My phone app is showing a 60% chance of rain this evening. I hope so. I hope we get an inch. I'm dreaming.

I worked this morning and will head back to work in an hour or so. In between, I took a nap and dug a hole for the Chinese Pistache. Hopefully Tom will help me get it in the ground before I head back to work.

Tom bought the finishing things to put the insect netting on the hoops. It's been warm enough that we are still getting insect damage to the greens and brassicas. I'm torn between what to do when it gets cold. Should I put plastic over it and open the hoop during the days when it's over freezing which is most days. OR should I just utilize a frost cloth as needed. I just don't know. It's a good year to figure it out because I don't have wonderful crops this year.

The plan is to continue garden clean up tomorrow and plant the rest of the pansies.

Maybe start working on the pumpkins. I would like to take all the orangy/buff ones, bake them and then put it all in the freezer. It's getting close to "good" cooking season.

Basically, I'm pretty boring right now.

I spent the afternoon at the walk in clinic with a severe UTI. A shot and antibiotics and a nap helped. Had beef stew from the crockpot for dinner, with the last of the potatoes from June. Pumpkin bread in the oven. Dishwasher running. Shower taken.

Big flat of pansies, panolas, Johnny jump ups, and snapdragons did not get planted. Maybe tomorrow.

We're under a tornado watch and they are predicting severe weather in the early morning hours. I could do without that. Been picking up black walnuts (17- 5 gal buckets) and pecans( a bushel so far) and picking pears.

We are getting rain and storms too. Not too harsh so far, though.

We might have had hail or sleet last night, but I haven't ventured out with a flash light to confirm or deny...but it sounded like it while laying in bed.

We got 1.25" of rain, and I see a few smaller limbs down and lots of leaves. The power was out during the night. I slept through the entire storm. Sounds like it was worse in Wagoner. Guess I'll find out in a little while. It is chilly. We had a low of 48 and it's 49 right now.

Sleet! Yikes, dbarron!

We got cold, Nancy, Pretty sure it was 41 when I woke up. It's warming up, though. It's 54 now. However, we didn't get the glorious rain that you got. I haven't checked the gauge, but I doubt we got enough to register. Bummer. It was going strong for about 5 minutes--we had some hail too--then it stopped.

In an hour or so, I'll head to the garden to work on clean up chores. Finishing up some bread and butter jalapenos right now. Speaking of jalapenos, I might start with pulling out those plants first. I know we talked about this a couple of months ago, but my plants never got very tall. I had an okay harvest of them. We were able to make a few small jars of pickled peppers. It will be easy to pull them out because they are so small. I have a garden cart of chicken droppings and bedding that I'll top the bed with and hopefully that will help with the poor quality of soil. I suppose the soil is simply depleted because it was fine at one time.

Speaking of chicken droppings...what does anyone know of zeolite? I've started using Sweet pdz as a litter for the droppings board. I'm actually scooping those boards each day and throwing it in with the garden cart of old bedding/droppings. There's Sweet pdz mixed into the stuff I'm going to dump on the garden bed (as mentioned before.), so I'm not pouring bags of it my garden--there's just a little mixed in.

Thankfully, nothing came of our Tornado Watch here in our county, but we had one severe thunderstorm that mostly was lightning, thunder and a little rain---only 0.20" in our rain gauge. Some parts of the county probably got more rain, but the hail seemed to stay east of us (just barely). We had brief wind gusts in the 40s, so minor leaves and small limbs down, and a lot of acorns down, but after seeing all the tornado damage in Dallas that occurred last night, I feel so grateful the worst of the weather missed us. I would have liked but more rain for the plants, but it just didn't happen.

Jennifer, I usually leave winter greens uncovered unless it is going to be cold enough to damage them. They build up cold tolerance by getting cold, plus some of them (collards and brussels sprouts are a good example of this) taste better after being hit by frost repeatedly. If you coddle the cool-season plants and keep them too warm, they never get a chance to harden off well to cold weather and never develop as much cold tolerance as they should, but it is a delicate balancing act to let them have enough cold exposure without letting them have too much and freeze.

It seems so ridiculous to be getting insect damage this late, doesn't it? This has been the strangest weather year. We still have some grasshoppers, especially within the fenced garden, and they usually are long gone by now. I killed one stink bug last week, but haven't seen many of them otherwise. I enjoy killing the bad guys most of all in autumn because every bad bug killed is one less bad bug that will overwinter and get off to an early start the next year. There's still tons of butterflies around which I think makes it seem a little less like autumn, but I'm not complaining.

You're not boring right now....it is just that the garden is in that transition period of autumn when there is not a lot happening. This is normal. I spend more time in autumn planning for next year, ordering seeds, etc., than actually working outdoors in the garden. There is a time and a season for everything.

Rebecca, I hope you recover from the UTI quickly. The stores here still don't have the cool-season plants. I know they had them by late October last year. I am on the verge of giving up on finding them. I'll look again this weekend, and if I don't find any, I'll just get over it and move on. We still have all the dianthus and a few snapdragons from last year, but I really wanted to add pansies and violas.

Robert, The bad weather missed us. I hope it missed you too. I do need to start gathering pecans as well. I wish it were a little cooler so I don't have to worry about snakes being out. We get chilly at night, but warm up very quickly in the mornings, so they still are out now and then.

Nancy, You got more weather than we did! I was busy watching the Dallas tornadoes and damage, and one severe storm that was headed our way from Texas kept me busy for a while tracking it, but it veered ever so slightly east of us, damaging a lot of trees and power lines in the county east of us but missing us. Once I knew that one was going to miss us, I could relax for a couple of hours. The last possible damaging storm came through really fast and didn't leave much damage in its wake, at least not at our place. I don't know if it was as kind to the rest of the county.

The unexpected chance to have the grandkids for two days and one night wreaked havoc on my plant-shopping plans, but I figured Tim and I can plant shop next weekend when the girls are at their dads' houses. For once, the stores here do not seem as intent as usual on clearing out nursery stock quickly, so I'd love to putter around and look for plants that fit into next Spring's renovation of the landscape. I am sure the girls enjoyed our afternoon at the park and playground, followed with a trip to Dairy Queen for ice cream, more than they would have enjoyed looked at shrubs at Home Depot.

Yesterday we decorated sugar skull cookies, and I have to say that the 5 year old's decorated cookies look a lot more well-planned and well-decorated than they did when she was 4. Today the girls are decorating a pre-made, pre-assembled chocolate gingerbread haunted house and are having such a good time with it. I believe the plan they have hatched for this afternoon involves the great outdoors and sidewalk chalk. If I learned anything at all last Christmas it was that the pre-assembled gingerbread houses are so much easier to deal with than gluing together all the walls and roofs yourself, so from this point forward we'll only buy a pre-assembled gingerbread house. This one has kept them busy for about 2 hours so far, and they aren't finished yet.

I have another gardening book set to arrive today or tomorrow from Amazon. It is specifically about butterfly gardening in Oklahoma. I already have a ton of plants, both natives and well-adapted non-natives, for the butterflies so don't know if I'll find anything in this book that we aren't already growing, but it will be fun to read the book and to find out. With 14.4 acres of mostly native plants, we always have gazillions of butterflies and moths everywhere, but I'm always looking for something to add that we don't have. Usually when I read those lists of "natives to plant for the butterflies", I just sit there as I read and say "we've got that one, we've got that one, we've got that one". I guess we are lucky in that respect---we had lots of natives on the property when we bought it, and we were careful to leave them alone and let them grow, though we were not shy about taking out non-native aggressive colonizers like eastern red cedar. Winter bloomers are the hardest plants to keep around in terms of natives (or, for that matter, non-natives), and we stay so warm here some winters that the butterflies and bees are out more often than you'd think, so that is one thing I'm focusing on when we re-do the landscaping---more plants that bloom from late fall to very early spring.

Today's weather is almost perfect---finally true autumn weather that is mild and pleasant and not extremely cold or extremely hot. I wish this weather could last forever, but it won't. Our ground is extremely dry. I wish it would rain more and soften the ground so I can dig out bermuda grass.

Dawn

Dawn--what gardening book will be arriving? My "Oklahoma Native Plants (A guide to designing landscapes to attract birds and butterflies) with Connie Scothorn came today. I forgot I ordered it but am glad it did. I'm betting you got the same one.

It was cool in town, and several downed trees to be taken off folks' houses or blocked streets. But even though we got lots of rain, the beds--at the school and at home, weren't too wet to dig in. I'm sorry you didn't get the rain, Jennifer.

I am so sorry about the UTI, Rebecca. Feel better soon.

Meanwhile, we took some cuties to the school and we had fun digging up the rest of the sweet potatoes, peppers, and okra. Little guy was just beSIDE himself with joy! He's only 5--such a sweetie. We really had SO much fun. These four announced they were going to be my "sidekicks" and come every Monday to help in the garden. They were so sad when I told them the garden was done for this fall. But will be excited to begin in the spring, no doubt.

