Marleigh, I tried to warn my son about purchased soil, but he had a plan to get his garden built (they moved into this home last Spring, too late to start a garden) right that minute and didn't listen because he is too impatient. He has great sandy soil in the yard itself and it probably could use some clay blended in with the sand to hold moisture better, but instead, he has a cute raised bed potager garden with clay/compost-filled beds on top of a yard filled with pretty fast-draining sandy soil. A local nursery in Ardmore (that we never used because it was too pricey for our budget) was bought by Marcum's a year or two back and I hoped they'd have quality soil, but apparently they do not, based on what his purchased soil from them looked like.

I hope you were able to get your planting done.

I didn't plant because hail was in the forecast and, right now, it has been hailing in the county just to our west but those storms are moving NE and will miss us. So far it has been only ping pong ball sized hail, which certainly is bad enough. The larger hail is a threat as the dry line moves across the state, which is expected to be in the afternoon down here.

I hope to plant as early as tomorrow if the torrential rainfall misses us. Overnight there was very heavy rainfall a couple of counties north of us and I was worried it would come south and get us, but it didn't. Hurray! I know we'll want this rain this summer, but we sure don't need it now. We already have mosquitoes the size of small aircraft everywhere, a legacy of the nonstop rain from Jan through March. The minute you walk outside, you are enveloped in a cloud of mosquitoes that follow you everywhere. The heavy rain has missed us the last few times and that is helping a lot in terms of soil drying out. I feel like the raised beds finally are just about dry enough to make the soil workable and I will plant tomorrow, whether it is workable or not because I really cannot wait any longer after today.

Jennifer, This is what a pandemic feels like in 2020. I try to imagine what it was like for folks in 1918 when life was very different from today and news traveled more slowly. How much did they know in advance? Did the flu pandemic hit like a tornado out of nowhere? Did everyone have enough food stored already? I mean entire communities, not just families? Were they ready? I know from reading John Barry's book that it did hit some communities very suddenly that way and, if my memory is correct, they didn't even close down the schools because they didn't know that such a thing would help. It had been 100 years since the last big pandemic (sound familiar?) and people had forgotten how well quarantining could work if implemented, so most didn't do it, and many millions died. Hopefully we are making smarter moves nowadays.

People dropped in? At your house? So folks aren't doing social distancing?

Down here I feel like everyone is being really, really good about social distancing, and we hardy have any cases at all....just 2 so far, and I understand neither one had to be hospitalized. I know people who haven't left their homes a single time since they told us to stay home. I am not one of those, but I've been pretty good about how little I've been out. There have been a lot of suspected cases that did not test positive in our county and I hope it stays that way.

It is allergy season and everyone I know is miserable with respiratory allergies, and hoping that all they have is allergies. You know, in allergy season we've never before had to ask ourselves if this is our allergies or something worse---we knew it was allergies. Now people will start feeling crappy and coughing and start wondering if they've coming down with the virus.

Rebecca, Technology is fascinating, I agree. That is horrible about the hail. We just got our roof replaced last summer because of previous hail damage, so I hope the hail doesn't get the new roof.

I imagine your eggplant will be fine if it still has any foliage left. Was it completely cut off like a cutworm got it? In that case, if there's no leaves to conduct photosynthesis it may or may not come back.

The overnight storms missed us, but they've been firing up to our immediate west all morning and moving into parts of our county at times. The storm spotters are quiet though, so far, and that's a good sign.

I hear thunder sporadically but believe it is from the storms in two adjacent counties, one to our west and one to our north. The skies here are pretty dark and it is kind of windy. I imagine the weather will get worse before it gets better.

Have a good day everyone and I hope the severe weather misses you and your gardens.

Dawn

The cats and dogs are driving me crazy. This weather is making them nervous. I finally put the kittens upstairs when I finished my earlier post because they were being destructive demons downstairs, and now they can play to their heart's content in the girls' room, and I have peace and quiet downstairs. The straw that broke the camel's back was that one kitten went into the kitchen, jumped up onto the counter and turned on the water faucet. Not intentionally. Then it came running to me in a panic because it didn't know what the heck it was doing and where the water was coming from. lol.

Larry, It is such a relief to know that you're not going to be in danger of having to till your garden any time soon. Why can't that rain miss you for a week or two and give you a break? I hope the tiller doesn't die of old age before you get to use it again.

Amy, I hope the hail at your daughter's house was small and didn't do too much damage.

When I talk about people overfertilizing tomato plants, I'm mostly referring to the ones who over-feed with Miracle Grow and similar water-soluble fertilizers, figuring if a little is good, a lot is better. So, they feed too much and they feed more often than the package directs. You'll recognize their plants by late Spring---huge monster plants that rarely produce a ripe tomato until fall because they're too busy growing into tree-sized plants with incredibly thick dense foliage. Often the foliage is an unnatural sort of dark green with almost a blue-green cast to it. It reminds me of a farmer's field that has been fertilized with anhydrous ammonia and suddenly is just the most unnatural-looking green compared to unfertilized fields around it. I think it would be almost impossible for a person using organic fertilizers to overfertilize tomato plants because the N-P-K values are so low in the organic products.

There was a guy who lived near us once, recently retired and moved back to OK to live on inherited family land, who had the most beautiful tomato plants I've ever seen. They were each (all 3 of them) spaced about 12-15' apart, were huge....like big fir trees....probably 10-12 feet high and about 5-6' in diameter, with thick, very dense foliage and it was very, very dark green. They were simply beautiful all summer long. No flowers. No fruit. Nothing. Nada. Too much nitrogen. Now, call me crazy, but I prefer less beautiful plants that are not as ornamental but which do actually produce tomatoes. Maybe I'm just weird that way. I have noticed that the heavier the load of fruit on the plants, the worse the plants look over time, but I'm okay with that---it means the plant energy is going into the fruit, not into the foliage.

Rain makes me depressed too, at least when it falls when we don't want it and/or don't need it. Or if it is falling nonstop like it did at our house all winter long. On the other hand, I love rain in July or August, assuming it isn't a flooding rain. Right now? Any rain is too much and not really appreciated by us gardeners. If only the rain would come when it should.

So far, nothing here, just clouds and noise. I think the dry line has to get closer to us before the storms will fire up. At least that is what the weather guy was saying this morning. Unless things have changed, he said any rain here this morning would be just a warm-up to the main event, which is the storms that will fire up as the dry line progresses more southward and eastward. I'd be okay if no storms fired up.

Mia, I've always liked Dixondale's onion fertilizer. It is just a 1-2-1 ratio (a 10-20-10 unless it has changed lately) but it also includes a lot of micronutrients that I think make a difference. I'll link it in case you want to see what it has in it.

A farmer friend of ours here just used pure nitrogen lawn fertilizer on his onions and had nice big onions every time. I asked him one time what kind and he said he just bought a cheap pelleted urea lawn fertilizer like you'd spread on the lawn with a fertilizer spreader. I believe he incorporated the pelleted fertilizer into the soil before planting. I'm not sure about using that sort of product once the onions are up and growing because the pellets might have so much nitrogen that they could burn the plants if the fertilizer is broadcast spread and touches the foliage at the ground level. I "think" he was using one that year that was 46-0-0 because onions are nitrogen hogs. Remember that it is the number of the leaves and the size of the leaves that ultimately determine the size of the future onion bulbs, and that is why he went heavily with a urea fertilizer. He did the same with corn, but not with broadleaved plants.

Dixondale Farms' Onion Fertilizer

The dogs are outside wanting to come in. I want them to stay out as long as possible because the minute it starts raining, they'll suddenly want to go out and play in the mud. It happens every time, and I'm determined they'll stay out now until it starts raining so they cannot whine about "needing" to go out once the rain starts.

I brought in the tomatoes and peppers that are in flats. I left the flowers and other miscellaneous plants in flats outdoors hoping they'll benefit from the rain, so I hope the hail misses us. Here in OK, there's a limit to how much we can protect our plants from the inevitable hail anyway.

Dawn

Mia, I use Dixondales onion fertilizer. I need to use it more often, though. I like how Dixondale sends reminders to fertilize.

Dawn, yes, people dropped in. We were all outside...and they didn't stay for long (other than HU, but he's like family now, but he also stayed outside as well). One guy brought a ton of meat over for Tom to smoke. Tom is already around this guy some because they work together, although they are required to wear masks as they are going into their individual offices...and as they are leaving. They didn't touch each other. He just dropped off the meat and left. Some other people stopped in and took tomato plants. Once again, no one touched or hugged and we were outside in the sunshine. Our neighbor gave Tom a ride to get the water heater. So they were close to one another in a truck. HU and Tom and Ethan ate dinner outdoors. I didn't hear anyone coughing or sneezing.

However, we were around each other and if the virus just...falls off of us through breathing or skin cells, I guess there could be a problem.

I admire those of you who would do without hot water because you wouldn't go to a store to purchase hot water. I'm just not that admirable.

AND...I get a little worn out when I hear (like the guy who came to my office and stood at the door in a mask just now) who says people aren't socially distancing because people are driving down 89th street...and he was criticizing people for being in Lowes. However, HE had to go because he needed something. It's funny how everyone's trip to a store is more important than everyone else's so they justify their need for a product but everyone else is being unsafe. Anyway, I'm like...all those people are alone in their cars, probably doing what you're doing--coming/going to work. OKC is a BIG city. And the biggest places that spread disease are closed: movie theaters, schools, churches, concerts, sporting events, restaurants, bars, clubs, gyms, museums, zoos, all types of social clubs--ALL closed, So, people are socially distancing.

And I am not ready for those things to be open again. I think they should remain closed--until when? I don't know. How long is long enough to prevent the second wave that everyone's talking and posting about? 6 months? A year? Longer? I am glad that we are probably off-the-hook from visiting my sil and bil next month because he is one who posts a lot about the second wave of the spanish flu. (It's funny because his son thinks most of this is being used for political things and watching their exchanges is uncomfortable, but interesting.)

I don't think we got hail last night...and I was up most of the night until about 4 am. But, we might have gotten some this morning. I don't know because I'm at work. Alone, other than the grounds keeper who stood at my door and talked to me wearing a mask. That hail they were showing on the news last night was scary!

We didn't have standing water on the new garden when I walked the dogs this morning, but we probably do now. It seems like we got a lot of rain last night so I'm surprised about that.

I really am hoping that I can plant all of the tomatoes and herbs tomorrow. I need to get focused. I'll leave the peppers for another week or so. I'll probably also tuck in the Armenian cuke seed and the gerkin one too. I'm going light on that seed though. Very light. I don't need a jungle of Armenian cucumber vines taking over.

Speaking of...does anyone know if Pennsylvania Dutch Crookneck squash vines are as intense as Armenian or Seminole? Wondering how lightly I need to go with that seed. I still have so many Seminole pumpkins left that I don't want a huge harvest of winter squash. Just a few. And I don't want their vines taking over all my other plants.

