unfortunately

HU

Rats! I was in the process of posting and the electricity went out! Rats. Will have to try again after dinner.

HU took the hoops down today. That was quite the project for him. The tomatoes look great though. The Juliet has blossoms.

Everything looks good except the crepe myrtles. Even the pots of horseradish.

We had to go to stores today. TSC to get feed and propane. Target to look for a specific kind of pizza. (yes, we're spoiled at our house) HD for blackberry plants...and then Walmart for a specific kind of local honey.

Everyone was doing everything "right". Target, you had to wait in line until the amount of people came out that was in your party. Stores were not crowded at all.

HD, had one way in and two ways out with guards at the doors. I just needed to slip into the garden center to get the blackberries, but had to go all the way in and into the nursery area.

TSC was okay but they make it unpleasant enough that you don't want to shop, which is really unfortunate (but probably the point of it all) because they had a lot of cute stuff I wanted to buy. And they had Rhode Island Reds and New Hampshire Reds. I want.

Only bought the feed and propane.

Then we get to Walmart. It was a free for all. Hello Stimulus Checks! People in there shopping like it was the good ol' days...or Black Friday. Buying up electronics of all sorts, trying on clothing.

LOL. It was ridiculous. I got my honey and got the heck out of Dodge.

Don't mean to annoy.

https://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/galleries/how-quantum-physics-proves-gods-existence.aspx

I still believe in religious quantum mechanics. I still believe that the evolution of human beings from rocks , trees , chairs and other inanimate objects could be considered a little more seriously now.

Perhaps the decisions that we make in our daily lives will collapse our wavefunction into one possibility or the other , probably the other. Span my space . I've always said that it was "the place" where thou hast need to arm thy heart with strength . All the guilt , all the shame , all the things that was said and thought about about "me" all down through the years . But there is no reason to be ashamed. "YOU' are all my heros , even if you don't won't to be https://bahaiteachings.org/quantum-physics-bridge-between-science-religion/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mysticism http://www.nhn.ou.edu/~morrison/

He was my quantum mechanics professor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics

HU

Interesting article, HU!

I hope you like it. That is my religion!

HU

Friends

what am I supposed to do with all these plants. I have been putting off potting them up a and I started last night,I have tons. Just out of of the porter tray I probably got 20! And I have white cherry TX wild cherry ground cherry large red cherry. I may have to try to sell some. If I knew y’all’s addresses I would do a drive by drop.

Jen,

I think it would be lovely to work from home all the time if a person can block out the distractions and stay focused. Tim can do that...he can sit right here at the dining table 5 feet from me and not hear a thing I say or notice anything I do because he is so focused on his computer and phone. I would be exactly the opposite---I'd stop whatever work I was doing to let the cats in and out, to feed the dog, to watch the hummingbirds outside at the flowers or the feeders, to check the plants on the light shelf, etc.

Well, the way the restaurant is positioned, that window is a walk-up, not a drive-thru. I suspect they'll remove it as soon as all this is over. The window is in a place where there normally is a booth inside. I think it was the best workaround they could come up with at the time, but it is far from ideal. They are in a tight little corner lot with an always full and overflowing parking lot so a drive-thru lane isn't feasible. Still, I appreciate that we have the walk-up window right now.

Amy, I'm looking at the cool night on Friday and hoping the weather stays warm after that because I have warm-season plants I want to put in the ground, and nights in the 30s just don't qualify as warm. The weather will be ideal for planting today, except for the wind, and then a lot cooler tomorrow.

dbarron, I am sorry about the peppers and thai basil. Our weather is so cruel sometimes....okay, most of the time....okay, practically all the time. I remember a very, very good year maybe a decade ago when I put tomato plants in large containers outdoors the last week of February and only had to cover up those plants on a couple of cold nights out of an abundance of caution. It was, of course, a drought year, since we always seem to have warmer winters in drought years. Since we've had this long run of wet years beginning in 2015, we haven't warmed up as early and I've had to wait much later to plant.

The quality of take-out isn't the same as eating in, and that's a shame, and even if we try really hard to rush straight home, it takes us quite a while to make it back home. We're happy if the food is still warm at all by the time we get home.

Amy, I hate carrying plants in and out too and have kept it to a minimum this year. We've been so chilly, windy, wet, foggy, flooded, muddy, misty, cloudy, etc. that there seemed to be little upside to leaving the seedlings outdoors in all that when they could be inside on a light shelf, nice and warm, and out of the wind. Never mind the fact that I didn't want to spend time stomping my way through mud to carry out the plants in the first place. Our mud has mostly dried up now, and I hope it stays that way for a while. April, May and June usually bring us a lot of rain. Maybe this year we had that rain in January, February and March instead.

Jennifer, You know, the worst possible thing that could happen would be that people will be out spending their stimulus checks and will get exposed to someone with the virus in a store as crowded as your Walmart was. It would be terrible if the stimulus checks had the unintended consequence of helping spread the virus, wouldn't it? I hadn't even thought about that until you mentioned how crowded it was at Wal-mart. I'm glad you got in and out so quickly, and I think I'll avoid it like the plague until everyone has had time to spend their stimulus money. If we were to decide we needed to go to W-M, we'd be there at 7 a.m. and be in and out in a flash. I understand the store is not that crowded at all during the first hour of the day reserved for shoppers who are older and for those that are immune-compromised. And, we might decide to go to Wal-mart tomorrow morning to get fresh fruit for the girls as they are coming tomorrow night to spend the weekend. It will be the first time we've seen them in over a month, and we have plenty of regular food but not a lot of fresh fruit, and the two of them will eat fresh fruit all day long if we have it. Some people in my shopping group have been posting photos of fuller shelves at the local Wal-mart, with lots and lots of toilet paper on the shelves some days, and full dairy and meat counters so it seems like things are getting back to normal after that big initial round of panic buying emptied the shelves. Now I'm wondering if the stimulus-spending will empty shelves again. It seems like everyone still is having trouble finding cleaning supplies, especially anything with bleach in it, and hand sanitizer and rubbing alcohol, but other than that, I think most people are finding what they want because I don't see as many "In search of...whatever" which was the purpose of the newish shopping group--so people could share which stores have whatever.

Kim, If they aren't potted up yet, you need to get busy potting up those poor little babies. You're reaching the end of the spring tomato-planting season for as far south as you are. Unless things have changed since we moved from North Texas to southern OK, most gardeners put their tomato plants in the ground down there beginning in mid-March and are done by mid-April, hoping to get fruit before the heat sets in which can be in May or June. Hopefully the ones who have done that have covered up the plants on the few late cold nights. It always is such a race to get food fruit set that far south, but at least your Porters likely will set fruit all summer long.