And my little buddy, N, when being quizzed in school about fennel and milkweed, was the one who remembered the black swallowtail and MONARCH. It slipped her mind, and when it came, she jumped up and shouted it out! SO cool. Then when we went to the garden, I pointed out the fennel and asked her if she remembered what plant it was. She got mixed up and said milkweed--I said, you mean fennel? Yeah yeah fennel! That's the milkweed, she pointed out. And then she said, "Nancy, LOOK! What kind of caterpillar is THAT? So I explained the instars to her. It was, oops, a 2nd or 3rd instar (I'm thinking second). I had "first" here. She was just soaking that up. And she was the one who found it and then found a second. Our little butterfly student! This is amazing, as she can hardly put three letters together for a word. She couldn't really even write her name when we began in August. (She's 6.)

Garry and I pulled out the long beans, the last Heidi, and the Midnight ornamental pepper this afternoon. And my garlic came today, so I can get that plunked in tomorrow. Not growing all that many since we over-planted last year. It sure is good-looking garlic! Softneck--Inchelium Red and Red Toch.

Dawn, is the Bermuda you need to get out in one certain place, or is this just overall removal. What would you suggest for growing beds for a large area, such as at the church or school? The rest of you, feel free to chime in, too. Both have yards of Bermuda. Figures. I'm thinking raised beds, starting small and growing. Trying to get as much out as possible, by hand, in the raised beds, and then lots of cardboard and modified hugelkultur. We put heavy hardware cloth down in the raised beds at school. I'm reading that some say that is a terrible idea. We did the hardware cloth, then cardboard, then rotten wood and all the rest.

Bermuda is the Devil incarnate. There's not much that works and it will sneak back in from the sides or spread from any surviving rhizome.

dbarron, that''s the deal. And yet we can't just not grow gardens. I've found that here in our yard, what works best is the lasagna style build-up, diligence, more build-up. What REALLY helps is when GDW weed eats the Bermuda 6-8 inches out from the beds. No, I quite understand the difficulty. I'm just trying to come up with the best approaches.

I wish you guys would send me some Bermuda grass, the frost has killed nearly all of mine. I did dig a little out today when I was removing the sweet potato vines and the okra plants. I expect I may have buried some in the compost pile, maybe it will stay warm there and I can have a start of it next year. I would not know how to grow anything without having it mixed with Bermuda grass. I expect God must have a special love for Bermuda grass, because there is so much of it.

It was a very nice day here. It was too wet to work in the wildlife garden, so I worked in the gardens in the lawn. The soil is amended in the house gardens and I can work in them when other areas are muddy. I want to seed the areas I have cleared in the wildlife as soon as it drys some. I still have one very large brush pile to clean up.

I lifted the roof frame up for my greenhouse/ he shed today. It will a frame structure with a visqueen south wall. I will finish walling it in if it does not work for starting plants. I dont know when I will be able to get back on the building project. My youngest son has a pace maker installed tomorrow, I have a Dr. appointment Wed. and go to south Ar. Thur. to try and aid my sister and sister-in-law, both are widows.

Exactly how much cold can butternut squash plants take? I have one plant left that has several small squash on it. I’d like to let them mature.

I need to divide my daffodils, but I’m not excited about all the digging. Have a bag of crocus bulbs to go in too.

Baby lettuce plants look so pathetic and weak.

Nancy, it's like you said...start small. IF you have the funds to make the first raised beds, do it now (or soon). Dig out all the grass underneath the bed frame. Put down cardboard and start dumping compost items on top of the cardboard. They will break down over winter. Compost can be leaves, toilet paper/paper towel tubes, food scraps. etc. Then, at planting time in the spring, add soil on top of the composty things.

Then if you have time/energy, dig out the grass about 2 feet or so around the raised bed frame and put down more cardboard and top with wood chips. that will help keep the Bermuda from sneaking in.

I worked super hard today and am tired.

Rebecca, my lettuce looks like crap too.

Jennifer, My experience with zeolite is that the Dirt Doctor, Howard Garret, has long recommended it for various reasons, primarily as a compound that can be used to detoxify soil. His most common recommendation of it is for folks making the transition from conventional growing to organic growing because it will absorb toxins from the soil (often delivered to the soil via some of the pelleted fertilizers used in conventional growing, which often contain either heavy metals or excess amounts of nitrogen). I used it once about 20 years ago, though I no longer remember why. Here's some info on zeolite from his website:

Zeolite

Nancy, That's the one, and I am a bit disappointed in how small of a book it is. I know I have become spoiled by the larger, much more detailed books about gardening-for-wildlife that have been available in Texas for a long time now. There's nothing wrong with this book and indeed, it is a nice little book,---I just wish it were larger and featured more plants. It is an attractive, well-written, well-photographed small book that features a nice, smallish selection of plants---95% of which we already have here, already have obtained seeds of for next year, or have ruled out because we don't have the right conditions for them here. So, my hope I'd find some new ideas in this book really didn't come to fruition. That's okay. I'm sure there's useful info in this book I'll use along the way.

Isn't it great how much the kids love the school garden? I was so lucky to grow up in a gardening family in a gardening neighborhood where we knew the joys of plants and the wildlife (birds, bees, butterflies, hummingbirds, toads, frogs, lizards, etc.) they attracted from a very young age. It astonishes me now, when I look back at it, just how full of gardens (both edible and non-edible) our neighborhood was in the 1960s and 1970s.

When Chris was little, I learned that some of his friends had no understanding of how flowers grow---because all they were exposed to in general were annual bedding plants in flower beds in shopping center parking lots where spring pansies gave way overnight to summertime begonias and petunias, which in mid- to late-summer mysteriously turned into mari-mums and chrysanthemums, periwinkles or salvias. Did the kids think each plant just turned into another type of plant altogether from one week to the next or did they understand that somebody was tearing out all the 'tired' annuals and replacing them with others? I wonder about that now. It also gave them an unrealistic sense that all the flowers stayed 10-14" tall and were remarkably uniform in height. Is that what we want to teach kids about plants? That they are expendable and can be yanked out and replaced by other bedding plants multiple times per year just to keep bedding plants that always look picture perfect? At our house where flowers often became towering behemoths, those sunflowers, tall garden phlox and tall zinnias, for example, could double as forts for little kids to hide behind while firing Nerf guns at one another, or they could search our two backyard lilyponds for fish and frogs, or ask me amusing questions like "do the elephant ears come from elephants?" or "if that is a shrimp plant, are you growing real shrimp?" I feel bad for little kids nowadays who miss out on experiences like that, and am glad y'all are bringing gardening to the kids in your community.

Our bermuda grass is widespread and I will spend the whole winter digging it out as time and weather conditions allow. I wish I'd ignored Tim's wishes and tarped the whole side yard all summer to solarize and kill the bermuda grass beneath it. My plan is to water the yard really well and then put down 4mm (or 6 mm) thick plastic over the grass now, perhaps this weekend. to help kill it back. It depends on how much rain we get between now and then--tarping works a lot better on wet ground, and I'd love it if Mother Nature provided the rain for us so I don't have to spend the time and money watering the ground. I also need to find and buy the plastic first because we don't have enough in the garage to cover the entire area I want to cover.) We will lack the heat and intense sunlight truly needed to solarize it at this time of the year, but covering it after wetting it down well will help weaken it, and I'm hoping that will make digging it out over time easier. The area where the girls' large above-ground pool sat all summer had 6 mm black plastic beneath it and the bermuda grass is almost gone there---I know I'll find the stolons when I dig that area, but it will be much easier to dig this portion of the yard than the areas that are full bermuda sod, so to speak. The other option would be to rent a sod cutter and to cut and lift the sod that way, which I'm not completely opposed to doing . I think that's a quicker fix, but also a much more expensive one. So, I guess I need to decide if I want to do it quickly but at a price (y'all know I'd rather spend the money on plants than on equipment rental), or do it more slowly and less expensively. If we could rent a sod cutter and use it all day long and get it done in one day, it might be worth the expense. Still, when you do this job with a sod cutter, you still have to roll up the cut sod and deal with it, and it is heavy to lift the rolls of sod. We'd probably just haul it out to a pasture and pile it up in a big pile and hope it decomposes over the course of the winter because we wouldn't want it to start growing there and push out the native grasses and forbs.

Either way, the plan is, once the grass is removed, to layer compost, chopped/shredded leaves, and bark mulch on top of the ground to amend it at the grade level. Perhaps we'll rototill some of those materials into the ground where we can, but I think there's only a limited area where that is possible because we have large trees and lots of roots that we don't want to disturb in most of the yard, so lasagna-style soil building is really the best option. We must improve the drainage by fixing the grade level soil first, and then we'll build raised beds, filled hugelkultur style, in the areas where we want to plant actual beds of ornamental plants. Because of the dastardly voles, each raised bed must, by necessity, be lined with quarter-inch hardware cloth, so long months of bed-building lie ahead of us before we can plant much of anything. I'm hoping to remove about 5,000 square feet of bermuda grass this winter and spring, fix the soil at grade level, build raised beds and pathways between the raised beds, install the fencing, gates and arbors for this portion of the landscape, build pathways (perhaps of Pavestone or flagstone, we haven't decided on the material yet) and then, when the weather is right, install the new plantings.

