My daughter came over this afternoon and we both had a good time. We dug some sweet potatoes and picked peppers, I had tomatoes on the counter to give her, so maybe she wont starve for a while. She will also be able to take veggies to her friends, but if anyone else come they are going to have to eat turnip greens and sweet potatoes because that is all I have left.

I think I like the Covington sweet potatoes enough to try them again. So far I have not had as many huge sweet potatoes like I had with others I have tried, but that may be because I planted later this year. I did have a few that had some rot on them, but I am blaming that on the rainy weather. I will also try digging the sweet potatoes with the tractor again, this old worn out body just wont operate a fork anymore.

I also mowed the lawn and ant hills this afternoon. The powder I have been using has helped get rid of ( or move ) many, but I think the hills pop up as fast as I can kill them. I have not even started on the pasture yet. I will use a spot sprayer on the pasture because the old body does not walk well anymore.

Loving this cooler weather. I cut open 3 persimmon seeds - all had spoons so Dawn I think you are correct, I’m not looking forward to a lot of snow - it’s beautiful if you don’t have to get out and do chores but I especially dread it with grandkids out driving to school and work. Have a nice picking of new green beans and the tomatoes are blooming- maybe the little ones will set before gets too cold. I’ve been cleaning up the greenhouse to get it ready to move plants inside.

We have an abundance of walnuts on trees this year on some newly cleared property. How do you tell when they are ready? Are they like pecans and usually fall after a frost? Dawn you are correct about the snakes- the biggest copperheads I ever saw were in October when we weren’t expecting them them to be out, and with all the falling leaves they are nearly impossible to spot.

Today is October 1st and the start of a new water year, since the water year runs from Oct 1-Sept 31. So, for anybody wondering how their area looks for the just-ended water year, here is the departure map that shows water year rainfall as related to average water year rainfall--you may see a deficit or you may see a surplus, and I guess some people may see their area received average rainfall for the water year. October 1st is the only day of the year that we can look back at the whole previous water year's data and see the whole water year accounted for so neatly. My area ended right where I expected it to end---in the -6 to-8" category. That was despite 8+" of rain in the last couple of weeks. Just imagine how bad it would look if we hadn't had that 8". Some areas ended the water year far too dry---in much worse shape than my little corner of the world. Hopefully the new water year will be kinder to them.

Water Year Departure From Normal: 10/1/17 to 09/30/18

Larry, I'm glad you had such a lovely time with your daughter and were able to send her home with lots of produce. Anyone else who comes still will be blessed to get turnip greens and sweet potatoes.

Since you had as much drought there this year as you did, I'm not surprised that your sweet potatoes weren't quite as large as usual. Now, you take it easy on your tired, worn-out body. Your body has worked so hard for so long and it is okay to cut it some slack now, you know. I am trying to learn how to pace myself better and to work smarter, not harder, as my dad used to say. There's no need for any of us to push ourselves to the point of exhaustion nowadays with all the modern equipment we have to help us.

Farmgardener, I am loving the cooler weather too, but the sunlight and heat came back yesterday and it felt pretty brutal after a couple of weeks of near-constant cloudiness, fog, mist, drizzle and lower temperatures. It was fun to see the sun for more than 15 minutes though, and September heat still is nowhere near as brutal as July or August heat.

I cannot decide if I think spoons are a good thing or a bad thing this year. I wish we could have at least one good snowy spell, even if it is only for a couple of days. I am not wishing for constant snow, and certainly not (no way, no how) hoping for any ice. Those of you further north are so much more likely to see snow or ice than I am that I cannot help hoping for it, at least for us. There's plenty of winters we see no snow at all (most of them) here, or a light dusting that looks like someone sprinkled a light dusting of flour on the ground. Actual snow in a measurable amount so you can make a snowman or have a snowball fight? Well, I do remember we had that in 2010. I'm not sure if we'd had a really good snow since then. We're more likely to get a light coating of sleet or freezing fog on the roadways, especially bridges, overpasses and I-35 than on lower lying local roads---so we tend to get all the trouble and hazards and none of the fun, white, fluffy stuff. The child in me just loves the white, fluffy stuff. I have to be realistic too. If it snows, the odds that the granddaughters would be here at that exact time and would be able to sled down the hill are pretty slim---they live 30 miles away, so enough snow would keep them from visiting, and there's no good sledding hills near them in their town. My snow dreams probably all are just pipe dreams.

I assume you have black walnuts? If you'll look at them while they still are on the trees, the husks will be green. By the time the walnuts begin falling, the husks should be turning yellow. When they are yellow, the nutmeats are mature. Yes, they'll fall like pecans do and you can just pick them up off the ground. Then, you have to remove the green/yellow hulls. If you will then air-dry the nuts for a few days before you shell them, it will be easier to remove the nutmeats after you remove the shells. I usually have to use a nut pick to get the meat out of the shells. It takes a hammer, and sometimes a vise to break through those hard walnut shells.

Our snake activity here is so consistent most years that you can know the season by which snakes are the worst and most active. In July-August it normally is timber rattlers. I'm going to guess that by then they have eaten most of the available food supply in the woodlands and come to our yard and garden areas looking for field mice, voles, frogs, toads, etc. I didn't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out---we'll have plenty of toads and frogs in the garden and then they'll disappear pretty suddenly so I'll know the snakes are getting them. In September and October it tends to be copperheads. I finally gave up on raking leaves by hand prior to the first hard freeze because of the copperhead danger, but sometimes Tim will just mow over them with the riding mower, collecting the chopped/shredded leaves in the mower's triple grass catcher. We then can pour the leaves onto the compost pile. Or, we can just wait until it isn't snake season any more before we even deal with the leaves.

This was not the worst snake year ever here, for which I am grateful. We really didn't see too many timber rattlers, but I noticed that when we did see them, suddenly my facebook feed was full of photos from local friends who also were seeing timber rattlers at the exact same time. Then, bam (!), it was over as suddenly as it had started and we were back to pretty much only copperheads again. It has been a pretty bad copperhead year here---pretty much everyone we know or heard of locally who was bitten by a snake this year was bitten by a copperhead, including the 8 or 9 year old daughter of friends of ours. I know that in many other parts of OK, especially central and eastern OK, it is the pygmy rattlers that have been such a huge problem this year. We are on the far western edge of pygmy rattlers' known territory, so we don't see them terribly often.

