought sometime in the summer months, and it is less painful if good rain has fallen in April and May.

And it's raining here today, as well! Gentle but nice rain!

We transplanted all our greenhouse plants into the raised beds this weekend. As usual I over planted and have 16 good sized Heidi, Sun gold and Chocolate Cherry 2 foot tomato plants I can't fit anywhere, so I'm considering sticking some in flowerbeds

In the last 24 hours the Mesonet said 1.5 inches, but from what I can see from the house, more like an inch here. I'll take it. DD and I were looking at the radar when storms started yesterday. She lives real close to the Mesonet station and we could tell her house was getting heavy rain that missed us.

A dove must have a nest some where close, it calls from somewhere that sounds like it is right outside my window All. day. long.

I have no gardening news. Spent Sat cleaning house and had family here last night. Too wet out there right now. I did notice brassica sprouts in the dog kennel I put in the chicken run.

May you have gentle rain.

Is it just me or does gardening make anyone else SORE? I need one of those cushioned benches that roll...I can barely walk after sitting on the ground transplanting all those plants!

Also the rain missed us too. It's looking like it could rain any minute here all morning but still nothing in NW OKC. Was hoping for good rain water for all my newly transplanted stuff but finally turned the sprinklers on this morning.

Nancy, a gentle rain is so pleasing to me. I'm a lover of storms (with all due respect when necessary), but gentle rains seem infinitely nourishing to plants.

Amy, I hope you get more so ya'll don't go into a severe drought this summer. When the hoot owls start their mating calls, it is SO annoying almost as bad as a backup signal.

I don't blame you for watering, katie. I didn't know what to expect, so I heavily mulched everything - especially the onions - and gave them a drink just in case. I recall reading something about it not being over for central Oklahoma, so there's still a chance, I think, for many to get rain.

bon

We are up to 0.80" and more is possible. A big thunderstorm formed to our SW as I watched it on radar and could hear the thunder here, but then the heavier rainfall (the yellow and red on the radar) veered a bit south and is raining over western Cooke County and eastern Montague County just south of the Red River. That is just weird. The storms generally have been moving to the northeast, and this one is just the opposite. I don't really mind. It seems pretty stationary over them and likely to cause flooding, and I'd just as soon miss out on that part here. They probably needed the rain as much as we did, so I'm glad they are getting some. We still are getting the thunder right overhead though. At the NE corner of our county, up near Lake Murray, they got a lot more rain than us and are having some flooding. I feel like we got lucky here, so far, and got enough rain but not too much.

Katie, Go for it! That is always my solution too. The flowers share space pretty well with tomato plants and I think the ones grown in the flower beds often seem healthier, perhaps because the flowers attract beneficials that keep the some pests away. I can have flowers almost year round, so I don't mind crowding them with some invading tomato plants. Tomatoes, on the other hand, aren't quite year-round so the more the merrier during the season as far as I'm concerned.

Amy, It only rained hard for a little while and then the rest was gentle. I hope it is soaking in and not running off. I did have to change my plans for today and probably tomorrow and maybe the next day as well as I'm not going to mud-in plants unless I have to, but the trade-off is that I won't have to water the areas already planted and that makes me happy.

Sometimes my three rain gauges here differ greatly, and they are not widely scattered. All are within about a total span of 150'. Based on that, I'm never surprised when our rainfall totals do not match the Mesonet's. Actually, I'm more surprised when they do match.

I think sometimes there's brassica seeds in some hen scratch formulations because sometimes brassicas sprout near the chicken feeders, or in spots where I scattered some hen scratch for the mourning doves when I'm out of cracking corn. We also have wild brassicas in bloom in the fields and alongside highways and roadways right now. I blame all those wild ones for keeping the population of brassica type caterpillars high. Eventually, that population moves into our garden, though I haven't seen any yet this year.

I've been fighting fire ants in the raised beds big-time ever since the recurring floods of 2015. I have made a lot of progress but still have a big mound at the north edge of the garden. I was going to douse it with water/orange oil today. The rain ruined my plan. On the bright side, any other ants in the garden will pop up above ground after the rain and I'll known if there's any mounds I was not aware of. I'm about out of organic ant killer, so guess I need to order more. I can use the orange oil where plants don't grow, but not where plants are growing as it will act like a herbicide when used at the strength required to kill fire ants.

Very light rain is falling again. I don't know that it will add up to much more in the rain gauge, but I just keep repeating to myself "April showers bring May flowers" and try not to mind that I'm stuck indoors instead of out in the garden.

Dawn--what kind of traps have you used for the voles? For the life of me, I cannot figure out how to insert a trap that would be perpendicular and still have room for it to snap. Have been looking at a JT Eaton bait station, which made a lot of sense to me. Have any of you used the bait stations? http://www.jteaton.com/professional_productpage.php?id=2_3

The gentle rain provided another inch for us. Too muddy to do much. . . I'm going to move a few plants/seedlings, then go clean the kitchen. Repeat over and over: gonna go clean kitchen.

Do these beans look normal? I'm posting from my phone but will come back to add to this post from computer.

Okay. Editing now by adding the following.

The soil isn't as dry as it looks in these pictures. Actually it's fairly wet. I'll mulch when they are all up. Just wondering if they look normal or right.

We enjoy green beans and would like to get a huge harvest this year.

I have a horrible headache and am going to nap in awhile. It makes me mad to have a headache when there's so much to do. I did manage to get the other 9 peppers planted this morning on the side of the house. I ran out of room in the garden. They are on the west side of house which has hot sun in the late afternoon and evening. Shaded in morning and early afternoon. Hope they do alright.

In other news. The cucumbers are up now. And I have tiny little apples on my columnar tree. Super cute. The radishes are about ready to harvest and the strawberries are doing well. Happy to have some produce. The giant mulberry tree about a 3 minute walk from my house, is about ready to produce too. I enjoy mulberries in my yogurt. This old tree makes tasty, very sweet mulberries. I've heard that some trees don't produce tasty berries. I wonder if anyone has ever made mulberry kombucha. I'll be happy to stop paying so much for fruit and veggies at the grocery store.

