Amy--you probably have seen primrose in full sun, right? Remember, I have a lot of shade. Plants tend to grow taller, and in this case, it's just fine. They can just have a ball falling all over themselves! LOL

It's true, I was not familiar with an evening primrose. . . but. . . LOL

I hope you love your Speed Queen duo, Amy. I'm with you. I wish our fridge was white. But it's not.

Garry just ran to Muskogee for mower and weed-eater parts. I hope he finds them. And he has kind of taken charge of soil now. He told me he had to pick up raised bed soil and peat moss. I asked him to pick up a large bag of potting mix for me, too. Then, I decided while he was in Muskogee, I'd go back to our local nursery and pick up stuff for various pots sitting around. I don't even care about beautiful or different. So I got a flat of zinnias, a flat of double petunias, and a big hanging basket of bacopia. (Can anyone tell me how to turn spellcheck off in House??). It autocorrected to bacon.

I didn't get the last two sections of lawn mowed. That works, because I usually only mow Section 5 every other week. This way I can get them both tomorrow.

Jennifer, I have mopped on my hands and knees all my life until now. I FINALLY bought a Swiller a couple weeks ago. I didn't even know how they work! LOL

Hahaha, I might have to do a flower of the month. I don't think I have enough flowers to do one every week. The herb thing's a fun idea, too--speaking of which, May's favorite, Valerian, is getting ready to flower.

What can I say, Dawn, I tend to grow things I shouldn't just because they're "pretty". And I admit, cucamelons are nice to snack on when I'm outside working.

HJ, I have two gherkins sprouted so far, and hopefully a couple more will. I think I'm going to try them in a hanging pot & see how they do. I really don't have space for anything else in the beds themselves. Glad the raspberries seem to be taking for you. I offered up the ones I dug to someone else but they didn't pick up. So if you want some more, I've got a bucket ful & they are still mostly upright.

I've been watching/listening to a lot of podcasts and youtube videos since working from home, and it makes me want to start a "mad scientist" channel and just do gardening experiments. Since that's how I garden anyways, just by trial and error.

A lovely rain rolling in right now. Perfect timing.

Kim, We had lovely rain at our house as well, just a couple of hours before it arrived at your place but ours was accompanied by severe thunderstorms with strong wind, thunder and lightning, and a little hail. I didn't care about the rest---what mattered was we got some badly needed rain. Fortunately, the hail at our place was small because I know some other parts of our county were hammered by big hail.

Jen, Ha! Been there, done that, and sometimes I find myself still paying for prior mistakes....like the mistake of liking the look of the pink evening primroses when they popped up down by the road, never dreaming I'd be yanking them out of flower beds (and even containers where they apparently sprout from wind-blown seeds) every spring and summer for the rest of my life. I freely admit we planted trumpet creeper vines in multiple locations for the hummingbirds, and I love those plants, but it is an endless battle to keep them where we put them because they spread aggressively and have no intention of ever staying where we put them. It is an endless battle now. We don't use herbicides, but I might make an exception one of these days for some of the abundant and ever-increasing new sprouts of trumpet creeper vines. There's nothing wrong with allowing a plant you like to stay, or even choosing to plant those sorts of aggressive things on purpose, but there are challenges that come with doing so. I yank out cucamelons because they will spread to every square inch of our garden (based on past history, this is not an exaggeration), and I'd just as soon use fencing space as trellises for actual cucumbers than for cucamelons. I 'think' the western fence line now finally is fully shaded most of the day and probably too shady for cucamelons, but I fought them there for almost 2 decades. It is amazing how much they'll spread if you just ignore them, which I did for a while. Three inches of mulch on top of cardboard in the spots where they sprouted most often finally put a halt to them....I think.

Amy, Could kale have bolted in hot summer weather and reseeded itself into the bed where you're finding it now? I've had that happen in the past. I also think the chickens feed on bolted kale (because I don't let them into the garden until after the kale has bolted or it wouldn't live long enough to bolt) and spread the seeds around because we have kale come up in odd places sometimes.

I hope you enjoy your new Speed Queens. Be sure to let us know what you think of them after you've used them for a while.

I never had stainless steel appliances, didn't care for them and didn't want them. We had every intention of keeping our old appliances when we redid the kitchen, and then, as we were remodeling, they rapidly failed one after another and had to be replaced as the remodeling was done. Because our kitchen was gray, we decided to go with stainless steel, and I was hoping it wasn't a mistake. Well, in a twist that simply amazed me, I found I love the stainless steel. Who knew that would happen? I thought I'd just tolerate them because they did look good with the gray cabinets. Instead, I found I really liked them, and no one could be more surprised about that than me. I will say that the refrigerate has the smudgeless finish on it that does not show fingerprints, and that probably is why I like it. I probably wouldn't like a stainless steel fridge as much if it had the regular shiny finish that showed fingerprints like mad.

Jennifer, I agree about cleaning the floor on one's hands and knees....suddenly you realize it wasn't as clean as it looked when you were standing upright and looking down at it. I usually just mop mine with a sponge mop and use a Swiffer for minor cleaning in between big moppings, but every couple of months I do the whole scrubbing-by-hand thing and then the floor is so clean that I hate for anyone, man or beast, to walk on my freshly cleaned floor.

We could be having a summer set-up similar to 2011, but I don't think it will be nearly as bad. In 2011, I knew by January or February that we were in trouble. Here, in 2020, I didn't see signs of trouble lurking until the rainfall dried up in April. We also were a lot hotter a lot earlier in 2011. I think this year might be more like 2012 or 2014 in the summer months, but they were bad enough.

What is normal for us is living inside the doughnut hole, and we spent most of 1999 through 2014 in the doughnut hole, except for the wonderfully rainy years of 2002, 2004, part of 2007 and all of 2010. When you live in the doughnut hole, you see rain falling in the doughnut area all around you on all sides, while you persistently sit in a dry doughnut hole in the middle. That is largely the story of our lives here. So, having rainy years in 2015 through the first quarter of 2020 has been very odd because we spent the first decade and a half here having exactly the opposite of rainy weather. In some ways the rainy years have been nice if you can ignore the constant mud and flooding, but it other ways they have been really challenging because clay holds on to excess water for so very long.

I met someone at one of our first Spring flings who worked on a custom wheat harvesting crew that traveled the state following the wheat harvest every year. When he asked where I lived and I told him south-central Love County, his immediate response was to tell me that he knew the area well and we lived in a very challenging spot in our county because the rain persistently missed us most of the time. His comments were correct, but totally blew my mind because he understood what our specific microclimate weather was like and he didn't even live here. I've never forgotten that.

Nancy, We got rain and small, inconsequential hail, last night, so the garden should be happy today. It was the first really meaningful rainfall at our house in about a month. Our April rainfall dried up and was only about 20% of average for the month, but we didn't really notice it for the first 2 or 3 weeks because we were so waterlogged from the fall and winter rains. It was only the last week or two of April that the ground really dried up and then, because it is clay, promptly began cracking. I doubt last night's rain was enough to close up the cracks, but the plants undoubtedly will benefit from it.

Nature is amazing and full of surprises, and pink evening primrose is one of those unpleasant surprises. Ours marched uphill from the bar ditch down by the road, moving the 300' from the road to our house in one year, and then it kept going, persistently marching westward from the house. We'll never get rid of it, and I have to pull out billions of pink evening primrose seedlings from the garden every year. I love the way they look, and hate the way they aggressively spread. I'd never plant them on purpose, but I bet we will be stuck with them forever. They've been here probably 15 years now, and they persistently crowd out native wildflowers that we like much more than we like the primrose....and that drives me crazy.

Jennifer, Just because people request tours of your garden does not mean you have to automatically answer yes to those requests. I was too nice in our early years and lost tons and tons of potential work time to drop-in visitors who wanted to see the garden and stay and talk forever, and I was always stressed out over it. While I did not inherently dislike having people visit and could happily talk about gardening forever, I found it impossible to maintain a large garden and have time for all the socializing, so always was incredibly behind on garden work. I had to make some hard choices there. It took me a long, long time to develop enough backbone to say that I was too busy, didn't have time to give a tour or chat or whatever, etc., and to reclaim control of my life and my time. What helped most was leaving the driveway gate closed and locked, which put an instant halt to drop-in visits. Now, if friends want to stop by, they call and let me know they're coming so I can have the gate open, but I no longer have to deal with strangers popping up at my garden gate while I'm in there working alone. I have found that, particularly when your garden is visible from the roadway, it really helps to set firm boundaries.

Having said that, I do sort of miss the early days here when all the old-timers stopped by to visit often (sometimes daily!) and to explain to me how stupid it was to build raised beds and how much of an idiot I was for trying to garden organically in Oklahoma. (Time proved them wrong, and most of them eventually came to admit that, somewhat grudgingly.) Sometimes I forget how many of them we have lost to death over the last two decades until I realize that there's almost none of them left, and the couple that are left aren't well enough to be out driving and stopping by like they used to. I cherish my garden time as quiet, private time and have worked hard to largely keep it that way.