I just have a few more tomatoes to give away. Hopefully my sister and another friend will come get their plants tomorrow. And we will stay outside and not touch each other.

Well some wind and hard rain is just now coming through here. I tied up my 7 tomato plants this morning because the wind had already beat them up pretty bad.

I got 12 of the Baker family tomatoes, and about 20 or 25 bush beefsteak tomatoes potted up before the rain ran me back into the house. I still have more potting up to do but I am running low plastic containers to put them in. I may have to sweet talk Madge out of solo cups.

Dawn, my tiller may die of old age before I get my garden tilled. I tried to go no till a year or 2 ago, and I dont use my tiller enough to keep it running properly.

Hmmmm. Gardening is obviously not happening today for most of us. No hail here, and I am so happy about that. So what's a person to do? Why clean the house from top to bottom--right? Uh, no. As Garry pointed out, it'll just get dirty again. LOL I believe I'll dust, and sweep the floors. And wash the two loads of clothes. And that, I think, will be enough of that nonsense.

I was alone at the school yesterday to plant. It was very peaceful, though I do miss visiting with Suzanne and touching base with John about the garden plans and progress. I am so happy all the beds are finished now--for this year, anyway. But I got more done yesterday being alone. I got nearly 4 dozen plants in (tomatoes, basil, peppers). I spent the first 90 minutes just taking stock of previously planted things, making a detailed map of where things are, and tying labels to some things, instead of just mini-blind labels stuck in the ground next to them. This way, John and Suzanne will actually be able to see what all the plants really are.

The frost got the first round of tomatoes, as I said. But after what Dawn said, I took a careful look at them yesterday and I'm pretty sure they'll spring back. (I pretended like I don't think they will, however, and planted another ten. heh heh. . .so they'll probably end up with 20.) I might try to squeeze a few more in--but I am fast running out of space there! I still have green beans, okra, watermelons and cantaloupe-type melons, squash. . .

The big round bed initially was going to be nearly all flowers--natives and good nectar plants, but I think now I'll mix in vegetables and herbs, as well--bush beans, peppers, Burgundy okra. I'll put the climbing "okra" on the outside fence where I'd solarized an area, along with the yard beans, mouse melons, and ornamental gourds--if there's enough room. So many things need trellised! I guess I'm going to have to figure that out. I loved the idea of cattle panel arches between some of the beds, but because the beds are arranged in a "pie wedge" design, might be hard to do that.

One thing I did realize with this, is that there WILL be a second garden beginning about August 1. I've avoided that at our house, but it's going to be actually necessary at the school. Collards, kale, chard, lettuce, spinach, carrots, beets, squash, cucumbers; maybe brussel sprouts, cabbage.

I've enjoyed the discussions of soil--and the crummy soil some are having, because there is certainly some of that at the school, too. We were so exasperated by the enormous load of cheap stuff we got from Orscheln's. Trying to break up those clods probably extended our labor by 50%, at least--that was with 6 of us working. And still when we finished, it was a tough go planting things. We did exactly what you said, Dawn. We had that rough stuff and then topped it with a thin layer of good soil and Black Kow. And underneath all that is all kinds of stuff. Moldy leaves and partly broken down mostly field grass compost, wood chips, cardboard, old firewood.

I also enjoyed the enlightenment about the nitrogen and tomatoes. . . and onions. I might have messed up, here in our garden. I planted the tomatoes next to the onions. Ah! No problem. The tomatoes are still small enough that I can move them further away from the onions; then will fertilize the onions and try to keep it localized to just them. Think that'll work?

I grew some super looking tomatillos for the first time. They're big and robust and were even beginning to bloom. I kept two here and took three to school.

I hope my post doesn't show up 2 more times. I hit submit just as Windstream shut down a while ago. I didn't lose my post, though, emailed it to myself.

Jennifer, Well, it can spread through breathing as people can spread it without ever having a cough, so let's just hope no one who stopped by your house was an asymptomatic carrier. I think the odds are low that they were, but then we never know.

A friend of mine posted a message today that a friend of hers died in central OK of the coronavirus---they never knew how she caught it as she didn't travel, didn't have contact with anyone known to have it, stayed home and was very careful, etc. I read her entire message and the linked newspaper article carefully. She did everything she could to stay safe, and it didn't prevent her from getting it....which is so frustrating for her family. They are just devastated by her death as she, like so many others with Covid-19, had battled it for a long time and seemed to be getting better, and then--BAM---she went downhill and died rather suddenly when they were expecting she was close to being released to come home. She probably was exposed to an asymptomatic carrier but they'll never know and I think that really bothers them. They have been campaigning big time for everyone to just stay at home and spare themselves and their families from a similar experience. I believe she was in her 50s, and wasn't considered high-risk or anything.

We have had people come by here one time---a friend of Tim's came over and brought his son and they tried to help Tim get the balky water pump off the pickup truck so he could replace it with one that works. We didn't have exactly the right tool (we do now) and they didn't stay long, but I stayed indoors anyhow because one of them was down visiting from central OK where there's so many more cases than we have down here.

This weekend we are supposed to go a drive-by birthday parade for a friend's birthday since a party is out of the question, and it is going to be the hardest thing in the world to stay in the vehicle, but we'll do it.

I think if our hot water heater went out, we'd order one online and have HD or Lowe's deliver it, or we'd pick it up at the store if they aren't delivering now. I couldn't live long without hot water either because hauling a stewpot of hot water up the stairs to the bathtub would get really old really fast...like after one trip.

I noticed with great interest that Gov. Abbott in Texas wants to reopen in early May if not sooner, and the Dallas County Commissioner's Court ignored his wishes and extended their stay-at-home order through mid-May, setting up a power struggle or a battle of the wills about who is in charge. Clearly Dallas County, with just slightly fewer cases in one county than we have in the entire state of OK, knows the strain their medical systems are under and aren't ready to reopen society yet. I hope the governor respects that.

Sitting here under a Tornado Watch, I was contemplating what we would do if a tornado hits a town. I KNOW what Oklahomans will do---they will disregard social distancing and rush to help. Who wouldn't do that? Tim is not responding to general medical calls but we would go out if a tornado hit. To me, the immediacy of a tornado emergency and just plain human decency would override any governor's stay at home order. Would anyone pay for it later in terms of contracting the virus? Who knows? It is just a risk you take if you're a first responder.

It IS true that people believe their trip to a store is okay but everybody else's is not. That just is human nature though and you cannot change human nature. I imagine it is incredibly scary to work in any retail store that is open right now and the employees must be very fearful of contracting the virus just because they have so much contact with so many people on a daily basis.

It is impossible for us to know when the second wave will come. If China had been totally open and honest, we could extrapolate from their experiences but they were not and are not. They are claiming they have a second wave now, but people who watch them carefully say their first wave never ended. In the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918, the first wave began early in the year and ran into the summer months. The second wave arrived in the fall. There really was not much time between waves, which surprised me. In this case, the second wave was much more deadly, but it is hard for the researchers to know why, though they have been able to exhume some bodies and extract the virus to study it. What they cannot know from studying it 100 years later is why the second wave was worse---did the virus mutate to a more lethal form? Was it deadlier become it hit people at the same time as regular seasonal flu and colds and all that was too much for their bodies? Was it deadlier because people over-reacted and over-used the new wonder drug, aspirin? Does that explain blood pouring out of ears, noses and mouths with that pandemic, especially in the second wave? We don't know what happens with this virus because each one is unique. I'd like to think that since the first wave hit Europe before it hit us, we'll see the same with the second wave and maybe get a bit of advance warning but who knows.

Ooops. I am getting an unofficial heads up on my fire app on a local tornado, though no actual tornado warning has been issued by the NWS. I need to get off of here and figure out where it is because my radio is silent and I don't know what they are talking about.

Back later.

Probably headed to the hidey hole.

Dawn

Dawn, not sure exactly where you are but terrible storms in your area. Please check in later.

I am here. Thanks for thinking of me. I am getting info on my fire radio and fire dept phone apps. The one nearest us is still a good 15 miles NE of our house and nowhere near us. It is very close to the Carter County/Love County line. We're way down in southern Love County. There are three tornado warnings in a row all along I-35 moving east of it and our son's house is sandwiched in between the second and third. I have sent him messages and neither he nor his wife are responding, so they're probably sheltering right now. I have a meat loaf in the oven that has to come out in 20 minutes, so I'm hoping a 4th tornado doesn't pop up down here along the river until my meat loaf was done. I am cooking dinner early to beat the storms, and I almost succeeded! I'll let y'all know after it is over, but right now we have sunny blue skies and it is insanely hot and humid at our house, so the atmosphere is juiced up for a tornado to pop up quickly.

By insanely hot, I mean that the temperature went from 82 to 90 in less than an hour. Maybe in less than a half hour. I think we have compressional heating where the thunderstorm cells/tornadoes to our north pushed the heat down here to us. We were forecast to hit about 79 or 80. The good thing is that the storms sucked up the moisture in the air, and our relative humidity and dewpoint dropped like crazy all at once, so now we are 90 degrees but with a heat index of 87. The storm that we were most concerned about now is headed towards Madill in Marshall county. Our power and satellite are flickering though, so something is disturbing them.

You okay, Dawn?

Sorry, I see that you've already replied. I just turned on the TV and they're talking about Madill and screaming at people to take shelter. Glad you're okay.

We're good, Jennifer. Madill is not good. Took a direct hit and at least 1 fatality reported so far. Unfortunately the tornado seemed to travel eastward right along Hwy 99 near or in Madill. We sent an ambulance and medics from our county to help them but there's not much first-hand news getting out yet.

The local news channels still are busy warning folks as all three tornadic cells keep throwing off hail and funnel clouds as they move east. I believe they mostly are all east of Hwy 75/69 in OK now, so are more of an eastern/southeastern OK issue now. A fourth storm just went tornado warned along the Red River. Tim has been watching it in the sky from the highway and I've been watching it on the radar ever since it popped up just south of the river near us. It is well east of I-35 too now, and in Grayson County TX or moving further east into Fannin County TX and approaching the Hugo OK area. So, while the danger is gone for our little region, it still is bad further east.

At our house it still is blue skies, lots of heat, sunshine and strong winds. For a while, I think we had outflow boundary winds because they blew like crazy shortly after Madill got hit. We got zero drops of rainfall out of this and I should be rejoicing about that, but it feels wrong to celebrate when you know the storm that missed you hit someone else.

I finished cooking dinner, and we are going to eat early instead of spending the evening in the tornado shelter, which is a nice, pleasant change in expectations. Tim just walked in the door after trying unsuccessfully to leave work early enough to get home ahead of the storms. He didn't get home in time because the storms began about 60-90 minutes earlier than expected here, but they all were east of I-35 by the time he was driving up I-35. Our biggest worry always is him being on the highway and getting hit by a tornado, but today will not by that day.