We didn't get any rain today. Happy for those of you who did.

Something keeps making a hole next to my mom's driveway in the grass. I wonder if it's a vole. She lives in town, but there is a large field next to her property. (with giant pecan trees). Anyway, she bought some sort of trap and has poured stuff down the hole. Maybe she didn't use the trap--can't remember. Do voles make holes?

Katie, I'm often sore from gardening. Even my hands.

We got some rain last night although not much. I'll take any at all. My newly planted seedlings loved it, they were standing up so pretty and tall this morning. I still have many seedlings to plant. I talked my dh into letting me build a thin, long tomato bed. Well, a couple of them actually. I have way too many tomato seedlings but to be fair most of them don't sprout or they get killed in the repotting process. This year I guess they all decided to form an alliance and I don't have room for them all sadly. I have at least 100 tomato plants , oh my.

I do have a question hopefully you all can identify this for me. It started growing at the back of our yard and I have no clue but didn't want to kill it if it was something good.

There are three of these things. My sister thought maybe milkweed but idk.

I need to clean up behind my privacy fence on our property. It gets weedy and allows a place for the snakes to hide. That and there's a weeping willow I need to kill. They can be pretty but it keeps trying to send shoots to my septic.

I'm sitting on my patio just admiring all my seedlings. I love the sound of nature. I can hear an owl hooting and birds chirping. Of course throw in an occasional child laughing or screaming lol. Life is great and we have so much to be thankful for! And I just saw a black butterfly, forgot the proper name but yay!

My mother in law only has 3 weeks left in Chicago for radiation . She's doing good. This time has brought us so much closer. My youngest daughter talks to her on the Facebook messenger app kinda like FaceTime. They have a great time and have bonded so much. Hopefully she'll get to spend the a week with us this summer.

Toodles for now.

After a slow steady rain all day (following a brief heavy downpour this morning), we ended up with 1.35" of rain in the gauge. I've really pleased with that, except for all the puddles and mud, which are inescapable. At least we aren't flooding.

Melissa, That's great news about your MIL only having 3 weeks of radiation left. I hope it is going well for her. I bet she's homesick for her own home and her own bed and all that. I know that I would be.

Is your black butterfly one of the swallowtails? There are some black ones in that family.

I love the nature sounds too. To me, that's one of the joys of being a gardener, but also one of the joys of just sitting out in the yard or on the patio or porch listening. We have one bird whose 'sounds' freak me out. He is one of our son's Quaker parrots, and he talks a lot and, since he learned to talk from our son, he sounds a lot like our son. It is weird hearing your own son's voice coming out of the mouth of a bird!

The leaves on that plant do greatly resemble some milkweed varieties. Time will tell. Did you plant any milkweed?

Hazel, I am sorry about the headache. I hope it has gone away. I hate headaches, and used to have horrible migraines but they stopped--BAM!---just like that when I went through menopause, making me one of the happiest campers in the world. The cessation of the migraines made me wish I'd gone through early menopause a couple of decades ago.

Your beans look perfectly fine. That is how they sprout. Every now and then, a wayward one pops out of the ground upside down. If you notice that, just gently replant it right side up. I don't know why it happens, and it makes me laugh when I see it because clearly that bean that pops up with the leaves in the ground and the roots in the air is marching to the beat of its own drummer.

Peppers should be fine in full sun. I have grown them in everything from half day sun to full sun and get a great harvest either way. The ones in full sun may require more water in the worst heat of the summer, particularly in a drought year.

It sounds like everything is growing really well for you there this year. That's terrific.

Your mom probably has voles. They form round smooth holes with no mound. The holes are right in the ground, often in the yard, and sometimes you see a small mound of soil that they dug out, but other times there's just a hole. Voles can be sneaky and also can take over gopher and mole mounds, holes and tunnels.

Nancy, You can just use simple snap mouse traps---a couple of dollars apiece and easy to use on the surface of the ground wherever you see vole holes or vole runways (paths). We don't both trying to trap below ground, as it requires disturbing the ground and disturbed ground seems to be a beacon that attracts more voles...you know....like 'hey guys, the ground is dug up over there, so it must be soft for digging, let's go there". Mix some dry oatmeal with peanut butter and use it to bait the traps, and the voles will come. We do not use rodenticides outdoors because we have cats, dogs and desirable wildlife we do not wish to harm, so I have no experience with trying to bait underground traps with them. Tim used rat poison in the garage this winter, and we had to be very careful to keep all the doors closed all the time when the dogs and cats were outside so that none of them could get into the garage. It did clear the rodents out of the garage, but I hated having to constantly worry about Pumpkin getting into the garage, because if any cat was going to get in there and get into trouble, it would be our mischievious little Pumpkin. I'd try above-ground traps first and see how they work before I'd go to the trouble of putting traps below ground. Local farm stores like TSC and Atwoods have a great selection of traps of all kinds for the sorts of rodents we see here in this state. Well, maybe not for groundhogs, which to me seem like they are just giant rodents. We don't have them here, but you're far enough north that you might have them there. (I hope not!)

Were you to discover you also have gophers, the wood box traps like Gopher Getters are the best ones for those suckers. Really, all you need is one gopher snake, but they are hard to find and expensive to buy.

Katie, Oh good heavens, yes! Gardening leaves me with all kinds of aches and pains, especially in my hands at planting/weeding/mulching time. I feel like we all should start spring training in December to prepare for gardening. Maybe next year we'll come up with a winter workout to prepare us for planting/gardening season. I still don't know if the winter workout would prevent the aches and pains but hopefully it would lessen them by preparing us for them.