All the plants I transplanted into large pots a few weeks ago have fruit on them now, and the Better Bush, which was a purchased, larger, plant has 8 or 10 tomatoes and some of them are about half their full size now. We're starting to count the days until the first BLT Sandwich becomes a reality. Granted, we only have those six early plants that will produce fruit before summer arrives, but I'm going to plant six more in large pots today and some of them are blooming in their little plastic cups already, and then I'll put the rest of the plants in the ground next week. I have a gazillion too many tomato plants and all of them won't make it into the ground. I'll hold a few of them in their cups for as long as I can since my neighbors all seem to use herbicides and we often get herbicide drift from mid-April to mid-May that damages and kills plants. I like to have a few replacement plants on hand in case that happens. The ones that don't get planted end up in the compost pile because everyone around me will have their plants in the ground long before I let go of the few back-up plants that I keep. In fact, most people here already have their plants in the ground and just covered them up on the cold nights this week. I think people felt they had waited as long as they could through the flooding rains and just went ahead and planted even though they knew potentially freezing weather was coming this week. Chris keeps offering me his extra tomato plants, and I don't need them as I have too many of my own. I'm glad he has those extras though as back-ups in case any sort of disaster occurs in his neighborhood. Last year four or five of the backup plants that I threw on the compost pile rooted into the pile and produced tomatoes, which was a nice surprise. The compost pile tomatoes were not plagued by huge hordes of green stinkbugs like the main garden plants were. We've never had green stinkbugs before in the huge numbers we had last year, and I hope they don't make a return appearance this year. Heavy rainfall seems to favor them.

Maybe you can find people in your neighborhood who want your extra tomato plants? At this point I am so stressed trying to figure out how many of my own extra plants I can squeeze into the ground that I'd just have to shoot anybody who tried to give me more. (grin) I wasn't planning on a big veggie garden this year because I had intended to be spending the whole spring redoing the landscape, until it decided to remain constantly under water this year, so the last thing I really wanted was a lot of excess tomato plants pleading with me to choose them and let them live. This has been one of those years when every seed planted indoors has sprouted, and I should have planted fewer seeds in the first place.

I haven't even seen and spoken with all my local gardening friends because we're all doing the proper social distancing. Since we live so spread out from one another, we don't even see each other driving down the road, since basically nobody is going anywhere. Normally people will stop and chat with you if they see you out in your garden, but this is not the year for that. We're trying to keep that virus from spreading here. There's only 2 cases in our county and there's 4 now in Cooke County, so everyone has been pretty successful so far in preventing or at least slowing the spread. When I see the numbers of cases and deaths in the D-FW metro, I am just horrified....and especially shocked by Denton County's, although the state school there gets the blame for a lot of those cases at their facility. I've noticed that when Denton County lists the cases by city, it lists the State Supported School cases separately like it is its own little town (which it sort of is). I also tend to forget the heavier populated areas in eastern Denton County and that's where so many of the cases are (and they maybe can blame Collin County for that). In my mind, Denton County still is largely rural, although that's not really the case any more. I guess I'm still stuck in the 1970s and 1980s in my mind when it comes to Denton.

I really, really miss going to Costco and Sam's Club in the worst way, but we aren't going near the DFW metro area to shop until the number of virus cases there drops tremendously. We did do a great job of stocking up on stuff from both stores before the virus arrived, and I am amusing myself now by seeing how long all those supplies last so I can evaluate my performance. It is hard to try to guess how much you need of things so you can avoid going to the stores for a few months....or longer, depending on how long the virus cases last. I don't think we'll have to buy cleaning or laundry supplies again this year, which was the plan. I think the first thing that will run out will be paper towels, but we still have about a 2 or 3 month supply of those because we bought a 15-pack of them at Costco back in either late February or early March. I won't even say how much I miss Central Market! It just kills me to not go there, especially for their produce section and bakery, and we haven't been there since late February or maybe the first week in March. I no longer remember....it was so long ago that I don't think the virus was even known to be in the area yet. I miss going to the nurseries and garden centers the most. We could, of course, go to those any time we choose, but we choose not to. I'd rather avoid catching the virus if possible, though I know it always is possible that Tim will bring it home from work with him. I feel like that's a high enough risk factor for us without us venturing out and taking more chances.

I want a normal life, and nothing is normal now.

We should be at the garden centers and nurseries, hauling home loads of plants so then we can figure out where in the world to put them all. We should be looking at cute garden accessories and the new 'crop' of garden tools. We should be dumping our excess plants on our gardening friends. We should be standing in somebody's garden comparing notes on how various types of plants are doing. We should be running to Wal-Mart and buying just one more hummingbird feeder and another sack of sugar because all the little hummers are so plentiful this year and so hungry on these cold mornings. We should be comparing notes on which fruit trees held on to their fruit (after blooming exceptionally early) through the late freezes. At our house, none of the trees have their fruit because they bloomed and set fruit in February but I don't know if my friends' trees are in the same boat here. I'm guessing they are.

We should be eating lunch or dinner at our favorite restaurants. We should be grabbing doughnuts to eat on the way to Wal-mart, but we aren't.

We should be taking the grandkids to the parks, the zoo, and the movies. We should be at the store picking out cute spring outfits and bows and ribbons for their hair.

We aren't getting to do those things, and I don't like it.

Dawn

Dawn I am only potting up the ones I am not using. Since we had frost 2 nights in a row and I lost a few tender flower sprouts I am glad I waited. I am only 15 miles from Oklahoma border as the crow flies

I am planting in ground today. Tomatoes and some herbs.

further south like Denton did not get low enough to frost.

next year will be a little easier since I am new here and learning. Plus my in ground bed is still water logged at home.

gladto have my daughters set up

I plan on potting up today. I have enough to go in the ground now that were purchased a few weeks ago. My grand daughter got me 7 plants, and at about that time I started some in the house. I should have around 12 or 15 of those, which are large enough to plant. I say every year that I dont need over a dozen plants, I lie to myself every year. I am sure I must have 50 more to pot up.

I plan on trying to get some spots ready to plant today, but will not plant till after Fri.. The forecast is a low of 39, but where I live that could mean frost due to my microclimate .

I’m also planning to plant on Saturday. My plants are so big I can’t put it off much longer, but that cold snap tomorrow night makes me uneasy. My tomatoes are all suckering, but I don’t want to pinch those until I get them settled and fertilized and leaves trimmed. 2020 is the year that wouldn’t quit.

At least I didn’t put my seedings out in today’s gale!

—Marleigh

This last cold spell really messed me up. It was too cold and windy to leave the plants on the deck. I did not have room on the light shelf, so they set days in a dark utility room. They look like they are in shock now. The small plants that were on the light shelf look good, so if I lose the larger plants I still have backups. I have been trying to clean out a place in the garden to plant them. I am just pulling the weeds out from under the trellises to make a spot about a foot in diameter and clean it better later. I sprayed along one trellis to kill the grass and weeds. I would have never done that when I was younger, but I am not strong enough to pull some of the weeds.

I am not ready to quit gardening and have been thinking about buying a tiller to put on my tractor. There is no way I can justify buying a tiller, but I want to try to keep going. It just seems hard to find something to replace gardening.