HU. The moles are tunneling under your plants looking for soil-dwelling insects, especially grubs, and even can be considered beneficial because they aerate the soil as they tunnel through. The problem is that the lazier gophers and voles then use the mole runs as rodent superhighways, and the gophers and voles will eat anything and everything from seeds to full-sized plants.

I hope the hail missed your gardens. We had hail, including some very large hail, all over the place here in our county, but by the time all the storms reached us from more western and northern parts of our county, the hail was down to being only about pea-sized, which was such a relief. We also didn't have trees and power lines down like some parts of our county had, nor roofs torn up and greenhouses demolished, so it was a pretty successful series of thunderstorms for us....only the rain for the most part, and hail that didn't hurt, and wind that wasn't high enough here to be too damaging. In western Love County, they had wind gusts as high as 72 mph and hail that was at least the size of ping pong balls, while adjacent counties had even larger hail. One last severe thunderstorm dropped large hail to our immediate south, but only brought our place more rain. Then, when I woke up this morning, a new storm was raining on us. I am so grateful for the rain and that we received only small hail.

I tried to catch up as much as I could. I'll check in later and see how everyone is. I'm headed out to the garden shortly to weed and mulch and then to weed and mulch some more. This is my week to get the garden weeds under control, I hope. I've been removing lots of tiny sprouting crabgrass. I'd so much rather deal with it while it is small and easily removed. I am extremely excited we will not be 94 degrees today like yesterday with a heat index that is even worse. I'm just not ready for that sort of heat yet, and we shouldn't have any more of it for the rest of this week.

Dawn

Dawn, I think that's what my main chore will be over the next couple of weeks--weeding the pathways and adding wood chips. The garden is mostly planted. I still need to sort out a couple of things about the soil in some of the beds....but that's something that requires thinking...and I can do that while I'm weeding and mulching.

I think one of my fears is my friends who want a tour...or any of my friends could stumble across this site and read my complaints and honesty---things I share with y'all but not everyone, you know? That little picture of me is old, but still looks like me and anyone with half a brain could read my posts which includes my husband and children's names and figure out it's me.

It's a risk I'll take, I guess.

I honestly do not mind tours, but I feel like I have to prepare the house and property, have drinks and snacks ready. One good thing about the covid 19 situation is people understand about not being invited into your house. LOL

If I can maybe arrange for a few people to come out on the same day, that would be best. I could make sure the property is mowed and picked up and that I have some water bottles or soda in the shop refrigerator.

I have a zoom staff meeting at 10. HU is coming out and he and Tom are changing out the lighting in the shop. After my meeting, I'll probably try to finish up some little things outside. I have some herbs that need to be put into pots. Thankfully I have potting soil. I need to water the front flowerbed. That hydrangea is going to get unhappy if she isn't given a drink soon. If I have time, I might weed and tidy up the front flowerbeds. That hasn't been done this year. The west side bed hasn't been cleaned up yet either. But I will only work on it in the morning. It's too hot in the afternoon. The daylilies, iris, comfrey, and cannas don't seem to mind, though.

Oh! As I was watering the cherry tomato bed last night I noticed two large squash bugs taking a stroll along the border of the bed. There's no squash in the kitchen garden at all! Maybe they were sniffing out the squash down in the survivalists garden. Or maybe they were hiding in the mulch in the cherry tomato bed and didn't like being watered. There were Seminole pumpkins in that bed last year. Well, let's be honest. The Seminole pumpkins were started in that bed, but webbed the entire garden. Honestly I wouldn't have know if there were squash bugs in that mess. haha!

That's for sure, HJ, about not know if there were squash bugs in "that mess." Me too. lol.

Re company in the garden, or "tours." I so yearn to have company to visit with--including the garden friends in Tulsa area, especially. And I'd love to have the garden club or church groups out. Sigh, but not going to be happening any time soon.

Most of my weeding is going to be pretty easy. With the layer of leaves, most of the weeds are those easy-to-pull ones. We only had 3/8" of rain last night. Worked for me. BUT I was ticked because the internet kept going out. I guess Windstream and I are going to be having discussions again. So far in the past 2 months, every single time we've had a rainstorm, the internet has gone out. GRRRR.

It's kinda cool today. Too cool to want to sit out on the deck. We did for a little while, since Garry spotted the bluebird's return to its new house, furnished by Lori Darling. The main was here a couple days ago, then left. Looked like both were there this morning, in and out. I take that as a good sign. We're both excited. Although the bluebirds have visited us each year, they haven't had housing furnished by us and so apparently moved on.

The other nature thing is that we have dedicated rodent hunters here. So far, we've had a body count of 3 moles, four mice, one vole, and one mouse/vole that was too small to identify. That's just this spring, and just the ones the cats have brought us. I pray the mice/voles/moles/lizards keep cats busy enough that they leave the birds and butteries alone.

Dawn! I have to tell you that I DID listen to your words about the cucamelons and decided not to plant them at the school. Thankfully, the decision was made easier by the fact that I'm running out of room to plant. Also that we haven't yet gotten the bed made up that will be next to the fence, for trellising. But still. I decided I'm done with aggressive spreaders that don't benefit natives. And though I'd like to taste one, will forego that here at home for now, too.

That sounds like a divine social event, dbarron! Visits with ONE good friend are the best! It DOES sound very low risk, indeed. Have a safe and enjoyable trip. I'm betting you won't be gone more than a day or two. . . got a garden to look after. :).

I was over at the school today. One huge challenge. We HAVE to get a watering system for the outside raised beds. There are 12 of them, forming a kind of "clock" around the big central bed. They're only 4' x 14 feet long. From everything I've read, researched and heard, drip lines are THE way to go. But we can't afford that yet. I just planted all kinds of flowers-- easy-to-grow seeds in the big center bed (zinnias, cosmos, marigolds, sunflowers, tithonia), in addition to the ones I'd grown on the cart and ordered--all of the plants are small. John had put soaker hoses all around, which was great--except the plants are too tiny for the water to reach them. He asked me yesterday if I thought a sprinkler would be good. I said YES. A big oscillating sprinkler, until the plants get large enough for the soaker hoses to provide water. Gotta keep those little seeds watered. . .now that we don't have a flooding problem since we raised the soil level by 2 feet, now we have a fast drainage problem!! But I'm good with that problem.

But what to do about the 4x14 raised beds that mimic the numbers on a clock. What would you all suggest? We have one watering source. Right now John has a 2 spigot faucet on it. I'd so appreciate suggestions you may have. Could we switch it to a 4 spigot attachment? My inclination is to try to place oscillating sprinklers around the round center bed--and then to try and cover 3 or so of the outside beds at a time. I know John is WAY too busy to be watering all day long--and of course, I'm 10 miles away.

Jennifer, I am glad that you are to the point that you can weed and mulch. I always feel like May is perfect for weeding and mulching, mostly because we need to have the weeds under control and the beds well-mulched now before the weeds seize control. I like weeding and mulching. While I still obviously have to be careful and watch for snakes, it still is a sort of mindless activity where you can focus on something as simple as pulling up weeds and adding mulch. Nothing looks better than a clean, freshly-mulched bed full of happy, healthy plants. I let my mind wonder to other things, too, as I mulch, and get a lot of thinking done while mulching.

The thing I found with people wanting tours is not just the time involved, but as you pointed out, the advance preparation and even the mental preparation....it just always comes at a time when what I want to do is to focus on getting the garden all planted and perfected (and by perfected I mean getting those weeds out and the mulch down--that is as close to perfect as my garden ever gets). If I had nothing to do but sit in a chair drinking sweet tea all day in the garden while showing it to various people, I'd gladly put up a Garden Tours-Free sign and just do it. Instead, being a work-oriented hermit with a serious To-Do list daily, I leave the gate closed and hope nobody notices me out there working in the garden. : ) Normally in Spring I'd be rushing off to fires all the time, which further complicates things. When you know there will be interruptions like that over which you have no control, it is hard to plan for anything, so during winter/spring fire season, I rarely make plans because the pagers can go off and ruin plans in the blink of an eye.

Our neighborhood is oddly quiet. Perhaps it is the coronavirus thing, but I don't even see that much drive-by traffic lately. I almost never see a tractor going up and down the road on its way somewhere....maybe once or twice a week instead of multiple times daily. I haven't seen a huge spraying rig traveling up and down the road or in nearby fields, unleashing its toxic brew of herbicides that will drift and kill my plants, not that I'm complaining, and I don't see the county precinct road workers out repairing potholes, mowing alongside the roads or anything else. It is like everyone has shut down everything and isn't ready to come back out into the open yet. Since so many of our neighbors aren't working, I don't even see them driving by, though on the few times I do, I wave hello to them---friendliness from a distance. While it is oddly quiet, I kind of like it. It reminds me of the time the bridge was out being repaired for months to our north, and there was almost no traffic down here at our end of the road because that bridge is between us and most of our far-flung rural neighborhood.