I am almost 58 years old and am trying to think back to those magical decades when I was in my 40s, 30s, and 20s to see if I remember the aches and pains at those ages. Yes, for sure, when in the 40s, but not nearly as bad then as they are now. In my 30s? Hmm. Some aches and pains, but usually only if I overdid it by lifting too many big rocks or digging all day or pushing heavy loads of soil or compost in the wheelbarrow. I worked out at a gym back then every morning on my way to work, so probably was in the best physical shape of my life, and still had those achy evenings after gardening all day. In my 20s? I remember tired hands, fingers, arms and shoulders, but not really the aching back and legs and such that I have now. Repetitive motion seems responsible for much of the aches and pains in the hands, fingers and arms now, but I don't know how to avoid repetitive motion in a garden. There's only so many different ways to dig planting holes or to sow seeds or to weed, etc., so it is hard to avoid repetitive motion. I also think it lessens over time. I am in the worst pain in March and April, and comparatively little after that. I am not sure if that is because my body adapts to the workload or what.

I watered Friday and was prepared to water again today, but then the rain found us. I shouldn't have to water again for at least a week, and if the forecasted rain comes in the Thurs-Fri-Sat time frame, that should mean no watering for an even longer period of time.

They had said heavy rain is coming late this week. Well, I've seen the current graphics on the NWS-Norman webpage and don't think heavy rain is coming to my area, which is a relief. Today's was enough. Some parts of OK could have 4" or more, so those of you further north than me, keep an eye on that! Some rain is always good, but too much at once is just too much. We're supposed to dip down into the upper 40s here at the same time the rain arrives, so I am sort of picturing a cloudy, cool, rainy weekend unless the forecast changes.

Dawn

Katie, I hear you on the extra tomato plants. I've given away almost 3 dozen so far, and have another couple dozen yet to go. I didn't think my first year wintersowing would turn out so well. I might sell extras in the future, but for this year it's made me feel good to share. I have two more grow bags I can use, though, as I get more mix for them.

I'm having a small, routine medical procedure Wednesday, and it's made me excited that I'll have a week off work to spend in the garden. I'll be up and around after about 24 hours, so I can do what I need to do and everything should be settled in when I go back to work. The first thing I have to do is plant the peppers, all of them. Then I have to get the grow bag bed ready for the squash, build the cucumber trellis and plant that, and see what I'm going to do about the rest of the green beans. The sugar snaps are in the buckets I used last year for them. Maybe they will be done by the time I need to put the bulk of the green beans in? If the basil is big enough, I'll plant that, and I'll have more flowers ready to go in out front, too.

The garden is loving the rain. I really need to get a rain gauge. I'm getting enough that I'm not having to water, but I definitely need to feed the container plants. The oldest tomatoes are loaded with flowers. The oldest pepper is too. I'm expecting the sugar snaps to bloom any time, they grow more every day. Sunflowers are coming along, my Thumbelina zinnias are going to bloom any day, and my first cosmos is blooming. The bunching onions are starting to look like onions! I'm not going to curse the rain we're getting, but I think everyone will really appreciate the next couple days of sun.

10/4 Dawn, we'll also try mouse traps. Our voles are all underground, so no above ground trails. So the undergrounders DO pop out at night?

Wow, Melissa, 100 tomato plants! I struggled with finding room for 22. You'll be competing with Dawn soon. lol. Glad your MIL is doing well.

Dawn, how old are your son's parrots? It's funny that one of them sounds like him. Really funny.

Headache is much better after Tylenol and a nap. I don't like taking medicine but sometimes I am very grateful for it.

It was a beautiful night. I wish we could have spent time at home. It really was/is a rare night--perfect temp (for me) and no wind. My son was inducted into the National Honor Society, so I spent the night in an auditorium. I'm proud of him and happy to do that, but why couldn't it have been on a windy night or rainy night? haha.

Congratulations on your week off, Rebecca. It's so nice to have free time for the garden. Best wishes on your medical procedure.

Hmm, Hazel's post must have cancelled mine out! lol

Was saying, good for you, Rebecca! I'm glad you'll have some time to get caught up with gardening, and hope your procedure goes smoothly. When I was "working (lol--like I'm not working now?)," I always scheduled a week of PTO for early June to get caught up with gardening and yard work--it was always glorious.

And, Melissa, I am glad your MIL will soon be done with the chemo ordeal, and am touched that this has made your bond closer. My thoughts and prayers for her.

Yay for your son with NHS! How old is he, Hazel? Must be 16, eh, since he just got his DL. Junior?

How do you DO it, guys? How do you read through these posts and REMEMBER them? I'm going to have to start taking notes! I just was reading through some that apparently I missed a little earlier on, and then some others that I intended to comment on. Yes. Taking notes is mandatory from now on. (My memory is excellent--but short.)

I just read one from you Amy, that I'd missed. YES. I have thought about meeting up with you. We have a daughter in Owasso. . . so I've actually been there 3-4 times! While I hate leaving my home, sometimes a little travel is also mandatory. And Tahlequah is so beautiful, there are worse places I'd be willing to travel to. Having said that, if it's to visit with a gardener, I'm there.

I'd love to get together with those of you nearby! This reminds me of my BFF from the age of five until now. She loved having company at HER house; I loved having company at MY house. For a few years as adults, we lived in the same town of about 15,000 folks, and we lived about five miles from each other. We met up about once a week and every week we argued about whose turn it was to go to the other one's house! What I discovered eventually were a few friends who loved to go visit but didn't like company at their place. Nirvana. What this has to do with anything is beyond me. . . now I'm reminding me of you, HJ.

Melissa et al, am so thankful I didn't plant 100 tomatoes. I grew the 32 I planted. And still now have 10 to get rid of, and another 10 peppers. I asked the Sunday School class if anyone wanted tomatoes, and about five said yes. But when they found out they were plants, not the fruits, backed off. LOL But quietly at the end, one lady asked me if I might have 4-5 plants, so I'll happily take those to her. And there's another lady who covets pepper plants because she grows them for church dinners, so although I've already taken four to her, am gonna make her day when I deliver about six more.

Dawn, I've got 11 years on you. These days, I don't very often get sore, and frankly am in better physical shape than the previous 30 years, just because of my increased activity. . but I sure get tired. And that irks me. I HATE spending time sleeping or resting. The only good thing about it is that I love reading, so get some reading done.