I was fortunate not to lose anything although potatoes were tall enough that I hilled with dirt as far as I could then covered with straw (which my dog then layed on top of!) so some were a bit crushed but most are okay. Cabbage, radishes, spinach, collards and turnips are fine. I covered the few green beans that had sprouted with straw. Only had 2 tomatoes out so they were easy to cover and the strawberries have a wire hoop over them with plastic and I just put a blanket over it. I uncovered everything this morning and watered it well. The wind said 40mph but I swear felt like 50-60! I didnt put flats of seedlings out just opened both greenhouse doors so they would get light and a breeze but not blow away. Hoping they will be wrong about the prediction of 36 Saturday morning but may cover just in case. Planning to put out squash, cucumbers, and rest of tomatoes Tues before the rain - they are about 3-4” tall in the greenhouse. Tomatoes about 10” and a couple of blooms.

dbarrin, I made the copycat KFC gravy and it is now in my spiral notebook of favorites! Delicious! - thanks for sharing - even though I definitely do not need it!

Dawn bless you for taking care of the little hummers, I’ve only seen a couple so far. We do have several doves and even a wild turkey hen coming in. I put cracked corn out for the doves all winter. I hung out a net bag full of lint, hair and yarn pieces for the birds to use as nesting decorations. Their favorite item is guineas feathers 😁

Okay, so HU and I tried very hard to be socially distant while planting the garden which needed to be done.

AND, I am not working out tonight. Feel like I got a great workout in the garden. I'm sure I'll be sore tomorrow.

Anyway, we planted 4 rows of beans--Black Turtle, Jacob's Ladder, Contender, and Fordhook lima. HU checked the corn and found that it is busy underground right now. That's exciting, huh? We also covered (with buckets only) the tomatoes and summer squash/zucchini plants.

Other than that, I planted my 7 precious Fowler beans in the raised bed with some leftover Blue Lakes Bush beans.

Radishes have sprouted.

THEN around 5 our power went out. I just wanted to sit on my butt. Nope, so I get up and look around outside to find a project. It was windy and chilly, but might as well get a project finished. SO, I started digging up the east side of the chicken pen (and finished). I just need to add the wine bottles and a little bit of soil and compost. The soil there is actually very lovely--full of worms. Probably because the chicken pen is right next to it. I threw the grass and stuff that I dug up into a low spot on the back of the property. Was gonna set the wine bottles but realized I need to removed the labels. Will do that tomorrow because it will be cold. BTW, the easiest way to remove the labels is to put the bottles in the oven for a few minutes and they pull right off. My friend brought me several bottles, but she likes red wine too and only brought green bottles. For some reason our favorite wines are in green bottles BUT I need some clear bottles and blue bottles. To mix it up a bit. I'm excited it get this project finished. This little bed faces the east, so some shade loving flowers could live here. Or shade loving herbs.

I'm excited to see what the gardens will look like in a month or so. I'm so ready to plant out the rest of the tomatoes. And the peppers. And zinnias. And to sow the cucumber seed. And okra and southern peas. Oh, and melons.

My asparagus is very thick and very crooked. Any ideas why?

I think NEXT weekend I'll plant the tomatoes and then the weekend after, the peppers. yay! Who is excited about this?

Mine are outside, as protected as they can be. They were looking a bit ragged from being inside the garage for 2 days and desperately needed some light. The wintersown tomatoes look tiny but are still growing strong. I think it'll be time to pot them up this weekend. I am afraid I won't have many peppers this year, unless the ones I just planted sprout and then I'll have a fall crop.

Dawn, my "desk" is the kitchen table, which is right next to the back door. So the pups keep coming over for a pat, or a belly rub, or they want in, or out or in... Fortunately with my job there's a lot of waiting on the computer, so its easy to stop every now & then to give a little attention. They're not going to like it when I go back to work, that's for sure.

I keep saying we need to go to Lowes for soil, and come the weekend I seem to put it off. But this weekend we're going to have to go. I'm completely out of dirt & we still have half a dozen mineral tubs to fill, plus some sort of fencing to puppy-proof the back.

I’m here. Just tired.

But yay for planting stuff this weekend.

Jen—Mine are super thick this year, too, and I’ve had quite a few crooked ones. According to the Illinois Extension Service:

Q. What causes crooked spears?

A. Asparagus spears grow quickly and are sensitive to mechanical injury from cultivation or cutting tools, insects or wind-blown soil particles. Injured areas grow slowly so that the rapid growth on the opposite side causes spears to curve toward the injured side. The cause of flattened (faciated) spears is unknown.

So my guess is all this wind and crazy cold is making them crooked. 😑

—Marleigh

That makes sense, Marleigh. Thanks. I wish the spears were thinner. Some are ridiculously thick.

Amy, a couple of weeks ago (or more) you posted something about turmeric and ginger---maybe making a paste of it? Or a tea? I bought some of both and want to do that. Will you repeat that information? Thank you. :)

Nancy, I haven't seen you on FB or here in a couple of days. Are you doing okay? How's the hip?

So, I just read a little about thick or thin asparagus. The thicker ones are slightly more tender, which is surprising to me. Once you cut off the tough stalk part (on both the thick and thin). So, I guess I won't fret about it.

Kim, did you see that Kitten George died? It was all I could do to not cry. I'm pretty sure they got Kitten George about the time I got Finbar. In some ways I wish I had never let Finbar outdoors.

I'm going to post a couple of their videos here. One, she's talking about frost protection and the other she's "being dramatic" about the late freeze. They might be good for new gardeners who might be lurking around this forum. Most of y'all regulars already know what you're gonna do with a late frost.

We can't work outside today. Might as well watch a couple of garden videos.

HJ I did cry. I don’t even like cats because I am so allergic. But kitten George. I also cry every time someone is sad.

with asparagus you can use a potato peeler and just peel the end of the stalk where it’s tough and still eat rest of the inside that is more tender. I just poke my fingernail to find the beginning of the tough part

Thanks for the vid's Jennifer . It is a good day to watch them.

Very relatable.

HU

H/J, I make tea from ginger and turmeric. I have seen things on line about paste, but I don't know about that. You can make tea from dried spices or fresh. I'm not scientific about it, equal parts of each, steep and add honey and lemon and a pinch of black pepper (black pepper makes the turmeric work better). Dried, I would think 1/2 to a tsp of the spices. I grate fresh spices and freeze them in icecube trays or my herb freezer cubes. So they equate to like 2 cubes to a quart. What's that? Tablespoon and a half to a cube? I steep with hot water and pour a couple of cups, then add tap water and put in fridge for the next day. If you want to clear your sinuses add cayenne. You could add any other herb you think might help you. Tagetes minuta is interesting. I have grown it, sometimes called Mexican marigold (and considered invasive I think.) It is sometimes confused with Tagetes lucida, so look at the Latin name.

The trick with asparagus is to hold one with both hands, each hand grasping the opposite end and break it. It will break above the woody part and thick asparagus is more tender than skinny.

Yesterday I potted up a tray of bigger herbs and ornamentals. Now I have to protect them overnight. There isn't supposed to be strong winds, but maybe 5-10 MPH. I guess I'll put the plastic back on the green house and throw a blanket over it. I think the dog chewed up my actual frost blankets.

So spinach bolts at 14 hour days. Do you suppose you could grow it indoors under lights controlled at 12 hours? It would be nice in summer salads? I have lettuce growing in cottage cheese containers under lights right now. I figure when all the stuff on my window sills moves outside I could grow them on the sills.

Well here we go again, forecast has dropped to 31 for tonight for me. Sigh..will it ever end?