Those squash bugs probably overwintered in mulch or garden debris and had awakened and were looking for food. I hope they are dead squash bugs now. I have wondered if I could skip planting squash for a year or two and maybe any existing squash bugs would die without a food source, and maybe new ones wouldn't find me. It probably would depend on how close the nearest garden with squash plants happens to be. There's not as many gardeners left in our area now as we had just a couple of years ago because so very many of our older gardeners in the neighborhood passed away last year. There's a couple of newish gardeners a couple of miles up the road, but I don't recall seeing squash plants in their gardens. Probably there is a garden close enough to us to have squash bugs that will migrate and find us, but I can dream about being squash bug free. It's just a pipe dream.

Nancy, I know you miss people, but it is so smart to keep one's distance nowadays. I miss seeing my neighborhood friends and my VFD fire family, but we're all just a phone call away from each other. It isn't the same though. Hopefully this social distancing will be necessary for just a little bit longer but who can guess at this point in time?

We only had about 3/4s of an inch of rain, but after going almost a month without meaningful rainfall, that 3/4s of an inch was a big deal. Our internet usually does not go out every time it rains, but it did this time, around 9 pm which is about the time the severe weather arrived. I am not surprised---we had wind gusts up in the 70s in part of the county, power flashes as a severe thunderstorm rolled through an area and took out some power poles, trees and roofs, scattered power outages in the most hard-hit areas, etc. The internet was back on by the next morning, and I was relieved to see it. Right now, with so few live human interactions occurring, the internet really is our connection to the world. If I wasn't out working in the garden and getting to wave to the mail carrier and a few folks driving up or down the road, I could go the entire week and never see another human being except for Tim. I talk to the animals a lot, but they don't respond verbally. lol

I'm glad your animals are on rodent patrol. They need to earn their keep, and it sounds like they are doing that.

I didn't find the flavor of cucamelons to be anything special. I'd rather have a real cucumber. On the other hand, if you need a natural laxative, just wait for the cucamelons to turn such a dark green that they are almost black, and then just eat a handful and that's what you'll have. This could be handy knowledge to have sometime in the future if the supply chain of medications really breaks and you cannot find certain products on store shelves. : )

dbarron, I hope that you enjoy a lovely drive and have a nice visit with your friend. Really, as overall risk goes, I feel like OKC is pretty safe. Certainly it is much safer than bigger cities like Dallas and Fort Worth, where huge (to me) numbers of new cases continue to be reported daily. Your comments about it being the first social event of the year made me sit and ponder when my last social event of the year was. I guess it was our 11-year-old granddaughter's birthday party in early March, right before they started shutting things down. I think back to how happy all those kids were, largely because it was a swim party at their town's YMCA's heated pool and there's nothing better than getting to swim and then have pizza, birthday cake and ice cream indoors while it still is cool outdoors. The girls were full of plans for spring break and summer, planning on hanging out together, etc., and then the virus hit and they haven't seen each other since their school's Spring Break began. It is odd how far back early March seems right now, though it was only two months ago. Two quiet, somewhat lonely months for everyone.

Nancy, Driplines would indeed be the way to go when y'all reach the point that you have a budge that will pay for them. I love drip lines. Unfortunately country rodents like voles love them too and will chew right through the lines searching for water in the hot summer months, rendering drip lines less useful in my garden than they should be. Every time I find one way to deal with the vole-related problems, they find a way to ruin that solution. While an oscillating sprinkler will work, if it doesn't reach far enough for you, y'all might consider a tripod sprinkler. Some folks who live south of us in Thackerville have a huge yard and garden and they use a big tripod sprinkler to cover a very large area at once. We don't have a tripod sprinkler, but I understand it does take good water pressure to operate them, so if the school doesn't have great water pressure, they might not work for y'all. Tripod sprinklers come in different sizes and some of them can cover a huge area at once---all the stores here (Tractor Supply Company, Atwood's, Lowe's, Home Depot, etc.) in southern Oklahoma carry them.

It is a somewhat chilly 51 degrees this morning, but I don't mind that. We're still expected to hit 80 degrees later on today. They now have dropped our forecast temperatures for later in the week, and we will be in the 40s for several mornings. It seems awfully late for that, but we had a May just like this in 2002. I remember it well because Tim's dad came down for Chris' high school graduation. He is from Pennsylvania, which still was really cold in May, and he was looking forward to staying here in our nice warm area for a couple of weeks. Well, it wasn't warm--it was in the 40s at night and probably the 70s during the day, or maybe the low 80s, and it just wasn't the nice, hot weather he was expecting. I felt bad for him. Any other May we probably would have been in the 80s and 90s, but not that year. I remember we were in the low 40s for at least a couple of nights during his visit and it felt stunningly cold to all of us. The cool-season crops were very happy and produced well into June that year which was highly unusual, but the warm season crops were a bit late to take off and really get going.

Today is another day to weed and mulch. You can walk into the garden and see exactly where the mulch has gotten too thin because there are tiny blades of crabgrass sprouting there. I'm definitely on a mission to remove all that crabgrass this week and to get thick enough mulch down on all the beds to make sure it doesn't come back, I'm mostly focusing on beds right now, but next week I'll focus on the pathways. When we first moved here, I always tried to have everything, meaning flower beds and the garden, under control by Mother's Day. I laugh now at my then-youthful ambition. If that were my goal for this year, I'd be failing miserably at meeting that goal, but I am making progress every day.

Dawn

Tulsa Garden Center used to do a home garden tour. You pay the admission & they gave you a map with places marked, then you could go talk to the homeowners & see how their gardens were designed. I used to love it because it gave me ideas. Not that I followed any of the advice lol; I'm more of a "let's stick this here & see how it goes....oops, that's not a good spot" type of gardener.

I'm getting down to my last few containers to plant. Either in ground or in one of the "nicer" containers (which just means a nursery pot without some logo on it). Then everything needs mulched & hopefully I'll be done for now. Except for weeding, watering, deadheading, harvesting, killing bugs....but I'll be done planting.

I hope you had fun, dbarron!

Nancy and Dawn, I actually like entertaining. But, I also like my house to feel inviting and clean (enough). I never judge other people by their homes, so I don't know why I'm so hard on myself about my home. It's like it's a reflection of me or something. And I guess that is true in a way for all of us. But, I have friends who are slight hoarders and I don't love them any less...and I don't think any less of them. I'm just hard on myself.

Also, people see the pictures and read my posts and think my garden looks/is a certain way, but it's all a work in progress....and I don't want them to be disappointed. When I tell them my plans as we're walking around it, they're always like, "well, that's a lot and you'll never get all of that done." Stuff like that. Like they're not taking me seriously. It frustrates me for some reason, because while I am a dreamer, I do more than dream. I work hard to get those things done. But my time and money is limited, so it just takes awhile, you know? And they don't realize how much we HAVE done since 2014. And the things we have built continues to need maintenance, like things do, and part of our time is keeping those gardens/coops/stuff up too. Also, for 4 years we were extremely busy with The Pride of WestMoore.

Speaking of, it's hard to believe it's been a year since we were doing all of Ethan's senior year stuff.

Anyway...

I enjoy the process and need to not care that people think I'm a ridiculous dreamer.

Dawn, mostly my beds are weed free except the back garden where the onions are living. I'm waiting for a good rain (maybe Thursday night) and will go out and tackle that. There's all sorts of interesting stuff coming up in that bed including volunteer tomatoes, some sort of melons or perhaps pumpkins or cucumbers? Compost is to blame for that, I think. I had struggled on what to plant in that bed after pulling the onions. Maybe it's will just be the "volunteer plant" garden. haha.

Got distracted...so, while the beds are mostly weed free, grass/weeds are sneaking into the pathways and those need weeding and woodchips.

Good luck with your crabgrass removal!

Jen, I'm sort of like you when planting stuff--I just put stuff places. I have a loose plan, but that always is messed up by extra plants that I pick up and then it begins--sticking plants in places that may or may not be a good spot for them.

A friend who visited a couple of week ago to pick up tomato plants, is giving me some plants tomorrow. She is a master gardener and they were unable to have their sale this year, so she has a lot of their greenhouse plants meant to be sold. Mostly ornamental things, I think. She told me the names, but because I'm so inexperienced with flowers, I have no idea what they are. I'll be making a list and asking for y'all's advice.

The survivalist garden continues to amaze me. It is coming to life in a huge way. This is a first year garden.

Tom and HU got the shop lights changed. He was here from 10 am to 10 pm. LOL Of course, we also had dinner and sat around the firepit. (sorry for the clone talk, HU.) and HU is coming back out to help fix the light in the coop.

I'm about to get outdoors and start cleaning the coop. There's 3 broodies, now, I think. Don't want to disturb them....but it's time. I dread this process, but it's time. It is such a big job.