Thanks, y'all, for watching out for us. We don't get much tornado action here, but we're always watchful too.

Dawn

We are just on the north edge of something that is pushing a lot of rain in on us. The TV is out but still have power.

I finally just now figured out that all the posts are backwards; newest ones at the top. I'm going to have to figure out how to get the oldest at the top again. Anyone else having this situation?

We lost the internet a few times today. I don't suspect we got more than 1.5". but it was really quite chilly. I didn't get the floors swept. :). I read most of the day, as did Garry. I'm trying to learn to relax more; I must say, I think I'm a natural. My reading WAS, however, good stuff--a lot of it about gardening stuff. And a lot of it was about how hugelkultur, permaculture, lasagna gardening are like current fads not based on science.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I wonder what this source would have suggested I do to garden--since I can't dig down. I will continue reading this but am highly skeptical about certain things more than ever now. LOL

Larry, I was hoping the rain would stay south of you.

We went through all those hours of tornadoes and wind and didn't get a drop of rain here. It was our lucky day.

Nancy,

All the posts still show up in chronological order for me. There probably is a way in your Houzz settings that you can change the order of the posts to something like "show newest posts first" or something, but I've never gone to settings and done it, so I'm not sure. It might be under "Your Houzz".

You can read about gardening until you're blue in the face and all you'll find is conflicting information and you have to wade through it all and decide what to keep and use and what to throw away. I don't care what any of the so-called experts say about any technique. I'm always going to use what has worked well for us and what makes the most sense in our particular situation. Everyone has to start out where they are on the property where they're growing and just take it from there and do what works for that location, its climate, its topography, its soil, etc.

I look to the way that Mother Nature builds soil in our woodland because nobody goes into the woodland and does anything there---it is all nature-driven over the years and decades and the most beautiful soil on our property is, always has been and always will be the woodland soil. Mother Nature isn't writing any books telling us how to build soil or gardens, but she does it by example. All we have to do is watch how she does it. How does soil build naturally in an area like what we have---in our case, mostly woodland? Everything...plants, plant parts, trees, even animals, insects and birds eventually dies and falls to the ground where it all then decomposes in place and builds the soil. That's it. Nature does what it does and soil just happens. The same thing happens in the grassland areas, but without trees to drop bark, limbs, twigs, leaves, and even whole trees onto the ground, the grassland soil never seems to get as rich as the woodland soil, at least not at our place, and it seems to build much more slowly. Maybe if we had native grassland that never had been a farmed, we'd see better soil there in the grassland areas, but this place was a farm for decades and the grassland soil was disturbed, used, and not rebuilt by anyone except Mother Nature. So, that's how we build and enrich our garden soil.....pile stuff on, let it decompose and let it work its way down into the layers of existing soil, and soil just happens. I don't worry about applying a specific name to it, as our focus is just on doing it. When Pat Lanza's first lasagna gardening book came out, I read it and liked it as I do like her writing style, but honestly, there was nothing new in the book---she was just replicating what Mother Nature has done for centuries and she gave it a catchy name. She was just using more layers of stuff than Ruth Stout had used in her 'no-work gardening' books decades before. Both methods work though regardless of the name given to them.

I also don't care for buying purchased soil, though plenty of people chose to do so because it is expedient. Why import more bad soil (purchased soil never is as good as the sellers say it is) that you also have to improve? I know it is a quick way to fill up beds, but I prefer improving the soil we have and letting the bed rise up from the ground on its own as the soil is built. My sole goal with regard to building the soil here is to leave it better than we found it when we moved here. Gardeners move away, they die, they get so old they have to give up gardening, etc., and yet the soil remains and does its thing anyhow. I always try to keep that in mind.

So, in a lot of ways, lasagna gardening is just an attempt to speed up that natural process that occurs in the woodland without human interference. Right? The thing about the lasagna gardening books I didn't like was the heavy reliance on bags of imported materials, but for most people, that's the way to get it all done in a hurry and most people are in a hurry and want instant gardens nowadays. Hugelkultur is about the same thing as lasagna gardening, just with wood-based layers that are just as effective as lasagna layers but which break down more slowly. I like hügelkultur because it teaches people to recycle natural materials which, in the past, would have been gathered up and put on the curb for trash collection and then would have ended up in landfills. I don't like hügelkultur because snakes love to get in those beds as you're building them and that can be nerve-wracking for the person building and planting the hügelkultur bed, but I like the beds you ultimately get from it, and the snakes do move on as the wood products decompose and turn into soil. I find both of those techniques preferable to the constant plowing/rototilling and disturbance of the soil used in commercial agriculture though. Nothing about most commercial, conventional agriculture practices is good for the soil.

As for permaculture, to me that seems like the more faddish thing. I understand the concept and principles and know what they are trying to achieve, but it is more regimented than what I want to get into. People who really get into it remind me of people who belong to cults as they become so overly focused on the system they're involved with and their names for it and so on and so forth....I feel like they can't see the forest for the trees sometimes. (grin) Still, building their guilds and so forth isn't hurting anything, so if it makes them happy, they should do it. They should not, however, try to shove it down my throat and some of them are sort of that way.

You end up with the same divergence of opinion when it comes to planting with natives. A lot of the plants that people refer to as native plants now are plants that came from elsewhere centuries ago, so who decides what is a native plant in a given area? The plant people can argue plant origins and such until they are blue in the face, and I'll just keep on planting what grows well here and nurtures wildlife here regardless of whether it is a true native, a naturalized plant, a relatively recent import or whatever. There's a place for all of it at our place. What I don't plant is picky, finicky, persnickety plants which need lots of care and extreme intervention to survive our summers. Ain't nobody here at our place got time for those sorts of plants that have to babied through the summer. Well, there's no place here either for imported and now naturalized kudzu that younger generations who grew up around it might mistakenly think is a native. I draw the line at kudzu. However, we have "native" grapevines, poison ivy, Virginia creeper and greenbrier plants that are just as invasive and bury everything underneath their rampantly growing foliage like kudzu does, so they can be just as much of a problem if you don't like the look of woodlands buried beneath large colonies of rampant vines. I've learned to make peace with the rampantly growing vines because I'll never be able to control 15 acres of them and at least they produce berries for the wildlife. I wouldn't have planted any of those vines on purpose, but they are here. I wouldn't have planted eastern red cedar either, and yet here it is taking over our state. We do what we can to keep it from taking over our property though.

I have read tons of gardening books, books about gardening with nature, gardening with wildlife, gardening with native plants, etc. over the decades and you can learn from all of them and take something from them that you will use, but you'll drive yourself nuts at the same time if you fall for one particular way of gardening and decide it is the only way. The same thing happens if you put too much stock into the writings of any one person. There is not one way to do it. There are many ways....and, if you laid all the garden writers end to end, they'd form a line that would wrap around the world, and they'd still never arrive at a single conclusion they all could agree upon. lol. You just have to do what works for you, and I think that you do that already. I do what works, and don't care what it is called. I'll tell you what Fred called it....he called it 'the smart way'. He didn't always like what I was doing or how I did it because it was so completely different from the conventional, plowing-and-chemical-reliant agriculture he'd done for decades, but as he watched our garden develop and produce over the years, he did determine it was the smart way because it worked for us, and he wasn't shy about saying I was a smart gardener. He also was always willing to give us old hay, manure, etc. that he knew would help us build and enrich our soil, even when he didn't bother plowing those materials into his own garden soil. He knew that I had found the processes that worked for us here, on this land, where we are and with what we had and that I did it without worrying about what everyone else around us was or wasn't doing. Isn't that what all of us want? To find the methods that work for us?

I don't read as many gardening books or articles any more because I have found that none of them are saying anything I haven't read or heard before--they just package the information differently so they can have catchy phrases or catchy ideas that will sell their books or their magazines or draw you to their websites or whatever. I'd really rather just be outside playing in the dirt!

Dawn

I hopefully have a boring day ahead. A bit of laundry, now that I have hot water and am not working in the office today. maybe a tiny bit of gardening. Some coop clean up. Some outdoor-porch exchanging of plants. Maybe some sitting too. Give my metatarsalgia feet a break.

The biggest reason we went to the store to get the hot water tank is that Lowes (and the manufacturer) replaced it for free because it was only a little over a year old. However, they wanted the old tank returned and so Tom and Neighbor did that. It may not have been worth the money for some people, but to us it was worth it to save that few hundred dollars.

Most people I've seen in Lowes have been careful about how they shop. I only saw one guy early on that was not. He didn't look healthy to begin with as he was on a riding cart and fairly young. He had two young kids with him and they were removing their masks and touching everything. Everyone else I've seen stays focused and careful. EXCEPT when everyone lost their minds at Walmart last week when the stimulus checks hit their bank accounts.

There are probably several reasons people bring purchased soil into their gardens. For me, I don't want to wait years to fill my raised beds....and I want raised beds. I don't have woodlands on my property and few trees. I do collect what I can. (It's sorta like when Blaze Baxter talks about how healthy chickens are free to run in her woodlands all day and forage and she doesn't buy feed for them, etc. Probably true, but, once again, I don't have a woodland on my property for my chickens to enjoy. Yet, I want chickens and I want fresh eggs. My chickens are mostly healthy. And, I am certain my eggs are healthier and tastier than store bought.) But, back to the soil. Like Dawn mentioned above, the less-than-perfect purchased soil can be amended too....and that is what I do. Even the crap compost from Norman. And that is what several of my beds started with. I have a young friend who goes to relatives' properties and digs and brings in dirt that way. Then adds compost. Raised beds are best for his family because he lives in town in a "normal" neighborhood. You must be very careful about digging and tilling on a property like that because of all the buried cables and wires and stuff. There is nothing in the world wrong with that. At all. One way isn't better than another straight across the board. Each person experiments and tries and sees what works best for them and their property. I like that. A lot. And I like to observe what others are doing and what is working for them in their situation. I hope to always be a person who is willing to learn something new...and able to keep my mind open. If you ever notice me developing a closed mind, please slap me.

Dawn, I gave my daughter 14 tomato plants. The boy friend said how many tomatoes are we really going to USE. He wants to give some away. She said I don't care, I want a VARIETY. She actually has a nearly perfect variety planted, 2 purples, 2 pinks, 2 hybrids and a determinate red.

I didn't plant, so it didn't hail here. And today it looks too wet to plant. Maybe late afternoon. Supposed to rain again tomorrow. Sunday should be good. Going to pot up today. And pull weeds.