The new fence is such a huge issue. I feel like we need a tall 8' fence to keep the deer out, but hate the thought of fencing in our yard so that it feels like a prison yard. We joke about the garden having a prison fence, but I don't mind it as I grow vines on it and it does keep my garden 100% deer-free, and mostly wildlife free except for the smaller wildlife like snakes, frogs, turtles, skinks and lizards. I just would rather not have that tall fence surrounding the house.

For the yard, I'd prefer a 4' tall white picket fence that fits more with the style of our house which was built to slightly resemble a Victorian-influenced farmhouse. It isn't really a traditional full-on Victorian style house, just a famrhouse with a bit of a Victorian influence, as we weren't trying to build a period-correct Victorian at all. We wanted people to look at the house and wonder if we built it new, or it if was an old farmhouse we restored....and most people cannot guess which it is from looking at it....so we sort of succeeded there. We just didn't want to move out to the country and build a typical brick suburban style home that was common in the 1990s---we wanted a country house that looked like it belonged here and that looked like it had been here a while. The issue is whether the shorter fence would keep out the deer, which are as thick as grass here. We're considering building long 8' wide raised beds where the fence will be, so basically running parallel to the driveway, and then running the fence right down the middle of the raised beds, with 4' of the beds outside the fence and 4' inside. On the outside of the picket fence, we'd plant deer-resistant or deer-tolerant plants that are native in origin. We're not stupid---we know that sometimes deer still eat those sorts of plants, especially in drought, but I think if we went with native plants very similar to those that already exist on our property, there would be no great incentive for the deer to stand there at the picket fence and eat close to the house when they already have fields of those native plants available to them. We'd plant the landscaping plants we want (deer-resistant or not) inside the picket fence, and then the deer war would be on! As Penny would say on The Big Bang Theory, "it's on like Donkey Kong". I know deer wars are the likely result of starting out with a shorter fence. If the deer want to jump the picket fence and come into the yard to eat the plants within the picket fence, then we'll need to beef up the fencing, but I feel like we can deal with that when/if it occurs. It could be possible to periodically install trellises and arbors along the fence and to grow vines up those to help close off the deer's view of the plants within the picket fence area without going with a full 8' tall fence. The longer we live here, the less the deer are a problem, but maybe that's because they are fully excluded from the veggie/herb/flower gardens by tall fencing, and also because all our landscaping is old now and well-established and there's not much in the way of our plants that they want to eat. Any landscaping we did long ago that was stuff they loved to eat was almost immediately devoured and, of course, we didn't come back and replant those deer magnet type plants a second time. It may be opening a whole new can of worms to put in new plantings of fresh, tender type vegetation and perhaps we will find ourselves right back to fighting the deer daily like we did in our early years here. We'll find out, I guess.

dbarron, I totally agree about the bermda grass. I'm not laboring under any false delusions here. The only thing that has worked well for us is to shade it out with trees and shrubs, but then that creates other issues---you need to have shade tolerant ground coverings and perennials to cover the areas where you've shaded out the bermuda or erosion (especially on our sloping ground here) becomes a major issue. I know I'll be fighting bermuda forever, especially in the area where we're going to remove it and put in new plantings in 2020, and I'm okay with that. I mostly have a bermuda grass-free garden now because I do religiously dig it out when it tries to re-invade, and for many years, I never thought the garden ever would be mostly bermuda-free. Still, I hate to think about what happens when I get too old and too feeble to dig out bermuda grass each year. I wish I could be a herbicide-loving maniac and just nuke the bermuda grass with chemicals every year, but that's not my style of doing things. Living here in such a rural area, I've learned there's worse things than bermuda grass though, including Johnson grass, which basically is just bermuda grass on steroids, and goose grass, which is impossible to pull out after it gets an inch tall, though digging works well with it.

Larry, I'm not sure if God loves the bermuda grass, or if the grass war is one of the areas where the Devil himself is winning the war.

I wish the frost would kill mine, but it doesn't. It will brown it out and send it into dormancy, but that bermuda grass never dies. In the 1980s in Texas, we bought a house with St. Augustine grass, which is not really an environmentally correct grass to grow nowadays because it guzzles water. I really miss my St. Augustine lawn and I'd plant St. Augustine here in a heartbeat if I thought it could tolerate our coldest weather. A neighbor here has it, or at least had it when we moved here, and has lost it to various freezes over the years since we moved here. The best thing about St. Augustine grass is that, when well maintained, it crowds out bermuda grass. Oh man, talking about it makes me want to plant St. Augustine grass in the worst way! I need to stop thinking about it. Anyhow, if we planted St. Augustine here, the voles likely would get it anyway.

Rebecca, They freeze at around 32 degrees, though the fruits often aren't damaged and can be harvested green and will finish maturing indoors.

I despise weather forecasts that are incorrect. Our forecast low as for 45 degrees per the NWS, and 42 per our local TV met, so I told Tim I was expecting 39 degrees this morning. I was more correct than they were---it was 34 degrees here this morning at Burneyville at the Mesonet station, and 37 degrees at our house. Why does the NWS even bother if its' forecasts are going to be 8-11 degrees off?

Have a great day everyone.

Dawn

Thanks for the link, Dawn. It seems zeolite is completely safe for my garden.

Your backyard plans sounds amazing. I think it's funny how we (Tom and I) and you (you and Tim) are often working on the same projects. Like when we remodeled our house, y'all were too.

And now our "backyards". Our budget is very limited, so it will take awhile for ours to be completed.

I had another day off of work and it was wonderful. The back garden is completely closed for the season...other than a single dill plant and a few red bee balms.

I planted a few pansies today and all the sad looking greens. They are now in the hinged hoop and I am thrilled. I hope they perk up. The only thing that looks great is several arugulas that reseeded. There's also another green that I haven't identified. It is either mustard, collard, or turnip.

That's basically all I did in the garden.

I've let the "baby" chickens out in the yard for 2 days now. I've got to get this flock mingled. I just am dreading all the meanness that will take place. AND I'm worried about the 2 bantams, especially the little Easter Egger. She is so tiny.

That's about all for now. Hope everyone is doing fine. Get ready for the cold that's coming!

Jennifer, When you live on acreage in the country, there's always projects! I don't think it ever ends. I hate to think back and remember just how long it took us to chainsaw our way through 14.4 acres of badly overgrown woodland just to clear a 4-5' wide corridor so we could put up barbed wire fencing to mark our property lines, and to help keep the neighbors' cows on their property and not on ours. Until we got our fencing work done, I was forever stumbling upon cows where they did not belong....once, one of them was giving birth to a darling little calf deep in our woodland. Believe me, a mama cow is not happy to have you wander through the area while she is busy giving birth!

I remember wondering back then if we'd live long enough to get the whole place fenced on those three sides to keep the cows out. Well, we did live long enough, but the front of the property never has been fully fenced---it is only about halfway fenced, and there's not enough cross fencing near the house to suit me, but all that's finally going to change. There were weeks where it seemed we worked so hard, cutting our way through that mess tree by tree and dealing with removing and burning tons of brushy undergrowth, only to make progress that was measured in feet....like 8 or 10 or 12' of progress per week. Cutting down one big tree and then cutting it up could take a weekend or two. It was such tedious work. It is a wonder we ever finished it. And, of course, those once-clear fencelines are an overgrown mess and the brush and trees are eating up our fence, but I don't care---at least the fence is there. Tim didn't belong to the VFD back then, though, so every weekend we were free and clear to work all day long without interruption. Nowadays, that is a rarity.

I feel like all the landscaping renovation projects on my To Do List for 2020 would have been done by 2008 or 2010 if we'd never gotten involved with the VFD, and that really frustrates me. It isn't that I regret our work with the VFD, it is just that there's been years when it has left us with very little time to do anything else. That's one reason there is a major landscaping reno planned for 2020---because we have to make it our main goal and focus solely on it, or it never will get done. I've long been fed up with talking about doing things "one of these days" and have made it clear to my DH that one of these days is now, and I'm going to do it with him or without him----a thought that seems to terrify him, which means he'll be out there helping me do all the work. lol. I think he is more on board with the idea now than he ever has been before---probably because he knows I've waited as long as I am going to wait for us to start this project and my patience in waiting to do all those 'one of these day' projects is at an end. I have no idea how long it will take us to do everything I want to do, but the important thing is that we're finally going to get started on doing it.

I'm making a plant list this afternoon after I finish working in the garden so we can go plant shopping big-time (meaning we'll drive down to the DFW metro if I cannot find what I want up here in southern OK) this weekend. I want to try to find all the shrubs I want for the south and east side of the house, and if we find groundcovers and perennials that are on the list, that's just a bonus. I can stockpile all the nursery stock in my garden, either heeling it in or just keeping the plants in their containers, and can keep it all watered, and covered with frost blankets if any very, very cold weather threatens. That way, whenever we get the beds built and soil improved, we can plant and we won't be hitting the nurseries every weekend in early Spring, frustrated that the plants we want aren't in the stores yet, which is one of my biggest fears. I know we need to get plants planted as early in Spring (if not in winter while dormant, which also would be great) as we can, so that they can become more established and make good root growth before the heat of the summer arrives.