October is my favorite month. The weather usually is sunny and fairly mild here with temperatures maybe in the 80s (often mid- to upper-) and nighttime lows in the 60s or low 70s. By the end of the month, we may be having lows in the 50s or 60s. You can feel the cool-down progress and sometimes see the leaves changing color, and sometimes you cannot. Sometimes autumn stalls here and doesn't happen like that. Sometimes the leaves hardly change color at all and then we get a big hard freeze and all the leaves then turn brown and fall off almost overnight. I consider that a fairly ugly autumn. We probably have more ugly autumns than pretty ones, but then, as much as I love the golds, oranges and reds of beautiful autumn leaves, I wouldn't want to live in the colder climates that get those lovely autumns either because I couldn't handle all the months of really cold weather.

We did mow yesterday afternoon. Or at least we tried too. Because, of course, while Tim was on the riding mower practicing the art of zen mowing (he seems to go into a trance and not even notice the rest of the world around him when he is on that mower and in the zone), the fire pagers went off for a grass fire less than a mile from our house. I could smell the smoke, but because we're in such a low lying area surrounded by trees, I couldn't see smoke or flames. I had to chase him down on the mower, fire radio in hand, and tell him he had to go to a fire. lol. If y'all could have seen his face at that moment! He was like a child being called to come indoors before he was finished playing. So, off he went to fight a fire in a field so muddy that, of course, a fire brush truck got stuck in the mud. Usually he's the one that gets stuck in the mud, but this time it was someone else and he used his tanker truck to pull the stuck brush truck out of the mud. The fire wasn't big---maybe a half-acre, but obviously we have enough dry grass to burn despite all the rain that has fallen or the puddles that remain standing in lots of areas with dense clay soil. When he got back home, he was back on the mower, finishing the mowing while I made dinner.

One of the best things about October is that even as the garden plants begin to fade away, the butterflies come on strong so there's lots of beauty remaining. In addition to the monarchs, we still have tons of swallowtails, sulphurs, buckeyes, queens and gulf frits.

This week looks like it will be pretty hot, with rain chances increasing as the weekend approaches. I'd be okay if the rain misses us because we still are so very muddy, but I also hate to wish rain away because often we do not get enough of it. One thing is for certain---we'll be seeing lots of scarlet red as the weekend approaches----it is time for the Red River Rivalry down in Dallas on Saturday, so from Wed or Thursday onward, but especially all day long Friday, we'll see thousands of Sooner fans (and the team and the band, etc.) traveling down the interstate. This year, Marietta hosts the Bevo Bash and on Friday, Ardmore HS hosts the Sooners Band for a marching practice/exhibition on their football field. Both of those events are great chances for local OU fans to at least feel included in all the hoopla even if they aren't traveling down to Texas for the game. I guess if I really had a strong need to see tons of burnt orange and scarlet red color, we could go to the Texas State Fair this weekend. (grin)

Since this week's warm/hot weather will be bringing out the snakes and I know I need to avoid them and the garden, I have lots of indoor projects planned.

It occurred to me this weekend that the linen closet hasn't been painted since we moved here and it looks a bit dingy inside compared to the rest of the more-recently painted house, so I took everything out of it yesterday and Tim made me new, deeper shelves for the closet. They're almost twice as deep as the original shelves and will hold a lot more. Hopefully this will help me keep it more organized. I fight a losing battle there because I married a pack rat who seizes every opportunity to cram more of the stuff he hangs on to into every nook and cranny that I clear out. So, today, I'm going to remove the shelves and paint the whole closet a nice bright white. I don't have to paint the shelves because they came pre-painted. After the paint dries, I can put the shelves back in and then put everything back into the linen closet all nicely organized, folded and stacked neatly. It is silly how excited I am about the new shelves.

Ever since we remodeled the kitchen in 2016 and achieved near-perfection in kitchen organization/storage, I've been on a sporadic kick (mostly in snake season) to clean out, purge and reorganize everything else in the house. It is a constant process that never seems to end, but I can tell we have made tons of progress. One of these days, perhaps even this year, I will declare the cleaning, reorganization and purging of the house a total success, and then we'll move on to the oversized garage, which is 1200 s. f. of mostly Tim's junk. You cannot even fit a car into that building, though it was meant to hold 3 vehicles with plenty of storage space left over. I think that purging, reorganizing and keeping it nice and neat might take another 10 years. When we were younger and our memories were better, he could walk in there and go straight to whatever he wanted to find and it was where he remembered it being. Nowadays, not so much. I think if we could reorganize, purge out the excess stuff he hangs on to just in case, etc., and then store everything on shelves in neatly labeled bins, then he could perhaps, once again, find things when he needs them.

I tried to explain Swedish death cleaning to Tim yesterday, but the thought of it seemed to terrify him....or, perhaps, bore him just like it bores him to tears when I ramble on and on about the garden. Still, I think he eventually understood the concept even if he wants nothing to do with it. I guess the one room I'll never be able to purge and reorganize is his office. I don't touch anything on his desk or in his files or anything because I don't want to mess up whatever system he uses in there, if he has any sort of system at all. (To me, the system seems to be to just pile things up and keep them forever just in case you ever need them again.) I wish his office could be as neat and tidy as my new garden shed (yay, we made it through the first summer and it is as neat as it was when we started the new garden season with a new garden shed), but I have to accept that this is unlikely ever to occur.

Have a great day y'all, and Happy October!

Dawn

I have had the best three days. Saturday I spent cleaning house and getting dehydrating and canning stuff ready. Sunday I went out to lunch with sweet friend and got blueberries and pears in dehydrator. Today I canning pear sauce. What fun. I have missed doing this so much but now that I have a system set up I can rock and roll. Did I mention I love canning ;)

My niece brought her little boy down to go to the science museum for TinkerFest. Free admission, lots of hands on activities, and hordes of kids. Fortunately no meltdowns with our group, but there were plenty of other little ones in full out temper tantrum. I would love to go back sometime when it's not so crowded so we can spend more time going through the exhibits. Definitely recommend visiting next time you come to OKC.

We've had our windows open the past couple days, enjoying the fresh air & trying to air out the zoo smell (with all these animals, it can get fragrant quickly).

I have no idea how many more I will find when I pull the vines off the other row and dig through the dirt and vines.

Jen that sounds like fun.

Larry that looks amazing. I have a few planted and they look good. We will see soon.

Dawn, may I suggest numbering your bins and boxes, when you get to the garage organizing? All my rubbermaid bins have numbers on them, and the sheet with the inventory for each numbered box is out there in the garage with them. A second list is here on the computer.

This way, I never have to change the writing on the boxes... just change what is in box 11 for instance.

This has worked really well for me.

Love the sweet potato harvest...

and Kim, yes I know you love canning. I wonder, if I ever get to canning again... right now, I am all about getting the yard Bermuda free for next spring.