Two years ago when I was having to pack 40 and even 20-lb bags of compost or gardening soil around the yard, it almost killed me. GDW was kind enough to step in at times and help me. Remember, this was the guy who hated gardening so I wasn't about to ask him for any help.

Speaking of that........ speaking of my trying to be respectful of him with my gardening not being his thing. . .today we were taking a break out here at my/our everything-office (the table on the deck), he said, out of the blue, "I gotta go buy some impatiens." My jaw dropped. . .first, I was mightily impressed that he knew the word. Second, his mind is reeling with all the little plants I've grown, not to mention the several dozen plants/shrubs/flowers I've acquired--and though he has taken it all with good humor, I have imagined that he's thinking 'what kind of monster have I joined in marriage with.' And yet HE now mentions one I have NOT acquired. I did not break out in uncontrolled laughter. I just asked, "And why do you need to buy some impatiens?" And he explained to me that because I wanted to remove all the white river rocks immediately south of the house in the top of the 3-tiered rock beds that support the house foundation, he wanted to get some flowers that didn't have deep roots that might upset the foundation, and he knew that those must not have deep roots since they had to be planted every year, so figured they'd be okay. Further, the stuff/fill the house builder put there is like concrete. I GUESS it's dirt--but it is solid clay/cement dirt. I can't get a shovel into it! And when I discovered that last month, I postponed my plans for it. I really don't think the house is going anywhere. So he has been thinking all this time, unbeknownst to me, that I don't like the idea of little tiny rocks as a "mulch." And so had decided to add yet more cinder blocks out there on top of the cement clay, and put in a bit of soil, and plant impatiens. His former wife of some years had told him that impatiens had to be planted anew each year, and so Garry had figured out their roots couldn't be too deep. Blew my mind. I laughed SO hard. I told him his reasoning was spot on. But then reassured him that the impatiens WOULD re-seed, and for that, he could be thankful. He is having a hard time figuring out the difference between self-seeding annuals and perennials. And frankly, being from zone 3-4, it's kind of novel to me, too. I totally get his confusion. And my parting shot was, "God bless you, Sweetie, you just reminded me of another flower I need!" So about an hour later, he returned, and said, "You still have a bunch of coleus. You said they like shade. We could put THEM out there." I said, "Your are a genius. YOU are paying attention." I cannot believe the guy who hates gardening is listening and learning. Isn't that just the best? But I'm still gonna put in a few impatiens! ROTFL.

Fell asleep, just woke back up. . . back to sleep, hopefully. Best to you all.

PS: AND by the way, have tons of veggies looking great, flowers and herbs, amazing. . . if I can keep the voles away, by repelling or death, that'd be good. AND, there will be some great successes, some failures. Usually more successes. . . I can live with that!

Rebecca, Only a gardener would be excited about having a routine medical procedure in spring based on the premise that the resulting one week off from work then would give them more time in the garden. I giggled when you said that---because it is so typical of how I'd approach something like that. I hope the procedure goes well and you then get to garden to heart's content while you're recovering.

I intend to enjoy the sun a lot the next couple of days, especially after the fog burns off this morning, which might not be until 10 a.m. or so. Maybe by then more of the standing puddles will have soaked into the ground. I'm a little worried about what the mid-80s will feel like with higher humidity, but will just deal with it---as it undoubtedly will feel better than the mid-90s would feel with the same high humidity.

I have to cage my tomato plants today. I'd rather do it when I first plant them and I used to do that, but then hail is in the forecast so often that I prefer to cover the rows with hoops covered with bird netting or deer netting for hail protection. Anyhow, once the tomato plants are getting so wide that it is about to become difficult to get a cage around them, that's the point when I have to remove the hoops and netting and replace them with cages....and we are at that point now. At least this is a garden chore that I can do while standing in the pathways because it is too wet to do much of anything else today. I also have to remove the netting from the beds of onions because the plants are large enough that the onion leaves are hitting the netting and starting to grow through them, and it becomes impossible to remove the netting once leaves are sticking out through it---you can end up with a lot of broken onion leaves. It seems early to remove the netting. I usually can leave it on the rows until the very end of April and sometimes even into May, but the lack of cold weather has allowed everything to grow really fast this year. Caging tomatoes is tedious and gets old quickly when you have a lot to do, but it is a task that is tailor-made for the first day after heavy rainfall.

Nancy, Our voles travel underground and aboveground. I've never known of any that solely travel underground, but maybe that is because of our dense clay which makes digging a lot harder. Our voles make little pathways, called vole runways, that are about 1-2" wide and clearly are little trails. Sometimes you will see the trails run from one vole hole to another. Pumpkin likes to hide near a vole runway and wait for a vole to come along. He is a relentless hunter and his favorite place is a vole runway that comes out of the tall grasses and forbs of our neighbor's pasture very close to our garden gate. Hmmm. Imagine that. No matter how much he hunts, though, he cannot get them all. Voles can experience sudden population explosions that can give you hundreds of even thousands of voles per acre. I hope that is not what is happening there. I've seen no sign of that sort of population explosion here. I rarely see the vole holes in our yard and suspect the voles make their holes in the woodland where the cats rarely go, or in the taller pasture next door. If a vole is foolish enough to dig a hole and burrow in the lawn, the cats hang around that area constantly.

Often we see no sign of voles at all until the weather gets really hot and then the holes pop up near the garden. I suppose that happens as the fields dry up and they come closer to the irrigated lawn and garden areas to feed. I suspect they are more active at night, but we do see them out during the day as well.

If yours are solely underground, you can dig down and put traps and baits in their runs, but we've just never had to do that. Some people dig down and lay a short length of PVC pipe in a run and put the trap in it. I suppose that is intended to just make it easier to remove the PVC pipe/trap to remove voles from it.

If what you have seems like a major vole infestation, you might consider calling a vole removal company. Or, you need bobcats. We never had a vole issue in the front garden when the garden fence was short enough that the bobcats could jump into the garden and hunt them. It wasn't until we raised the fence to 8' in height to exclude the deer, which then also excluded the bobcats, that the voles became an issue....and then we understood why we previously always had bobcats in the garden.