Hopefully this will be the end.

Then comes the tornado warnings as it warms on up.

Always the stupid weather.

HU

Hey Jennifer'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLEGZH4sPz4

She throws an egg down into the hole when she plants tomatoes.

Kinda like the Native Americans putting a dead fish in when they planted corn.

Here's another one :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG6jE-FkrZU

HU

Sighing over here, too, though 34 isn't as bad as 31. I had just put the clear totes in the garage after the last freeze threats--back out. Bummed.

HJ, I just haven't had much to talk about--especially regarding gardening. I had just now decided to check posts out and say something, like how lazy I've been--however, I did get the entire lawn mowed yesterday while Garry had the weed eater (is eater what you call call it--I remember you all teasing me about it. No, I think you call it weed wacker. I think I called it a weed whipper.). At any rate, we both did GREAT! Remember telling you all about the natives in the back and how excited I was to find so many. And they're kind of all mostly in one area about 30x50. So I had little orange flags around that area so Garry knows not to use the weeder thingy there. Even he was mildly excited as I was showing him various natives. Most funny were the milkweeds. I had no idea.

I'm dreading moving the plants back in this evening. Totally not in the mood. I spent a good bit of time Wed and Thurs organizing them all, and then choosing 54 plants to send off with a nearby friend, who will take what she wants and hand off the rest to a couple more friends in this area. I was thrilled to get rid of them. And I'd been hoping to get a bunch more to the school, but John called yesterday and said it was so windy I might want to wait. I did. And now with it being so cold and ugly until tomorrow. . . . . here they all sit, still.

I've been so preoccupied, as I'm sure many of the rest of. you are, with gardening, Covid-19, that I forget who I've said what to, so please forgive me if I'm repeating myself. By far the biggest and most healthy looking tomatoes this year are the Homestead 24s. I hope that is indicative or how productive they'll be.

Top photo is the blueberry bushes, which look really good; then a bed of garlic and kale; and the back, where I flagged off an area for the native plants. I love that part of the property--that's where I was going to put a rock garden--but there is so much Bermuda that probably is a bad bad idea. There are a lot of callery pears back in the flagged area, and those suckers are hard to get out. Lots of privet, too, but it pulls up fairly easily. And both of us were astonished at all the elm, hackberry, and oak seedlings everywhere. I found two wild cherry trees, one of which has to be moved to the forest area from my center bed, and white ash trees out back.

I've been loading up with turmeric, ginger (with the pepper--which gives it a kind of delightful little zing), SAM-e, occasional ibuprofen (not as many as before), and magnesium. I think I'll begin with the tea. Darn. Have to get a new teapot.

I've put off going anywhere. But need to get to the school this weekend, and we should go to Lowe's, also, Jen. I haven't even been tempted to look at flowers for my deck containers. But perhaps this next week will be the time. By the way. . . Jen, you brought me the green oxalis, didn't you? I LOVE that plant. Aren't they they wonderful? The purple one is lagging far behind, Megan, but is just now beginning to get bigger. Both of those are right below the deck. That was not using my head. Why would I put them where I can't even see them--unless I'm out doing yard work. That does it. I'm moving them to a bed where I can see them.

The tomatoes I planted already are not happy. They're still alive, but not happy. The peppers didn't even freeze. Yet. I didn't cover any of them because I still have so many of both, sitting on the deck.

Our rabbit book and chicken book are supposed to come today. (I don't want so many chickens that I'll be very busy with them. . . four or six would be good. That's IF we decide to get any at all.) That will give us something to do. I ordered them a month ago. Apparently we weren't the only ones interested in learning about raising chickens and rabbits. AND, I hadn't ordered my beans, and now can't find them anywhere. Company after company says they're not taking orders.

I second Carole's (Carole/Carol--is that you?) comment about the KFC gravy, dbarron. Thank you! And I also like a pinch of cayenne (in the gravy and in a lot of dishes). I set out to make a special breakfast for GDW last night--bacon and eggs (OE) with hash browns and biscuits and sausage gravy. I realized AFTER I put the biscuits in the oven that I'd left out the butter. Kinda cracked me up, actually--since that's almost how I make pancakes (only with more buttermilk and a pinch of baking soda). So I figured at worst we'd have fat pancake tasting things. Actually they were fine, if not AS fine as real biscuits. I rarely do biscuits and gravy for me. I prefer honey on my biscuits.

Larry, yep, the last 3 cold nights have really messed my plants sand me up, too. Oh well. . . happens more often than it doesn't, I guess.

I'm out of sorts about not being able to freely roam through the nurseries, too, Dawn. I hate it. But may give it a try when it warms up.

We’ve gone from 39° to 36° in the forecast tonight. Hoping it doesn’t go any lower. My plants have been inside all week, but I just don’t have the energy to go cover things up again. It seems like none of it will ever end—freezing temps, howling gales, and the ever-elusive “peak” that is always two weeks from today. I feel like a donkey following a carrot on a stick. The day I can plant, the day I can go get a book from the library—it’s always two weeks away, and never any closer. Blargh.

I think we're all feeling the same way, Marleigh! BLACH. :).

Marleigh, Again? I hope for you and your garden's sake that this is the last one of the Spring.

For those of you who haven't been watching your weather closely, I linked the NWS--Tulsa webpage on the cold weather thread because they, and surrounding NWS offices in the general region, have issued either a Frost Advisory or Freeze Warning, as applicable, for the areas where plants are in danger tonight/tomorrow morning.

At our end of the state, and I would laughingly refer to it as the warm end of the state, but it sure hasn't felt warm today or for most of this week, we're only forecast to go to 40, so I'm not carrying anything in and I'm not covering up anything. I hope that the forecast lows don't go lower than forecast or I might be sorry.

Jennifer, Thick, as in abnormally thick, and crooked asparagus is indeed the result of cold injury. Some years, though, if you only have really thick spears and not crooked ones, it is just that the plants are getting older and producing monster spears. It if not unusual to have at least a few spears as large as or slightly larger than the diameter of your thumb that are just nice, healthy, early-season spears.

farmgardener, We feed cracked corn to the doves all winter too, and sometimes to the squirrels, but only because they are stealing the dove's corn. (grin) Bless the little hummingbirds' hearts! They have been so chilly this week and have been feeding heavily, but seem fine. We have not been quite as cold, in general, as most of y'all who are somewhat further north.

Jen, At least your desk is in a place that is convenient for the pups. That's worth its weight in gold.

Our dogs are different dogs when Tim is home. They know their schedule with me....they know approximately when they'll go in and out, etc. When Tim is home, it is like the schedule flies out the window and they want him to play with them, talk with them, take them for walks, rub their bellies, etc., non-stop all day. I cease to exist on the days he is home, and that gives me a break, and he gets most all their love and seemingly desperate need for attention. If he puts them in a room or in their dog crates and closes the door, they bark nonstop for him to come back and set them free because, clearly, it is all about them. He never could work from home daily because they wouldn't let him get anything done.

Amy, You should be able to grow it indoors under lights if you can absolutely control all the light exposure, but I haven't tried.

dbarron, I thought of you when the NWS frost warnings and freeze advisories went up. I was just shaking my head---some of you just cannot get a break.