Moni

Your bin system is so smart. I forgot about it. I am purging and packing almost daily. I am nearly done and will be so happy when its it's over.

Moni, Thanks for the tip. That's a great idea. I'll pass it on to Tim when we tackle the garage because 90% of what is out there is his and I have no real control over what he does with it. I'm hoping he's enjoying the progressively clutter-free house so much that he won't fight me too much on decluttering the garage. Maybe I'll make that our big project of 2019.

Kim, Purging and packing seems endless right now, I bet. It will feel so good when you're all done, at least with the purging part.

I think part of our problem is that we haven't moved in 20 years, so of course, we have accumulated tons of stuff in the last two decades. Getting rid of it is hard because one of us, not me, thinks we might need it again someday. In many cases, I'm sure we will not. Even though I cleaned out the linen closet and got rid of a ton of stuff, I've got two wool blankets that Tim inherited from his parents in a zippered bag on the very top shelf. I have no idea why we are keeping them because they are old, thin and full of moth holes, so basically unusable....but Tim has an unending emotional attachment to them, so there they sit, taking up most of the top shelf. As near as I can remember, neither one of them has been used in all the time we've lived in this house.

I love canning too, but I took off this whole year from canning, and I'm not sorry. I missed it at times, but I also enjoyed not spending all those endless days on my feet in a hot, steamy kitchen. We still have salsa, peppers and jelly from last year, and I got to spend my summer doing other things. Will I return to canning in 2019? I am sure I will, but it will be a much scaled-back version. I don't think I'll make any jams or jellies---I don't eat them because of all the sugar, and Tim doesn't eat them that often. I also am no longer willing to spend time making salsa for everyone we know, but I'll resume making it for us. Less canning means growing less veggies and that means more space for growing flowers, so for me it is a win-win situation. Right-sizing the garden with the best blend of veggies, herbs and flowers continues to be my goal for 2019. I did it fairly well in 2018, but will tweak it more to get to the right mix of different plants that is best for us.

Larry, That's a nice sweet potato harvest, especially considering the drought!

Jen, It sounds like it was a fun outing. I had windows open on some of last week's cooler days and evenings but the heat came back, the windows are closed and the AC was on today. I think we cool off again about a week from now and I'm looking forward to having windows open again when that happens.

Y'all, today I noticed that the foliage on the persimmon trees on the edge of the woods, about 200' west of the house, is turning that lovely golden-orange from the top down. The persimmon tree by the house still is fully green. So, apparently it is autumn here, in case I didn't know. Other than the elm trees and persimmon trees, it doesn't look much like autumn yet.

We had a lot of hummingbirds today. I hope they are passing through and don't intend to stick around too long---they need to get further south before a big cold spell sweeps through and makes their lives difficult. We usually don't see too many hummingbirds after the end of September--normally they all are headed south by the end of September, followed the first week in October by the monarchs. Instead,we have large numbers of hummingbirds still here, and monarchs too---so, either the monarchs are massing together in preparation or they're already migrating. It is hard to know which thing is occurring for sure.

We have at least a billion mosquitoes in our yard and they follow you around the yard---you're engulfed in a cloud of mosquitoes while out there. Then, they attempt to follow you in, or they fly in the door every time you let a dog or cat go in or out. I'm completely over the mosquitoes and spending too much time trying to kill them.

Dawn

Hey Friends. Just checking in to say "hi". Hopefully will catch up tonight.

Not much going on in the garden...well, nothing new anyways. There's always stuff going on. The melons that I'm harvesting are tasty, which is surprising after all that rain. Most stuff is dying or dead. There's a weird disease on the tomatoes that I've not seen before. They're at the end of their lives anyway, so I'm not too worried about it. I'm not harvesting much other than southern peas, melons, and peppers. I really wanted to pickle up some jalapenos for our band contest dinner this weekend. There's just no time unless I want to miss sleep, which I don't.

We are hoping to get the mowing done this evening...at least the areas around the house and other structures. Looks like we are in for a wet weekend. SO hoping that it holds off until Sunday. Being outdoors all day in the rain on Saturday does not sound like fun to me. (Our 2017 SF was surprisingly fun even in the pouring rain...so maybe there's hope.)

Chicken coop is smelly and needs a scrub down. The "babies" and main flock are still mingling during the day. There's a weak spot in the fence that needs to be repaired once I find it. Ida has found a way to get out and I'm constantly putting her back into the yard. Surprisingly not Stella this time.

Almost certain that Jules will be Picard. He (?) is not crowing yet, but the body shape is slightly different and the tail feathers are starting to drop over. I hope he's a nice rooster so we can keep him. Tom won't put up with being "spurred".

And the flies are awful this year. I'm going to post a video. If you have time, will you (all of you who can) look at the video about 11 minutes in. There's a fly trap system that I'm interested in. Have any of you used a similar one? (The video is actually very interesting. A young woman has a little farm in the city rented property. It's amazing what she's done.) I'm afraid my hens would jump on it.

Jennifer, If you post a photo of the tomato disease maybe we can ID it for you and tell you if it is likely to overwinter in soil, etc. just so you can have that info for planning for next year.

The heavier rainfall in the weekend forecast wasn't bothering me because on the Monday morning maps it largely stayed far west of our county and the 7-Day QPF had us in the 0.25-0.50" category, which is practically nothing. But, of course, the QPF updates multiple times daily and the bulk of the rain has moved more eastward now, so at the present time I think it has us in the 2" category. We already mowed over the weekend, and now I'm thinking I ought to mow on Friday or so before the rain gets here. I guess we'll have to roll out the red carpet to welcome another million mosquitoes if we get a lot more rain. I think rain is in our forecast for Friday, so maybe Thursday should be the mowing day.

Any rooster can be made into a nice rooster. Really, I'd hope for a smart rooster because a smart rooster can be taught quickly not to spur you, but you need to act the very first time he tries to spur you...and every single time thereafter. Aggressive action early and often establishes you aren't going to take that sort of behavior from him. If he spurs you, strike back at him, hopefully while wearing leather or rubber boots. You don't have to kick him hard and, in fact, you really don't have to make any contact with him at all because the fact you're kicking back will scare him---just the fact that you're a lot larger also will scare the fool out of him and he'll stop spurring. If you don't wear boots, you can carry a broom, bucket or branch and swing it at him if he comes charging at you to spur you. If you nip it in the bud early, it usually doesn't turn into a big problem. A smart rooster learns pretty quickly to stop spurring anybody significantly larger than him. The worst thing you can do is to retreat and let him get away with it, which will embolden him and set you up for a vicious cycle of attacks. If y'all retreat the first time, he thinks he is dominant and has won and then will continue the behavior, and it will be very hard to break him of it because he'll think he's won from the start and thereafter he won't back down. Preventing him from ever thinking he won will halt the spurring right from the start.