One thing I have found out about gardening is that you may change your style, and goals as you get older. Mother nature can make you change your mind if what you are doing causes pain. I started out planting in the ground and working the soil by hand. I next started using raised beds. My best raised bed was one that I hauled many truck loads of soil from old, burned brush piles from the land that is my wildlife garden now (it now belongs to my daughter). I hauled many loads of good building stones from behind my mom's house, I had to dig them out of a hillside. I then hired rock masons to build half-moon shaped retaining walls to hold back the soil I had hauled from the brush piles. It turned out beautiful, but I had a ton of work and money in the project. I was in my 30's then and loved doing things like that. There is no way I would try something like that now.

We sold the house we had put all the work in, moved and start all over. The next beds were landscape timber beds, I was not so happy with them because I had a lot of trouble keeping the bermnda out of the corners and from going under the timbers. It seemed to be a lot more work keeping them clean and pretty. I moved back to the old home place about 20 years ago and started the old style of gardening and keeping it clean with a tiller and a hoe, which worked very well, but I had an artesian well to supply all the free water I needed.

I moved again about 14 years ago and I am doing things a little differently again. I have to use a lot more mulch now because I dont have free water, and my soil is different. I also making more changes because my body is about worn out and I cant work like I use to. I am expecting to plant my left over tomatoes in the wildlife garden. I will plow a furrow with a middle buster and plant on the edge of the mound made by the plow and dump compost down in the furrow. I experimented with this method and it worked pretty well a couple of years ago. I have no water in the wildlife garden, so I haul water in a 55 gal drum in the bucket of one of the tractors and let it run out into the furrow filled with compost, which at that time is covered with mulch. The water seeps through the compost into the root zone of the plant, and the mulch helps by keeping the soil cooler and to slow evaporation.

This method is a lot of work, but I thought that some of the people around here may want to have a few free vegges this summer if the job market is as low as I think it might be.

I potted up 40+ tomatoes yesterday, and 30+ this morning, and still have around 50 more to go. I will have more than I need in my two gardens. The neighbors and deer can fight over what ever grows in the wildlife garden. I plan to plant summer and winter squash, pumpkins, okra, peas, corn and beans over there also. I also have well over 2 pounds of flower seed to plant over there. I think that I counted 21 of my berry canes that are starting to grow, and all 5 of the elderberries are starting to grow.

Amy, I think a lot about what you said about Ron cussing the lawn mower. I have a lot of junk that needs cussing, but my memory is so bad that I cant remember the words. When I start crank on this junk some of the words start coming back to me, but my shoulders hurt so bad that I cant crank long. I am sure I am missing some of the most effective words, I must be because it takes so long to get all this junk running.

Well I rested long enough, I need to go check on what else has fallen apart.

Larry , you got almost as many tomato plants as I do.

When you need to remember how to cuss it only takes 4 letters.

sh** , he**, f*** , God d***, them's the usual ones.

HU

Jennifer, I cannot believe a water heater would go out after one year. How frustrating is that? I'm assuming they want the old one back so they can send it back to the manufacturer to figure out why it failed so early in its life? I certainly would have returned it as well. I believe every dollar counts and to me it would be a big deal to save a few hundred dollars.

Maybe the people last week in Wal-mart were giddy because they had money to spend? I hope they spent it well (and not frivolously) because I doubt the government has the money to bail out individual taxpayers again. I keep thinking of all the debt they are creating now that our children and grandchildren will be paying off forever via higher taxes.

You know, on a personal basis, I don't care when or how they ease the restrictions and 'reopen' the state. What we have had here has been a pretty loose shutdown anyhow, with people going pretty much anywhere they choose that remains open. So, how much worse does it get if more stuff is open? No one will know until they do it. I just hope people are careful, wear masks if needed or required, and try to maintain proper social distancing because it is the right thing to do to protect everyone until this virus is gone. If it ever really goes away, you know, because there is a chance it won't go away. There's a chance it won't come and go in waves...it may just stick around as a persistent, long-term problem.

I've seen people bring in huge problems with purchased soil, which is one reason I don't care for it. Huge, huge problems....like root knot nematodes in purchased sandy soil or sandy loam soil. Once you have RKNs you really cannot get rid of them, so they are a forever problem and they make raising tomatoes impossibly hard. In the old days when I was a kid and a young adult gardener, you could get rid of root knot nematodes by fumigating the soil with chemicals no longer allowed for that purpose and, truthfully, they needed to be banned as they kill everything in the soil, including beneficial microbial life. Those have been discontinued now, so all a gardener can do is repeatedly trap crop with cereal rye grass in the off-season. I believe if I had a garden and brought in root knot nematodes in purchased soil, I'd just have to pack up and move someplace else. lol. We have clay, though, and RKNs are a big issue in sandy soil, so I generally don't have to deal with them regardless. I've seen people bring in nut sedge in purchased loamy soil. Nut sedge is hard to get rid of except by repeatedly hand-digging it. We had it in Fort Worth in our St. Augustine lawn in black gumbo clay and it was a pain in the neck to deal with it. If a person doesn't bring in those problems, that's just less garden problems to deal with overall, not to mention all the wilt diseases that kill tomato plants and commonly reside in soil. If you don't already have those in your soil, you don't want to bring them in via purchased soil. I'd just rather start with the soil I have and fix its problems than to import soil with new problems.

When we started building the garden beds in our garden, we added organic matter, but not from our woodland. We bought peat moss (not a popular move but we needed to lower the pH drastically and it helped), bagged Black Kow cow manure, used our own home-made compost, and I had huge compost piles every year for that purpose, and used old spoiled hay gifted to us by Fred. That got the first few beds going. I wanted to be as sustainable as possible, and didn't like purchasing anything, but wasn't going to win the war with the clay if I didn't. Still, I'm not a huge fan of peat moss---it was just a necessary evil.

I didn't switch to using stuff collected from the woodlands until we'd been here several years and I was frustrated by how little the soil seemed to improve in drought years---it was like the drought years sucked out all the organic matter we'd added previously and left us right back where we started. It is one thing to know intellectually that it happens, and I did know that....hence, the old saying "heat eats compost" but it is another thing to witness it year after year. Once I started adding woodland materials, the bed-building got easier because I could add more in one year than the heat could break down, but we'd built probably 2/3s of our beds before I started doing that. I also added tons of bark mulch directly to the soil which will make people jump up and down and holler and scream and say that it is going to tie up all the nitrogen in the soil. Ha! It never has done that in my garden, and adding bark mulch directly to the soil and rototilling it into the beds fixed the soil in those drought years better than anything else I did. That sort of pushed me into using hügelkultur after that, because I figured why go buy bagged mulch to add to the ground, when I could just go into the woodland in winter and collect bucketfuls of deadfall and half-rotted tree limbs and such. For the last decade I just enrich the soil by mulching on top and letting it work its way down into the soil as compost over time as it breaks down. I wish I'd done that from the start. I had used hügelkultur back when we lived in Fort Worth and bought our first home in the early 1980s but had stayed away from using it here because snakes like it so much. Finally, I had to give in and use it to fill up the taller beds with hardware cloth bottoms that we built to thwart the voles and keep them from eating root crops. The other option would have been a dumptruck load of purchased soil and I wanted to avoid that route. We no longer have such a horrible problem with bindweed and other noxious weeds because we are disturbing the soil so much less than back when we rototilled. If I had known that no-till would have helped reduce the weed load so very much, I would have gone no-till right after we built each bed and never would have rototilled it and disturbed the soil like that again.

All of us have to work with what we have and I guess my distaste for purchasing soil ties into the fact that purchasing soil is not a long-term sustainable practice. Everyone cannot endlessly go buy soil from someplace else. There's not really a soil factory sitting out there producing soil for the world to buy, unless someone wants to buy a million bags of Miracle Grow soil-less mix or something. That's my main reason for fixing the soil we have instead of buying some and just fixing it after it is delivered---it is the most sustainable practice. It isn't perfect, but it means a person can start with what they have and fix it without buying soil transported from elsewhere and just as likely to need fixing anyway. I don't like importing compost either, though I have done it. I just prefer to compost at home and not import it. That way I know what is and isn't in my compost, and that matters when you are growing food crops. For a long time I mixed up my own version of Mel's 5-1-1 mix and filled containers with it, but it got to where it was harder and harder to find and purchase all the materials to do that anyway and I spent more time and money mixing up my own than buying bagged Miracle Grow to put into containers. I tell Tim that I got too old to work that hard mixing up and transporting the Mel's Mix to where I needed it one wheelbarrow load at a time. There's garden work that I did endlessly in my 40s that I am not inclined to bother with now that I am in my 60s, and mixing up a soil-less mix falls into the category. I loved it when I did it, and those days are long gone now and I don't miss them.

I cannot imagine going and digging up soil at someone else's place and taking it to our place, but I know people who do that. And, one of them did it by digging out his dad's pond bottom, thinking the pond bottom would be full of rich stuff that washed into the pond. It surely was not. It was clay-ey, mucky, and not in good shape at all, but he was gardening on top of a rocky ridge, so it was a better option than the rocks. In his case, it might have been smarter (though less sustainable) to order a load of soil from somewhere (no one down here has good stuff as far as I can tell) and start that way because he worked way too hard digging out his dad's pond bottom only to get crap soil. Know what? It was the worst crap soil, but plants still grew in it anyway. Just because it wasn't good and was far from ideal didn't mean he didn't have at least some success. Except with tomatoes. His tomato plants never set fruit. I teased him by asking if he'd ever seen tomatoes growing in ponds. : )

I cannot imagine you ever being closed-minded. All of us work too dang hard in miserable Oklahoma weather, climate and soil conditions to close our minds to any possibility. You never know when you'll stumble across a way of gardening that turns out to be the best thing you've ever done....all because you're willing to try something new. My first experience with hügelkultur in the 1980s had nothing to do with hügelkultur as I wouldn't even see or read that term for probably another 25 years or so. It had to do with me being thrifty. We had cut down an old dead tree and it was half-rotted and compost-like inside, so I couldn't just stack up all that wood and put it on the curb knowing it was practically compost already, not when I had a huge yard of black gumbo clay that needed improving in the worst possible way. Instead, Tim cut the tree limbs into shorter lengths I could carry, push, pull or drag and I buried it in the garden beds. I even built the sides of raised beds with it so it could enrich the beds further as it rotted. It was the best thing I ever did with our Fort Worth place as it really fixed the soil quickly, and I didn't have to spend a fortune on soil amendments. It was our first house, we'd just had a child---there was no money in the budget for amending the soil, and not much time because we both worked full-time, so hügelkultur was more of a desperation move to fix the soil without spending money or endless amounts of time gathering and adding materials from somewhere else, and it worked incredibly well. I'd love to have that soil again.