Just emailed the Elisons report.

HU

Considering how little attention my garden received from mid-summer onward last year, it is amazing there aren't more weeds. The weeds that are driving me crazy likely would go unnoticed by most people because for the most part they are small and look rather innocent at this point. It is just that I know that they won't stay small for long.

I've been happily weeding and mulching all day, marveling at how much better a raised bed full of plants looks with the weeds gone and a fresh layer of mulch on top of the old mulch. I'm just pretty much a zero-tolerance weed person in my own garden, so I can't relax and be happy if it is weedy. I have friends who could care less about weeds and they don't care if their garden is full of head-high weeds by late June. I don't judge them, but I just couldn't garden that way. I've got to be able to see the copperheads and timber rattlers in order to avoid them. When people in my neighborhood say things like "I can't believe you can spend all that time out there in the yard and garden and you've never been bitten once by a snake...", I agree with them, but deep in my heart I know the reason I haven't been bitten is because I keep the weeds to a minimum. That and the grace of God, because I've stepped over snakes that I didn't see, I've stepped on snakes, I've walked right past snakes and never noticed them. I should have been bitten 5 or 6 times by copperheads by now, but the truth is that both the copperheads and timber rattlers still would rather avoid us and not waste their venom on us if they can. They are the reason I cannot ignore weeds.

Jennifer, I think you might get that heavy rain. The local TV mets are driving me crazy by using words like heavy rainfall and torrential rainfall, and I'm talking back to the TV, saying no, not yet, not yet, I like it sort of dry....so, I guess I'd better get this week's soil-related garden tasks done tomorrow before the rain comes. The 7-day QPF doesn't look that bad, so I'm going to stay calm and hope for the best. I guess the best would be adequate rainfall but not too much of it. The TV mets made it clear that not everyone will get the heavy rainfall or the 3" hail, but people who get the heaviest thunderstorms may expect both.

Heavy rain just will drive the fire ants back into the raised beds again and I don't want that. I'm still fighting them in the 'dry bed' which is 20" tall, almost never gets irrigated, and contains plants that prefer to stay on the dry side, like lavender, gaura, lantana, red yucca and Cape Honeysuckle (not a honeysuckle, it is Texoma capensis). The fire ants like the dry bed because it stays high and dry even in heavy rainfall. We built it to drain very quickly because the plants we put there cannot tolerate wet winter soil in our garden, not even well-amended clay in raised beds, so for them it is a matter of survival that this sand-based bed drain very quickly and the soil stays dry. Sadly, the fire ants love this bed for those same reasons and it is hard to keep them out of it. Just today the red yucca and Mango Tangerine red hot poker flowers began blooming, just so the hail can possibly beat them up tomorrow.

I was sitting in a pathway at the south end of the garden weeding this morning and I looked up and across the garden towards the northern edge of the garden by the woodland and saw that first red yucca bloom and was just thunderstruck by how beautiful it was. I just sat there for a while staring at it as if I didn't have work I should be doing. I finally returned my focus to the task at hand.

As for other people and their expectations of my garden and my own expectations for it, I dealt with all that early on here. Back in 1999, I must have been the absolute first person anyone here ever had met who routinely mixed together herbs, flowers and veggies in the same beds, and it drove all the "old farmer" crowd stark-raving mad. They thoroughly believed the only way to garden was with a tractor with big wide expanses of bare soil in between narrow rows of crops, and never ever would they have mulched anything. They didn't like my wide raised beds with narrower paths, even though I didn't need wide paths for tractor tires. I had to patiently explain over and over again why I had "all those weeds" (anything that was not a vegetable) growing in my garden, why the plants were packed together closely in raised beds and why I mulched. The old farmer crowd had absolutely zero appreciation for herbs and flowers. (sigh) They didn't care if they were doing anything to attract pollinators. They weren't interested in organic gardening and attracting bees and butterflies. They pushed chemical pesticides and herbicides all the time, even after I told them I was not going to use them. I just had to tune out their negativism and keep doing things my way in my garden. Maybe they couldn't see the vision, but I could. And, I was a kinder person then they were. I never once drove over to their gardens and stood there and tore apart their techniques or tried to tell them everything that they were doing wrong (in my eyes), nor did I ever consider doing it.

You have to have nerves of steel and a firm belief in your methods and your vision of your garden to stand your ground against a bunch of old farmers and old ranchers who know that their way is the only way, lol, but I did it. They finally shut up about it because I was getting earlier harvests and heavier harvests and nothing succeeds like success, but I still wasted entirely too much of my early years here explaining myself to them. I wish I could have been bold enough (and rude enough) to tell them to just go away and leave me alone because I didn't need their approval in order to grow my garden. I just couldn't do that though, as I was brought up the old, traditional southern way that girls were reared when I was a child, which is to say that I was taught to respect my elders, to be polite and to be nice. Most of them backed off with the constant criticism after they figured out that (a) I was ignoring it or (b) I was getting nice harvests despite doing everything wrong in their eyes, but one old guy just plagued me like a disease until his family finally put him in a nursing home.

People who do not garden, or at least those who are not consumed by gardening, have no understanding of how much time it takes to maintain even a small garden, much less a large one. Everybody wants instant gardens and instant results nowadays, but gardens just aren't like that. A beautiful, well-designed, well-maintained and well-loved garden becomes that way over time, largely because the gardener or gardeners pour their whole heart and soul, and most of their waking hours into thinking about the garden, planning it, preparing and planting it, maintaining it, watering it, weeding it, mulching it, harvesting it, and all the while, making more and more plans for it. For a person who loves gardening, the garden becomes an all-consuming passion, and I'm never going to apologize for that. Other people can go to the gym, Starbucks, the mall, the nail salon, the craft store, the weekend football games or to exotic places for vacation. Where do I go? Always to the garden. As long as I have the garden and my family, that's really all I need. Stores and shopping are just a necessary evil I tolerate because when I am there, at least I can buy things for the garden. : )

As y'all know, last year was a miserable year here with so many of our friends/neighbors and family members ill and dying one after another for months on end. I was beside myself with grief and sadness and, at a time when being in the garden would have been very healing, there was almost no time available to spend in the garden. I kind of think now of 2019 as the lost year, in terms of gardening, because I remember very little time spent in the garden between the time I planted in the spring until all the illnesses and deaths were behind us and I finally was able to venture back into the garden, albeit briefly, in September and October. The months in between spring planting and fall harvest are just a blur, but it was good to know that even when I wasn't able to be out in the garden, it still was here waiting for me to return to it.

Dawn

Leaf miners?

I did have fun, despite my friend arriving oh, two hours later than I expected (and I who am always early arrived an hour later than expected, because I encountered massive amounts of road construction). The delay probably caused me to pick up at least $30 more plants...sadly?

We shopped till we dropped a load a cash, then we went to eat at BBQ place in Stillwater. The owner (expecting we were locals) apologized for the price increase, but said he had barely managed to accquire beef to bbq and had to pay a premium for it. It really didn't seem that bad to me, price wise. Anyway, it was good (and messy).

We didn't want the day to end, so sat chatting for several HOURS inside a restaurant...which due to circumstances had no one within 20 feet of us, in fact not a lot of traffic between 3 and 5:30 pm anyway.

The greatest regret is spending 7 hours behind the steering wheel.
I may moan about the plant expenditure, but it gave me joy to pick them, buy them, and will give me further joy to research and figure where they get planted and to plant them. Hopefully to watch them grow into something beautiful. Most you know know how that feels :)

I don't think I did anything more socially risky than a grocery store shop mostly.

We got a sprinkle just now. I was out early putting the coop back together. That clean, pine shavings coop smell is just so nice. It will last for such a short time, though. I was pooped yesterday after that "deep clean" but forced myself to do my exercises. (Wednesday is the hard exercise too.) Pretty sure I slept all night without waking. That hasn't happened in years! Coops get so very dusty. I wear a mask when cleaning them. In fact, yesterday is the first time I've worn a mask in months. lol Some of the dust still "got in" (to my nose), but I did the netie pot last night, so hopefully won't get a sinus infection. Hitting the fire cider too.

Tom and HU changed out the light fixture in the coop. We're all cleaned up for the summer now.

That is a job that I do not like.

So...why is beef rare and expensive right now? Because...there's fewer cows?

So glad you had a fun time, dbarron. Seeing an old friend is the best...and time flies so quickly when you're together.

Dawn, my visitors'expectations are a little different. They want to see a kitchen garden--a pretty kitchen garden. However, they're all very interested in HU's garden right now too...I suspect it's because food security is on a lot of people's minds.

Speaking of...have y'all mentally made a list (not on purpose, but it just happens) of people you want in your...tribe if things get bad? You'll see posts on social media and are surprised and think..."yep, I'm asking you to be in my tribe." haha!

