" There is also a very large, and interesting plantation of them in Maui, not the southeast, but still a really warm humid climate" Nope! Wrong again! The redwoods there are mostly planted above 5000', a climate where dewpoints are always << 60F, thus nights are going to be in the 50s at worse, and even 30s and 40s in winter. Highs probably never hit 80f, even during the worst heatwaves. Not at all a "really warm humid climate". A few are a bit lower, down to 3000', but their growth seems to become abnormal. Even there, summer are as cool or cooler than Boston's!

Jeff, Y'all have had too much shakin' and quakin' going on there in 2009 and 2010. I can see Jones making lemons from lemonade....they could come up with a new slogan like "Jones, Oklahoma.....We really rock!" Melissia, Just stay tuned. I'll post when I start planting. Diane, Your situation is one of the reasons I post weather extremes when they are in the forecast. And, by the way, if I know a really severe T-storm or tornado is headed your way, I will e-mail you in addition to posting. I worry about y'all when I see red on the radar heading towards you. Hopefully any warning I could send you would reach you ahead of the storm and before the satellites shut down. Jay, Our forecast has changed twice today already and I haven't looked at it since I started this thread, so I'm almost afraid to go look and see what it says now. Undoubtedly it has changed. I think originally we were expecting rain and snow (only rain this far south) on Friday, but then they moved it to Thursday as Paula noted above. For our area, El Nino usually means extra rain and I'm about sick of rain. We haven't has a lot in 'inches' this month, but the ground is so saturated from the fall rains and the earlier snowfall that it just never dries up. Paula, KFOR's forecast matches what the NWS was saying this morning, although I do think that pretty much all the media outlets hype the weather to some extent and scare people into expecting something worse than what is really expected. I "think" the increased bird activity occurred because the weather was so nice, but then I also think I'm seeing a lot of 'new' birds coming in from the south and west. I do start seeing additional robins in late January of most years and they may be more or less migrating through. Some of the robins stay all winter, but then all of a sudden, it seems like we have 4 times as many as we had before. I hope the Purple Martins are still hanging out down along the Texas coast. We wouldn't want them flying too far north too early. If anyone wants to look at their long-term forecast, you can go to the websites for Accuweather for a 15-day forecast or to the website for the Weather Underground (Wunderground.com) for similar info. I look at both of them, our local TV station's website and the NWS websites and then try to make sense of what all 4 sources are saying....and, often, they are not in total agreement so then you don't know who to believe. Dawn

Well, here we go. Thanks again, everyone. Looking east from the house. You can see the "bumps" of weeds growing around the old stumps of the mature Norway Spruces that were removed in spring of 2014. I need to get those stumps removed or ground down. I'll call and get some estimates this week. Looking south. Ignore that dead Japanese Maple on the left. It was another casualty of the water issue. It's coming down when my neighbor comes back from his kayaking trips. As you can see, there's plenty of room for trees. Shade and height are sorely needed since the other trees were removed. Plus, I'm tired of mowing. By the time I'm done, I have no energy left to tend to all the weeding and other things that need to be done. Now, for the small front yard on the south side of the house, looking east again. Where the pokeweed is growing in the foreground, there used to be a huge sugar maple. It was taken down about 5 years ago and the stump was ground down. Lots of electric wires in the way and close to the road. I'd like to shade that area in the summer, but don't know what to put there. I wouldn't mind height, but the width would have to be restrained. Peonies around the foundation will be coming out and planted elsewhere. Nothing here, except for the Japanese maple that was planted in the early 1990s, needs to stay. Yeah, I'll get around to removing those weeds in the foreground too. :-) Another angle, looking west. As you can see, there's no shortage of trees around here, except for my yard, which is pretty much naked now. :-) A few more random pics of that part of the yard for some more scale.