Nancy, A lot of folks on our FB groups went to Lowe's and HD the and some nurseries, like TLC, last couple of days to buy plants, and were complaining about how crowded the stores were and how no one was doing social distancing. (sigh) Did they really think it wouldn't be that way the same week the first round of stimulus money was direct deposited into people's bank accounts? I wish people would use the good sense God gave them. I want to go plant shopping, but it won't be this weekend! Maybe next weekend after everyone has had time to spend their stimulus money, leaving the stores emptier maybe next weekend than this weekend. We might go out early in the morning this weekend.

This weekend, we have the grandkids for 4 days/3 nights after a month of social distancing. The kids decided we all were healthy and had been social distancing, so could be together. Finally! We have been having such a good time since they arrived here yesterday afternoon. Since we weren't together on Easter, we're pretending this weekend is Easter weekend, and we're calling it Easter 2.0. We've had all sorts of Easter fun, including dyeing dozens of eggs, and we gave the girls their Easter baskets, filled more with Easter toys than candy, and they've had a ball wearing their bunny ears and bunny tails, and playing with their Easter slime in pretty pastel colors that....makes farting like sounds when you squeeze it and squish it. The 5 year old has declared it the best Easter gift ever. lol. I never knew such a thing existed until I found it when shopping for their Easter goodies in mid-March, when I was trying to get all the Easter stuff done early before the virus situation went from bad to worse. Tomorrow we'll hide the eggs and they'll hunt for them. The weather today was just too chilly and icky. The 4 little kittens have had endless amounts of attention and playtime, and it seems like these kids are having a growth spurt as they are eating nonstop all day long which, come to think of it, is what the kittens do as well.

We didn't even see the sunshine today, but I think it is supposed to put in an appearance tomorrow.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Dawn

That made me happy for you, Dawn, having the grands! Yay!

Dawn I am so glad you got to see the girls. grands make life so much easier. And joyful.

nancy what kind of beans are you looking for ?

i scored free fencing and posts but can’t find a truck to get it home I need a pickup and trailer

In new news, the Washington projections plummeted overnight. Our peak is now in two days, not two weeks, and projected total deaths went from 950 to 350. I feel like these people are using some Common Core math, but hopefully all this will be done soon.

—Marleigh

Nancy I looked at the last the weekly threads and could not find any mention of beans type needed.

i just realized I lost my whole flats of large tomato types and I only have cherry. My daughter and I are looking forward to canning this year and I definitely need large tomatoes. Not sure I would want to can sauces with cherry types.

o h. This dang pandemic messing up my day.

Kim, When/how did you lose the flat of large tomato plants? On one of these recent cold nights? I didn't even start any seeds of canning tomatoes because, as y'all might remember (lol), I wasn't going to have a big garden this year. I was going to have a tiny veggie garden and focus all my time and energy on redoing the landscape. That was before Mother Nature decided to turn our place into a lake and swamp. So, I'm thinking I'll grow canning tomatoes for fall, putting them in the ground in late June. If I have seeds of Heidi and sow them, I might start them earlier and put them in the ground in early June. They produce so well in heat that they might produce tomatoes by August from a June planting. I'm afraid I may have too many types of bite-sized tomatoes too because those are the ones that sprouted the most. I don't remember now. Everything is so late and so out of order that I am not sure what I have any more, which is just sad. I thought I'd be planting this weekend and would figure out what plants I had at that point, but then we had the chance to have the girls, and I pushed gardening out to Monday because I knew they'd want to have Easter (we're calling this weekend Easter 2.0 and they are loving it) and then we have a whole stack of white t-shirts and leggings to tie-dye today, which will give them a colorful summer wardrobe. Normally we'd do the tie-dyeing around Spring Break, but they actually went on a beach trip on Spring Break, cutting it short to rush back home when the first Covid-19 case was announced in the county where they were vacationing. After that, we couldn't see them, of course, because Chris and Jana wanted to protect us. So, today we're starting with tie dye, better late than never, after breakfast while it is still so cold outdoors, and hunting for hidden Easter eggs this afternoon in the warmer weather. I feel like we are trying to cram everything we would have done in the last month into this weekend, so it has been sort of hectic. The 5 year old did lament the fact that we can't go to the park and playground, out to eat or shopping for summer clothes, or go to the movies, which are things we often do on weekends, but she does understand about Covid-19 and how much it has turned everyone's lives upside down.

We found a good movie to watch last night, popped popcorn and had family movie night on Friday night as usual. We just did it without going to the theater.

Marleigh, The horrible models have been a sight to behold, haven't they? I'm glad the math errors all are in this nation's favor. Just imagine the chaos if everything had been worse than the models projected? Oh, and don't even get me started on the nonsense that is Common Core math.

Texas starts opening things back up soon. I don't know if that is good or bad, or if it just "is". We'll see, and it may provide clues for what we might be able to expect when Oklahoma begins to open up a bit more.

I discovered via a DFW news station website a few days ago that a lot (a little over 30 positive, 1 death so far, and more waiting for test results) of American Airlines/Envoy ground workers at DFW Airport have Covid-19 and neither Tim's group (the police department) or Chris' (firefighters/paramedics) had been told. They should have been told so they'd be extra careful when dealing with employees in this work group....and I was the one who told them. This news did not come down the line from the airport's upper management---it came from the NBC station and the employees' union. We're all aggravated about that! When Tim was on vacation and working at home, I listened to every single one of those tedious teleconferences they had each morning and afternoon when they did talk about numbers, and I wonder why they weren't talking about numbers now, just a few weeks later, that they actually have a lot of airline workers that tested positive. It doesn't make any sense to me.

It is chilly here this morning. I trusted our forecast of 40 degrees and didn't carry in any flats or cover up the tomato plants in large containers and our plants were fine, but out west of us, the Mesonet station, and presumably the surrounding area, had about the same forecast as us (39 or 40) and dropped to 31. I would have been highly upset if that had happened here!

Here's the map showing the overnight lows statewide for last night:

Minimum Temperatures for Today

I hope everyone's plants made it through last night just fine and that y'all have a lovely day. I'm going to have a colorful one.

Dawn

Dawn, so happy you get a weekend with your girls. That must be so fun for all of you!

Our pets mostly ignore Tom--not really ignore, but the minute I get home from anywhere at anytime, they need my attention. Mostly they want food even if they just ate 2 hours ago. I'm convinced that even the chickens know my car and see me coming.

And the asparagus is very thick...maybe not abnormally, but thicker than what you see in the stores. I'm just not going to worry about it. And crooked spears still taste good. These aren't going to a farmers market so I won't be concerned since it's just my family and friends eating them.

What kind of beans are you looking for, Nancy? It took forever for the black beans to get here. I still haven't received the lima beans, but HU had a large package of them that we put in the survivalists garden. . I did find a small package of limas in my stash, but the seed is 4 years old. Let me know what you think about the chicken and rabbit books. I don't think I would eat a rabbit...I don't eat chickens, but it would be hard to harvest rabbits for my family. They're so cute! (If we turn into Panem and are in District 12, maybe. Actually I think Oklahoma is "in" District 11 HA!) However, I would like them for their droppings. One of Tom's work friends shared a giant bag of it last year. We could put it straight on the garden.