Today, I am going to pick up my plants and get my roots touched up (Mom is doing it) and then going to work for awhile, I guess. Hadn't planned on it because my co-worker was leading this project, but she has had some things come up.

By the time I get home, it will probably be raining. If not, I'm going to set up cages around the tomatoes in the kitchen garden. The plants are small and really don't need cages just yet, but I'm tired of the cages blocking the pathways.

The pole beans are popping up in the survivalists garden. In a couple of weeks that garden will be so impressive looking, I think. Hopefully the hail will continue to miss us.

This is cool. So, a couple of days ago, we went out to look at the garden and I discovered a tomato that had been cut/snapped. It was barely attached at the stem and it's leaves were obviously wilting as they were lying on the ground. HU put it back upright and piled up mulch around it and it seems to be healing itself! Super amazing.

HU, it looks even better this morning. None of the leaves are wilted now.

Tom is going to do some pulled pork for our friend whose husband died. I'll probably make a couple of sides to go along.

If I wanted to make deviled eggs, how should I transport them? I have a deviled egg tray, but I want to take containers that she doesn't need to return. Should I just buy a cheap deviled egg tray or is there some other way to do this without making a mess?

The sprinkles have stopped so I'm going out for a few minutes to enjoy the cool air.

Rebecca, Leaf miners? Depends on where they are. They're hard to kill because they get inside the leaves, so spraying the outside of the leaves doesn't seem to bother them. I just ignore them, but it is easy to ignore them on a tomato or squash leaf and much harder to ignore them if they are in your spinach leaves. They are the larvae of certain kinds of moths, sawflies and flies. You can kill them inside the leaves by squeezing the leaves where the miners' trails are, effectively squishing them to death and that at least will prevent them from doing any further damage. They are easier to prevent (some traps are sold to catch the moths and flies) than to 'cure' once you see them. I rarely see them in our garden, and often I just see a couple and then no more. The healthier your plants are, the less that you'll see leaf miners, though I am not quite positive why that is so.

dbarron, It sounds like a lovely trip, and now you need to tell us what you bought because you know that enquiring minds want to know. I doubt you exposed yourselves to any more risk than visiting a grocery store, and I still feel the risk is lower in our state than in adjacent ones like TX and LA. We are fortunate to have fairly low numbers, if you compare our number of cases per capita to other states. I hate that you had to spend all those hours on the road, but at least it was a pretty day to be out.

Jennifer, I think a lot of people would happily hire someone to come and put in a pretty kitchen garden for them so they could have it to enjoy without having done all the work to create it, and a lot of that might be because they are inexperienced and don't really know where to begin. A person who liked building pretty kitchen gardens for others probably could make a career out of it, especially right now, or at least as long as bulk purchased soil mixes remain available. Our front garden generally is the pretty one, and the back garden is the big production garden. People rarely see the back garden just because of its location so I also am not as picky about how it looks as I am with the front garden. Believe me, I have tried to keep the back garden up to the same standards of the front garden, but it is too big and time is too limited. I just cannot give the back garden the same level of attention that the front garden gets.

I don't think I have a tribe list in my head specifically, but our neighborhood already is sort of a tribe, albeit a smaller tribe than we had in the past. We all know who is the expert on catching and filtering rain water, raising cows, raising goats, raising poultry, raising hay and field corn, etc. and we know who has the right tractor and implements for a specific job, etc., and we all know who we can count on...so that's our local tribe, already in place. We know who cans and who bakes bread and who makes and decorates party cakes as well as who is skilled in butchering and processing meat. If really hard times struck, I feel like we'd all band together here and help one another because we already do that, just on a smaller scale. My truck broke down once just about a mile up the road from our house, and I instantly was surrounded by neighbors who materialized out of nowhere to help with the truck and to make sure the dogs and I made it home okay. That's just how it is here---your neighbors seem to instinctively know when you need them, almost before you know it yourself. My perfect survival neighborhood would have all of us Garden Webbers in OK living together in perfect harmony all in a row with gardens to die for, but that's not our reality---we are too widely scattered.

I do that with tomato plants all the time. They are amazingly resilient. Even when you stumble upon a branch broken completely off and badly wilted, you often can revive it and grow a new plant from it merely by sticking it into the ground and watering it.

The meat issue is Covid-19 related. Basically we are having massive supply chain disruptions linked to outbreaks of Covid-19 within meat slaughterhouses and meat processing facilities. Over 10,000 employees (plus 500 USDA meat inspectors) have tested positive for Covid-19, and sadly some of them have died. This disease spreads very quickly inside meat processing facilities where the workers literally stand elbow to elbow and work in very close quarters for their entire shift. The USDA meat inspectors travel from plant to plant so probably are being exposed to huge viral loads while doing their jobs. When a facility has a lot of cases, it shuts down temporarily both to give employees time to heal and to try to sanitize their facility. Some have been shut down for at least two weeks. We have plenty of animals---lots of beef cows, pigs, chickens, etc. but the animals are being euthanized on the production farms because the meat processing facilities aren't accepting them. It is heartbreaking to read stories about large producers having to euthanize thousands (or millions) of animals at a time. They must do this because their system is highly structured, with X number of animals of a specific size and age flowing into the meat processing facilities on a regular basis. If the facility cannot take and use your animals at the specific contractual time, you are stuck with them. For a producer, it makes little sense to keep feeding animals they cannot sell because it doesn't take long for the animals to become too old/too large (might be too tough at that point for good eating) for delivery to the meat processing facilities. As a producer, you have younger crops of animals sizing up and reaching slaughter size on a regular basis, so you cannot hang on to the older ones/larger ones that have missed the market through no fault of their own. You have to keep the animals flowing, one way or another. So, for consumers, we end up with shortages in the stores and with higher prices because of the law of supply and demand, and that is where we find ourselves now.

I haven't been paying attention to meat prices because we stocked our freezers back in the winter, and just went to our favorite meat market a couple of weeks ago to buy enough chicken, pork and beef to replace what we've used since then. We were, in fact, trying to stay ahead of the coming meat shortage and we did. When we went to the meat market 2 weeks ago, their prices were still about the same, but they focus on locally-grown meat that they slaughter in their own facility themselves, so they aren't caught up in the current issue. They even process and make their own bacon, summer sausage, bratworst, etc. so it truly is a local endeavor. What I think is getting them now is the increased demand because I know that people from the D-FW metro are driving up here to the Red River Valley to shop there. Some people buy their beef there a whole cow or a half cow at a time and have it custom processed there. I hope all those 'outsiders' who do not shop at our meat market regularly don't ruin it for those of us who do rely on this place for our meat. Regardless, our family is in good shape for the rest of this calendar year and probably beyond. I hope I have enough bacon in the freezer because I think it is about to be in really short supply.

I read yesterday than 18% of the Wendy's hamburger places nationwide are not selling hamburgers now because of supply chain issues. It is hitting them harder than most fast food places, or at least earlier, because they have long advertised that they use only fresh, never frozen, meat. Right now, that's a problem.

Now I'm thinking that maybe this weekend Tim and I should stock up on fish and seafood for the deep freezers because they naturally will be in more demand when fish, pork and chicken run short and/or get so much more expensive that people are looking for alternatives. Ever since I became aware of Covid-19 in early January, I've been stocking up on canned meat products too---canned beef, chicken and pork (not Spam, though, as I hate the stuff) and canned tuna and salmon, buying a few cans whenever we were in the stores, figuring that as long as we have canned backup products we can weather whatever disruptions occur in the food supply chain. I wish I had more canned meat stored away, but you reach a limit as far as how many canned goods you can cram into the space you have, and we've exceeded that limit already. I never really bought those individual serving tuna pouches before, but buy a lot of them now because you can grab one for a quick lunch and you can store a lot of them in a fairly small space. I suspect we'll have a few rocky weeks and then this issues likely will resolve themselves, unless we get a severe second wave of Covid-19, and if that happens, all bets are off.

Honestly, I'd rather give up eating meat temporarily if they needed for us to do so in order for all the employees of the meat packing plants to be able to stay home and stay healthy. I'd hate to think they are nice meals are coming at the expense of somebody's health and/or life. We have lots of peanut butter, legumes, and tree nuts stored away as alternative protein sources, as well as protein shakes and protein powders.

All of us can, to some extent, control whether or not our own family has fresh produce just because we are able to grow a lot of it at this time of the year, and we are able to preserve it (canning, dehydrating, freezing, fermenting or root cellaring) for future months. If you have chickens, you can do the same with eggs. I've been freezing extra eggs rather than selling them or giving them away. Of, if you have dairy goats or dairy cattle, you can produce your own dairy products. It is a lot harder to produce your own meat supply, though it is fairly quick and easy to do meat chickens in just a matter of a few months. People who like to hunt and fish also can supply some of their own meat, especially if they are skilled at processing and preserving their own venison.