I've seen that Sagebrush Fly Trap before. Peaceful Valley Farm Supply sells them. Others might. They even make one for ranches and large farms that fits over a 55-gallon drum. I'd be worried about one of those traps drawing fire ants here, but perhaps you don't have fire ants up there the way we have them down here. I haven't used one and I hate all fly traps as they seem to attract far more flies than you had in the first place. I'd rather order fly predators from one of the insectaries. The fly issue is fairly hopeless here as we are surrounded by cow and horse ranches. Guess how many flies those sorts of places create/attract?

The flies have been awful this year particularly since it rained and now it is the mosquitoes. I'm hoping next year will be better, but honestly, flies are a part of rural living along with quite a few equally unpleasant wild things.

It was hot and humid today, and tomorrow should be worse. Oh well, being hot and humid in October certainly is nothing like being hot and humid in the summer months, and we know cooler weather is coming next week anyhow.

Since I mentioned the 7-day QPF, here it is. Remember, it updates multiple times a day and the actual rainfall you receive may not resemble what it predicts at all. Sometimes our rainfall does, but most often it does not.

7-Day QPF

If anyone has not yet dug their sweet potatoes and sees lots of rain in their forecast, now might be a good time to dig them before this next big wave of rain rolls in.

Dawn

Walked out in the garden tonight to find 4 squirrels. Bait is out.

I leave friday morning for a long weekend in Atlanta, at a conference for people with one of my health conditions. Mom is cat sitting for tomatoes. Hope the squirrels leav her a few.

To till, or not to till, that is the question? I did pretty good with the no till approach to gardening till it came to potatoes. I was able to just scratch a groove to plant,but harvest was another story. Madge nor I can dig. I had to use the tractors to get the potatoes out of the ground. How do you people that do no till handle the garden after potato harvest? I am thinking that I will plant a cover crop of winter peas, then in the spring just mow, plant and mulch.

I am open for ideas.

Hazel, GREAT video, super incentive! I would love some chickens... but think, they are not allowed... where I am. Should look in to this. I really love how she copes, with temporary fencing and all.

That fly trap shouldn't be to hard to make.... and is similar to what people in Germany use to trap yellow jackets.

Thanks for sharing the video.

Moni

Rebecca, I hope you have a nice time at the conference and also hope the squirrels will leave a few tomatoes for your mom. It looks like you'll be getting out of Oklahoma before the hard rains arrive. I suppose Atlanta will be Hot-lanta, sunny and warm as usual.

Apparently the squirrels have been having an acorn party here in our yard. I looked beneath an oak tree in the yard that appeared to be dropping acorns extremely early. I've noticed this acorn drop from a distance but none of the other trees are doing it, so I went off to the side yard on the north side of the house (too close to the snakey woods for comfort) yesterday to see if I can find any damage on the trunk or something else that would explain why only this tree is dropping acorns while the others are not. When I got close to the tree, I could tell the acorns on the ground had been chewed into, etc., and realized the tree isn't dropping acorns naturally. The squirrels are stripping them off the tree, chewing into each one, taking a little bite or two, finding them fairly inedible (not mature enough perhaps?) and discarding them on the ground. Hundreds and hundreds of them. There was not one single whole acorn on the ground---they all had been sampled. It is odd behavior that I've never noticed before, but it mainly served to make me grateful that so far, knock on wood, the squirrels do not venture into my garden and do this with tomatoes and other fruiting plants. To me it remains baffling that they do not go after the tomatoes in the garden---I think at some point it will happen. After snake season ends, I'll rake up all these sampled acorns and throw them on the compost pile. I won't have to worry about them sprouting there because all are severely damaged.

In Fort Worth we had a neighbor who had squirrels do this to his pecan trees every summer and he waged full-fledged warfare on them to the extent that you can within the city limits where shooting is not allowed and poisoning is not really an option because of all the neighborhood dogs and cats. In all those years, he never got a pecan but constantly had a yard and driveway littered with sampled pecans just like our sampled acorns. His were the only pecan trees in the neighborhood, planted decades before by his father in law. The father in law was a very avid gardener with a huge vegetable garden on their large lot (his lot and my parents' lot were larger than other nearby properties and were referred to as 'lot and a half' when the neighborhood first was built) and the squirrels never bothered his garden, including his tomatoes. I understood why he had the squirrel issue there with the pecans though, but I do not understand why I am seeing similar behavior with squirrels on only one tree. Nature is baffling sometimes.

Nancy, I bet it was a gorgeous day out on the lake and I hope y'all caught a lot of fish.

Larry, Most people who are no-till will sow a winter cover crop to keep the winter weeds out of their growing area. Then, in late winter or early spring they cut off the cover crop, let the clippings lie on top of the soil and let the stubble of the plants die back and then they plant right into the decomposing stubble. I find this challenging if the weather isn't cold enough to allow the stubble to decompose---and if instead it just starts regrowing. My rye often just resprouts and will not go away the way I want it to at the time that I choose. This is one reason I don't love cover crops as much as I should. I didn't start no-till at all until we'd been improving our clay soil for about 15 years, so I don't have to use cover crops on the no-till areas, as decomposing mulch accomplishes the same goals in the raised beds.

All my no-till areas in the big front garden are raised beds built from lumber. I can plant root crops only in raised beds that are about 2' above grade level, lined with 1/4" hardware cloth on the bottom stapled to the lumber to keep out the voles. So, those raised beds either get a cover crop of Elbon rye or I just pile on mulch (mostly chopped/shredded autumn leaves mixed with grass clippings) heavily in late autumn, often after Thanksgiving because our first freeze here usually is the week before Thanksgiving. I pile on mulch 6-8" thick, and by planting time it usually has decomposed enough that I just rake it back, plant seed potatoes, onions or whatever and rake the mulch back over that area. If the mulch is wet and we are having a wet, rainy weather, I keep the mulch pulled back from the onions until they're well-rooted and making good new leaf growth.