Hazel, I keep cutting back on tomato plants every year, so maybe someday soon, someone else will be growing more plants at one time than I am. I've kept the total under 80 this year so far, and plan to reduce it even more next year.

Chris' parrots are older, but I am not sure how old. He's had the oldest two for about 10 years, and I think they were pretty young when he got them. Both Ducky and Sarah talk a lot, but Ducky is the one who best mimics Chris' voice. Sarah learned to talk from Ducky, so what she actually does is mimic Ducky's voice. His other pair of parrots are rescue birds named Authur and Guinevere, and their previous owner didn't teach them to speak so they don't talk but Gwennie meows like a cat upon rare occasions. Ducky is highly intelligent. On the days that I am taking care of them because Chris is at work, he'll tell me "Daddy has to work today", and at the end of the day when I am covering up their cages so they can sleep, he'll tell me over and over again "Ducky was a good bird today." I think his constant chatter at that point in the day is like a child asking for a drink of water in order to postpone bedtime. When it is clear that I am going to cover them up and they are going to have to go to sleep, he starts telling me "night night". I don't have grandchildren. I have grandbirds.

Congratulations on your son's induction into the NHS. Sadly, you don't get to pick the weather, huh?

Nancy, I don't always remember. I usually just scroll back as I type a response to make sure I don't miss anything.

It sounds to me like your husband is becoming a gardener as well, whether he likes it or not. (grin) I think that is so sweet, and I do believe it is important for couples to share the same interests. I have developed into quite a football fan (I always was a Dallas Cowboys fan since I grew up in the DFW metro, but in my younger years, I wasn't that much of a football fan except for them) because Tim and Chris are such huge football fans. Sometimes Chris seems impressed by how closely I follow college football and that I can converse intelligently about which teams in which conferences are doing well, etc. I guess he totally doesn't understand that he and Tim are the reason for that---if I don't pay attention to college football, then their weekend game watching and conversations about it just exclude me, and I'd prefer to understand what's going on and be able to discuss it with them. I suspect that if I was a single woman without a son, I wouldn't pay one bit of attention to college football.

Dawn

I read every ones posts, there are just some times I don't have time to comment on all.

Congratulations, H/J, NHI, very impressive!

The dew made the asparagus look cool this morning like fairy trees.

Have a great gardening day!

They do look cool, Amy.

My whole garden is dripping with dew and we still have fog even now, though it is not as dense as it was this morning.

Good News from the garden: I ate ripe SunGold tomatoes while working out there this morning.

Bad News from the garden: first copperhead of the year in the garden, a broad-banded one, still alive but hung up in bird netting that is covering an onion bed to provide hail protection. I saw the snake when I was about one foot away from it. I fled indoors for chocolate therapy because chocolate fixes everything.

Dawn - EEK! I'm glad I'm not the only one who runs! I was sitting on the ground weeding my herb garden saturday and I turned over some soil and there were three tiny coiled up snake babies. I just stared at them like they weren't real. Then a movement caught my eye of the mama slithering away around the corner of the house. NOT copperhead but any snakes ruin me. Needless to say I was done weeding for the day.

Dawn, You're gonna need a bigger chocolate bar. Maybe. This year is certainly "different" and early. My son saw a black snake in the shed. It think he's a resident from our other property which is separated by only the alley and one is butt to butt with the shed. I once mistook his back end as some type of rubber hose. He was smart enough to move. Seeing him doing his work this early with the mice and/or bunnies that shelter in the shed is strange, indeed. I don't usually see him until mid or late summer.

I don't know much, but I'm guessing it's usually still too cold at this time of the year. I see a lot of the ground snakes and lizards, as mentioned in the other post. Now that I think about it, I don't usually see them until later in the year.

These are all the good guys and I'm thinking I need to be careful and watch out for potential venomous.

bon

Katie, Seeing a snake in the garden ruins my day, and doubly so if it is a venomous one. Oh, and triply so if it was within striking distance. This one was within striking distance but the bird netting had it by the neck so I was safe, but try telling the adrenalin that was rushing through my body that I was safe. It was screaming: Danger! Danger! Danger! I am a big baby when it comes to venomous snakes. So, chocolate was only a partial cure. Eventually I calmed down and went back out and caged one row of tomato plants. Then, when I got to the next row, that brought me closer to the snake, so I would have to look at it as I worked. I gave up and came indoors. After Tim removes the snake tonight, dead or alive, with or without bird netting around its neck, then I'll go back into the garden tomorrow and put in a full day's work.

I had the whole baby snake encounter last week, at least 5 times, including twice on Saturday, and three times I accidentally touched them. Ugh. I was just thinking today that if I lived/gardened in a city, I might not have to encounter a venomous snake once the entire year. It was an enticing idea, though I don't intend to actually move back from the country to any city.

Bon, I agree. The way I feel today is that there's not enough chocolate in the world to soothe me. I've had too many encounters too early, and too many snakes too close. I just kept thinking about what might have happened if that bird netting wasn't there and hadn't caught that snake. Yuck. It seems inevitable that eventually I'll get bitten, but I really do try to be as careful as possible. In fact, I was watching carefully for snakes when I first went out to the garden. I didn't see any. I got busy. I walked down that row and...crap, there it was.

It could be that Pumpkin had seen it trapped in the netting and left. He loves the garden like no other cat does and was right there with me early in the day. He even was down at the end of the row I was working on, while the snake was just one row over and about 4' away from where I last saw Pumpkin. I remember looking up and not seeing Pumpkin. I turned and looked at his favorite spots where we have catnip and catmint growing. He wasn't there. Clearly he had left the garden. Hmmm. Doncha think he could at least have stopped by to see me and to meow something in Morse code that would let me know there was a venomous snake at the end of the next row? All he really had to do was swat me with his paw and lead me to the snake, which he does if there's a frog hung up in the netting. (Of course, he wants me to release the frog so he can chase after it.) When I next see him, I'll have to tell him 'thanks for nothing, buddy'.