I've concluded there's no such thing as perfect gardening. We all just start with what we have, and do the best that we can from that point forward. I will say that as much as I hate dealing with red clay, I am grateful every day that we bought a place with clay and not sand because our neighbors who garden on sand have root knot nematode issues that plague them nonstop and that truly would drive me crazy. The best thing you can do for someone in that position is to convince them to stop fighting the RKNs and grow their tomatoes only in containers instead. I did that by planting tomato plants in containers, caging them and growing them. When my friends began losing yet another crop of tomato plants to RKNs and began hinting they'd love some home-grown tomatoes, I delivered to them several large containers with fruit-bearing plants growing in them, and some of those tomatoes were ripening already. That was the best way to show them what a difference it made to grow in containers, which they always had seemed reluctant to try. Sure, I could have taken them bags of tomatoes instead, but it was more sustainable over the long term to show them that they could grow tomatoes in containers instead of fighting the invisible enemy in their soil---a battle they finally figured out they could not win. They were doing the best they could with the soil they had, but it was as close to unfixable soil as any I've ever seen. There's a reason you don't see big veggie gardens growing in beach-like sand, and they finally came to understand that.

I also had a neighbor who grew a great garden in woodland soil...in the woodland. He got away with gardening in dappled shade for a long time because his woodland soil was so wonderful, but ultimately the trees got too big and he began losing the battle for sunlight. He moved his garden to a less shady spot. I think I would have cut down 15 or 20 trees and let the garden stay where it was because he had plenty of trees as it was.

Amy, I agree with your daughter that variety is best and it sounds like she has a really nice mix. Y'all know how I've always grown far too many varieties in the garden because I like having variety in the kitchen. When Chris offered me some of his tomato plants, how could I say no? Most of what he had was different from what I was growing from seed, so taking in his extra plants just meant more variety for us.

It is hot and mosquitoey outdoors but I've had a long break indoors and need to venture back out there. The mosquitoes are driving me crazy. I don't like spraying mosquito repellent on my skin, but I'll spray it on my clothing and that helps a lot. I'm using Backwoods OFF today, which used to be called Deep Woods OFF, which is 40% DEET and I hate the way it smells, but hate skeeter bites more. I remembered to stock up on it just before the coronavirus thing set in and turned us into virtual prisoners in our homes, but the 4 cans of it that we started out with will not last forever.

The day when I will venture into a store to buy something is getting closer and closer, but it probably is more because I am bored and want to buy plants than from any actual need to buy anything essential at the store. : ) I can pretend I need to buy OFF or milk or bread or something and that will be just an excuse to go to a big box store and look at the plants. Texas is getting really close to opening up again, but that doesn't mean we'll go hog wild and start going everywhere....because I think that is what many people will do and I don't want to be around all of them. We're probably going to remain extra cautious and mostly stay home for a few more weeks to see if the virus cases spike after the shutdowns are lifted. I do not want this virus. Not now and not ever. There are some indications that once you have it in your body, it never actually leaves, sort of like some other viruses like HIV or the type of herpes virus that causes shingles or whatever. No one can be sure yet, but people declared free of it who tested negative are testing positive again a month or two later and say they've never really felt well and haven't felt normal again even after testing negative and being told they were recovered. So, that makes me think it is better to be conservative and avoid it as much as possible. I think a vaccine for such a disease is an impossible dream.

Dawn

Finished planting out tomatoes and peppers today. Just a tiny bit more seeding to do and a few odds and ends to tuck in here and there and voila! The garden is done! (She says, laughing.) I collared all my plants, which seems to have deterred the cutworms for now, and the layer of straw mulch kept them from being totally squashed in the rain yesterday. Things were certainly wet, but not too sodden to plant, thank God!

I got to teach the boys about companion planting today—they seeded two of our four straw bale beds with a classic Three Sisters combo. The sunflowers they planted in February (hehe!) are growing like crazy. They accidentally planted them in a circle, so I think we may try for a sunflower teepee in the yard this year.

Also, Walmart has Promix in stores now! Since I haven’t set foot in a Walmart in months, this may not be news to anyone else. 😆

http://www.walmart.com/ip/PRO-MIX-Moisture-Potting-Mix-2CF-Compressed-Soil/325675412

—Marleigh

Larry, Ron calls it "sweet talking" it. I heard him in the garage today and when I opened the door he had a work bench pulled away from the wall and was having trouble pushing it back because things were in the way. He said he was just sweet talking it. He does enough cussing it will bleed over to AR and "bless" your junk for you. He has trouble pull starting things and has trouble with his right shoulder now. Years ago I was at the kitchen window when I saw a chainsaw sail over the back fence. The kids love to tell the story about the router that tumbled down the drive way and into the street. He can get very colorful when he's frustrated and unlike you he has not forgotten any of the words as he gets older. I used to blame it on the people he worked with. I could tell when he was around someone who cussed a lot, because it was worse. X-military were the worst.

Did I mention we went to tractor supply yesterday? I bought seeds (how does one NOT have dill seeds?) and we got dog food. I don't think I'd been out in a month.

I potted up some basil plants today. Why didn't I just direct sow, or at least start with solo cups? It was hot and I feel like I worked harder than I did. Marliegh needs to come finish up my garden for me.

I was so proud the kids covered the tomatoes before the storm with a tarp on sawhorses so they had no damage and not even soil splash.

Amy, I wish I knew about herbs. I think they would be fun to grow. Madge grew up in a household that used very little spice and almost no meat. I grew up in a household that believed that it was okay to eat anything you can get in your mouth, but we could not afford a lot of the finer foods.

I am glad Ron is blessing my junk. I finally got my tiller started. I put on a new carburetor and drained the old gas out of it. I blew out the old carburetor, I think it will be okay now. I dont use it often enough and the gas goes bad and the carburetor stops up.

I took a heaping bucket of compost to the wildlife garden thinking that I would just plant the rest of my tomatoes from the flat straight in to compost potting soil mix. That idea did not fly, the ground was so muddy that the tractor had a hard time getting the bucket of compost to where I wanted to dump it. It looks like all my work will be done in my south garden until everything drys out. I have to try to get some of this stuff in the ground, maybe Marliegh could come and finish my planting also.

I have no idea how I am going to get my pumpkins, squash, cucumbers and extra okra planted, unless, maybe, I can borrow some of Dawn's little boats.

Well, I need to go pot up some more unwanted tomatoes. I will be glad when my stimulus check come in so I can pay Madge for all the plastic cups I have stolen from her cupboard.

I'm so TIRED tonight! And damned right leg/hip! I need to go see a doc one of these days. . . but have been holding off because of the elephant in our country's room.

I'm not paying much attention to "back to work" orders. . . I began isolating before "they" told us to, and likely will for a good long time. I am right with you on the same page, have been from the get-go.

Also--laughing at you Dawn, about breaking out and going to look at plants. Planning that here, too! And GDW said he needs dirt. So we're going to sneak into Lowe's really early next week and sneak back out. The garden center is large, and I've never been in there when it was wall-to-wall people. And SHOULD we get there and find all kinds of people we'll leave, and come back here to Walmart or the nursery.

Dawn, I'm sure you'll remember when I first showed up here and we had only just built our raised beds, but I didn't have much money for the raised bed soil. You were so reassuring (and Bon). . . and so my entire gardening experience down here has been a hodge podge of sort of lasagna/modified hugelkulture. I've been very pleased with it--especially since we can't dig down here. You know all that. So what I was reading yesterday pretty much told me I'd done everything wrong, and now everything wrong at the school, too! I freaked a little bit--but I found myself being suspicious about the whole thing, not to mention feeling defensive. So seeing you go over again about your own experiences made me feel better again. Thank you.

Although I've been focusing on planting natives this year, mostly because I didn't feel like I had enough, there are so many exceptions that I'll continue to grow--especially since many of the nectar natives won't grow well here because of the lack of sunlight. But tithonia, zinnias, cosmos, among others do pretty good. Like we all know and agree--we have to go with what works best where we are. BUT when see beginning flower gardeners starting out. . . would love to try and steer them to an awareness of the importance of natives.

Oh my gosh. . . after yesterday's rough storms, I was very nervous about seeing the school garden. But I went in at noon today--guess what! The garden looked spectacular! Yay!

How many of you have grown Joe Pye Weed here? Filipendula? Probably too dry here for the filipendula in many places, but Joe Pye is native to here--should be great? Not so much on our property because of the shade. So I ordered the short Joe Pye, I grew both Joe Pyes and filipendulas in Minneapolis and they were the stars of the show up there. They were spectacular.

But I have to laugh saying I didn't have enough natives, since in the back of our property where Garry used the weed eater/whipper every summer to keep it from getting all brambly and jungly, it IS woodland. And found oh so many great natives back there. How I have loved my life down here, and not having an office job after almost all of my adults life, in the city. I've learned so much from all of you. I grew lots of various herbs, plants, shrubs, flowers up in the city--no veggies. Not in over 30 years. It was probably 25 years ago when I thought to do lasagna gardening. I'd read an article. I didn't have the time or energy to laboriously dig up sod. And so didn't! It worked great for me then and does now. . . well except for the Bermuda grass part. LOL

Larry. . . what herbs do you think Madge and you might like? I love my rosemary, chives, sage, basil, oregano, and thyme the most. HJ grows a lot of them medicinally, I think, as does Amy. Me, mostly about cooking.

I had hoped for a simple day, but it didn't go my way. oh well.

One of the friends who came to pick up tomato plants stayed for 2 and a half hours. We stayed outdoors and sat several feet away from each other. She is a woman who needs someone who will listen to her. It can be exhausting, but it's okay. I can do that for her. I

just didn't get some of my housework done.

About the time she left, my Mom, sister and niece showed up. (In different cars and we also all stayed outdoors and sat a few feet apart). Mom brought purple iris for us and my sister took her tomatoes. My Mom took her Tiny Tim. It was so good to see them.

This is a first for me. As I was sitting on the shop porch with my friend, I heard a scuffle in the chicken pen. From what I could tell, a hawk went into the chicken yard and sort of squared off with Jean Luc, who was "telling" the girls to get in the pen. So, when I was fully aware of what was going on, the hawk had flown over the chicken yard fence but was sitting right next to it. Of course, I flew off the shop porch and shoo'd it away and put them all in their pen. I'm so glad I was outside! Jean Luc is bigger than that hawk...but still!

I went to Jen's to trade out some peppers and purple iris (the Mom had brought) for raspberries. We visited for a few minutes standing apart while she worked in her garden.

I enjoyed all the visiting, but this introvert really needs a quiet day at home alone. LOL! Why does everything seem like so much right now?

Dawn, I agree about making your own soil better and composting. I do that too. I just need more than I'm able to make sometimes....to plant the amounts of things that I want to plant. I don't even fill the beds completely because they're often built on old compost so the soil is already better. AND if a raised bed is built in the fall, it becomes the current compost pile. But, I like to top it off with soil that I don't have really. It just seem like if I can get the soil above ground level, it drains better when we have these very wet times. And, quite honestly, we've had wet years mostly since moving here. We moved here in April 2014.