I think it is harder to start with no-till in clay that isn't yet well-amended, but the more cover crops you use or the more mulch you pile atop the ground, the easier it will become. I have found going no-till requires a lot of patience, which is why my grade-level growing area in the back garden isn't no-till yet. I don't know if it ever will be no-till back there. I'd love to have all raised beds lined with hardware cloth back there too, but we just never seem to have the time to work on building anything back there in that garden plot. We didn't break ground for the back garden until (I think) 2012, or maybe 2011, so it is much further behind in terms of soil improvement, than the front garden, which first was planted in 1999. The back garden has sandy-silty soil with only one small area of dense, red clay, but the sandy-silty soil is harder to improve---organic matter added back there just seems to evaporate each year so the soil never really is better the next year, and the sandy soil does not hold nutrients well either. This area is heavily, heavily infested with pine voles from the adjacent woodland, so I have tons of problems back there that are much more severe than any problems encountered in the front garden. The only good thing about the voles is that they rototill the soil for you, at least underground. I even have mulching trouble back there as it seems that all the mulch really accomplishes is to provide cover and bedding for the voles. In this garden, bare soil would be better because then I could see the voles and their above-ground pathways and the holes they make in the ground, but then the sloping garden would erode too much if I didn't mulch it. Tilling that area seems both helpful and harmful---sometimes I think all we really do, other than rototill organic matter into the soil, is to loosen up the soil so it is even easier for the voles to tunnel through it.

I'm almost to the point with the back garden that I'm thinking of putting down a great, heavy-duty greenhouse or nursery style weed fabric (they have some rated to keep an area weed-free for 20-30 years if you don't cut holes and plant into the fabric) and then just putting containers (cattle feed tubs) on concrete blocks atop the weed fabric to make it harder for the voles to come up through the drainage holes in the pots. Then I could fill up the containers and plant potatoes in the containers. Digging them out of the containers would be easy, and I could rotate potatoes from the front garden to the back garden annually. I have maybe 20 or 30 molasses feed tubs scattered around with various plants growing in them, so maybe gathering them all in one place in the back garden and using them in a way similar to the hardware cloth-lined raised beds in the front garden would be the best use of the vole-infested back garden. Some could be used for potatoes and the rest for tomatoes and peppers.

I know we all have to work with the soil we've got and usually that soil is our biggest challenge. As I get older and enjoy digging less, and find the hard physical work of breaking the ground and keeping it weed-free is a lot more challenging now than it was 10 or 20 years ago, I love growing in containers more and more ever year. My friend, Fred, still is gardening somewhat at the age of 96, though his son now does the heavy labor of plowing/tilling the ground, and the garden is not as large as it once was. About 15 years ago, I got Fred to try growing tomatoes in molasses feed tubs and he loved it. He had a bad back and bad hips and was undergoing a lot of surgeries on his hips and knees, so he put his molasses feed tubs up on top of sturdy wood tables and a stone wall. Then he filled them with soil-less mix and planted, declaring it the easiest gardening he'd ever done. He's been growing his tomatoes in the feed tubs ever since. I want to grow potatoes the same way, and every year when I am manually digging potatoes out of the raised beds, I tell myself I need to just start growing them exclusively in tubs where the soil-less mix would be much easier to dig than the soil in the raised beds. Maybe 2019 will be the year I finally do that. I keep trying and trying to find ways to grow edible crops in a manner that is easier to maintain and, for me, the raised beds are somewhat better but the containers are far better.

One of the big trends, Larry, is to layer wood chips on the ground up to 2' tall and then let all that decompose. It gives you great gardening soil in a few years' time, though I don't think it would work for me because I think our timber rattlers and copperheads would live in those wood chips. So, I just add a few inches of wood mulch a year, no-till style, to the tops of the beds and let it decompose in place. As the mulch breaks down, rainfall, insects, and just the digging I do with a trowel while planting transplants in the ground or digging potatoes, sweet potatoes and other root crops will carry the decomposing mulch down into the soil as fine humusy organic matter.

Moni, Some cities allow people to keep a small number of chickens, with no roosters because of the crowing. Maybe your city has a chicken ordinance like that? Our hens are very quiet. It is only the rooster that makes noise.

Dawn

Hi y'all. I just wanted to tell Larry about the various ways I have grown potatoes. We bought a couple of bags at the nursery one year designed for growing potatoes. The commercial bags are unnecessary, however. I have grown them in chicken feed or dog food bags cut with drainage holes. When you want to harvest, you put down a tarp and cut the bags open. The bags aren't too heavy if you don't fill them too full. I put them on the east side of the house so when it gets hot they're in the shade. I put a couple of inches of soil in the bottom of the bag, 2 or 3 seed potatoes and fill to 18 inches. You can do the fill as the plant grows thing, but it's unnecessary. The potatoes will come up anyway. I don't use soilless mix, I use Mel's mix, which is 1/3 compost, 1/3 peat and 1/3 vermiculite or perlite. I don't know if it is more economical than Dawn's soilless mix or not. Planting in a container is hard because it has to drain well but not dry out too quick.

I have grown them in straw bales. That might work better where you are than it did for me. Straw bale gardening is a whole other system.

A variation on that is to lay your seed potatoes on top of the soil and cover them with straw. As long as the mulch is thick enough to keep the sun off your potato tubers you're good. It is much easier to pull up straw to harvest than to dig in dirt. I rather liked this method, but my husband didn't think it produced enough.

I can't say we have gotten great production regardless of the method, including planting in ground. We did that this year. In the end, I soaked the ground and hosed the dirt away from the potatoes in order to get them out. (don't tell me this is bad, I'm sure it is). I won't do it that way again for 2 reasons: it was too much for me, and it took up too big a footprint in my little garden.

Still busy with non garden stuff. I read everything here. XOXO

Dawn, thinks for the info. I am too old to start raised beds, although my gardens work much like raised beds because I dug ditch around them and filled it with mulch. I would harvest the mulch every 1 to 3 years and toss it onto the garden and re-fill the ditch with new organic matter. Because of the slope of the land the gardens drained well, except in very wet times when the entire valley was too wet.

I have the option of planting a cover crop or replacing the mulch because I collected a lot of old hay this year. I have never used winter peas for a cover crop, and I still have 5 or 10 pounds of seeds left. I have planted winter peas as a food plot or just to have some winter green in the lawn.

Amy, thanks. I did try planting Irish potatoes and covering them with hay this year, I was not happy with my production either. This being my first year as "no till", and having a very dry crazy spring probably caused the low production.

I give most of the stuff I grow away so I don't want to sink a lot of money into the garden. I took most of my sweet potatoes up to my neighbor yesterday. He is the one that gave me the slips. He is 87 years old and like to give produce away, but he is unable to grow produce very well on his rocky hill side. I expect he took most of the sweet potatoes to the food bank today. He also said that he would be down today and pick turnip greens for him and another neighbor. I have told him, and others just to help themselves to my garden anytime they wanted, I always have more than I can use.

quick post. Here’s pictures of the dying tomotoes’ leaves.