The black snakes don't bother me too much if they aren't around the chicken coops. Of course, we cannot tolerate them there because they eat eggs and chicks up to about half-grown size. It is a hideous thing to see a black snake wrapping itself around a partially-grown chicken or guinea and squeezing it to death. By the way, we don't usually see them until maybe May or June, and then just crossing the road or field or whatever. They usually don't venture into the coops until at least mid-summer.

I think it is going to be a bad snake year and I'm not ready for it.

We all need to be careful. You know, I start out carefully every day. From the moment I leave the house, I watch the ground as I walk to make sure I don't step on a snake. I watch carefully when I enter the garden. I look around. I don't see any. Every now and then I stop what I am doing, stand up, look around and still don't see any. But....the minute I get immersed in what I am doing and stop thinking about them, then I get surpised by seeing one.

I know snakes exist for a reason. I know we need them to keep us from being overrun by rodents. I'm not seeing any rodents in or around my garden, but there's plenty of small snakes, lizards, frogs and toads....and I think the snakes must be hunting them. I don't particularly want the snakes wiping out the good reptiles and amphibians in the garden, so I'd rather they go elsewhere. Both in 2015 and in 2016 with all the rain and flooding, we actually had crayfish in the garden. I thought that was kinda cool. Then, the Graham's Crayfish Snakes (at least 3 of them) showed up in the garden and then we didn't have crayfish any more. I'd never even seen a Graham's Crayfish Snake here in all the years we've lived here. I want to know how they knew crayfish were in the garden. Sigh.

I'm indoors now and staying indoors. I did everything I could that did not put me in a spot where I have to look at that snake.

I had removed the low tunnel hoops and bird netting from the two big beds of tomato plants so I could cage the tomatoes before the plants got too big to cage. Then, I was going to remove the hoops and netting from the onions because they are getting so big that the onion leaves are growing through the openings in the netting. Now, I'm thinking I should leave the netting on the onions a little longer since the netting seems to be one way I have of figuring out when there's venomous snakes in the garden.

I need more, more, more chocolate, or fewer snakes.

Y'all be careful Bon, If you have non-venomous snakes out and active, then I bet the venomous ones are out too.

Dawn

I was watching from the kitchen window today as one of the girls (Stupid?) Had either a huge long worm or a small snake. Everyone else was chasing her trying to steal it. I could only see the silhouette but it seemed awfully big for a worm. I had a rat snake stuck in bird netting some years back. I freaked out and smashed it with a hoe. I smiled at the chocolate reference. I think maybe that encounter qualified for something "harder".

I am dog sitting. They can't be trusted not to walk in the beds. I get the chickens confined and then I have to deal with Bigfoot. ;)

I put some flower starts in one of the beds today, while trying to pick out weeds but not disturb seeds direct sown. I really haven't got this system down yet. I pulled weeds before direct sowing, I swear I did. I think I pulled some celosia seedlings today before I looked them up. The Four O'clock seeds came up, but there is no sign of last year's plant. Do you plant columbine in the shade?

Melissa, one of my friends came home from MD Anderson in Houston yesterday after her final radiation treatment. I don't know what her next course of treatment is, but she has several things wrong with her.

Nancy, I don't think I responded to the comment about getting together. I am one of those people that doesn't entertain much. My house is always dirty. We could have lunch. Maybe we could go to Tahlequah together. They have monthly meetings. Or we could have lunch one day with Rebecca.

I seriously shudder at just reading about the snake encounters. I know that once I start taking away the dead grass from the pool I'm sure to see one or two at least. I already killed one that tried to slither underneath while another bigger one got away.

I still haven't put my green beans in the ground and they need to go already. But I think I'm going to plant them in the middle of cinder blocks to build my youngest daughter's teepee. I really hope they grow well because this was her idea and she's so excited.

Nancy, I honestly babe never had this many seedlings sprout. I was really surprised to see this many and doing so well. I have a couple neighbors that want a few tomato plants and I'm sure if I post on our neighborhood page there'll be more wanting some. I mean who wouldn't rather have home grown organic plants?!

I'm thinking of planting an indeterminate tomato plant at the end of my lettuce row for some shade. It gets morning shade but the heat of the day beats down. I thought I planted it closer to the house for shade but I guess not. I planted my peas so when they start really climbing they'll shade the cabbage and spinach.

hazelinok congrats on your son's induction into NHS. That's great!!

Dawn, I love the story about your grandbirds. My mom used to have a parakeet and it started mocking her when she'd call my sister...... "Arin, come here. Come here Arin." Lol, they're so funny.

We had a nice red strawberry one day but not quite ready. The next day it had a bit out of it. Ugh! Birds! Darned birds!! I need to build some type of enclosure that I can just raise up from one side with bird netting over it to keep them out. I'm thinking of buying more strawberry plants because I'm not happy with 16 plants. Ok let's get real, I'm happy with them, I just want more for a bigger harvest.

Oh Dawn, about that plant that looks somewhat like milkweed......I didn't plant any and haven't planted any here. So if it is, then the birds brought it in. I looked again at more pictures of milkweed and I found one that looks exactly like these. Yay! Now to watch them to see if they are going to bloom because you know I need to save seeds from them.

Late this afternoon, I went back out and caged a few more tomatoes at the opposite end of the garden from the snake. Then Tim came home, cut the snake out of the netting and tossed it into the pasture where, with any luck at all, a happy possum or something will find it and eat it and have themselves a nice dinner. When Tim was carrying the snake out of the garden, I asked him for an estimate of its size (because when I saw it, it was all twisted up in the netting, not stretched out straight) and he said it was about 24" long, which is about typical for a copperhead here. We've seen longer ones, but not very often. All I care about is that it is not in my garden any more.

Amy, Chickens crack me up with their silly chasing one another around trying to steal someone else's special treat. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a small snake. I'm seeing a lot of small non-venomous ones.