In preparation for the 2020 landscape reno, I watched the nurseries and garden centers very carefully this Spring, noticing when the shrubs, vines, ground covers and perennials I want to plant arrived, and a lot of them weren't really in the stores until late April through mid-May, and I'd prefer to get all the planting done earlier than that if I can so the roots have time to settle in and grow before the inevitable summer dry spells begin. I've even toyed with the idea of driving much further south than the DFW metro in early March if we have to---maybe to Waco or even further south to Austin, just to find the plants we want when we want them. I'd hate to have to do that because my gardener's mind is thinking it would be more fun to spend money on plants than on gasoline to drive further to buy plants, so if we can plant shop now in October and hold on to those plants until we can plant in late winter or early Spring, that would be my preference. I've also been ordering seeds of a lot of the native flowers and grasses I want to use, and will grow them myself this winter/spring instead of raising tomato and pepper transplants.

We have had rainier than usual autumns-through-spring ever since 2015, when our rainfall was 200% of usual, and what I need is for this winter through spring to be less rainy than that so we can do the dirt work we need to do. I'm not hoping for a winter drought by any means, but just average/typical winter rainfall would be low enough that we would be able to get all the dirt work done.

Budget is a big part of it all---on one income, we've always had to be on a careful, tight budget so we're pretty frugal anyhow, and for so many years after we first moved here, our focus was on saving money for and paying for Chris' college education so he would finish college with zero debt, which we did. After that, Tim started pouring every extra dollar into retirement savings....so I've been saving and planning for this landscape reno a long time because I'm certainly not going to be able to convince him to save less for retirement (and I won't try). I know that when he does retire, we'll both be glad for all the scrimping and saving we've done for our retirement years, but it does make renovating the landscape harder because we have to watch every dollar and spend carefully.

My grass-mowing husband, who seems to find some sort of zen path to happiness while on the riding lawn mower, does get itchy, twitchy and uncomfortable every time he thinks of lawn being converted to hardscaping and raised beds, but I keep telling him that even if the entire yard area around our house was converted to non-lawn areas, he'd still have 2 or 3 acres of grassland left to mow. I keep reminding him that the task of mowing the lawn that he loves doing right now might become a burden when he is 70 or 80 years old and I'd like for us to have a lower-maintenance landscape in place long before that happens. That idea is driving the landscape reno as much as anything else---I've watched our older friends around us age and find it harder and harder to maintain their gardens and landscapes over the years, and I want for us to make ours easier to maintain long before we reach the point where we'd have to hire someone to do stuff for us. With that thought in mind, we'll use a lot of native plants, though not entirely native by any means.

After the landscape reno is done, which may take a couple of years as far as getting everything done on all 4 sides of the house, then a garden reno is planned, probably for 2021 even if the 2020 landscape reno isn't fully complete. I think we'll convert all our edible gardening to container gardening in the back garden at that point, and use the front garden's raised beds for butterfly gardening and a cutting garden. So, it is likely that the front garden never really returns to being an edible garden after 2020, and I'm okay with that. Ever since we built the back garden in 2012, that has been the eventual plan and I'm ready for us to follow through on the container part of that plan. If we move all the front garden containers to the back garden, they only will fill up about 1/3 of that area, properly spaced, so we will have to acquire and fill up a lot more containers. That is a daunting thought, but the expense of doing so will be worth it in the long run because it will make the rest of our edible gardening life much more efficient, and not so exhausting, until we get too old and too feeble to have a garden at all. With container gardening in the back garden, we can make wider paths than the front garden has now, which also will be better for us as we age.

There may not be any fruit trees in our future plans. The ones near the front garden are being shaded out by the once-tiny shade trees planted two decades ago, and I have no desire to fight the voles in the back garden's sandier soil as the voles are very hard on young fruit trees, so don't plan to put any more fruit trees in the ground back there. Perhaps some dwarf fruit trees in large containers can be a part of our plan, but then there's also just the option of relying on farmer's markets or pick-your-own orchards for our fruit crops. Our winter weather warms up so early and kicks the fruit trees into blooming too early and then we lose crops to subsequent freezes so I'm about done with growing fruit, except of course, the native sand plums make great jelly and we will continue to encourage our small plum thicket along the southern fence line to expand. Even the native trees get tricked into blooming too early some years, but not as often as the fruit tree cultivars that we buy and plant do. Ever since we moved here, we have observed a fairly drastic change in our winter weather and, since 2010, we just don't have cold winters any more---not cold like they were prior to 2005, when we used to have snow part of every winter and the nights got really cold and killed back pests. Between 2005 and 2010 we kept having warmer and warmer winters, and then we got that nice cold winter with lots of snow in 2010. Sadly, we haven't had a winter like that since then, and it has been almost a decade! Nowadays, most pests have no problem overwintering here because we don't get cold long enough or stay cold long enough to kill them. We tend to have mosquitoes around all winter the last few years, and that is so irritating. I know we still have just enough cold winter nights to keep us in zone 7b, but most winters the majority of our weather is more like zone 8a, which might explain why some zone 9 plants are overwintering in the front garden nowadays. The crazy winter baffles me. I'm still going to plant zone 7 plants, but likely will squeeze in some zone 8 and zone 9 plants just to see what I an get away with overwintering here.

Today I am removing all the roselle and candletree plants, and I believe I'm going to have to dig them up because they are too big and too deeply rooted to pull out. Then, I'll rake the soil level and broadcast sow poppy seeds and larkspur seeds in those 4 raised beds for spring blooms. Yesterday I overseeded the front pasture with the TX/OK wildflower seed mix and poppy mix that I had purchased from Wildseed Farms, so now all I need is for this week's rain to fall in the right amount to water them in, and to not fall so heavily that all the seeds wash downhill and end up in the creek, and thence in the Red River. That would be very discouraging if it were to happen. I needed to get those seeds out there before the soil temperatures cool down too much for them to sprout now. I did notice a few tiny bluebonnet plants have sprouted already, and those either are plants returning from last year or new babies from the seeds they dropped. I hope last spring's bluebonnets dropped lots and lots of seeds and that they all didn't wash away in the heavy late spring and early summer rainfall. With sloping property, this always is an issue.

We still have tons of butterflies, so I will leave the existing zinnias, salvias, celosias and whatever perennials remain in bloom for them, and hope that's enough to sustain them until the cold weather arrives. We still have two hummingbird feeders up for late migrants, but I think I've only seen one hummingbird the last couple of days, after seeing a couple of them over the weekend. These late hummingbirds need to hurry up and get far enough south to stay ahead of the cold nights. When they spend the night in torpor in order to survive, they have to stay around and feed for a prolonged period, it seems, often not departing until after noon, which means they won't make a lot of good miles on one of those days. Perhaps they're being smart and riding the north winds south as cold fronts push through, enabling them to gain more miles per day.

For a couple of weeks, it seemed like a lot of our songbirds were gone. I think the ones we had here all summer had migrated south. It was bizarrely quiet. Then, after a couple of quiet weeks with little bird activity, all of a sudden, we have tons of new ones here, probably migrants from further north. It is funny how that happens.

Dawn

I'm glad the two flocks mingled okay.

With all the Seminoles harvested in advance of a freeze, I waited until they had fully turned their normal buff color before processing them. It can take them months---they will slowly turn from green to buff and then still will last forever (months....up to a year or more) right there inside their shell with no problem. With all winter squash, the starches convert to sugar as they cure and sit on the shelf and some of the moisture evaporates, so their flavor actually improves, which is why I never get in a hurry to process them after harvest----I want for them to have all the time they need to develop their full, rich, sweet flavor. It takes about two weeks of curing for the excess moisture to evaporate and the rind to harden even more than the hardness it had at harvest time. After that you can store them at room temperature (at least 50 degrees Fahrenheit) for up to a year, so I've never really bothered processing them. I just cut one open as use as needed when needed. If you had any that were fully green and small when you had to harvest at the end of the season, those can be used immediately the same way you'd use summer squash. I like to use Seminoles as summer squash approximately 3-5 days after the blossoms were pollinated, so when they are roughly baseball sized to softball sized.

As it turned out, Mother Nature did her best to prevent me from gardening. I harvested a big bowl of Roselles from the plants, but they are so deeply and strongly rooted I cannot even dig them out---I'll have to get Tim to do it or wait for them to die and for the roots to begin to rot. The underground portion of the plants is thick and dense and goes on and on forever, both horizontally and vertically. Maybe if it rains and softens the ground I'll have better luck than I had today in our drought-hardened ground. I did cut off a lot of the branches and haul them to the compost pile, so the part of the plants that remain in the garden now are like big tree trunks that have been pruned back rather unkindly, um, like crape myrtles that have been murdered. lol. Since I couldn't get those things out of the ground, I pulled out lots of dead zinnias that this week's patchy frost finished off. Not all the zinnias are done, but a lot of them are. I weeded a little. Then I did the same with a handful of the candletree plants, (the smaller ones), but the bigger ones will be hard to remove just like the roselles.