What happened to your tomatoes, Kim?!

Some of you might have seen the post. Today was the day for our SF. :(

I found a raised bed on Market Place and we were going to buy it. It was a good price. Messaged them and it's not available AND her husband can't make any this week. Why put the ad up then? So, I guess we'll build a bed today. I have a couple of empty spots in the "kitchen" garden. We'll add another bed this fall.

Tom got the hinges on the hoop bed already today...and the handle. But I want a latch too. The wind the other day was rough and sorta made the hoop frame askew. (The hinges weren't on it yet, but still I don't want it flying open in the insane wind we get at times.

Okay. I'm going to take the buckets off the squash and tomatoes and go buy some supplies to build the raised bed.

Have a good day, Friends!

Hey all--SESE is taking seed orders right now! Be back in a few.

We just got back from a drive. We went to Poteau OK. I stopped in at the Farmers Co-op and bought 1.2 # of Purple hulls, I would have got more, but the seed bucket was low and I did not want to take all of them, being as I may have enough for the first planting anyway. I don't think that I have ever seen that many people in the Co-op before. I jokingly said "how is your Gardening business ", I was answered with " I have never seen anything like it." I got out as quickly as I could because I am trying to avoid Covid-19.

When we got back home my carburetor and Joe E. Parker seeds were in the mail box.

Well, I didn't make it to SESE in time! So many things are sold out. So many things will be lost to tilled up bermuda grass and choked out before July. I guess we better save seeds this year in case we can't get them next year.

I'm so sorry, Amy--what were you wanting? I discovered it because Kim and HJ asked me what kind of beans I was looking for (Contender, Maxibel Filet) but noticed I had 2 more kinds of peanuts in the cart, also. I hit that order button so fast! I am excited to try the peanuts out! And so many of the other things.

I was up at 4:30 this morning, so just now woke up from a nice nap. I have peppers back out on the deck--they still look good, and took the frost blanket off the tomatoes on the deck. And Dawn, sure glad I still have lots of tomatoes! Because a few of mine that are in the ground are looking very unhappy--and the school DID get bitten by a freeze. The tomatoes there aren't going to make it, I don't think. And a lot of other stuff looking pathetic, as well. Even the Amer. beauty berry bushes don't look great. I best get ready for tons of planting over there from here until the end of May. If nothing else, I can plant ALL the tomatoes, ALL the peppers, and ALL the basil. Amuses me just to think about it. I do have lots more flowers here for them, but they're still very small. I think I'll wait until later in May to deliver them. BUT--John, with help, got the rest of the 14x4 raised beds finished! Yay. They look terrific, and the guys did a really nice job on them. This is the Lincoln Learning Garden at the Lincoln Enrichment Center! (lecwagoner.org)

Looks good, Nancy! I'm glad you were able to get your beans. We planted Contender in the Survivalist's Garden.

Amy, sorry your didn't get yours. That's how it's been. They'll open up for a short time and shut it down again. My 7 precious Fowler beans--if they make it, I'll save all seed from those. I really enjoyed that bean last year and was sad it wasn't available this year...even back in January.

Larry, you're so nice to save some seed for others.

We had a busy day here. We decided to try the thinner concrete blocks for our raised bed. It worked really well. And was cheaper while taking up less space. We just need to bring in some soil now.

We also picked up a couple of "handy panels" from TSC. We made one trellis thing for the tomatoes in the S. Garden. We need to grab one more panel and 3 t-posts to finish. But we want to check in with HU before we proceed.

I did see some swiss chard has sprouted.

Mom drove out. It's been a long time since she left her house. I have several dianthus that I need to dig up and give to someone. She came and took the reddish ones. I didn't realize what I was planting last year. I thought they were annuals and would add a pop of temporary color to that little flower bed. My sister might drive out Thursday to take some too.

I made a list of tomatoes to give away. What isn't given away, we'll squeeze into the S Garden. I have 38 to offer. They would have been at the SF today.

Oh Jennifer I wish you weren’t so far. I could take a few off your hands 😉

i actually think I spoke too soon.

the flat that had my larger tomatoes in it is the one I put on top of the frig and forgot in the cave which is my home with no windows. They grew so ridiculously leggy I gave up but I found that flat today and the plants recovered and although they are wiggly stemmed they are stout and medium green.

all the labels are gone so will just plant one or two of each and see what happens.

although today was hard for me one of my dreams came true. My daughter and I gardened together again with the babies of course. Love every second

planted okra, beets, radish, watermelon, carrots, flowers, spring onions. It was a blast. Got free lumber more soil and back home.

my little man in Lubbock was bragging how he had 3 naps and I said I haven’t had any but I am going to bed early. He told me it’s okay if I take a 12 hour nap. Glad I have his permission lol

My garden is fine. Officially we hit 32 at the mesonet station, but my yard was apparently warmer. So nothing lost!

My cucumber seeds walked off. I can’t find them anywhere. I was so careful to order only ones that were mosiac virus tolerant, had them all in one bag. Now they disappeared. I’ll have to go see if anything is left on the seed rack at Lowe’s, I guess. I’m sure it will turn up eventually, and it’s in a perfectly logical place...wherever that is.

I have 25 tomato plants in. 3 more to go, plus the okra. Then I attack the second half of the front flowerbed. I didn’t count the Tiny Tim plants in the total. They’re more for amusement than anything else. Not sure how to get rid of most of my plants. Have a few family and friends who want some, but not sure after that.

At at least I was working in the spirit of SF.

I had to run by Lowe’s to pick up more compost. It was a hot mess. SO many people, most not wearing masks, families with multiple kids. Had to wait in line to get in, but then walk through the store to get to the garden center. Can’t order garden stuff online for drive thru pickup either, which would be the logical, safest thing to do. I hope I don’t need to go back.

So so now I’m exhausted, took a muscle relaxer, and ordered pizza.

Ya, I'm bummed we're all missing SF this year, too. So we'll just have to make up for it next year, right?

Nancy, the oxalis didn't come from me, but I got one from the same person. I forget who, but they brought one & 2 of us wanted it, so we split the thing right there at SF. It looked pretty scruffy all last year, but this year it went nuts. I'm afraid I'm going to have to divide it, it's outgrowing the space I have it in.

Glad you got time with your girls, Dawn. There's nothing like little ones running around. I love all the time I got to be with my niece when she was a kid.

I had to get out today, first time in months. Went to Lowe's because I need a little more dirt to finish planting. They had a line to get into the garden center, as someone left another person was allowed in. I'll hand it to them, they had the process down pat. They had 4 clerks scanning your orders while you stood in line, then when you get up to the register it took a minute or two to actually check out. And most people seemed to be trying to stay away from each other.

Then I went to Walmart to get our groceries. Figured I'm already going out so I might as well save the delivery fee. The big Walmart had a line wrapping around the side of the building so I went to the little neighborhood one by us instead. Looks like they have it set up the same way, but there weren't enough shoppers when I was there to make a line. And it was hit or miss whether people were keeping their distance.

Jen, must have been Lisa, then. Don't ya LOVE it??