Between the chickens and Bigfoot I don't know how you got anything done today.

I hate weeding beds with emerging seedlings. No matter how hard I try, I always yank out some of the very things I had planted. It sure is weeding time, but I do notice that every week in the established beds, there's less and less weeds, so I feel like I am making some progress.

I think Columbine does well here in morning shade and afternoon sun. I've never seen it in full sun.

Cancer is hard. There's so many treatments but also so many side effects that sometimes it seems like the treatments are almost worse than the disease. An acquaintance of ours here had a transplant (kidney, I think, or maybe liver....) shortly after we moved here, and well before we met him. I am guessing it was maybe 15-17 years ago and he has seemed very healthy since then, until now. He recently was diagnosed with lymphoma, which I learned is common in people (occurring up to 20% of the time) who have had transplants like his because of the anti-rejection drugs they must take. That is just sad that you get the transplant, you take the anti-rejection drugs, and then because of them, you develop cancer. So, now he is in a battle to fight the cancer and save his life. Some people seem to have more than their share of troubles.

Dawn

Gardening. I got to see how much the garden grew between 9:30 am and 4 pm. A lot, by the way! Was out catching spoonbill on the lake in between. Exhausting--but fun. I'd probably be less tired if I'd been toting 40 lb bags of dirt around the yard. Was just sitting here enjoying the total GREENNESS of the yard and scratching a chigger bite! (When will I learn not to be walking around the yard without DWO on my socks!!) And musing about deer, rabbits, moles, woodchucks, VOLES, rattlers and other snakes, chiggers, ticks, fleas, BR and black widow spiders. . . . realized there's one thing good about snakes vs all the rest of those vile critters. Snakes eat some of the others--namely, voles! Wish someone would turn a few snakes loose in our front yard (preferably the non-venomous kind, but would even leave a rattler alone out there for a couple weeks. I would, in truth. Having said that, running into one, especially up close and personal DOES give one a start, I agree! Keep chocolate on you at all times, Dawn. And maybe a bottle of wine sitting on the kitchen counter.

Garry went on a wood-bee killing binge a couple days ago. They eat the house. Not a good thing. He got several but missed one out here on the deck. And for 2 days, it will buzz by, he'll get up to get it, and it zooms down through the lattice under the deck. Smart little bugger.

A friend said hummingbirds had made their way to Santa Fe. . . GDW is guessing next Tuesday here; me, Monday. What do you think, all?

My tomatoes are just now beginning to bloom, not the peppers, cept two of them--but one has a 2" long green pepper on it. . .my flower seedlings, most of which were set out too early, are now finally taking off! Brugmansia is looking great. . . I'm excited about it, you all--have never seen one before. The clematis I cut to the ground last year because of bacteria is now filled out and 5'6" (it's an inch taller than I am. . . ) and has about a dozen flower buds just on the top alone. Peonies are next on the scene, our deep pink (fuschia?) ones are nearly in full bloom. The endless summer hydrangea are forming flowers now. . . everything's pretty, but I'm kinda all about ones that have really long flowering seasons!

Our yard is MUCH greener and more filled out than the previous two years.

Amy, the asparagus WAS enchanting-looking. GDW happened to be sitting next to me when I saw the photo, and he loved the little hoop tunnel. He mentioned it to me, and I said, "Yeah, that IS cool. Would be easy to set up in our raised beds, huh?" He said, "Yes! Maybe some of our stuff would last longer in the fall. . ." Uh-huh, keep those pictures, coming, guys!

With all this wet weather, it looks like slugs are hitting the lettuce bins. I probably used half a can of Sluggo Plus on the lettuce, spinach, herbs, onions, and around all the tomato and pea plants. I'll probably have to start applying it after any rain, until we dry out a bit. Which, obviously, isn't going to be this week. At least Friday's rain will keep me indoors and from pushing myself too hard to get back out in the garden.

Here's something I hate. . . when I'm outdoors weeding (hasn't happened here yet) and reach down and accidentally grab a slug. Dagnabbit they are slimy!!

I'm super excited about cabbage. I've never made sauerkraut, and it looks like a breeze! And we LOVE sauerkraut! And coleslaw and sauteed cabbage and colcannin. . .see, I'm kind of easing into the "greens." I DO have a handful of lettuce, but loose leaf. . . which I love, but Garry doesn't. . . so I'll get his iceberg for him and have my loose leaf stuff. I've never grown fennel before, either, and am excited about my little fennel plants, and when I saw bronze fennel at Walmart, had to pick up a couple because of you folks. Everything's growing good, but realize it could come to a screeching halt if the voles find their way to the back yard. I really think I may call exterminators in the area tomorrow to just see what their prices are. What do you think? I am serious. . . there are easily 300-400 or more holes in the smallish front yard (about 20x 60 feet). Can't walk two feet without spotting one.

Nancy, PVC hoops are easy. I think that bed has permanently installed hoops using these plastic straps

but we also pound rebar into the ground and slip the PVC over the rebar. (Rebar is kind of like zip ties and duct tape in the garden, isn't it). One year I used blue tarps to cover the beds over these hoops when it got cold. Nails in the bed hooked the eyelets on the tarps. Hard part was the ends, but nails, zip ties and clothes pins worked till I got tired of covering the beds every night. I would use gray EMT, it is slightly cheaper and camouflages a little better than white. I told DH recently I want the hoops on all the beds so I can do Dawn's bird netting covers. I have also put tulle over the hoops to exclude insects. Honestly, bird netting and tulle are a pain to get into, there has to be a way to make them more "user friendly". Almost all my Beds are uniform 4x8s. I want to make covers that will be usable on any bed.

The other thing we love in the garden is cattle panels.

Just dropping by to say, "hi". Had a long day with the kindergarten at the zoo and a pilates class tonight. But managed to harvest my first radishes and strawberries before dark. Oh, and walk the dogs.

Nancy, I don't remember. I often scroll up to reread stuff. And I still forget things I wanted to talk about until later, when it's way too late to bring it back up.