Mostly, though, I just worked as carefully as I could for as long as I could because a rattlesnake had rattled at me, long and hard, but even though I froze in place and looked everywhere that I could look without using my hands or feet to disturb any foliage, I couldn't spot it. I went to the opposite end of the garden to work for a while. However, mindful that the snake could be moving around and not staying where it was when it rattled at me, I finally left the garden, thinking I'll return to it in colder weather when there's not any venomous snakes trying to share (or not share) the garden with me. I think it probably had to be a timber rattler, because that's what we normally have in the garden---they come out of the adjacent woodland. I've very seldom seen a diamondback rattler on our property, and only a couple of times in the garden. They don't seem to come to the garden nearly as much as the timber rattlers do. Also, timber rattlers as a group are pretty shy and retiring and would rather warn you and then retreat if you don't retreat first---they are not aggressive and would prefer to avoid a direct confrontation. Diamondbacks are a bit more aggressive and feisty. Either way, I wasn't happy to have one in the garden with me, but grateful for the warning rattle.

The odd thing about all the plants is that even a lot of the ones that froze were putting out new foliage and new flowers---both the roselles and candletrees, which seems odd but then ever since that night we went to 27 degrees, we've had temperatures as high as they mid-90s and mostly above-freezing nights, so the plants might have been frost-damaged and freeze-damaged but they weren't completely killed.

After I had removed tons of old, mostly dead zinnias and cosmos, the flowers in the garden overall looked pretty patchy, but there were tons of butterflies around nectaring on whatever they could find, so I started counting and there's still 35 kinds of flowers in bloom in the garden. They don't look great---lots of them are half frozen and half-dead, but have newer blooms below the damaged parts, down closer to the ground. The plants at the west end of the garden barely show any damage at all because the trees that sit west of the garden fence must have kept most of the frost off of them. Only the blooms on the shrimp plant look a little damaged by the cold---the periwinkles and jasmine in pots look fine. The pepper and okra plants dropped all their leaves so they are done.

I noticed that the Yvonne's Salvia plants have reseeded the ground beneath them with new salvia plants that already are beginning to bloom. The mature Yvonne's Salvias are at least 3' tall, but the babies are just 6-8" tall and blooming. I wish the next freeze/frost would be another month away so all those babies have a chance to grow and bloom for a while, but they'll probably freeze late next week. There's also baby milkweeds, zinnias, daturas and comfreys. Oh, and there's quite a few 'Diablo' cupheas that I didn't even plant---they appeared late in the summer in two locations where I've previously grown Diablo, so they must have reseeded themselves there.

I would have loved to be able to get more garden clean-up done and get those dianthus and poppy seeds sown, but I get too skittish in the garden when there's a venomous snake lurking there.

I went down into the front pasture where I had overseeded wildflower seeds yesterday to check out the young wildflowers already sprouting from seeds dropped by this year's plants, and found quite a few. Most of them are run-of-the-mill common wildflowers, but I found several of my beloved Texas Bluebonnets that had only very recently sprouted and were about an inch tall. Because we have dense clay that holds moisture forever, the bluebonnets should not do well here, but somehow they manage to thrive anyway. I don't get as good of a stand of them as a neighbor a couple of miles down the road who has deep, sandy soil, but at least I get to enjoy having some bluebonnets every year.

We are supposed to get a lot of rain over the next couple of days, so maybe that will help all the plants.

Dawn

Well, having gotten antsy on Sunday, I ordered a few more native wildflowers from Missouri Wildflowers. I started planting them yesterday after they arrived in the afternoon. I got about half planted, the ones in small pots. 4 or 5 quarts remain to get planted after ground dries a bit (raining now as I type). A swamp clematis, witch hazel, baptisia, ninebark, and a lead plant. The baptisia and lead plant are experimental (due to abundant soil moisture)...I think I know where I can plant them and they'll survive.

I've noticed that I'm gravitating towards dual purpose plants lately. I have a number of ornamentals that have food qualities, like sweet bay (bay leaf sub) magnolia, ornamental blueberries in containers (coloring nicely), mace marigolds, georgia savory, and cumberland rosemary among others. Using natives that thrive to emulate those Mediterranean herbs that won't take my water. Even though I can't eat alliums, I like to grow them and they're pretty much all edible. Now if I could find a culinary sage substitute...that would grow in wet soils.

My help did not show up yesterday, so I really fell short of what I wanted to do. There was so much that I needed to do before the rain hit. But the rain has really hit hard and looks like it may rain all day. I did get the area seeded that I really wanted seeded first, but I expect that most of the seeds are washed away. I was hoping for a much softer rain, and not so much of it because the area is very bad for erosion.

I seeded 1# of wildflower mix, 2# of turnips, and several pounds of Austrian winter peas, rye grass, grain rye, and clover. I can already tell a difference in the soil in the wildlife garden, after working cover crops into the soil the past 2 or 3 years.

I expect that the rain may have me shut down for many days, maybe for months. I think the seeds I have left will work fine early next spring, even though I had rather they be in the ground now.

I need to go to south Arkansas today to help my sister and sister-in-law. I don't like to travel in the rain, but I have too many other projects waiting on me , and I have to do them when I am able and have the time.

I need to load the truck and head south.

RAIN. I guess lots of us are getting it. It's been raining here since sometime before I got up (6:00). Sorry you have to travel in the rain, Larry. That's how I'm feeling about driving today. . . Wow--a pound of wildflower and several pounds of other stuff! That's a lot of nice cover crop seeds.

We have to go to Muskogee and get a new kitchen faucet. I'm not wanting to leave the house but might as well get it over with. For sure no working in the garden!

I just checked out the Missouri Wildflower site, dbarron! What a nice site it is. I certainly wish we had something like that here. Think I need a catalog.

And, HJ--you are getting quite a flock of chickens. How fun is that! I am so sad we don't have any chickens.

Dawn, I got a kick out of imagining you trying to pull up the roselle plants. And was picturing you avoiding the rattlesnake. It was like reading a book, with your adventures.

I'm in a hurry, we're getting ready to leave. I was so thrilled yesterday to see wildflowers coming up in the back of the property. Later, all. I'm enjoying your posts.

Bustani stocks quite a few natives. Where are you Nancy? If I've read, I don't remember.

Dawn, I tolerate snakes well, and even enjoy having harmless garter snakes in the yard. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, one ran across my bare foot to escape me. However, if I heard a rattler, I'd be eyeing the area and planning my escape (after making sure I wasn't moving further into danger) at a slow pace (though wanting to RUN).

Just reading y'alls posts makes me tired! I'm being a slug, not really doing anything but checking seeds. I grew some white, pink and white and pink cosmos this year & want to plant more next year so I'm trying to catch the seeds before they fall out.

Tomorrow night is our halloween festival at church so most of my energy is going to that. And we have a new client that will start coming to doggy daycare at 5 am Sun-Wed, so I'm going to have to reprogram myself to get up at 4 (ugh! I am so not a morning person). In a few weeks she should be used to the routine so I can go back to sleeping in until 6, but for a few weeks I'm going to be miserable.

Stay warm & dry y'all!

dbarron,

It sounds like you got the plants into the ground just in the nick of time to benefit from the new rainfall this week.

I love dual purpose plants and need to plant more of them.

Off the top of my head, I cannot think of a water-tolerant substitute for culinary sage, but if I run across anything that might fit the bill, I'll let you know. I have trouble with sage here, even in raised beds that have been amended a great deal to facilitate drainage. In the dry years, of course, it is happy and everything is hunky-dory, but the wet years tend to kill it. I can (obviously) get completely different results in a year with 20 or 30" of rain compared to a year with 30-45" of rain. My 4 year old sage plant could not withstand the spring/summer rainy spells this year and died back to the ground, and one tiny sprig of it has recently regrown. That new little sprig is not near the original root area but instead is very far away like one of the long branches might have rooted into the ground. We'll see if it survives the winter, or even this week's rain. I planted this sage after 2015's record rainfall of 78" killed the previous one, which also was about 4 or 5 years old. I guess for my area, it seems like culinary sage can only survive for 3-5 years, and lavender is the same way.

Larry, I'm sorry your help didn't show up yesterday. Dependable people seem to be a dying breed.

The rain is just arriving here after only light sprinkles this morning, and we're getting steady moderate rain now and a little thunder, so probably heavier rain is headed our way. It is getting really dark outside, and the temperature slowly is dropping. It is down 8 degrees from this morning, so the cold front must be almost here now.

The lighter rainfall this morning was great for the wildflower seeds I had sowed this week. I hope they are washed into the soil enough now that heavier rain won't wash them away. We won't really know until Spring when we see what sprouts where, I suppose.

I'm resigned to spending a very long day indoors with our new 40-pound puppy who wants to sit on my lap all the time. He usually is out in the yard for a significant part of the day, but that's impossible in this weather. At least he is house-broken, and the cat is quickly teaching him to stay out of her space. You know, when you take in an animal that was dumped 'out in the country', that sweet furbaby is so grateful to have a home and love that they will just about love you to death. He is a sweetie, just a time- and attention-demanding one. He's fairly calm all day considering he is such a young dog, but when Tim gets home from work, he is so excited he bounces off the walls and cannot calm down for a solid hour. Once he works all his excitement out of his system, it isn't too bad. I usually take him for a 2 mile walk every morning right after breakfast which helps him burn up some of his boundless energy, but it was sprinkling this morning so we didn't get to do that. He ran around the yard a little in between little showers of sprinkles but it wasn't enough to tire him out.