Our family would be fine for the next year just based on the food in the house right now plus what is in the garden. I suspect the average family probably doesn't stock up as much as we routinely do, but my country-raised, Great Depression-surviving parents taught me the importance of always having a year's supply of food stored away just in case something happened and you needed it. One reason I always have preserved so much food from the garden is that I was taught to always have 2 years of produce processed and stored, so you could outlast a bad garden year/drought/crop failure. In order for this to work, you have to be really conscientious about labeling all the produce you process with the date processed and you have to rotate it constantly, so you're using up the food first that has been in storage for the longest period of time. I didn't process much of the garden produce last year because of the issues we were dealing with among our family and friends, but I knew we'd be okay because I knew how much canned and frozen food we still had in storage from other years.

I should be out in the garden weeding and mulching, so that is where I'm headed right now.

Dawn

Oh my, I got everything I needed to plant (from purchases yesterday) planted. I'm holding some things because Friday morning 37F now...(lantana and coleus). And..if you really want to know what I bought (and the way the prices stacked up...)...well view my photo :) I usually take these pics for reference anyway. The last couple are tender plants that will go inside for winter (ruellia, ice plant, sinningia)

Hate to back to back..but going to. I also got an order of carnivorous plants today, and scrambled to unpack and plant in my mini bog trough out back. As is kinda normal for CPs, many of which reseed so very easily, I got unknown numbers of freebies. Yes, you could call them weeds, but a forked leaf sundew (pic of example posted)

And I only noticed this 2 inch tiny because it was in flower, a tentative id being bladderwort, urticularia sandersonii.
I know there's another species of sundew too, thread-leafed sundew, drosera capillaris but I already have a pot full of that.
I will let them enjoy the summer outside and may transplant (if I can id them) some to pots to save if they're tropicals.

It was fun looking up some of those plants, dbarron. And what a fun trip it must have been! Yes, the prices do tend to add up. Did you have a list? What a variety! One day I WILL make it to Bustani's. There is no way I could have gotten them in the ground as quickly as you did. It takes me forEVER to decide where to put things.

When I go to the school to plant, I usually sit and mull things over for an hour or more before I actually put seeds in or a plant in. Same here. I have these 2 American beauty berries, for example. I brought them home from the school after Dawn said where hers do well. They rebounded immediately and look great, but they're still on the porch waiting for me to decide where to put them.

I got a pot of beautiful orange New Guinea impatiens from friends for Mother's Day, and a beautiful pot of purple scaevola from Garry for Mother's Day. He didn't realize he got them for me. I had to tell him. lol

Dawn, I loved your last two posts. So so true about gardening becoming an all-consuming passion--and joy-filled passion.

I am so sorry you had such a grief-filled year, and hope you are being healed by the gardening this year. I sometimes find myself reeling with the realization that both my brothers and Mom died in the past five years--causing a temporary loss of equilibrium. And yes, the garden is a nice place to retreat and regain that equilibrium.

I loved your description of your reaction to the red yucca. I suppose I'm going to have to buy one of those. But speaking of taking one's breath away. . . (this one's not in a good way--LOL) Dawn or someone, you will undoubtedly know what did this to one of the cannas. It was NOT me with my hole puncher. Garry and I got a good laugh out of it.

I'll have to come back. Have to go fix dinner.

I walked around with the pots and placed the pots, then I came out and started planting. I usually mix the two, but I now believe it was SO much more efficient to make my mind up first. Of course sometimes, rocks changed my mind just a little ;)
As to Bustani's you never know what he's going to have, so a list is kinda pointless (imo).

Dbarron, I love to go to Bustani, and yes I could spend an hour just walking around their garden taking pictures and trying to imagine where I could put that plant at home.

The cages are around all of the cherry tomatoes now! That was a fun job. It really was. The temperature was perfect (for me) and I didn't have to rush around because some other event, task, etc. was waiting for me. That was nice. No one expected anything of me tonight. Tom cooked dinner for Ethan and himself. I could just be outside. Love.

So, now the paths are clear--cages out of the way.

Well, Dawn, it seems like our meat system is messed up for it to have to come to this. I could care less about buying beef, but I have two in the house who enjoy it. I have a small amount in the freezer.

We have a good community of neighbors too. Not all of them. Some I'm sure would steal garden produce if things got rough. Which sorta makes me mad. I don't mind sharing it, but FOR THE LOVE, start your own flippin' garden instead of spending every weekend going on "rides" OR going to the lake.

And, Dawn, I agree. People don't realize what goes into a garden. Especially a pretty garden. I've had texts and pictures sent to me over the past couple of weeks from people wondering why their veggie plants aren't beautiful. People see my pictures and think that I'm just lollygagging around my garden taking pictures. They don't see my fingernails or feel my aches and pains (totally worth it though). Which is fine. If it's important to them, they'll figure it out. I'm still trying to figure it out. I was laughing with HU yesterday about how I was so clueless when we first moved out here, that I was planting broccoli and green peas in June/July.

And, yes, it would be such a dream community if we could all pick up our properties and live in the same "neighborhood". :D It would be like Spring Fling everyday!

Okay. I have a short list of plants that my friend gave me today. Will y'all give me any info that you may have on them. Thanks!

Honeywort Purple Tear

Pineapple Sage

Yellow Kerria Tree

Kolancho Marniers

Then, she gave me a couple of fennel plants. (butterflies like these, right?) and Summer Thyme. Is this just regular thyme?

We have a wee tiny garden. . . certainly not enough for a family of four. BUT maybe enough for family of 2. My project for the next week is getting trellises made for the cucumbers, summer squash, watermelons, and Tigger melons. It all looks good, cept for the puny onions. Garry's making fun of them--I think they'll be fine. He is also making fun of the tomatoes. They'll be great.

I have not been able to keep up with what you all have been doing. My computer is down, and I barely see this tablet.

I have planted a lot,with more to plant. We got a nice rain last night. I live in a strange area, some of my ground was too wet, some starting to get too dry,but I have worked areas to plant flowers and vegetables. I made a zinnia bed about 4 x 90 ft and will plant more flowers as the soil dries. I also have 3 picking tubs now. I will soon have more plants than I can care for.

I will post this before I lose it. Good gardening to all.

Perfect timing, Larry. I was just about to ask if you're okay. Sounds like you've been busy. We also got a nice rain--not too much.

Amy, are you okay?

Nancy, a tigger melon sounds fun. What's it taste like? Why's Garry making fun of the tomatoes? haha.

Hmmm, I guess the last time I posted was Monday.

I planted sorghum, if the birds left the seeds alone. Potted up the peppers, which left me more convinced I should toss the bag of seed starting mix. Nothing thrived in that.

Ron mowed. He cleaned the gutters. I stay in when he's mowing because I'm allergic to grass. He didn't want me outside while he cleaned the gutters because he might spray me with the hose. We cleaned inside because it was supposed to rain yesterday...it didn't. At least not during daylight got .68 overnight. Windy today. Did anyone have bad storms?

They bring the new washer today.

I've been reading your posts all week, just haven't had anything to say.

XOXO

Its too cold, wet, and windy to do anything, so I came in hoping the wind will dry things enough to work. I can use the rest, but it is hard to sit still.

Dawn I agree 2019 was a lost year for me. It all blends together

everyone sounds like they are full on spring planting. I love spring it’s so full of hope.

We are almost done planting at my daughters, I think. Need to replant squash someone planted to shallow and they were found on top dried up. The problem is I planted five types and I don’t remember which was which so I guess I will plant all five again.

i still want to Plant sweet potatoes but none of my potatoes have made slips.

i also need to plant more okra

and melons.

at home I have nice herb garden started in Sophie old swimming pool. She finally poked holes in it with all her crazy swim/digging she does. It will work nicely for a few culinary herbs.

picked a handful of snow peas to enjoy with my lunch. I definitely will grow more of the peas next year.

can I grow these in the fall?

That would be awesome

well happy growing everyone and may the hail miss you all

dbarron, What a marvelous selection of plants! I am just totally green with envy, especially since I'm so far away from Bustani. I had hoped to make a trip up there this year, but since the yard isn't ready for new landscape plants yet, we pushed out that planned trip to 2021. Freebie plants are fun too. I bet your mini-bog is going to look awesome. I'm impressed with how quickly you got everything planted. I try to do things that quickly but sometimes I just cannot make up my mind where to put something and I have to sit and stare at the plants a while before I know for sure where they belong.

That 37 sure is going to feel cool tomorrow and I hope your temperature doesn't drop lower than they say it will. They keep dropping our forecast low for tomorrow morning, and it has slowly gone from 50 degrees to 44 over the last week, and oops, now they are saying 43, so something like an actual temperature of 40 wouldn't even surprise me because our cold microclimate here in the valley tends to go lower than forecast more often than not.

Nancy, Self-shopping and then telling the hubby what he bought you is one of my favorite things, and Tim doesn't mind it either.