Rebecca, I am upset that you went to Lowe's!! Aren't there any services around that will run errands for you?

And the rest of you, and Jen. You don't HAVE to get out. But if you really need something, use your masks, gloves, and go off hours.

We agreed we HAD to have printer ink so went into Walmart at 7 this morning. I stayed in the car, and GDW had on face mask.. I 'm not at all paranoid about the coronavirus, but AM not brain dead or ignorant or anti-science, either. I wanted to get out today, too. So Garry and I drove into town this afternoon to check out the Lincoln garden. We were there by ourselves. There are plenty of places gardeners can "get out" and yet just be with nature and themselves.

But I confess I am wanting to see what our local nursery, Walmart, or Muskogee Lowe's has for container plants. I noticed that our local nursery's stand didn't have one single customer this morning, so I think I'll just do a drive-by early in the day at each of these.

Hello all!! Hoping everyone is doing well. Haven't been on in quite some time. I took a gardening hiatus I guess you could say since my oldest daughter moved out. I was finally ready to get back at it then we made the decision to move back into town. Was getting the house ready and then bam, all this happened. So, we've decided to stay for at least another year or so, maybe longer. Thus means my hiatus is over and I'm ready to find my peace in the garden again. I hadn't started any seeds because well, thought I wasn't going to be here. So, I just started some last week. Placed a pickup order from Tractor Supply for tomorrow. Good thing I didn't get rid of my seeds when I thought we were moving.

I have stayed away from Walmart completely. It has been a couple weeks since I went and got a few groceries and I went to Winco, Whole Foods, and Natural Grocers. They weren't too bad but I have to say I have never been more anxious to go out in public. My husband works at one of the hospitals here in OKC. My oldest daughter is working on the front lines in Rhode Island and has watched several older people die. My heart aches for her so much because she's seeing so much death at such a young age. She'll be 20 next month. I miss her so much and just want to hug her tight and never let go.

How have you all been doing? Are you able to get what you need? The toilet paper thing is mind boggling. Had to ship my daughter some a couple weeks ago. So glad to "see" you all. I really wanted to attend the SF this year but that's ok. At least we are all here and can connect.

Have missed my gardening comrades. :)

Hugs and love to you, Melissa.

Rebecca that sounds like a great wa way to end the day

Nancy, I mean "had" as in, for my mental sanity. I don't do well staying home all weekend, & I have left the house 3 times in the last month to get take-out. I'm getting major cabin fever. I can't wear a mask (something about things on my face), so I took a spray bottle of alcohol and doused my hands every so often. And watching people who were wearing them has convinced me that I'm safer not having one on. Seriously, if you're going to wear a mask & gloves then do so responsibly. Otherwise they're just helping spread it even more.

I've been going through my seed stash, and have come to the conclusion that I need to start enough seeds to feed half of Oklahoma next year. Some are getting old, but I just have so many that I seriously need to thin out the ranks. And looking some up, I found one that someone claimed was "far superior to Sungold" in sweetness, so I'm just going to have to run a taste test.

Nancy, I know, but for some things I don’t have a choice. I need to save the delivery fees and tips. That money is needed elsewhere. Plus, the few of them there are, are so busy it takes days. I did place online orders for Target and Walmart pickup, but had to go into Sprouts for produce, meat, and dairy for mom and I. We are too picky about those things and have to see it first. Mom is wrestling with the Sams website trying to make a delivery order with them. I did wear a mask and sanitized everything after.

As an aside, I got mom bundles of asparagus at Sprouts for $0.99.

I need another bottle of brush killer, so I’ll stop into Stringers after the Walmart pickup. I can get in and out real quick. Still trying to finish off Godzilla, and a runner has appeared on the OPPOSITE side of the house. Like, it tunneled under the crawl space. Also, pokeweed laughs at Roundup.

Is there any reason not to plant bush beans in between onions?

I’ve got to find my cucumber seeds.

Jennifer, We have been having more fun than a barrel of monkeys with the girls. It has been the most wonderful 3 days, and today will be the fourth. Then, everything gets back to normal again as the work week/school week start up again tomorrow, but at least we got to spend some time together. The girls have been totally exhausted by the end of each day. Tim and I have been totally exhausted by the end of each day. See a trend there? lol. Having their youthful exuberance around just seems to infuse the house (and us) with more energy.

When the girls get home, they are going to have a big surprise this afternoon and I'll tell y'all about it later. I wouldn't want to ruin the surprise by having one of them walk in and start reading over my shoulder.

All of you who are looking for seed: buy what you can now, and save what seed you can save from open-pollinated varieties. If this is like 2008-2009 all over again, then it is the second year of the economic downtown that was the worst then and could be the worst this time around too because new gardeners planned ahead better and ordered seed online earlier the second year after having so much trouble finding it the first year. I already have a horde of seeds set aside for 2021, and now I'm going to start buying for 2022. It can be very helpful to be thinking ahead and preparing ahead of the curve. I went to look at Renee's Garden Seeds' website a couple of days ago just to see how they were doing, and I don't think I've ever seen so many varieties sold out before summer even arrived. It was just nuts. If I didn't already have a collected seed stash for Fall 2020 (remember you can grow a ton of root and leafy crops this fall to help you have fresh produce in the fall and winter), I'd be feeling somewhat concerned that I wasn't going to be able to find the specific varieties I want. Not that the world would end if I couldn't find my favorite varieties---I'd just grow other varieties, but prefer to have the tried-and-true varieties that I know I always can count on. In some ways, the run on seeds may worsen over the next month or two as people in the northern tier of states finally get some decent weather and decide to plant a garden in May or June. I'm not saying they'd have success from one started that late in a short summer area, but that doesn't mean they might not be buying up the seeds to try. Now that some stupid states are saying seeds are non-essential and cannot be sold in big box stores, the online seed companies are going to get even busier.

Nancy, Back in the year when our overnight forecast low of 50 gave us a surprise freeze and frost at 32 degrees, I lost virtually everything in the garden, including tomato plants that were knee-high. I did have about 4 True Black Brandywine tomato plants at the highest point of the garden that survived. In instant freak-out mode, I ran to the store and bought whatever tomato plants I could find. It was pretty late in the season, and I didn't have a lot of options, but I figured any tomatoes were better than no tomatoes. I did the same with pepper plants. Then, I came home, cut off the frozen plants at the soil level and planted new tomato plants in between the old, dead plants....so they alternated, dead plant, live plant, dead plant, live plant, etc. Lessons I learned: 1) It is good to not pull up dead plants by the roots because if they were old enough and well-rooted enough, they may resprout from the ground. My tomato and pepper plants both did, and because the root systems already were pretty large, they outgrew the newly purchased plants. 2) Any tomato variety you can find and buy is NOT better than nothing. We had a lot of hybrid varieties that produced reddish, roundish, baseball-sized looking things that claimed to be tomatoes. They had horrible texture and firmness (hard) and mealy flesh (yuck) and poor flavor. Their skin was tough. They were roughly the equivalent of grocery store tomatoes despite being grown in an organic home garden. Clearly they were bred for people who think any red round thing is a passable tomato and they weren't bred for flavor. They were bred for something else....and I suppose shelf life was that something else. To our picky palates that were used to eating a huge variety of open-pollinated tomatoes, those things were just horrible. They were fine, though, for making home-canned paste sauce or salsa because you add enough to those cooked products to make up for the poor flavor. Oh, and lesson number 3 was to never really trust the forecast, and to buy and use tons of frost blankets. I haven't lost a crop like that since then.