Be careful traveling in the rain! Some people out there on the roads just do not slow down enough on wet roadways and they are a bigger hazard to us all than just the wet roadways. We were paged out to a motor vehicle accident this morning within 5 minutes of the start of light rain. It happens every time.

Nancy, I don't know how much anyone else needs this rain today, but virtually all of us seem destined to get it, and down here in our area, it is desperately needed. The ground is cracking and dry as a bone, yada yada yada. What's new, right? It seems like we swing wildly from being too dry to too wet over and over with very little in between. I don't mind this week's rain since we need it, but it surely will keep me out of the garden for the rest of this week at the very least.

Safe travels to y'all on your journey to buy a new faucet. I hate going out in the rain for anything.

These roselle plants were about 6-7' tall and 5-6' wide, so have developed quite a root system. I told Tim last night that I didn't even think he could dig them up at this point, though he certainly is welcome to try it. I usually have to wait for freezing weather to thoroughly kill them and for their roots to halfway rot in the winter, and then I can get them out of the ground with a digging fork. Perhaps it was naive of me to think I could just go out there and dig them up yesterday merely because I wanted to do it.

My plan for today is to work on plant lists and seed lists, but I'm also a realist and know I have to work around the hyperactive, big puppy dog. He has a pile of chew toys, but he's only happy if he is sitting on my lap or right next to me (so close that we are touching) chewing on a chew toy. He has the attention span of a human toddler, so he is up and down constantly and just can't sit still. We've had him a couple of weeks now and I still haven't seen him lie down on the floor, couch, porch or ground and sleep. I'm guessing the only time he sleeps is when we put him in his dog crate at night. I might have to put him in it for a while today just to save my sanity. At least when he is in the crate, I'm not having to worry that he is chewing on something he shouldn't. He has been easy to crate train---he goes right in when you take him to it, but I don't want for him to spend too much time in there either. I'm looking forward to the day when he has calmed down more and can be content to just lie around the room hanging out with us.

The rattlesnake was an unwelcome interruption, but that is pretty typical of October---the snakes become less visible, but they aren't down for the winter yet either, so we do tend to see them out and about, or in this case, hear them. What we need is a few really cold nights and days, not what we've been having which has been some cold nights followed by really warm days. I think the cold spell next week might stay cold enough long enough to pretty much put an end to the snake activity. We rarely encounter them in November. I need to just quit dithering and buy snake books and snake pants, but then you know if I do that, a snake will just bite me on the arm or hand to prove that Mother Nature wins in the end. And, when I start looking at snake boots and snake pants, I look at the prices and translate that into how many plants or seeds I can buy with that amount of money....which is why I don't have snake boots and snake pants after 2 decades of living in snake country. In the end, I'm always going to choose to buy plants instead, I guess. A friend of ours wears snake chaps when mowing and doing other yard work like using the string trimmer or spraying his fenceline with herbicides, so I suppose snake chaps are another option, and certainly a less spendy one. I need to look at those the next time we are in an outdoors store.

Are y'all watching next week's forecast, right around Halloween? Certainly the further north you are, the worse the cold weather will be. OKC looks like it will have a very cold Halloween and a cold start to November. We'll be a little bit warmer down here, but not a whole lot. I think our days might be quite a bit warmer than OKC's but our nights will be fairly cold for us for this time of the year.....maybe some December weather to start off November.

Dawn

Hey Everyone! I read your posts. Seems like everyone is getting rain. We need it here, but it makes me so sleepy.

More questions about Seminole pumpkins. I am about to head home and start baking them and then putting them into the freezer. Our house is small and I don't have great storage space to store 63 pumpkins. Even our shop could freeze inside even though it is insulated.

Here's my issue. These pumpkin fruits have gone through a freeze. I did NOT harvest them before that freeze a couple of Fridays ago. They've also been sitting on the patio outdoors until last night. Are they ruined? Their shells are still very hard and the greens ones are turning buff colored.

Did I ruin my pumpkins by not harvesting before the freeze???

We're back from our faucet-buying. He's almost done. On the homestretch. Aggravating. He went to town 2 times the day before yesterday for parts. Still leaked. By the time he came in yesterday and said, "I give up, call the plumber," we'd spent $50 on parts. The plumber came out, and $160 later the faucet still leaked (he put new shut-off valves underneath, though, and so the water is a lot easier to shut off); faucet still leaked after he worked and worked on it. He apologized and advised going to get the new faucet. So $100 later, maybe we'll have no leaky faucet. Yay--we don't.

dbarron, I'm 115 miles southeast of Bustani's, and they don't have enough native plants for me to want to take a 2-plus hr (one way) road trip. (We're 10 miles north of Wagoner near Ft. Gibson Lake.) I should be able to find many of my natives from Missouri Wildflowers, and I like that they sell small pots of many of them, which makes them very affordable. I ordered a catalog and will cross reference it against the natives for here.

Dawn, I forgot how much trouble Titan was. He was a lot of trouble. Right after we got him (he was 10 months old), I ran into town and GDW stayed here with Titan. When I got back, there was a former 2-ft tall wooden totem guy lying in splinters all over the living room floor, with Titan happily lying in the middle of the mess and Garry asleep nearby. Several days later I went to town again and we laughed about Garry falling asleep. When I got home, Garry was on the floor feverishly picking up pillow stuffing so I wouldn't see it. . . . busted! We crated him at night for a couple months. Well, good luck. Speaking of trouble, how's Honey, Amy??? lol And as I was laughing about Jesse and Honey (and Titan), I could Garry out scolding someone. I asked him about it when he came in, and the culprit was Tiny. Tiny is feeling bratty because he can't go off the deck and be out exploring, so first he got up in planter outside the kitchen window, with the coleus. Just now he was out scratching on the screen door, but didn't want in, just wanted to tear something up, apparently. Tom and Jerry won't even go out.

It's still raining. It has been raining all day and shows no sign of stopping. It's not raining terribly hard--we only have 2 5/8" so far. No we didn't really need that much. Have a feeling there'll be significantly more before it's done Saturday. Oh brother! Yep, forecast is looking nasty for 3-day stretch at Halloween time. Sigh.

Jen, no WAY could I do that. Get up at 4 am to greet 5 am company! How man doggy clients do you have now?

Oh wow--I am trying a new dish! Mexican pork stew. I grabbed some pork "stew" meat earlier today but didn't want a traditional stew. But we just had chili, so I didn't want it tasting especially spicy. This suggested adding chorizo to the browning pork, so I did that, but took it easy with cumin and chili pepper (plus onions, garlic), and added a can of San Marzano smushed tomatoes and 2 cans of pinto beans. Tastes very porky; I like it. Next time I'll put in hominy instead. Over rice, served with cornbread.

Well, that's about it from here.

Nancy, just saying that for several years I made the trip from Springdale to Bustani's once or twice a year...:)

I think the Seminole issues are resolved.

Moving on...

I'm not sure how much rain we've gotten, but it's enough. It can stop for a few days now.

The small coop with the youngsters has an attached pen and the pen is standing water. This has never happened. I'm not sure what to do about it. I wonder if I put down...some dirt or something to raise the ground level a bit. Looks like we have 2 more days of this, so the pen won't get any better. Maybe some boards. I'll have to look at it tomorrow. Poor little things. They're having to stay upstairs and that area is really only meant for laying eggs and roosting. It was fine for my 4 original hens, but there's 8 youngsters. Anyway...

Nancy, what a pain about the faucet!

Dawn, sorry the rattlesnake ran you out of the garden.

I've been extremely out-of-sorts today for a lot of reasons. I probably should just go to bed and start fresh in the morning. I got exactly 2 pumpkins baked. LOL! And here I thought I would get the entire batch done. I was so confused by the appearance of the inside of the fruit and was nervous. However, the baked pumpkin was quite tasty. I'm thrilled.. I really need a root cellar.

This weather year is crazy. We have Trunk or Treat on Wednesday and it looks like we will need to move it indoors, which I dislike.

Nancy, it's not my preference and usually we tell clients that we "open" at 7. But this is a recurring booking for an indefinite period so it's hard to turn down steady income. And after a while the pup should settle into our routine (come in the door & climb into bed with the mama lady & take a nap) so hopefully it won't be too bad. I don't know how many clients we have total, but I'd guess we're approaching 100. At any given time, though, we could have up to 7 dogs counting our own. Even more, since we tell clients that we won't turn away repeat clients. Christmas last year we had 11 (our 4 plus 7 guests) & spring break wound up with 10. Plus my brother & his girlfriend were here & they had 4, so 14 dogs in one house.

Rainy, cold & miserable here in OKC. Our 3 do not like rainy days so they're sulking. I'm taking it easy this morning & will head over to the church around 2 to finish setting up for fall fest.