Looks like the pics didn’t post. Will be back later to try again.

Amy, I suspect that I cannot use the method here where you put tomatoes on the ground and toss hay on them for the rather obvious reason that native rodents---field mice, voles and probably rats (though I've never seen them in the garden) likely would find those seed potatoes and eat them. I think it could be a great growing method in a milder climate than ours and if a person doesn't live in such a heavily rural area that rodents would be an issue. I like the concept of hay bale gardening, but again, I think it might work better in a milder climate. Our summers are just so hot and dry here that many alternate (soil-less) methods are very challenging. Heck, even growing in the soil or in soil-less mix in containers in drought is very challenging.

I do like to custom blend a soil-less mix for the expected weather---making it drain better if I am expecting a ton of rain but making it hold moisture better if I am expecting a dry year. It can be hard to do, though, because in the winter when filling containers, or adding to containers to enrich the existing mix, it can be hard to guess what the coming year's weather will be like. For several years now---dating back to around 2006, I guess, I have filled the bottom half of the molasses feed tubs with half-rotted logs and such, sort of hugelkultur in a pot and that works as well as anything I've ever done, only the large amount of wood means it doesn't leave space for potatoes. I can grow potatoes in molasses feed tubs if I leave out the soil-less mix. If I start out with large enough chunks of half-rotted tree limbs, it can take them several years to fully decompose. Having tons of woodland means there is an endless source of half-rotted wood, but I do have to gather it in the absolutely coldest weather to avoid snakes. It is shocking to me how often I stumble upon snakes in the woodland in the dead of winter---so I only venture in there when we are down close to freezing or below freezing.

Oh, and success with potatoes seems to be strictly temperature-related in our climate as near as I can tell. How big my yield is each year relates directly to how early we reach temperatures high enough to stop the plants from setting and sizing more tubers. In recent years, we warm up so early the the potatoes tend to be on the small size and there's fewer of them. This year was that way---with July temperatures in May, I dug potatoes early and just didn't worry about their size or quantity because I knew the weather controls all that.

Larry, With the drought, I suspect your no-till garden just didn't produce as well as it would have in a rainier year. Maybe rainfall will be normal next year and things will be better. If the September/October rainfall are any sort of sign of what is to come, I think we'll have a good year in 2019. We had a huge amount of rain here in September, which did break our drought completely, and now we're expecting a huge amount in October. I think that for us, down here this far south, the heavy rain won't really reach us until Sun-Tuesday, but at least we know it is coming. And, apparently, we'll be able to mow this weekend if we get out there and do it on Saturday because they've backed off a lot on the concept of Friday or Saturday rain for us. A rainy October will be a lovely gift, especially for all the trees, and if we get a rainy November, that will be even better.

Y'all, I know that the weather experts have been wishy-washy on the development of El Nino this winter, and are still watching the sea surface temperatures for signs of development and all that, but to me, even without SSTs in the right range in the right region of the ocean, this fall feels exactly like the weather we get as an El Nino is developing. So, I remain hopeful. The latest El Nino Watch update from 1 Oct 2018 gives us a 50% chance of having El Nino develop in the autumn and I think it said 65-70% chance of having it develop in the winter.

Before it rains again, I want to get out there in the dog yard and put down landscape fabric in their pathway (they won't like this because they love to dig there) and cover it with hay or bark mulch. Hay would be better in this case for making it easier for them so see snakes. Or, maybe put down concrete stepping stones or rocks. The amount of mud they tracked in after our most recent 8" of rain was astronomical, and I need to do something to prevent this from becoming a winter-season-long headache. I guess I'll put that on this weekend's To Do list.

Jennifer, Thanks for posting the photos. I have a couple of ideas about what it might be.

To me, the most obvious choice is Septoria Leaf Spot, which is a fungal disease. It can overwinter on plant debris, so good garden cleanup and the destruction of plant debris (rather than composting, unless your run a compost pile so hot that it steams in the middle) via burning it or trashing it/disposing of it with the garbage is the preferred route. When I have Septoria Leaf Spot I do compost my plants but in a compost pile far from the garden that I am using to rehabilitate an unwanted drainage gully---so I leave the compost there and never use it. Instead, the compost remains in place and helps plants grow to break the cycle of erosion in that gully.

Here's info on SLS and you can compare their photos to your plants. Keep in mind that diseases don't have just one specific appearance, though, so your plants might not look identical to the ones in the photo.

MOBOT: Septoria Leaf Spot

It also is possible your plants could have Bacterial Leaf Spot, but I don't usually see that in autumn and feel much less certain of that as a possibility. Usually with BLS the lesions are somewhat smaller than what I see on your plants. However, as wet and cool as y'all have been sprordically this autumn, it is possible it is BLS. I just happen to think it looks more like SLS than BLS. Neither one is something I'd worry about obsessively this late in the growing season, but I would do a very thorough clean up of all affected plant debris after the growing season ends.

Do y'all feel the rain coming? I don't feel it yet, no matter what the forecast says, but I keep believing it will happen. (grin) It has to---our ground is drying out and the puddles are about gone, and we just don't need to get all dry again after being luxuriously wet the last couple of weeks.

Our weather here remains hot, dry and windy. Our nighttime lows are astonishingly high and that bothers me more than the warm days. We're only dropping into the low 70s at night, whereas normal nighttime lows right now ought to be in the upper 50s. That's quite a difference.

I saw tons more monarchs yesterday and they are extremely happy as the recent heavy rainfall over the last month or so has caused a huge abundance of wildflower blooms. We have tons of Maximilian Sunflowers, regular native sunflowers, liatris, crownbeard daisies and asters in bloom. Oh, and goldenrod. There's a lot of nectaring going on, and I saw males puddling yesterday in the one mud puddle we have left. The garden is also full of butterflies, but it is less important to them now that there's autumn wildflowers in bloom everywhere.

I can tell the milder weather is making me happier too. I am enjoying cooking dinner again instead of dreading it and dragging my heals and hating the thought of going into the hot kitchen. Last night I even made yeast rolls from scratch instead of thawing out and baking frozen ones.

There still are a lot of hummingbirds, but they aren't lingering as much now as they were just a few days ago---just chowing down at the feeders and plants and moving on. I could tell a definite difference yesterday---they are more in 'eat and run' mode now, and not sticking around and guarding feeders or fighting over them. I suspect they feel the cooler weather coming next week and are trying to fly enough miles daily to keep ahead of it. You know, at this time of the year, you never know when the hummingbird you see flitting around your garden or feeders will be the last one, but I suspect the last one will be coming through here very soon---perhaps this week. They're already a bit late and I don't know how far they want to push it in terms of lingering much longer.