Larry, I need to go for a long drive in the worst possible way. I think it would be great just to get out of our little world here and go somewhere, anywhere, for any reason at all. Tim doesn't feel the cabin fever burning like I do, likely because he "gets" to drive to work in Dallas 5 days a week, but I haven't left our little area in more than a month, not even to go to someplace a close as Sherman or Denton Texas, which are maybe 50-60 miles one-way, depending on where we're actually going in those cities. Maybe next weekend we'll do that because the girls and I have science experiments and other fun already planned for today. I'm pretty sure Tim is going to mow the lawn while he has the chance, if it isn't raining. The last time I looked, we had a 20% chance of rain for today, so I think the odds are that he'll get to mow.

It was sad to realize it was Spring Fling day, but Tim and I had planned from the beginning to skip it so we wouldn't potentially carry Covid-19 germs from him, because of his work at an international airport, to y'all, so it wasn't that tough of a day for me....since I didn't expect to be able to attend it this year anyhow. There's always next year, so let's think positive and hope for the best.

Kim, I'm glad your green babies are resprouting. I started my tomato seeds super late because we were continuously under water for months, and then Tim dropped a whole flat of them while they still were pretty small in the starter flat. Many of them lost their labels at that point, so now I truly have no idea what I have. I saved all the ones that were salvageable, potted them up, and have plants that are a decent size now but most have a ? on the label where the variety name ought to be. I hope when I plant them that I don't plant only cherry types. lol. Mine are ready to go into the garden except they aren't hardened off. I will start that today. I had started it a while back and they were up to 3 hours a day when the cold came back. Since I already had so many other flats of other plants outdoors that needed to be carried back indoors on the cold nights, I stopped carrying out those tomatoes and figured I'd just start over with hardening them off after the cold weather was done with us. So, I think the cold weather is done with us now, and I'll start hardening off the tomatoes again beginning today. The hardest part, though, is that we are staying mostly cloudy, so they are going to be hardened off more to cloudy/partly sunny weather than fully sunny weather.

I bet you are having fun gardening with the kids and grandkids. I'd love to do that, but am very hesitant to have our granddaughters out in our garden with all the timber rattlers and copperheads that we have around here. I'd rather be out in their garden with them in their city yard where apparently, so far, there are no snakes. We'll go into our garden to look at everything, but I spend my whole time out there watching their feet to make sure they don't step on a snake. If there was such a thing as truly snake-proof fencing, I'd pay any price to have it so I could make our garden safe for the grandkids.

I cannot imagine what your little man did to wear himself out enough that he needed 3 naps! I hope you enjoyed your 12-hour nap, especially since he gave you permission to take such a nice long nap.

Rebecca, I'm glad your plants survived the cold snap.

Thanks for the report on Lowe's. I'll continue to avoid it a while longer, though perhaps our country one wouldn't be as busy as one in the city. On the other hand, the Lowe's in Ardmore is the only one around for several counties. so people from some counties close to us (where there's a lot more coivd-19 cases than in our county) might be driving to it, so a person cannot just assume everyone there is safe to be around. When I'm finally able to step foot inside a big box store's nursery/garden center again, Tim's not going to be able to drag me out of there until I have a cart so loaded down with plants that I cannot squeeze in one more thing.

Texas is trying to reopen stuff as early as next week, so I'll be watching their news to see if another round of new cases starts appearing 2 or 3 weeks after they reopen more stores and such.

Jen, It sounds like the folks running your Lowe's had done a lot of preparation and planning and were ready to make safe shopping as little of an ordeal as possible. Kudos to them for that. The thought of a line wrapping around Walmart horrifies me, but it is the reason we aren't even trying to go to Costco or Sam's Club as I've seen their lines on the news. Our little country town Walmarts in this area probably aren't having lines like that or I think I'd see it on the news or on our FB shopping group where people share exciting news like "The Wal-Mart in Gainesville has toilet paper, bottled water and lots of meat!" or whatever. No one has even mentioned any lines anywhere, so I assume there aren't any. One thing I've learned from this group is that all the little mom and pop type stores in little towns scattered around the area have a much better supply of everything than the larger grocery stores frequented by large numbers of people, so I've filed that tidbit of info away from whenever I need something from a store.

Melissa, It is so good to see you here. I hope your husband and daughter can stay safe throughout this public health emergency. My daughter-in-law works at the hospital in Ardmore, although not on the floor where they have Covid-19 case, if any, or even the suspected Covid-19 cases they're waiting for tests to clear. I worry about her but she's doing fine so far. Your poor daughter---my heart hurts for her too. She is too young to have to see all that she is seeing now. I cannot imagine being able to handle that when I was 20.

The toilet paper thing is mind-boggling. We haven't had any trouble though. We shop at Costco, so as soon as I was aware of this virus, back when it was running through Wuhan rapidly in January, I started picking up an extra package of Costco's toilet paper here and there....maybe twice a month. I think I had 4 big packages of it stored away back when the panic buying/toilet paper drought set in. I gave one of them to our son and daughter-in-law for their family in March when the panic buying began because they couldn't find any then, and we still have plenty. I did not anticipate that there would be panic buying and toilet paper shortages (who could have foreseen that?), but I knew that the Kirkland brand of toilet paper at Costco was made in China, so I figured it would be in short supply at some point because of supply chain/distribution issues. I never expected it would sell out in panic buying. I just wanted to buy it while we could, and I thought that what I had would last forever. Now, of course, it won't last forever, but by the time we are running low, I expect the stores around us will be restocked again.

We haven't had any trouble buying anything we need or want, but we were pretty well stocked before the virus became an issue here and, at this point, anything that we don't have is probably something we can live without. Because my husband and our son both work at DFW International Airport and have regular contact with large numbers of people, I know that the odds are they will be exposed to Covid-19 and possibly bring it home to Oklahoma with them, so I tried to prepare in advance so we could avoid stores as much as possible and encouraged our son and his family to do the same (and they did). I sure do miss going to the stores though and, you know, your body is going to crave whatever it is that you did not stock up on in advance. If my horde of chocolate runs out, then a trip to the store will become mandatory. : ) I really, really, really miss being able to wander through nurseries and garden centers and impulse buy plants but just keep reminding myself that no plant that I'd like to have is worth contracting the coronavirus. Of course, on some pretty spring morning I will decide to risk it and just go shopping, but in the meantime, the less I venture out into stores, the better.

Jen, I agree about the proper usage of both masks and gloves!

Rebecca, I haven't tried bush beans in between onions so have no idea how they two of them do together, but think it always is fun to experiment and learn from stuff like that. Go for it! The only issue I foresee is that if your onions are done before the beans are done, you'll have to harvest the onions carefully so you don't accidentally pull up the bean plants at the same time you pull up the onions.

Dawn