It is hard to think of the ones we've lost. Whenever I talk about losing my mom, I remember how many of us here have lost our moms so closely together the last couple of years. I cannot imagine what it feels like to have lost your brothers too, as all my siblings (knock on wood) are still living.

The garden is very healing, and I really need that today. This morning, on FB just a few minutes ago, I read the stunning news that our neighbor has been diagnosed with Stage 4 pancreatic cancer that has spread to his liver. Our little piece of land once was a part of the family farm he grew up on, and he and his family are very special to us. They are such good people and from the first day we met them, I knew we had won the Great Neighbor jackpot. We knew he was having health issues and that they were looking at his liver, but never expected it would be something so serious. We'll be praying so hard for him. He isn't even one of the few old-timers that we have left here after last year, as he is just about the same age Tim and I am. He might be a year or two older, but that's it. And, I hate to say it, but we are moving closer and closer to becoming old timers ourselves, something I'm reminded of every time one of those young whippersnappers (i.e. anybody younger than us) moves into the neighborhood. I remember when we were the young whippersnappers, but that was over 20 years ago so we're not so young any more...and, even worse, the old-timers we have left here in the neighborhood now were just about the age Tim and I are now when we moved here. I confess that I thought they were "old" at the time we met them all, so I cannot deny that we are "old" now at the same age they were then.

Jennifer, Yay for getting the tomato plants caged. I haven't caged the ones in the garden yet, and I need to get that done before they get so big that it becomes difficult to get the cage over them. I do have the ones in containers caged, but they were planted several weeks earlier than the ones in the ground.

I don't think the meat supply is in trouble long-term. I just think it will take a few weeks for the supply chain disruptions to work their way through the system. The worst thing will be, and this probably is happening now, if people panic buy and further deplete the limited amounts available. Of course, nobody can buy more than they have the freezer or fridge space to store, so I don't think it will be as severe as the panic buying of paper products was. I just read news this week and late last week about food processing companies in the Texoma region having issues with Covid-19, though not on as large of a scale as what we're seeing in the larger meat processing facilities. One facility wouldn't say how many were out ill but implied it was not very many people, and the other one said they had two people out ill. So, if they have taken good steps to sanitize and all (and hopefully have some PPE for their people to wear) then maybe this regional facilities won't see it become more widespread. What I noticed last week when we were in the store was that Wal-mart was fully restocked with toilet paper, Kleenex and paper towels everywhere....stacked high, so obviously those supply chain issues have been resolved. I'm not sure how long they have been restocked that way since we had been avoiding the stores, but it was good to see those things are back in stock. The same thing will happen with the meat industry too.

We have had produce stolen from our garden in the past, but that stopped with the completion of the 8' high fence with a locked garden gate. It is sad that it has come to that. I will share produce with people if they'd like some, but I don't want them coming onto our property and stealing it. Everyone is capable of gardening, even at a small level, but so many people are just lazy and would rather just take what they want instead of working for it. Don't get me started on rural meth heads who will come onto your property and steal every bit of metal that isn't tied down because they can take it to a metal recycling place for quick money---they even stole a ranching neighbor's brand new metal pasture gate. It is hard to keep your cows in the pasture when the gate is stolen during the night!

The only one of your new plants that I have grown is the pineapple sage and the fennel. Pineapple sage is my favorite sage. In our garden, I generally plant it in the mixed perennial border that sits just inside the southern garden fence. It gets about 4' tall and wide by the end of the summer and has beautiful red blooms. Hummingbirds love it. Fennel of all kinds is a food plant for swallowtail butterflies. Right now my biggest, healthiest, happiest fennel is a bronze fennel plant that is in its second year. It is just huge this year. I didn't plant this one, it just reseeded from a previous plant nearby and I left it where it sprouted. If what you have happens to be Florence fennel, then that one is grown, technically speaking, for its bulb but mine usually last at least a year before the bulb demands to be harvested and I mostly grown it for the butterflies too, not so much for the bulb. Fennel, by the way, was once used in medicinal elixirs like absinthe. All fennel has the potential to reseed heavily and become invasive, but in my garden it tends to just reseed in small bits here and there and I leave them where they sprout if I can.

Nancy, Tell Gary to stop making fun of those plants! They cannot help it if they haven't grown much yet. Just wait a month. The difference in tomato plants from early May to early June is quite impressive---a happy tomato plant can get huge quickly once the cold nights go away for good. To me, onions never look that impressive until they begin to bulb up, but if yours seem to be slow, you can feed them nitrogen and they'll make a lot of growth quickly.

Larry, I'm glad you are able to get some things done despite the rain.

Amy, Was the bag of soil-less mix an off brand or something? The only time I ever have gotten a truly bad bag of soil-less mix was the first year that Miracle Grow made Miracle Grow Organic. It was the worst stuff ever.

Our rainfall came in two rounds. It wasn't expected until after 11 pm last night, but around 9 or 9:30 a collapsing thunderstorm west of us sent a heat burst to Thackerville that did some wind damage there. It missed us by a few miles to the south. We got strong wind from it, but apparently the worst wind was south of us and all we got at our house was some loud wind that didn't do any harm. The rain didn't roll in until the morning hours---around 3 a.m. and you can't sleep through it because the NOAA weather radio goes off to warn you that you have a Severe Thunderstorm Warning. We got small hail and brief heavy rain, but no damage, and only about 1/2" of rain, so it was all good news for us.

I'd be excited if I was getting a new washer today. I hope it is beautiful when it arrives and, more importantly, that it works well.

My allergies are just horrible this week and it slows me down in the garden. I'll be glad when the trees finally finish pollinating and I can stop taking allergy medicine that makes me feel drugged and groggy.

Dawn

Hi everyone. BRRR cold today. A breezy 61. I did a walk-around with a heavy shirt on, but though Tiny wanted me to stay out, there was no lollygagging this time. And they've also dropped the forecast low for here tonight, also, to 39 now.

HJ, I don't know what a Tigger melon tastes like, but will let you know when we get some. Also. . . a friend brought me a Kerria (Japonica) three years ago. I wanted it because she said it would flower in the shade, and then I proceeded to put it in a heavily dappled shade area. It DOES flower, though would probably flower more in more sun. Well, since I've been all about natives of late, I'm not that crazy about it. But they ARE pretty. Here's a link: https://www.gardenia.net/plant/kerria-japonica-pleniflora-japanese-kerria

Kalanchoes are fun-- i try not to buy succulents, since I have nowhere inside to overwinter them. But, of course, I often fail and buy a few. Now, having said all that, I was just outside to check the rain gauge and noted that three succulents are growing in one of my pots from last year. And then there's Sedum, too, and hen and chicks. Aha. I see a whole bunch of succulents do just fine down here. Now I guess I'm going to be spending some time today checking them all out! LOL

Oooooo, Amy. Hurry up and test it out!

Haha, Dawn. My nose was running like crazy the past two days. I told GDW maybe I was getting a cold. He said it was most surely allergies. Huh. I never key into that possibility. Duh.

The rain just messed around on us yesterday, until late. We ended up with .75". And we had quite a bit of wind with it.

The reason some of the tomatoes are so puny, Dawn, is that I had lopped the tops off and stuck them in water. So I decided to conduct an experiment--growing the tops as well as the bottoms of the several tomatoes. But I decided that on the spur of the moment, so planted the tops straight from the water containers they were in. And it wasn't all that warm when I planted them, to boot. I'd buried them up to their "chins," and then the weather was kind of ugly, also. I'm really proud of them for surviving at all. I think they're starting to look really good.

That is shocking and tragic news about your neighbor, Dawn. Prayers for his family. So so sad.

I've been sitting here far too long. I think I'll go weed for a while on this less than perfect day.

Yes, we should be like 36 (which actually means I might see frost)...sigh.

I got out and used my grass shears for tall sedges that are crowding my flower bed edges and almost impossible to mow. I had forgotten how handy those are, I bet I haven't used them ten times in fifteen years. I can see the bush clematis now..it's not hidden by burgeoning sedges in my overly wet back yard.

I'm shocked when people call me sir, but then I look in the mirror at my white hair and think, just yesterday you had dark hair and were thinner. :(

And yes, my allergies are awful with all the wind. This morning before the sun came out, the wind was picking up water from the lawn and blowing it like it was still raining (rained early morning). I didn't really realize how hard the wind was blowing till I see the trees bobbing and swaying.

I just posted the NWS Frost Advisory in its own post for those of you in NE OK and adjacent portions of other states. It sure seems late in the year for this, but then again, at least we aren't going to get snow like some portions of the northeastern USA.

For the chili heads : https://www.cayennediane.com/big-list-of-hot-peppers/

HU

I got some of those great chili chiles!

Thanks! I'm in the process of making notes on all my tomatoes and peppers, so when I go to start some next year I don't end up with all orange cherry tomatoes and super hot peppers. So any site that helps identify peppers is definitely helpful right now.