It is good to know that wood chunks in your soil does not tie up nitrogen. That is my main issue with the soil we brought in the other day. It was basically the chunky "compost" from Norman, mixed with a little something else. Maybe I won't worry about it so much then. That's encouraging. You're right...people certainly holler about that a lot.

I have empty spots in my "east" garden or "kitchen" garden or whatever I will decide to name it. Because it's had wood chips sitting on the empty spot/pathways, the soil is pretty good a few inches down. I have too many tomatoes, so will probably just scrape the remaining woodchips to the side and plant those directly into the ground.

From what I understand about Shelter in Place, it was meant to slow the number of sick people while our medical and healthcare prepared...it wasn't meant to keep everyone in their homes until the virus went away. I'm tired, so probably didn't word that correctly. There's still so much they don't know about it. Like, the herd immunity stuff. And, you wonder if it's been with us longer than we realize...and some of us might have already had it. I remember when you, Dawn, were so sick last fall. With Tim working at an airport maybe he...and you were already exposed. There were just some weird illnesses that people had at the end of 2019 and in January. Illnesses that just didn't fit the regular flu or even quite like a cold. But, that could just be a coincidence. Who knows.

Ladies, you won't be able to easily slip in and out at Lowes or HD. They have people stationed at the entrances of the nursey area. You are forced to walk through the store to the nursery. You may exit through the nursery, though. If you go early, there should not be the line you have to stand in before entering the store. I'll admit to going to many stores over the past few weeks...and they are pretty strict with the numbers of people entering.

Marleigh, let us know how your Three Sisters garden does. HU and I are trying something similar in the Survivalist Garden.

Larry, once you're used to cooking with herbs, it's hard to go back. It makes all the difference in flavor. Maybe start with a few pots of basics. Of course I know a few people who prefer plain food...maybe their palate is bland. Nothing wrong with that, either. I've often wondered if they have extra taste buds...and spice is just too strong for the. Sort of like with little kids. Children have more taste buds than adults...and that's maybe why they don't like spicy foods. As we lose taste buds as adults, we seem to like more flavor able foods. Maybe. I just remember as a kid LOVING Spaghettos, but my Mom rarely bought them. When I was grown, I was going to buy them and eat them as much as wanted. I'm grown afterall, right? Well, after the first can, I was out. They were so boring. But as a kids they were delicious.

And I'm rambling now because sleepiness does that to me. LOL.

Nancy, I have no idea what spices Madge would use. She has a spice rack with a lot of dried spices on it, but I dont think she uses a lot of them. Both Madge and I grew up poor

( and still are). My dad died when I was young, and mom did not know how to grow and use spices. She spent her time when she was young being mother to the younger brother and sister while her parents took care of the garden. They did not have the money to buy extra things, Granny grew spices to use for canning and maybe for a few other things, but that knowledge was not passed down to me. Madge and I have canned with a hot bath system, but not with a pressure cooker like my mom and step dad.

This year I want to grow more pumpkins, winter squash, sweet potatoes, and thing I can store easily. I have tried to go no till, but it is hard for me. especially sweet potatoes. No way can I dig any more, but I can drag the vines off with a pasture cultivator. which will drag a lot of the potatoes with the vines. I then get on my hands and knees and pick up potatoes tossing them into a pile, the damaged potatoes are tossed into a separate pile, processed soon and frozen. My pasture cultivator is 7 feet wide with 9 shanks ( plow points ) on it which I can run near a foot deep. A few passes with that and I think I can get most of the potatoes, the ones I miss become organic matter anyway. I would like to have a better way to harvest my sweet potatoes, but my digging days have passed, especially in the fall when the ground is as hard as a rock. With sore bones, muscles, and joints you cant get a lot of work done.

My two neighbor boys came down today to borrow a sander. I was so happy to see them, it is so much fun to work with young people. If kids knew how much old folks enjoyed seeing them they would come around more often, but they both knew we were trying to do social distancing.

Nancy, I meant to mention this yesterday. Recently I purchased a pair of Oofos sandals. They are a type of recovery shoe that is supposed to help people who have foot, knee, hip, back pain. They are a bit expensive, but I think they might be worth it. I only wished that I had bought the slides instead of the flip flop style. Only because I've not worn flip flops since childhood and my foot isn't used to it.

Hoka One One also has recovery shoes, but I haven't tried those. I will purchase their athletic shoes next time. They are expensive, but I hate having foot pain. I'm not much of a sitter and I know you're not either.

Raising children as a single mother in those days so often DID mean the family was poor (unless the mother's family had money). Garry grew up in that position, also, Larry--except his morning did remarry when Garry was in high school. His step dad was a good guy. I remember a few other friends who were in that position, too. My family was better off because both my parents were alive. But we didn't have much. But also, back then, most people just cooked a whole lot differently. Food was much "plainer," I think because my generation's parents (and grandparents) lived through the Great Depression. That and America hadn't yet had a big food awareness/revival/outgrowth. More of a meat and potatoes kind of generation, at least it was where I grew up. No fast foods, and my family never went to restaurants as a family. I remember Mom buying boxed pizza when I was a 15 or so. First time we ever had pizza. Chef Boyardee, I think. Mixed up the dough, rolled it out on a cookie sheet. and there was a small can of pizza "sauce" to pour over it, and dry parmesan cheese. Haha! It didn't taste all that great. Do some of the rest of you about my age remember those boxed pizza mixes?

For the most part, our standard go-to meal was deer steak, boiled potatoes with gravy, and iceberg lettuce salad (lettuce, carrots and celery). By the time I was in high school, my Mom was working full-time. My usual job when I got home from school was to peel the potatoes and make up the salad. I didn't touch boiled potatoes or iceberg lettuce salad with carrots and celery after I left home. I'm not a huge fan of salad to this day unless it's in a restaurant. For some reason then salad's great. Garry loves salad, though, so I make it 3-4 times a week, but have to put lots of goodies in it and have a good dressing in order to enjoy it.

I don't bake, so I use mostly savory spices. I was going to learn to cook Asian and Thai, and have a lot of the ingredients now. . . but haven't followed through well, because of Garry. He is a stick-in-the-mud regarding food. lol

Well, we woke up to rain, but it may let up now for a few hours before it comes back. The raised beds at the school are the only way we could have a garden there. The water table is so high and with the clay content. . . it would be so much more of a challenge--and there's a lot of Bermuda mixed in with the other grass/weeds. With the raised beds, no problem.

I was laughing at all my non-natives yesterday, Dawn! THREE different varieties of clematis, the hollyhock zebrina in one smallish bed. Then my giant hosta that I love, the astilbes, peonies endless summer hydrangeas, climbing hydrangea.. . . and on and on! Hahaha, and not really willing to get rid of any of those. Then the iris, the spireas, the day lilies, the Scotch broom, and all the herbs. Yikes. I AM going to take out the Scotch broom and day lilies. I'm glad I didn't get too much into them. Fact is, before this year, I had very few natives--and those were mostly by accident. Ha!

Thanks for the shoe tip, HJ. I will be sure to check them out. Your timing was spot on--I was just thinking I need a new pair of shoes. Oh also, re shelter in place, I suspect some of the most vulnerable groups will take it more seriously and for a longer time than other groups, don't you think? We don't get out much, anyway, so it's not a huge deal for us.

Later, all.

Jennifer! Do those shoes run true to size? I am loving the idea--think I must have clogs!

Nancy, I ordered a 7 and that is what I normally buy. My foot is actually somewhere between a 6.5 and 7.

I hope the clogs work for you. My advice is to wear them inside your house for a few days to see if they help and then try them outside, that way you can send them back if they aren't for you. I made the mistake of immediately going outside because the shoe felt so good. However, I would have exchanged them for the slide had I waited and realized I don't like the "thong" style. lol. Too late.

A lot of the people I see out, Nancy, are who I would put into the "high risk" category as far as age goes. But, people really aren't standing next to each other or lingering around. And no one dares to cough or sneeze. They're getting in and getting their stuff and getting out. It's honestly not comfortable to shop right now. It feels unpleasant. That is probably why people are just grabbing their stuff and going. This especially isn't fun when you shopping for flowers, which is why I haven't done that yet. I needed some potting mix, so took Ethan with me to HD this morning so he could lift it for me. They had a pretty decent sale on some of their flowers...so I quickly grabbed 4 because they were right there in front of me. I desired to shop around a bit, but didn't. I'm trying to do all white flowers in my front flower beds and pots along with plants that have that silvery green foliage.

Heres how I feel

right now. lol

except I’ve done surprisingly well with my food choices during alI of

this.

Spot on Jennifer

HU

Marleigh , keep me updated on the severe storm situation out there this afternoon.

I'll be over there in the morning.

HU

Zero storms here today. It’s been intermittently cloudy, but mostly just sunny and breezy. Haven’t had a drop of rain since before dawn, and the weather has revised us down to a 20% chance of rain at 8pm.

—Marleigh

Update: Just got a Severe TS warning along with some dark clouds. Thunder is still way to the south of us, but I’d guess Okmulgee proper is in for some rain about now.

Final Update: Warning is now cancelled. We had about ten minutes of hard rain and thunder, followed by light sprinkles for a bit. No puddles or serious water. Here and gone!

Jennifer, that is better than I feel. I found out yesterday that the fellow that leases my pasture has fed sprayed hay. He tried to tell where he fed it, but I guess he thinks that the cows poop where they eat. I collected a few pickup loads of hay and manure this morning and plan on testing for herbicide. I may be able to use some of it for border around my gardens. I scoop out the moats around my gardens every year or two anyway and refill them with organic matter. But still I have let the fellow about how I feel about some sprays. This wont continue, or I will stop leasing the pasture. He runs too many cattle on it anyway, I think I can sell enough hay to pay taxes and keep the place up anyway. I dont like renting things out anyway, I even had to run my own son off from renting my old house, or should I say just living there, he paid no rent and would not even mow the lawn. I just let the place sit now. Others have ask to rent it but I dont want the headache. I have told y'all before that I am a jerk, but my deadbeat tolerance is almost zero, and I have enough deadbeats in my family, I should be able to write a book.

Sorry about the griping, I just had to get it off my chest.

I do not have tolerance for deadbeats either so I get it.

if we were neighbors I would sneak over and help you. I love gardening with other people. It’s more fun than being alone. for sure

our okra is sprouting already and I just planted on Saturday. Some reason 9 days was stuck in my head for okra. I think it actuallycame up yesterday. Carrots, bok choy tomatoes potatoes are all doing great too

the kids are so excited about their first garden. As well am i

Amy, I'm glad you were able to get out, and you didn't have dill seeds because...hmmm...maybe you planted them all last year?

I never start basil from seed any more, having let it reseed all around the garden over the years. If I am patient, little basil plants will pop up here and there in May. They always do. I wish the whole garden would just pop up like that.