Being stuck inside with a big puppy who cannot run around outside is driving me almost as crazy as it is driving him. He is smart, he is learning all the standard commands like No, Come, Sit, Stay, etc. but he seems determined to engage the cat, Lucky, in a battle of the wills every single day. The lesson he has not yet learned is that her claws are going to win every single time. I am on the verge of losing my sanity here. I need a vacation from the big puppy. He is a bundle of love, but a very energetic bundle.

Jennifer, It always is challenging the first time a person processes something new from the garden---new to them---and sometimes the sheer quantity of whatever needs to be processed is quite daunting. I'm glad you're making progress on the Seminoles. You do need a root cellar! I've always wanted one but never have been able to convince Tim that building one would be worthwhile. If our clay wasn't so impossible to dig, maybe we would have one by now. We started digging out a spot for one once and simply gave up---digging that dense red clay is like trying to dig concrete.

After decades of trying to raise as much of our food as possible and spending far too much time canning, freezing and dehydrating it, I'm sort of over it and really, really wanting to cut back more and more. I no longer can 600-800 jars a year and I don't miss all those long hours in the kitchen. I don't think my body can physically tolerate being on my feet all day every day in the summer any more either. I'll always can some stuff, but more and more I focus on food that can be root-cellared (or maybe I should just say kept in dry storage since I don't have a root cellar) or frozen. Nothing makes a person appreciate things like onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes and winter squash like the fact that you can harvest them, cure them, and put them in dry storage as needed until you use them.

This summer I processed and froze all the excess tomatoes in 8-cup batches for salsa back when we were harvesting tomatoes, telling myself that when the weather cooled down, I'd spend October-November turning them into salsa. So far, I haven't done that. If everyone is going to get salsa for Christmas as planned, I need to get busy canning salsa. After all, October is almost over. I think I'll do a few batches of salsa next week, and I haven't yet decided whether to make apple pie jam, candied jalapenos or Habanero Gold to go in the gift bags as well. I need to decide on that and get it done because it seems like once Halloween arrives, Christmas is here in the blink of an eye.

I dread doing all this canning for the holiday gifts. I know I'll enjoy it once I start doing it, but I'm so burned out from doing so much for so many years that I don't absolutely love doing it the way that I once did. I wish I did absolutely adore doing it as I did 10, 15 or 20 (or longer) years ago, but I just don't. There's probably a lesson in here somewhere about pacing one's self better over the years so you don't burn out, but I didn't learn that lesson in time. I wish I had a nickel for every night I stayed up canning and cleaning up until midnight, and then got up at 6 am to go out to the garden, harvest tomatoes, and do it all over again....until midnight again.....and again, and again. I used to feel shocked when my older friends here gave up canning in their 60s or 70s after a lifetime of doing it, but now what I'm thinking is that I'm surprised they didn't retire from canning sooner than they did.

I may can a lot more after Tim retires---he'd be here to help lift that heavy canner filled with water and filled jars, for example. On the other hand, I may decide that I completely retire from food processing when he retires from his job, though I really don't think I will. I am not sure he wants to help with the canning, because every time he walks into the kitchen now and I'm canning away like a mad woman, he sort of gets that deer-in-headlights look in his eyes and cannot get out of the kitchen, and the house, quickly enough, like he's afraid I might put him to work in the kitchen. lol I'd like to point out that I never once have asked him to help me can, dehydrate or freeze anything, so I don't know why he gets so twitchy when he thinks it might happen.

Nancy, I hope the new faucet works out. I hate plumbing work. Tim can do it, and he does do it, but it always requires at least 3 trips to the store to get all the right parts, as if it is impossible to buy all the right parts the first time. I realize that when you start taking apart old plumbing, sometimes you find a part in there that you didn't expect and have to go get one, but it drives me nuts...partly because it is such a long drive to get to a store that has what we need.

I hate having to go out in the rain anywhere for any thing at all. Nobody here can drive in the rain and we have a lot of motor vehicle accidents everywhere when it rains, particularly on I-35. We joke that people here cannot drive in the rain because rain is so rare they lack experience in driving in it. Yesterday, within 5 minutes of the rain starting to fall, we were paged out to an auto accident in town. It boggles my mind how common this is.

Jen, I love dogs but couldn't have that many of them underfoot all the time. It would drive me crazy. There is a really nice pet boarding facility north of Marietta and some friends of mine who love animals worked there for quite for a while (several years, I think), and it was a tremendous amount of work.

We needed the rain and I'm grateful we received it, and now I'm ready for it to end and be over already. We've got about 2.5" in the rain gauge, with light rain expected to continue falling today and tonight. I'd be happy if no more rain fell, but it still would be very wet, chilly and miserable out there even without any more rain. At least we aren't getting snow like those folks in western OK and northwestern OK.

I am not getting one single thing done with this dog in the house. He just has too much energy, and I am too kind-hearted to send him out to play in the rain. I'm going plant shopping tomorrow, come hell or high water, because being stuck indoors is driving me almost as crazy as it is driving the dog.

Next week's cold looks discouraging. It looks like summer held on forever, and winter is coming early. I miss the long, pleasant autumns we used to have.

Dawn

I have pneumonia again. I think my garden year is over. The rain guage says 4.5 inches. It was not emptied after the last rain event, but I'm thinking at least 2.5 inches since Thursday. Standing water in the garden pathways. Wet dogs. Had to turn the heater on. FB post telling how many days till Christmas. Bah humbug, is it spring yet?

Honey the dog? She's smart. She climbs the fence like a cat. A 65 pound cat. She still chews up things left on the floor and occasionally counter surfs. I give her rawhide chews to help keep her from chewing on things she shouldn't. The current dog bed is made of foam, no stuffing to pull out, but she sometimes chews on it. Yesterday the cat wanted to sit on my lap. The dog was having none of that, so she climbed into my lap displacing the cat. She wanted to lean on me, but I have enough trouble breathing. Eventually we found a comfortable spot. At one point I was wheezing and she turned her face to look at me like "why are you growling"? She chases the cat, the cat hates her. But last night they were both asleep on the couch. When it's not cold, I leave the house door open and she can push the storm door open by herself. She likes to stand half in/half out and let in bugs and hot or cold air. My dogs do hate squirrels and rabbits and nearly break that door getting out when they see one. We resolved her chewing the tv cable by running it through PVC pipe. There is still a gate keeping her (and grandsons) out of the back of the house (if Ron closes it properly). We no longer crate her.

Facebook came up with memories today "2016, hottest Halloween ever", also red tomatoes on a plant in 2016. My early girl has green tomatoes. I should have Ron pick them so we can have fried green tomatoes. We expect a killing freeze next Wed. My red romaine lettuce bolted but the green looks ok. I had hoped to shelter over wintering potted plants in a straw bale shelter, but I don't know if that will happen.

Oh, sage, I was going to tell you the pyramid planter i had grew wonderful sage and rosemary in the top level. It was 4x4.

This is when it was new, 4/12/2015

and later that spring. Best crop of cilantro I ever had. 5/26/2015

This was spring 2015, when I had to repot the container tomatoes because that spring was so wet. That top layer of herbs thrived. The tall plant was sorrel. There's oregano in the second layer front that became a thug. I still couldn't grow thyme in it.

The disadvantage to this set up was the soil settled. The top "box" had legs that rotted. DH thought it would have been better if it's corners sat on the layer below like the second layer. I guess the point is, get them above grade level. Or grow them in a fabric pot that dries out quickly.

I have to go, XOXO.

Before I talk gardening, I'd like to say that my big kitties are back, but NOT on our property. As. far. as. I. know. I do think maybe we'll buy a trail camera tomorrow and put it up near the deer feeding area because if a big kitty is going to be roaming around, this is the most likely spot for it to be on our property. Actually, it may have been there last week. I am not surprised by the big kitties' presence in our county as I've seen a couple of puzzling signs that I might have been slow to believe in. More about that in a minute.

So, a FB friend shared Lacey's Swope's post that featured a mountain lion caught on a trail cam on, I think it was, October 20th of this year at the opposite end of the county from us....on property where this guy lives with his family right along the Carter County-Love County line, near Lake Murray. I wasn't happy to see that. Then a guy commenting on that photo said they'd seen one on Brown Springs Road, which is SE of the Winstar Casino and quite a bit closer to us, especially for an animal who likely is traveling the river bottoms and not the roads. So, I know we'll need to be extra careful when outside after dark.

So, the signs I've been tying to ignore: 1) at mid-summer, the coyotes disappeared. They just stopped coming around. I think I have heard them howling twice since then, but usually we hear them every night. When the coyotes are lying low, there is a reason why, and I do know that, so I've sort of been expecting the worst. 2) The deer stopped coming to eat or to search for something to eat. They usually have a pretty dependable routine and you can almost set a clock by them. For the last 6 weeks or maybe 8 weeks, they haven't come at all, or are coming at very odd times....like in the middle of the day instead of around sunrise and sunset. This is not completely abnormal at this time of the year though, because they start lying low when the hunters start hanging out in the wilder areas, usually around the time dove hunting season starts, but certainly by the time that bow hunting deer season starts (and it already has begun...and I think muzzle loader season is ongoing now too). So, I can sort of ignore this sign because it isn't always reliable. But, then there's number 3. Well 3) is all about number 2. About 2 or 2.5 weeks ago, some sort of large animal deposited a large pile of scat right where the deer come through the fence to check the back compost pile. It wasn't deer scat, and it was literally positioned in a spot where the deer would have to step on it (and they did, squashing it flat) as they come through the fence---sometimes they jump the fence, but other times they squeeze between two strands of barbed wire, especially the younger and smaller ones. I looked at the scat, didn't think it was coyote scat, and wondered if maybe a large dog had left it, though it didn't look like dog poop either. Finally I decided I just wasn't going to worry about it and stopped thinking about it, perhaps because the remaining alternatives were too unpleasant to consider. One of our neighbors' Aussie shepherd disappeared a few weeks ago and we've all been worried about him as he's gotten pretty old. Now I'm wondering if something got him. I hope not.