How's everyone's gardens this morning? I saw posts on FB that frost got some people. :(

Well I carried stuff in (yet again...good lord it's May), and covered stuff with blankets. And of course, it didn't frost here :)

Jen,

Honeywort is another name for cerinthe. I’ve always known it colloquially as “shrimp plant,” because the branches are nodding and appear kind of jointed, like shrimp. It likes sun but will take a little bit of shade. It’s drought tolerant but is prettiest when watered regularly, and does well in so-so soil.

I second Dawn on pineapple sage. It’s a great plant. In California it would grow into a shrub, a good 4’ tall. Hummingbirds LOVE it. And it really does taste and smell like pineapple.

I’m not familiar with that exact Kalanchoe, but so far as I know they are all succulents. They do well in rock gardens, or pots you can bring indoors for winter. :)

No frost here, though we were good and chilly this morning. Plants are all well and happy, so I’m happy. Hopefully we’ll get some new garden beds made this weekend. Woo!

—Marleigh

This is my south garden. One more row of okra and it will be planted. The north garden is not this complete. The wildlife garden has spots of people food and wildlife food planted, but all may become wildlife food.

I have 4 king pots planted, will make 2 . tablet is trying to change what I am wanting say, but I have 4 self watering pots, will make more.

No damage here. Some of the peas came off the trellis during the storm the other night, but a couple zip ties fixed them.

Things are just growing. So far I’m pretty happy with how things look. Should probably throw some Tone around tomorrow so that the rain dissolves it.

I also had a bag of composted chicken manure break in the back of my car. Yuck. But I didn’t know that Riddle sells that, and now I’m glad I do.

I also dropped a container of 250 zip ties in the grass. I always hated playing pick up sticks.

That looks awesome Larry

our garden at my daughters looks so good and I have effectively passed the addiction to gardening to my daughter and my niece.

it is a good thing.

I am going to be going through Oklahoma on my way to Branson soon.

I wanted to see if I could socially distance visit with anyone as I pass through the areas.

if not I understand. Most people are still taking more serious precautions.

dbarron, sorry you had to cover everything, but glad you didn't get a frost even so.

Larry, looks great!

Rebecca, dropping a container of zip ties is so annoying.

Thanks for the info on the plants. I have a good idea of where I would like to plant them all, but one of the beds isn't made yet. I'll have to hold them in pots for awhile--well, only the Pineapple Sage and Kerria. Except I don't know what to do with the honeywort yet.

I sure am hoping for a quiet week. Last week was very busy and I think I was a little anxious about my friend whose husband died last week. I was in charge of getting some items together for her and that involved collecting items from people and choosing a plant--stuff like that. And I never want to stress out a grieving person by demanding they be home and ready to take gifts. However, she was staying at a friend's home last night after the memorial service and it's fairly close to where we live. We were able to deliver the car load there today. Hopefully she'll be able to stay with her friends for awhile. Their house is like a retreat. Absolutely gorgeous. ...or at least the outside is. They have a beautiful pool, hot tub and even an outdoor living room. It's all landscaped beautifully. I would never want to leave.

There were a few other things that came up too this last week. Maybe this week will be calm. And my brain can be calm.

Kim, what parts of Oklahoma are driving thru?

Kim I am not sure where you live,but there is a lot of pretty country between you and Branson. I understand about the social distance, Madge and I have a problem with it also, mostly because of our kids. It seems as though they have become the parents now,and they tell US what to do. We have each had a kid come by and check on us,but we were told to sit out on the deck and all wear mask. I don't handle being told what to do very well, but I know they are only trying to take care of us. I have broken the rule a few , but having my helper come over to work, I have to be able to show him what to do.

I would love to meet any member of the group. Robert ( oldbusy1 ) is the only one I have met. He seems to be a wonderful person. I think he lives about 100 miles southwest of me.

If you are coming up through Oklahoma I would think you would take highway 59 or 69. I think 59 is prettier, but harder driving. I think the prettier country is in the montians. Going to Branson I would think you would switch over into Arkansas at some point. All roads to Branson are pretty. If you find yourself in my neck of the woods, you are welcome to stop by. I live about 17 miles south of Ft. Smith.

I can relate to getting the kids hooked on gardening. I am trying to get my kids hooked. My youngest son is talking about doing containers,I think it is all talk. My oldest daughter is doing a few containers now. I am also working with my sister's oldest son,try to get him into gardening. but he is over 120 miles away,so there is not much " hands on " I can do for him.

I may drive the eastern route one way and the western route one way. The western route takes me thru OK city and Tulsa. The eastern thru Arkansas. I won’t be in a rush just meandering

Kim just wandering is great. I wandered west to Ca., then north to Wiseman AK.,then east into Canada,then south to home,it took me 4 months. My next wandering trip took me south into Mexico. That wandering trip took me 1 month. It was too hot for me to wander in Mexico. I then got a job driving an 18 wheeler and wandered for 3 years all over the lower 48 states. I don't wander any more, because that got me a wife, if there is any wandering to be done now,I send Madge..

That’s sounds like fun Larry. I have always enjoyed driving or riding. I don’t do it very often because of work. But that is ending in two weeks. I will have time then.

No frost or freeze damage here because we only dropped to 46 degrees, 3 degrees above our forecast low of 43. I think our Mesonet station dropped to 41 though, which is so bizarre. It is at a slightly lower elevation than our place, but not much. Tim's sisters in PA were expecting snow yesterday (and not happy about it). May weather has been so goofy so far.

Larry, That looks great! So your soil finally is drying out some? The weather at our house did a total 180 and we are getting exactly the opposite weather the last month from what we had previously, so we are veering towards dryness and not flooding, but I am just thrilled we no longer are water.

Rebecca, Of all the things to break in the car! I've dropped zip ties like that before, and just hate it, but otherwise I love them for attaching cages and trellises to fence poles and stakes. They are just so handy in the garden.

Kim, I am sorry, but we aren't entertaining visitors at this time. We are still socially distancing as much as we possibly can, and not just for our own safety. Our very dear to us next-door neighbor just was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer and starts very aggressive chemo soon. Because we are medical first responders with the VFD, we are trying to stay distanced from everyone so we can respond to his house safely (for his sake) if he needs quick medical assistance. We couldn't go, in all good conscience, if we'd been out and about seeing people and might have been exposed. We could get to him a good ten minutes before an ambulance coming from Thackerville or Marietta could get here if he needs anything. I'd hate for a call to go out that he needs help and for us to feel like we couldn't respond to help him because we might have been exposed to Covid-19, so we're just going to stay locked down as much as possible for as long as possible. I hope you have a fun trip and also stay safe.

Jennifer, It is very stressful when a friend suffers a major loss. Fifteen years ago this month, Tim's best friend died of cancer on my birthday. When the phone rang at our house around 4 a.m., I knew it was his wife and I knew that he was gone. One of the reasons we had moved here was to live closer to them. We immediately threw on our clothes and rushed over there to sit with her and their children in their home until the guys from the funeral home could come to pick up his body (it took them a couple of hours to get there). I'll never forget that. It was an extremely distressing time and yet felt extremely comforting to be right by their side. We already had been at their side as much as possible since his stage 4 cancer diagnosis around Easter, and then we were with them a lot that week and for a period of time thereafter. You feel their grief so deeply even as you are dealing with grief of your own, and you're trying so hard to help them in every way that you can. That is what friends do. I hope you have a calmer, less stressful week this week because you deserve that.

Larry, Our son and his wife have been the same way, but finally are easing up some now. I think it finally sank into their brain that Tim could bring it home any day from work, though I hope he doesn't, just as either of them could bring it home from the fire station or hospital on any given day too. The risk from seeing them doesn't seem worse to me than the risk of seeing Tim here in our own home, but for a long time they worried that they would infect us. So, we see each other about once every couple of weeks now, which is better than not seeing each other at all. Everyone still sits further apart, etc., isn't so huggy and all, and everyone worries because the case numbers still are going up in the D-FW metro where Tim and Chris work, and in fact, Dallas and Fort Worth keep reporting new record numbers of cases several days a week, and even our little quiet area is seeing more and more cases. I think we're all doing our best to stay safe. Meanwhile, I have relatives in the DFW metro out running around all over the place, sort of like the virus is just magically gone, and I think that is a mistake, but they're making their own decisions and we are making ours. I'll be perfectly happy if we don't venture down there until a family wedding in August. Maybe by then the case loads of virus patients will be much lower.

I am relaxing enough to go to at least 1 store every weekend. It is so good to be out even if only for an hour, but we are very careful still to go only early in the day while the stores are still very quiet, and we try really hard to maintain proper social distancing and to not talk with anyone if we can help it. A lot of people here are still wearing masks so I think that shows they are trying to be cautious.

It is a beautiful day today but my allergies are simply awful today so I'm indoors now trying to avoid all the pollen that apparently is in the air.

Dawn

I am confused! I saw Week 2 earlier. . . . but don't see it now.