I'm planning on getting out and going somewhere tomorrow. I'm not sure where, but it will be fairly close to home. Since the DFW metro has thousands of cases, we would not choose to go down there to any of my favorite nurseries even though that's what I really want to do.

Nancy, I understand why you don't want to go to the doctor as there seems to be quite a lot of Covid-19 in your county. Can you call your doctor's office and ask about the risk of coming in for an office visit? They may tell you that they are directing all possible Covid-19 patients to go straight to the ER, by-passing the doctor's office entirely. I know some doctors are doing that in order to keep their office facilities safe for non-Covid-19 patients.

You're welcome. My advice is to ignore those books and believe your own eyes. What you are doing is working, your gardens both at home and at the school are a success, so have faith in the processes you use to build and develop them. Real-life experience is 100,000% more informative than books.

Marleigh, If the storm hit y'all, I hope you got nice, gentle rain and nothing damaging or scary.

Jennifer, I am glad you were outside and saw the hawk. They can be very bold. We have had hawks and owls go right into the chicken coop through the open door and, once, an owl broke through a skylight in the roof, but hurt its wing and couldn't pursue the chickens and they all got away and remained safe. We put the owl in an old turkey pen and rehabbed its broken wing until it was well enough to fly. That was our first or second year here and we couldn't get anyone around here (no wildlife rehab groups here then) to show any interest in helping that owl, so we just did it ourselves. Is it crazy to help an animal that was trying to prey on our poultry? Of course it is, but we have soft hearts.

Yes, the shelter-in-place was only designed to slow down the spread of the virus so that the hospital systems would not become overwhelmed and would not collapse. But, in order for that to work, people still have to stay home as much as possible, or shelter-in-place means nothing and accomplishes nothing. I think it largely has worked well in OK, or certainly well enough. We certainly haven't had tens of thousands of cases like some other states, and we are getting to reopen more and more for business-as-usual much earlier than some other places in the US will. Everyone should be prepared for us to have more cases as people get out more and more. It isn't that the virus is gone and that there won't be new cases, but just that it has dropped to lower levels so that there shouldn't be enough cases to overwhelm any given area's hospitals. Well, not in big metro areas. It doesn't take much for small, rural hospitals to become overwhelmed just because they are so small. As governors of various states reopen their states to more normal activity, they are betting the case loads will stay low enough that the hospital systems can deal with them. Let's hope the governor of each state is getting good advice from their public health people and are making the right choices. Nobody wants to be the next New York, Massachusetts or Louisiana.

I still have not fully recovered from whatever I had from late November through late December. I have very low energy, get tired more easily, etc. I just do not feel the same. I am firmly convinced that a lot of us have had this already sometime in the last 6-8 months. I'll go further and say this: remember the American tourists who developed strange lung diseases and dying while vacationing in the Caribbean last summer? Their symptoms were similar to Covid-19. Remember the strange vaping cases with damage to lungs that appeared to happen to only a couple hundred out of thousands of vapers in the USA? I think they had it, but since we didn't know Covid-19 existed, it was blamed on vaping. Remember the ESPN reporter, a young guy who died around Christmas after a long battle with pneumonia? He thought he contracted pneumonia while covering a college football game....in Michigan, I believe, and he was sick for months and just couldn't get well. After his unexpected death, they said they had just diagnosed him with some rare autoimmune disorder that made it hard to fight the pneumonia? They diagnosed that right before he died. Maybe they were wrong. Maybe what he had was Covid-19 but, once again, since we didn't yet know that it existed, they tried to explain what they saw in him as pneumonia exacerbated by some autoimmune disorder he never knew he had. They were doing the best they could to make what they saw fit in with diseases they knew to exist. Maybe all of it was Covid-19. Maybe the reason we lost so many people to the flu and pneumonia in the winter of 2019-2020 was that Covid-19 was here, mixing in with normal colds and flu and not being diagnosed as a separate issue. I know so many people who had something that didn't test as Flu A or Flu B, and seemed infinitely worse than the flu, and often was finally diagnosed as pneumonia or a pneumonia-like illness. Now, the question remains as to what all that means. If we had it months ago, are we immune now? They cannot tell us, but I know from researchers' work in China and Italy that I've read, immunity if conferred at all does not seem to last long---a couple of weeks to a couple of months. Some people who survived it once have died quickly after they contracted it a second time, though it is open to debate whether they ever really were free and clear of it, or if it just dropped to undetectable levels in their bodies and then resurged.

I think we are seeing a strange virus, too new to be well-understood, that will go down in history as a major issue that threatened people worldwide. It isn't (I think) that it will be as deadly as the Spanish Flu was. If that were so, the death toll now would be in the tens of millions already and headed for 100 million or more. It is that it has spread so quickly and is so highly contagious while simultaneously remaining largely asymptomatic in a percentage of the population and also that the measures used to fight it (closing down so many businesses and so much of normal life) are doing more damage to society as a whole than the virus itself is doing. The economic repercussions probably will be worse for society overall than the deaths, but by saying that I do not mean to diminish anybody's death---every person lost to Covid-19 matters and their death surely is devastating to everyone who knew them.

One of the scarier bits of research I'm seeing just this week coming out of New York where doctors have found that many of their patients did not run a fever, deceiving medical personnel into thinking they weren't sick or not sick enough to be hospitalized. They'll have to figure out why the fever is not happening. If everyone is using fever as a measure of determining if people can enter their store or salon or whatever and now we're learning many people never run a fever with us, where does that leave us now??? Oddly, I do not remember ever having a fever back in Nov-Dec and I remember sitting up on the sofa all night afraid to sleep because I had so much trouble breathing if I laid down. That went on for a month, and I got pretty good at sleeping on the sectional sofa (one corner of it has a recliner so you can be mostly upright but comfy), though it was really was a lot of sleepness nights filled with coughing and just bits of sleep here and there. Whatever I had back then did not feel like the usual cold, bronchitis, flu or pneumonia, and at times my lungs literally felt like they were burning when I was coughing. I never understood that burning sensation.

For those of you who are fans of the Tiger King guy, Joe Exotic was moved to the prison hospital at Carswell Joint Reserve Base near Fort Worth, and that place now has a major COVID-19 outbreak. They have moved several dozen to the county hospital for COVID-19 treatment, and have many more who are sick at the prison hospital. Their numbers are not pushing Fort Worth's numbers higher and higher.

Larry, Go ahead and say whatever you have to say. This is a safe place for venting frustrations because we all need to do that at times. I have almost zero tolerance for deadbeats as well....and there are some in my family too. I hope none of the herbicides have compromised the safety of your plants.

Oh, and you can borrow my little plant boats if you need them because it seems the weather pattern and changed and now all the rain is missing us in what usually is our rainiest months. All my plant boats now are beached on dry land. So, my weather is officially backwards for 2020---it rained like crazy during the 3 months that usually are our driest months and now that the traditionally wettest months are here, the rain is missing us every single time. This makes me think summer might be on the dry side.

Zero storms here at our house today where it is sunny, windy and warm, but we're watching 3 tornado warnings to our east, one confirmed tornado in Bryan County, OK approaching New Oberlin and two on the Texas side of the river a bit further east. Our local CBS affiliate is covering it live, wall to wall. The meteorologists and storm chasers affiliated with them are excellent and do great group coverage of these events. One minute I was watching reruns of The Big Bang theory and, then, suddenly, I found myself watching tornadoes live on TV. Doesn't that just sum up springtime in Oklahoma? The areas further east were under Tornado Watch but Bryan County wasn't. The Paris, TX, area has one confirmed tornado south of town and another one coming from the west. We rarely have tornadoes down here, but this week it seems to be our turn. Someone east of us there surely are people suffering tornado damage and/or damage from the large hail accompanying these storms. The best we can hope for, I suppose, is that the tornadoes will stay out in largely rural areas and miss the towns.

We had 11 tornadoes on Wednesday, with the largest one being the EF-2 that hit Madill. That's enough for me for the year. There are some spectacular photos and videos of the Madill tornado in particular. I hope the rest of our spring weather is quiet, but that's not a very realistic hope.

Dawn

Dawn! Okay! you go hit somewhere and I will, too. I know where I'm going. Can't go at 6, but maybe at 9. I can hardly wait. . . but like I said, if I see lots of folks, we'll retreat.

I remember your illness, Dawn, and thinking it doesn't sound like the flu...but was obviously more than the common cold. And I'm not saying the common cold isn't bad--it can be horrible. At least when I have it, I'm quite miserable...more so than the 2 times I've had the flu. A different type of discomfort. With the flu, you're given grace to stay in bed and rest. With the cold, everyone is like, "it's just a cold...carry on."

In my garden I'm happy to see the beans in the raised beds beginning to sprout. I suspect the ones in the new garden will very soon.

I planted the blackberry plants. And the eggplants.

And, several of the tomatoes. Oh, and the white impatiens I've had for awhile.

It was a pretty good day. The wind was horrible tonight, so I just came inside around 6:30. Didn't feel like dealing with that crazy wind.

Dawn on Wednesday’s and Sundays natural grocers opens early for one hour for immune compromised people to shop

So my husband needs a part for his mower that only Lowe’s has locally. I went along, hoping to get a browse in the nursery. It was total madness! Forty people in line to get in. How is it safer to stand in line for an hour with forty people when getting a bolt and checking out takes ten minutes? And how does one mow the lawn when it takes hours to get a bolt from Lowe’s?

Uh-oh, Marleigh. Not liking the sounds of that! Maybe I'll hold off for a while. Definitely will, in fact.

Inoculants. I had to read up on inoculants yesterday for my beans and peanuts. Do you all always use the inoculants? I happen to have some--it expires in "June 2020." I didn't realize I needed different kinds for them. . . but the one I have supposedly has both bradyrhizobium and leguminosarum (no idea if those are right and too lazy to look up). But it was a whole other thing I didn't know about! I am so glad I had some. . . I couldn't find any online except in large quantities or very expensive.

We just got the lawn mowed. Don't think I'll be quite as fanatic about keeping it mowed this year.

Some folks are taking over the restaurant at the marina (folks there last year didn't renew their lease)--what horrible timing for them. First the lake was flooded in Feb, March. Then coronavirus. We will be ordering from them once a week. And the marina is opening May 1 with the looser restrictions. We won't be going in, but will continue picking up orders. Their hamburgers are GREAT. Nothing fancy, but different from my own cooking one day a week (my rule is on lawn mowing days!).

Peanuts, bush beans, Meat Jaeng summer squash, Armenian cucumbers, Tigger Asian melon, and Hime Kansen icebox watermelon--planted today. Tomorrow I'll be planting stuff at the school.

End of April 2020 we have lots more hummingbirds than we have had for the past few. years. Has anyone else noticed this?