I'm eager to get into the garden and do some garden cleanup but it remains far too early for that, realistically, at least as far as safety goes. I wish they made a snake-proof fence. If they did, I'd have it all around my garden so I could be in there even now. I always tell Tim that it wouldn't upset me if a tornado came through and took out the acre of woodland nearest the garden. Of course, that never will happen, and if it did happen, it probably would take out the garden and the house, so I'd better be careful about what I wish for. I just think life in the garden would be a lot easier if the timber rattlers had to travel much, much further to reach my garden instead of popping out of the woods and being inside the garden in just a minute or two. We'd never hire a guy with a dozer to come in and clear that acre of woodland, but if Mother Nature did it, I would not complain.

Have a good day, everybody!

Dawn

It was good to read everyone's posts. It's always such a relief to come here because there's not all of the political posts and memes. I have friends on both sides of every "situation" who are all good people. I hate all the hate. And dislike how someone is "bad" if they disagree with you. No one cares about understanding the others' point of view...and quite honestly, social media will never make someone change their viewpoint. Thank you all for keeping it enjoyable here. Love you!

It's crazy but there are mostly dead tomato plants putting out new blooms in my garden.

The peppers are many. The plan is to harvest them all tomorrow night and the boys who grill at contest can grill them all with some onions on Saturday. They'll love it and I won't feel badly about wasting garden produce.

My volunteer watermelons are not the smaller variety! They are large. How exciting for me. I've never been successful with growing large watermelons. I'm wondering when I planted this seed. I don't remember doing it last year, but maybe I did.

Dawn, thanks for all the advice on the little roo and tomato disease. Next year I'm planning on planting only 8 tomatoes in the spring and will put them in the back garden. They've not been in the back garden for 3 years...so, it will be 4 years this coming spring. They were back there my first "real" year of gardening. Now, I might do some fall tomatoes for the first time. Exciting to think about my fall being freeeee! I will miss this though. Nights like tonight I'm more happy about the freedom that's coming, though. Y'all, I'm tired. And the weekend hasn't started yet.

Ethan started dating (finally). She is a cutie. I don't think they are a couple yet and I'm totally fine with that. They don't need to be together all the time as far as I'm concerned. She's in colorguard, so in the band too. I have a whole new set of concerns now. I'm like...just don't touch her (other than holding hands) or kiss her and always have others around you. Our boys have to be very careful now. Our girls have always had to be careful in other ways. But, I'm excited for him. He's always been a bit reserved with girls...seems like his mood has lightened and that is a good thing. He actually walked the dogs with us tonight and it's been awhile since he's done that. He was very chatty, like when he was younger. Totally enjoyed it.

Looks like Tom isn't going to Nebraska with me. My cousin (once removed) can't stay at our house to care for everyone. And our animals are high maintenance. Keeping so many pets does cause issues in traveling, huh?

I think that is all for now. Hope everyone is having a good week.

We were discussing thanksgiving plans earlier. With our zoo, we would have to pay someone to stay here. Plus holidays are prime dog sitting opportunities, so we're planning to stay home. So if anyone's in the OKC area and wants a place to go for dinner, feel free to stop by.

Jennifer, Yes, keeping so many animals makes traveling extremely difficult. I hate leaving our animals for longer than a day. Have a safe trip when you go.

Between school and band, I don't see how Ethan has time for dating. I hope his senior year is wonderful.

Jen, That's sweet of you to offer a place at the Thanksgiving table to anyone who will be in the area and needs a place to go.

When we lived in Fort Worth we always hosted the holidays. It is crazy how long ago that seems now. For a few years we hosted up here too, but it just makes more sense for us to drive down there now instead of all of them driving up here.

It was hot today and I am so over the heat. Not that it matters. We're just going to be hot here whether I'm over it or not. Temp was 91, heat index was 100. Really? How in the world can we feel that hot in October? I keep hoping for a cold front, but the ones that are making it part of the way into OK just aren't coming this far south. The rain will be pretty late to reach us too. I think a lot of you will get quite a bit of rain days before it makes it to us. Our big rain days are supposed to be Mon-Tues or Tues-Wed....it keeps sliding out further into the future. That does mean we can postpone mowing another day or two.

I worked in the garden some early this morning, with Lucky keeping me company. She's a good garden cat. I pulled out all the morning glories, cypress vines and bindweed that had sprouted in the melon bed and climbed the melon trellis late in the summer. I wanted to get them out of there before they could go to seed and give me more unwanted volunteers in that bed next summer. I noticed that, since the heat is hanging on, volunteer zinnias and celosias are sprouting, and in some cases the zinnia volunteers are blooming already. The late heat is giving us a whole new round of blooms. That's good for the butterflies though.

There's no school tomorrow, so the girls are here tonight to spend the night and the day tomorrow. I won't be working in the garden tomorrow, but we might drag out the wading pool if tomorrow is as warm as today was. I don't expect it will be too cool to play in the pool tomorrow. Might be too cool about a week from now.

Dawn

Here I am, shortly after 4 am. Can't sleep. Not sure why, but been awake since before 2, and got up about 3:45

I am going camping later today. I know, it's supposed to rain, but some of the camping in rain was the BEST, and we have the best memories. Not sure yet, if taking the bike along make sense... but this is the next to last bike camping weekend.

I worked hard on getting the old shed demolished yesterday, and realize, I forgot to take a before picture. I knew it was in bad shape when I bought this house... but didn't realize how bad till I started taking the alu sides off. There isn't one board without termite damage.

I am going to spray the area heavy, before the new shed is built there next week.

Hopefully most of the bugs will die, before the rain washes the spray off.

Gardening should be more fun, when this eyesore is gone.

Moni

I'm in a reading, not talking, mode. But I'm here. :)

I will start cleaning the garden soon. I plan on doing away with all bamboo trellises. I cleaned the garden last spring with a weed burner, which worked well with the tee post and cattle panel trellises, but a lot of the bamboo had to be replaced. I will have no trellises at the edge of the garden, and no trellises closer than 10 feet apart. My small tractor and any implement used on it is no more than 6 feet wide. unless I get able to walk better all work will be done with a tractor, the tillers will be retired. I will continue to work toward "no till", and use old hay for mulch, if I can get it. If I use a cover crop I expect it will be buck wheat or winter peas because of the softer structure of the plants. I hope to grow my okra across the highway where the soil is un-amended and there is no water unless I haul it, because the okra over there this year was much shorter and easier to harvest.