I don't want to get all paranoid, but when I combine 1) 2) and 3) above with the game camera photo from the far northern reaches of our county and the reported sighting a few miles south of us, I am left with a sick, queasy feeling. It also isn't just that we aren't having coyotes or many deer around...what else are we not seeing? Skunks, possums, armadillos, beavers, etc. It is like we're having a wildlife drought lately. Luckily it is not gardening season and I don't have to spend a lot of time outdoors looking over my shoulder right now. It has been almost a decade since we had a real issue with cougars on our property and near my garden and I've almost forgotten how horrifying that was. Almost. Now, I just want to forget about the big kitties and pretend I don't know they are around, but it is hard to convince my mind to un-see the cougar in the trail cam photo. I did alert Chris to that trail cam photo because they like to go to Lake Murray and run, walk and ride bikes on the trails....and he is training for an ironman competition he's going to participate in next year, so he's out there a lot.

I've been walking Jesse most mornings, pretty early in the day. I do take the route with the most traffic, on purpose, because I feel safer with more people driving past us. Now I'm wondering if it is safe for us to keep walking. I don't really want to stop. Maybe we'll walk a little later in the day when a cougar is less likely to be out. (sigh) Some days I miss living in the city where the wildest thing we ever saw was a possum on our porch once, and even that was extremely rare. I don't miss it enough to move back to a city or town though.

Amy, I hope you recover quickly. Pneumonia is so horrible. It sounds like you got tons of rain on top of the earlier rain you had received. With the cold bearing down on us all, I think our gardens will be done next week if they aren't done already.

Honey sounds like she still has tons of energy. I'm not looking forward to the next couple of puppy dog years, but I do believe Jesse eventually settles down.

Your garden photos are great---look how green and pretty everything is! That was a good year for anything in a well-drained area that could handle the onslaught of rain.

Well, gotta go. Lillie is on her way here. This is supposed to be her dad's weekend, but we're going to have her tonight and half of tomorrow and will meet up with him in the afternoon so she can spend the rest of the weekend with him. I'm happy to have a bonus 24 hours with her this weekend. We're always happy to pinch hit when he is busy with something else on his weekends......

Dawn

Amy, I remember that planter box! You posted a picture of it here at one time. I'm so sorry you are so sick.

I'm so thankful to y'all who care for crazy dogs. I have two of those and I won't do it again. I feel bad in a way....but it's nearly too much for me. IF I ever have another dog it will be a very specific type of dog. I miss my Percy dog. It's not that I don't love these two dogs...I do, but they're not enjoyable. They are a chore and I *get* very little from them. I am happy to give them a safe home, though. I get so annoyed at people (like some of our neighbors) who refuse to spay and neuter. Why?! Why in the freakin' why won't you spay and neuter?! Their dogs are jumpin' fences and making babies that no one wants. OR they do while they are tiny and cute and then they dump them or haul them off to the pound. Just freakin' spay and neuter.

Okay. Moving along...

It's been a steady rain for the last couple of days. They old coop's pen is standing water and those chickies aren't living in the best situation right now. That will hopefully change tomorrow when the rain stops. We are probably going to Branson next week, so I won't move the babies to the main coop until after we get back. I need to leave it fairly easy for Ethan to deal with.

I haven't gone to the garden to check the rain gauge, so have no idea how much we've gotten. And honestly, I don't even know what I'm going to do with the garden at this point. I suppose I need to keep pulling out the dead plants. I left a few tomato fruit on the plants I covered for our frost 2 weeks ago. The plants' foliage died, but the tomatoes that I left are turning red. I need to grab those before next week. I also found several carrots that I missed back in June. The ground will be nice and soft to pull those too. The asparagus ferns are mostly still green...so I'll wait until they turn brown to cut them back.

Dawn, I remember your concerns about a cougar several weeks ago. I'm sorry you're dealing that that.

The rain has slowed enough to snap a picture. It has been raining for three days. This is all the fall garden I Have

The wildlife garden will have to be put on hold now because it is so wet I may have to hire a track hoe to remove the unburned logs from the brushpile in order to have a spring planting. If I were younger and in better health I would just wait it out, but I feel I need to get the land easy to care for, or if it will jusjust grow up again. The kids just don't love the land like I do.

Trip to the restaurant supply and Mexican grocery store this morning, and housework. I still have my flat and a half of mixed fall flowers to plant. It was too wet to plant today, so hopefully tomorrow afternoon. Lettuce and spinach coming up in the boxes.

That's a shame, Larry, that they don't. None of ours do, either. Oh well. What is the crop?

I went out a while ago, and Garry and I did a walk around. Nothing happening, other than seeds sprouting up everywhere! I've no idea what many of them are! Guess I'll find out eventually. And it felt as though we'd come through a tornado; also because of the very cool weather and running around country for faucets and parts, we hadn't been out much this week. It felt very strange. And the lawn is so spongy today. Now you know it drains quickly here, but 4.8 inches since yesterday morning. . . . yeah, by Monday it'll be fine.

Jennifer. Feel for your chickens in all this wet weather.

I also have a bunch of lettuce growing by leaps and bounds. I let it go to seed in June. And of course, I forget what it was. I think it'll come to me. Pak Choi was there, for one.

Oh how nice you have a Mexican grocery store, Rebecca! (I'm watching Mexican cooking on Bourdain at the moment!) What things do you pick up at the restaurant supply store?

We're trying to train the cats to leave us a lone at night. They aren't any trouble when it's warmer. They're out most of the day so sleep at night. But colder weather is going to be a problem until they get acclimated. I put them out at 5. I do not like getting up at 5! Nonetheless, it was productive time for me. I got a lot of good reading and studying in, mostly on sustainability.

Ewwwww, Dawn. Sounds like a big cat, doesn't it! I would be somewhat paranoic. I have no idea what largish critters are around here--nor how many. Nothing really would surprise me. Oh, I am suddenly sleepy, so best jump up and get my meatballs cooking. Later.

Nancy, the crop is, starting from the far end of the garden, back toward me, is, Brussel sprouts. China red globe radish, Egyptian walking onions, Barkant turnips, red cabbage, and a couple of rows of mustard. Off left of the white plastic pipe is some Jersey wakefield cabbage, where I had just tossed out the seed and never went back to transplant them. I have pretty good luck transplanting plants with the post hole diggers. I just take out a plug where I want the plant to go, then pull out a plug of plants and plop into the hole. That way I dont have to bend over to plant the plants. If I get more than one plant with the post hole diggers, I trim out the weaker plants at a later date.

I am not 100% sure of the order of the plants I listed above because I did not mark anything. I dont bend over anymore than I have to. I walk along sifting seeds from my fingers and then come back after they have come up and trim the rows with my hoe or my mantis tiller. My joints don.t start engines very well anymore, but the mantis has what is called an easy start crank on it, as you gently pull the starter rope it winds a spring in the recoil starter, when the tension overpowers the compression of the engine, the spring will spin the engine for 2 or 3 revolutions, after a few pulls the engine will start without any quick pulls.

I don't see a new thread yet. I don't see many plants I've never heard of before. I'm in a FB group for rare and unusual plants and today there was a post about prairie turnips. I'm still researching. They have a pretty flower and an edible tuber. They were a large part of Lakota diet when Lewis and Clark arrived. They're found in the plains all the way down to north Texas. Maybe Nancy's come across them in her native plant research. You know I love plants that are both ornamental and edible! They probably taste bad, LOL, but I'm intrigued.

Larry, your brussels sprouts look better than mine. I haven't been in the garden in days to see if anything has sprouted.

Nancy, big cats turn up anywhere there is prey. When I worked on the ranch there was one in the Oolagah area. Before that on the Arkansas River near Sand Springs. Ranchers will shoot them, even though they're not supposed to. It is probably young ones who venture into populated areas. Perhaps it was time for the coyotes population to be thinned. They may even go after wild hogs. They would be good to have around if they left domestic animals and people alone.

I was wondering which Mexican grocery Rebecca went to, also.

I am coughing less today and slept better last night.

Have a good week.

I thought I had an article about wet chicken runs, but I can't find it. I think they put straw in the run. Actually, a couple of straw bales wiuld raise them off the ground a lot.

Houzz (or my tablet ) is being weird. It won't let me move "have a good week to the end, nor will it let me delete it. Better "submit" before I loose it all.

I was at Morelos at 31st and 129th EAve.