I just came in from working in the garden. I told Madge that it was sure hard to get motivated to push that tiller after you have come in and rested for a while. I hauled a bunch of mulch and put it on 1 side of each of my 2 gardens. I will plant some pea or bean seeds in it to check for weedkiller. I will plant some peppers and more tomatoes. I will not till most of the garden. I will just plant and mulch around the plants.

Madge went to see her older brother yesterday, and my granddaughter said that she and her mother were coming over tomorrow, I feel guilty about getting out or having company. I know I should not feel that way, but I want so much to do what is good for the country. I sure wish I knew what is best for everyone.

Well back to the garden. As slow as I am, I will still be working on that garden when Christmas gets here.

I have a broccoli buttoning. None of the others have anything. However, I can go cut kale buds and pretend it's broccoli. I think stirfry tomorrow, broccoli, kale buds, something frozen. Maybe I could stirfry all the lambs quarters I have to get out of the tomato bed. Hubby brought in some smoked salmon we had, wonder if that would stirfry. Otherwise, I have chicken in the freezer.

I put some collard babies in the ground today. It's late, we'll see what happens. I am thinking peppers in after turnips and spinach. Tomatoes go in the ground tomorrow. I didn't map everything out this year and I'm not sure what else I have to make room for. Okra? Yeah, in the bush beans? They should be sprouting tomorrow. Put up arches and trellis cucumbers, long beans, pole beans, squash along the edges. Rethinking peppers. I need to rotate to something totally different in one bed, so peppers there, and short tomatoes. So okra where the turnips are and maybe southern peas. Or squash on the ground in front of them. Sorry thinking out loud here, ignore me.

Caught Sasquatch standing in the lettuce.

Marleigh, I have no desire to go to lowes. I wonder if they'll loosen those restrictions soon? People outside are supposed to be 6 feet apart.

Yes I was really sick last winter, too, first in Oct and then in Jan. First time I had been to the hospital for a test, second...same hospital complex to see a doctor.

I want Margaret's goulash. I wonder if they are doing take out.

Random thoughts, I guess I should quit typing.

Garden looks surprisingly good after the deluge this week.

Amy, my broccoli isn’t doing anything useful yet.

Onions look good, and the topped eggplant is coming back. Spent most of my time outside today planting flowers. The plan was to work on planting okra and summer lettuce tomorrow, until...

I may have broken my nose. At the very least, I look like I got beaten up. Tripped over a bag of mulch. Did NOT drop the tomatoes I was carrying. Might let mom talk me into getting checked out tomorrow. The swelling and shiners are kicking in now.

Marleigh, some would say "they" are preparing us for bread lines.

We stood in line at HD today. They have X's on the sidewalks 6 feet apart and you wait until people come out before you can go in. It went pretty quickly. At least the weather was nice, so standing outdoors was pleasant. The stores aren't full at all because of this.

Nancy, I've not used inoculants. I keep meaning to buy some every year, but always forget.

Amy, you've been busy! I'm hoping to plant tomorrow too. We bought some Black Forest compost to top off the new beds, so I spent my day shoveling. And weeding around last years elderberry bushes. I must get the two new elders planted tomorrow.

What is Margaret's Goulash?

Rebecca! What in the world? I'm so sorry! Glad your tomatoes are okay. ;)

I noticed some beans sprouting in the Survivalists Garden. Exciting.

Finbar is sick. He will go to the vet on Monday.

So...as we were standing in line at HD, I noticed a smell that was familiar...was it compost? OH! I wore the same pants to HD that I shoveled in last night. They didn't look dirty but perhaps they picked up a smell somehow. So, we went home (after porch dropping off tomato plants and eggs) to drop off our HD purchases. I changed pants and we went to the grocery store. I still smelled that smell. Ugh. What in the world. Maybe it was on my shoes. But...I didn't wear those to the garden. Oh well. SO, as I was getting into my purse I noticed something NASTY in it. Cat vomit?! Ewww! Somehow he must have vomited in my purse. I recognized the smell then. When the dogs have gotten loose and eaten something they shouldn't have....and then are sick for a day or so--it's that smell.

That has got to be a first. Cat vomit in a purse.

So, one must ask, how did you piss off your cat ? This is a typical revenge ploy. :)

Jennifer, that is a new one for me. I have never heard of something like that. When I was young I had 1963 Studebaker station wagon, which was a pretty new car at the time. I had my bird dog in the back, and was going hunting with a fellow that worked for me. My wife had thrown out a bunch of spaghetti and the dog had eaten if a short time before we left. The dog got car sick, you can guess the rest. I didn't know a dog could hold that much spaghetti, and I didn't know it could smell so bad. I had to give my bird dog away. I worked all the time and did not really have time to hunt. I gave the dog to another man that worked for me. He lived in the country and did not have to haul the dog some where to hunt.

I did quite a bit of bucket work with the tractor today and got both gardens looking better. I also planted 3 more pepper plants and 46 sweet potatoes, along with a row of pole beans. My soil is still too cold and wet for anything to grow well. In another week or so I should have 40 or more sweet potatoes ready to plant, I have more plant than I have room for, and the soil is too wet to work properly, A lot of my plants will just have to be planted and mulched around to kill the grass. I dont have as good of luck with the plants when I plant them in that manor, but I do have some empty containers now after planting the peppers and sweet potatoes, I can put plants in the containers and by a little extra time.

Kim, Thanks for the info, but with all due respect, we are avoiding the entire DFW metro area like the plague and staying closer to home since there's over 6,000 coronavirus cases down there. Up here where we shop, we have or have had 2 cases in Carter County, 2 cases in Love County, 4 or 5 in Cooke County, TX, 4 or 5 in Montague County, TX and a few dozen in Grayson County, TX, so we're staying close to home until the case load falls significantly in the DFW metro.....and I think that is why I'm going stir-crazy. You know that almost all my favorite places to shop are down there, not up here.

Nancy, I'll have to give the full report later, but we went to the meat market in Muenster TX on Saturday very early and then hit Wal-Mart in Gainesville to get a few things. We were home by 10:30 or 11:00 a.m. which is pretty good because Muenster is a far drive and most of our time was just spent on the road. Then, on Sunday we hit Home Depot as soon as they opened and breezed right in and out, and then ran over to the Sam's in Sherman, largely because I wanted to buy a couple of new water hoses and we like their 120' long ones since our gardening spots are so far from the house. We were at Sam's Club when it opened, and there was quite a line to get in, but by the time we parked and walked to the door, the line was gone, so we walked right in without waiting. Sherman was a real experience, and not necessarily a calm, soothing one. More about that later.

I hope your shopping trip was successful.

Now that I've been out and relieved the cabin fever and bought a few of the things I wanted, I think I can stay out of the stores again for quite a while. I know we'll be staying away from Sherman for reasons I'll explain later.

Larry, I understand the feeling of being behind. I've never been this far behind in planting, and I am trying to stay calm and not be overly worried about it.

Since our rain basically stopped, we are rapidly going from lakes and puddles and flooding to dry, cracked ground---you know how clay is about doing that. No rain is falling in meaningful amounts and it is getting hot fast. Our rainfall totals for April are far below normal but we're still above average for the year since January, February and March overachieved drastically in the rainfall category. I should be worried about both the early arrival of the heat and the seeming lack of rainfall over the last 3 or 4 weeks, but I'm so happy to be able to play in the dirt that I am not. I miss having cool-season crops, but had I managed to get them planted, they would have rotted anyway in the wet ground, so I just have to accept that this is how it is this year. Since it is getting so hot so fast, I'm going to plant mostly southern peas and only a small amount of green beans today. I can plant larger amounts of green beans for a fall harvest. When the rain almost totally stops in a rather abrupt manner and the temperatures spike quickly, that usually means a hot, dry, miserable summer is ahead and I don't care right now. I'm just happy the rain has stopped.

Marleigh, Can you order the mower part online? That's what Tim has done lately, and the parts ordered have arrived within a few days each time. We did go to HD this weekend and he got some parts he needed for something while I bought plants. We were there shortly after the store opened and got in right away, found what we wanted and got out. By the time we were leaving, there was a line waiting to enter the store. Since we haven't been out shopping, I didn't know this was happening, and I was quite shocked. I do not think I would wait in a line to get into any store, and I hope I don't have to eat those words later if the shopping situation worsens over time instead of getting better.

Nancy, I have grown legumes both with and without inoculants and I am not sure I ever could tell a difference. If you are growing beans or peas where any sort of legume has grown in recent years, you don't need the inoculants anyhow. The inoculants might be helpful in newly broken soil, but it would depend. We have lots of clovers and vetches growing here on our property, likely surviving remnants from when our place was part of a family's farm, so I haven't worried much about using inoculants over the years.

Amy, There's nothing wrong with random thoughts! Was Margaret's open and did you get to have some goulash? My dad loved goulash and used to make it on the weekends when he took over cooking to give mom a break since she didn't like cooking.

Rebecca, I hope nothing in your face is broken. I bet you have turned kinds of pretty colors by today. When Lillie hit that parked car while on her friend's hoverboard a couple of months ago, her face turned delightful shades of yellow, green, blue and purple. These were her first black eyes and she wore the colors proudly after she got over the shock of it all. She had swelling around her nose, but it wasn't broken. I think she was a little embarrassed to go to school with her injuries because she is quiet and shy by nature and didn't want for everyone to be staring at her, but she got over it pretty quickly, and her bruising actually faded more quickly than we had thought it would. I hope yours does too.

Jennifer, I would bake my own bread (and we have stored the ingredients to bake at least several months worth of bread, so we could do this) before I'd stand in bread lines. I'm not worried this will be a reality for us though. I might be slightly more concerned that the end result of all the closures of meat-packing plants due to high infection rates of Covid-19 among their employees might result in higher meat prices or in some types of meat being temporarily in short supply.

I hope Finbar is going to be alright. Chris has had to drive a couple of his birds to the vet in Dallas within the last few weeks, and his vet is not playing around with the virus. The lobby/waiting room at the vet office is closed. There are Do Not Enter signs on the door. They meet you at the car, greet you, have you fill out the paperwork there, and then they take the pet indoors to be examined while you wait in your car. This is a super busy vet practice because it is one of the few that actually sees and treats tropical birds (among other pets, not a pure bird specialist). When they are done, the return your pet to you, you pay electronically, and they give you whatever medications or supplies you need. He said the vet techs that come to the car are masked and gloved, and of course, you can speak with the vet on the phone if needed.

I have to agree with dbarron that throwing up in a purse is a classic cat revenge move. Did somebody or something upset Finbar?

Larry, I am glad you are able to get some things done. I hope the rain stays away this week and you can make more progress in the garden.

There, it is Monday morning and I am at least caught up on last week. Now, I need to feed my pets and head out to the garden. Just to vex me, the sky is very cloudy and they threw a 20% chance of rain into the forecast. I'm just going to ignore it and carry on as long as there is no lightning.

Dawn