Super sleepy. Night.

Meanwhile, we also have a banner crop of little elm seedlings out there, as well as the little oaks I'd previously mentioned. My prayer is that the voles like little elm seedling and oak seedling roots to keep them busy until I can figure out how to destroy them. . . I noted your comment, Dawn, about how often when oaks have a banner year, the voles appear. And I have researched and figure we have pine voles, which are typical for this area, and are mostly subterranean.. . which is what my observation has been. On with the battle tomorrow. . . mouse traps, ordering one bait station (pet impervious) and ammo, my continued use of castor pellets and my liquid garlic and cayenne. A multi-pronged attack, one could say--plus the call to exterminators.

I saw some vole holes in my two nearby gardener neighbors' yards and pointed them out to them--neither had heard of voles--but nothing like what we've got. When one of them visited me last week, I showed her the holes in my front yard and she too was horrified.

Can you all tell I'm a little preoccupied with voles right now? Sorry about that.

Amy (and Rebecca, and anyone else who lives nearby--we're in Whitehorn Cove outside of Wagoner--it should be a town itself-- it would be terrific to get together. Tahlequa would be a fun destination, such a pretty drive.

Driving to our "grandkids" near Bixby is also a lovely drive, and if we take a shortcut (which we always do now, now that we know where it is), we get lots of fun steep hills (bet they're hell in an ice storm), and there's a winery we pass. . . looking good this spring. . . the grapes are a growin'.

We took off fishing this morning kind of the spur of the moment deal. About 8:30, I said to GDW, if we don't go fishing today, we won't be going until next week. Today looks better than tomorrow (he loves fishing SO much, but doesn't say much. I like fishing, but would gladly give it up to stay home and garden. In fact, actually hate fishing during spring gardening. There, I said it.) So off we went, and I know I made him very happy by being the first to bring it up. . . and it's so important to me to make him happy, because he is the best, and because I am happier than I have ever been in my entire life since we reconnected. And we had an absolute blast! We laughed, and laughed and laughed. And those big spoonblll led us a merry chase today. He lost 3, I lost one. . . of course the ones we lost were the smarter bigger ones who came out victorious, before I caught my one and he caught his one. . . by that time we truly were exhausted. And neither of the ones we caught were wounded at all badly--he caught his by the tail, and I caught mine by the edge of its bill, so we scolded them to be more careful next time and let em go. Mine was pretty small, about 20 lbs, and his was quite large, probably about 45-50 lbs. Having said that, if cleaned properly, they are REALLY good-tasting fish. A lot like sea bass--not fishy tasting, and very dense meat--like a very tender sea bass "steak."

Ahh, parrots and parakeets. . . I adore them. There's a great book/movie, can't remember it at the moment a parrot as one of the main characters. . . South American. Someone? Our nearby neighbor has a parrot, a real character, who is very funny. I had parakeets for 20 years, and adored them, and they me. Love love birds. And love parakeets.

Which reminds me--what is the beautiful butterfly that is kind of black and blue? We have several of them right now.

Okay. . . I think I'm winding down now. What a joyful gift we gardeners have, and to be able to enjoy it with those who have it too, is a true blessing.

Play time today. . . and this little guy lived to fight another day, hopefully a little bit wiser. The hook caught him in his bill, so a bit of a bloody nose, but otherwise good to go.

Wow Nancy! How fun!! That's a good looking fish! A pretty cute Fisher woman too (Wink!) I think it's great you took him fishing. Looks like you enjoyed yourself too.

I think the movie you're thinking of is RIO. ?

I'm sorry to skip/ not join in commenting on the various conversations going, but you kids have gone every direction possible with this thread and I can't keep up lol I've tried to read through it a few times but by the time I get to commenting I have forgotten who said what haha I love this group. It's such a lovely group of people. Night all!

So many comments and no time to catch up. I missed yall and so glad to be home.

Right before the outdoor ceremony two butterflies swirled and danced in and out of the seating area and all across the field. It was stunningly beautiful and I was the only one to see it. I got pictures but it did not do it justice. One was a swallowtail and one was a huge yellow butterfly.

Nancy, If you have rodents outdoors, the snakes ought to show up. Keep that in mind. I'd offer to catch you some non-venomous snakes and bring them to you, but as you might have noticed by now, I try to stay as far away from snakes as possible.

Hummingbirds have been back here a month already, so a part of me is surprised they aren't there yet. I guess the return of cooler weather in April (as in cooler than March's really hot weather) might have slowed down their journey north a little bit. Let us know when yours arrive.

Rebecca, I hate to hear that about the slugs, and all the moisture you're about to get there will just encourage them. It sounds like you're gonna need more Sluggo Plus!

Take it easy on yourself this week and don't push too hard to be outside too early. You have a whole week of recovery and that should allow time for you to heal and bit and then be able to go outside later.

Nancy, Sauerkraut is a breeze---one of the easiest things to make. I make 2 or 3 dozen pints per years. Sometimes, in a great cabbage year when I planted way too much, I make 2 or 3 dozen quarts. Cabbage, salt and water....and then wait or the fermentation to occur. Kimchi is another good option for using up cabbage if you have a big harvest and if you like its hotter flavor.

Amy, none of the coverings for low tunnels or hoops is very user friendly, so it is just something we have to deal with unfortunately.

Hazel, Congrats on the strawberries and radishes. I hope you got a good night's sleep. Your days sound so full and so busy. I don't know how you find time to garden.

Nancy, Yesterday about six new vole holes popped up just outside the chicken coop door. I suppose they are there, figuring they can raid the chicken coop for hen scratch. You'd think with over 10 acres of woodland, they'd have plenty to eat. I'm not happy to see those six vole holes, but I'm pretty sure Pumpkin will be on the job stalking and killing voles.

Your day at the lake sounds fun and that's an awesome fish.

Okay, this thread has gotten ridiculously long. I'm going to start a new one for the rest of this month, and then maybe it will be easier to keep up because there will be less to scroll through and read. I hope that's okay with everyone!

Dawn