Ron's sister died unexpectedly yesterday. He is headed to NJ Sunday. In talking to his other sister, his third sister is in the hospital with end stage cancer, which the family was not told about. My mother is not doing great. Even if I was physically able to go to NJ, I would be afraid to leave because of my mother. One of my sons and my daughter will go to NJ with Ron. I don't want to adult anymore.

Moni, I have nights like that a lot, especially if I go to bed early. It is like my body decides it has slept enough and is done with sleep for the night, but my brain always is saying "No.....let me sleep!" I always think I'll make up for the missed sleep by taking an afternoon nap, but then I rarely do.

Congrats on demolishing the shed. That's a lot of work! I bet gardening will be more fun with that eyesore of a shed gone.

I hope you enjoy your camping in the rain. I like camping in the rain as long as there is a place to retreat to in order to stay warm and dry---even if that place is just a little tent.

Larry, It sounds like you have a good solid plan in place. Isn't it amazing what a pain in the neck that tall okra plants can be? I don't want any plant so tall that it makes harvesting difficult.

Amy, I am so sorry for the loss of Ron's sister. My deepest sympathy to you all. I hate hearing the news about his other sister's cancer already being end-stage before y'all even found out about it. While I respect a person's right to reveal their own health information as they see fit, I don't understand it when people don't even tell their immediate family members that they have a terminal illness.

I totally understand why you wouldn't want to go to NJ given the current state of your mother's health. There are days I don't want to adult either.

There's not much new to report here except maybe the snake in my garden. This week I have cautiously entered the garden and done a bit of clean-up work virtually every day. Even if it isn't much work completed in one day, it does add up over the course of a week. I have been careful and watched for snakes. Yesterday I was in the garden only long enough to pull up a few morning glories and moonflower vines sprouting near my tomatoes---mainly because I went out there to check on the tomatoes and then just noticed the vines accidentally. They were trying to climb the tomato plants, so I ruthlessly yanked out every one of them. I still don't know if my fall tomatoes will have time to mature, but the fruit wouldn't stand a chance of doing so if I let the vines climb the plants and cut off their sunlight. So, I never saw or heard a snake while in the garden, but.....

While walking down to the mailbox very late in the day, I glanced over at the garden fence as I walked by and there was a shed snake skin woven through the fence about 5' from the entry arbor. I suppose the snake threaded itself through the woven wire fence and rubbed itself against the wire to help remove the skin. I am pretty sure that snake skin wasn't there when I was in the garden because it was right at eye level and there's no way I wouldn't have noticed it. I don't necessarily think it was a venomous snake. Based on the shed snake skin's size, appearance and location, I think it was from a Rough Green Tree Snake because they love to hang out on the coral honeysuckle and cannas there in that immediate area. Still, I'm never happy when snakes send me an "I am here" message in the garden. I think I'll stay out of the garden today. I keep waiting for cooler weather to arrive and make snake activity during the daylight hours more rare, but it just isn't happening yet. Maybe next week.

It was a lovely and hot summer day here yesterday, which probably is a gift in October. The girls played in the wading pool for close to 3 hours while I sat in the shade, watching them and supplying an outdoor picnic lunch eaten beside their little wading pool. They'd already had lunch before we went out to the pool, but worked up a big enough appetite to eat a second lunch a couple of hours after the first one. I told Chris when he picked them up in late afternoon that they had an extra lunch in the afternoon and might not be hungry for dinner. It is possible that they crammed in a second lunch in order to avoid dinner because Chris was going to cook a fish "with eyes still on it", in Lillie's words, for dinner and the girls were uneasy about having to eat a fish that looks like a fish.

We were joined by lots of butterflies and dragonflies lurking near the water the girls splashed out of the pool. I do not believe I saw or heard a single hummingbird all day. Maybe the last one has headed south.

We had a lot of wind yesterday and it kept the mosquitoes off of us for the most part. We'd have a little skeeter trouble when the wind temporarily died down for a few minutes here and there. The mosquitoes? We have the usual ones in great profusion ever since rain started falling in significant amounts again, and 2 or 3 days ago the large gallynippers showed up. Ugh. If it is possible to hate mosquitoes more than I already hated them, then I really, really hate those gallynippers.

Dawn

Hi, all, and realize, I'm probably the last poster of this week. Umm. . . not much gardening per se, but a lot of gardening homage. Now this is a little off the gardening path. . . my link to gardening will be that we are to tend the garden. Genesis 2:15. I'm so thankful for all of you here. You are such a wonderful community of like-minded people. I'm blessed by having found this group, and I love you all!!

Now. I am going to share something personal, an aside from gardening. 1) I'm in a Bible study class. Love it. 2) Eileen and Larry came over and we were out on the boat fishing, two days last week! Loved it. 3) I profess to be a Christian but I have more than a couple chinks in that Christian armour. I smoke. I've smoked for 45 years. My best friend of those 45 years (my kindergarten friend from Wyoming) asks me every 4-5 months how it's going with the quit smoking. I usually got defensive, or angry. or evade the question. She asked last week, and I broke down in tears and said, "Sue, this is it. I CANNOT quit. Yes, it will kill me. Yes, I have prayed and prayed and prayed. And that was that.

This past week, Eileen and Larry came over and we were out fishing all day. I realized that night I was out of cigs. Usually I freak if I'm down to the last pack, but that day, didn't worry about it. The next morning GDW was going into town and asked me if I wanted him to pick up cigs. I said, "Nah, don't worry about it." Later that day we went in for Bible study. Again, GDW asked me about it. I said, "Nah, I'm good." Now here's the thing(s). I had already given up on being able to quit the smoking. Second, knew I was gonna die cuz I couldn't. Third, though. I was so excited about my studying and praying and having a dialogue with God, that I didn't think much about smoking.

Quitting smoking is something I've failed at time and time and time again for 50 years. Fifty Years! I went 6 weeks without smoking app. 20 years ago, but I took a lot of baths, showers, went on a lot of jogs and walks. Thing is, had to change my life.

Now it's been 5 days. A few irritants, but here is the thing. This is not something I'm giving up. This is something that God has given to me as a great present. I am beyond delighted. I am SO blessed. Thank you, GOD!!!

Nancy I am soooooo happy for you. I remember my quitting journey and it was such a great time with the Lord helping mme every step.

Congrats, Nancy, and I do believe the Lord is with you every step of the way.

And, see there, Kim and I posted here so you aren't going to be the last one to post on last week's thread. Now, I need to go start this week's new thread before our house starts floating away because it is raining and we are flooding. I'm not complaining either, just stating the facts.

Dawn