The worst, busiest, most exhausting week of 2017 is behind me now and I need to sleep for 3 days and nights before I can read, catch up and comment more or less intelligently, but I'll try to comment on what I can before my eyelids get too heavy. I just popped in to say hi and haven't read everything---just skimmed through quickly. Amy, It started raining here around 5 p.m. It has been very light rain, but we're up to at least 0.15" now, the first time we've gotten more than 0.10" in one day in over a month. We're hoping to at least get enough moisture to hold down the clay-soil-turned-to-dust layer that sits atop the ground. I spoke with a friend from another part of the county and she described how their clay soil's upper layers had turned into an inch or so of dust and I said "Bingo! Ours too!" and it was so nice to find out we weren't the only ones whose clay is deteriorating. Neither of us ever has seen clay go dusty to this extent. It is weird. My favorite way to get what I want for Christmas (which always includes almost exclusively gardening supplies) is to buy what I want and then tell Tim "this is what you got me for Christmas". lol. It works every time. I hope your cat enjoyed her ninth birthday. Rebecca, Strawflowers grow great here. In fact, every type of everlasting flower I've ever tried has grown well here, and they're super-easy to dry and then use in wreaths, swags and bouquets. I did that a lot in our earlier years here before my pepper and tomato obsession took over all the available space. More than likely the Shasta daisies will come back, as long as they weren't pulled up by the roots. We actually were not out on fires. The south winds brought nice moisture flow (in the form of ever heavier clouds) over our county all day and the higher humidity (it only dropped into the upper 20s which is better than 10 or 12 or 15%) helped keep fires at bay. Yay, yay, yay! We went Christmas shopping and bought big Nerf dart guns for our niece's and nephew's boys so they could wage (safely) all-out war in the back yard on Christmas Eve. We were "trying" to be good and not buy anything too messy like paint, slime or play dough, nor anything that plays music or makes a ton of noise, so I hope the guns work. Tomorrow we'll shop for the girls. I was really wishy-washy about shopping for them when I tried to do it today---there's 400 billion girl's toys in all the stores and how anyone can figure out what to get for two sweet little girls is just beyond me. Oh, and we bought all the groceries and supplies (including those for the VFD) that we think we'll need for the next two weeks, just in case snow or ice arrive next weekend. I felt like we accomplished a lot, but then we had to hurry home and get ready for the annual VFD Christmas Party, which is my favorite night of the year. It was great, and now it is over, and I am really, really tired. We all almost never get to be together in the same place at the same time because when we are together, we are rushing around at fires. So, it is a luxury to spend 2 or 3 hours together eating a meal, exchanging gifts, laughing and enjoying a little bit of peace and quiet. Other VFDs covered our calls for us tonight while we were gone to the party in Texas---and we only missed one call, I think, and it was a gas leak after some part of a building collapsed and broke a gas line. I'm not sorry we missed that one. You would not be stupid to kill off any sort of grass in order to grow plants that contribute more to your little ecosystem there on your place. Kill, kill, kill the grass and plant what brings you joy! It is not at all surprising that people start fires when they should not. Many people either are clueless or do not care. Know when they begin caring? When they have to pay other people for the damage done when their "controlled burn" escapes control. Don't even let me get started on expressing my opinion about people who burn carelessly and without regard for other folks' property. Texas has much better laws than we do regulating prescribing burning. Take it easy and don't rush your recovery. Baking is fun and I love doing it too, but other than holiday baking and baking for the firefighters, I don't do it that much any more because grain-free baking that Tim and I can eat is so much harder, and chasing down all the grain substitutes takes up a lot of time and energy. Amy, Honey has too much energy! It is hilarious that she wore out the other dogs. Nancy, Pinterest and FB are full of hilarious gingerbread house fails. If I attempted a gingerbread house, I suspect mine would be like those....or, perhaps I'd do a half-decent house and then would come home to find that Pumpkin pushed it off the table or counter onto the floor and the dogs ate it. That's how life goes around here. Getting a lot of baking done quickly just comes from experience---and I got my experience with almost daily fires for months at a time in 2005 and 2006. I got used to coming home from one fire, taking a shower, throwing the smokey clothes in the washer, and then baking for the next fire. Then I'd clean up the kitchen and (hopefully) go to bed. The next day might be the same routine all over again. I just prefer home-baked goodies for the firefighters when possible. Nowadays we use pre-packaged, snack-size cookies a lot (I've yet to meet a firefighter who won't grab a little package of Nutter Butter cookies when they see them....it is strange that they are so universally adored!) Some years we hardly have any real fires that require cooking, other years that's all we have. Having a Sam's Club fairly close (in Denton, TX) helps because we can grab snacks pretty quickly if we need them, or I can even get Tim to stop by and grab stuff on the way home from work. Jennifer, It sure seems late for them to have harvested. Maybe I'm just used to earlier harvest dates further south and west? The equipment is so specialized now. When my dad and his siblings were children, their dad hired them out to pick cotton from sunrise to sunset for $1.00 a day, and if they were lucky, he'd give them a nickle or dime from their weekly earnings to spend at the general store in town on Saturday. That sounds cruel, but they were poor sharecroppers and the cash the kids could earn picking cotton helped the family buy things at the store, like salt and 1 pair of shoes per child per year, that they never, ever could have afforded otherwise. When there was no cotton to pick, if they needed anything from the store, my grandmother would barter for it, trading her eggs or cream or butter or whatever for the items she needed. The problem with bartering was that there never was enough food anyway, so bartering away any of it just meant more hunger somewhere down the line. Picking cotton was painful, difficult work and I don't know how anyone could put their kids to work doing it, but times were different in the 1920s and 1930s, and it was such a hard struggle to survive. We are lucky to live in a different era when big machines do so much of the tedious harvesting once done by hand. Kim, I agree that being snowed into a camper would not be fun, so I am glad to hear you plan to get to Denton before any anticipated winter precipitation arrives. They GPS-mapped our fire from earlier in the week and said it was only a little over 500 acres. No one who was there thinks it was mapped accurately but, you know what, I am staying out of that discussion. It was just flat bad no matter the size---the smoke plume was visible from 100 miles away. My son had coworkers who live a long way from here contacting him to ask if he was at the big fire, and we were shocked they could see it from their communities where they live. Usually after a fire like that has scared the fool out of everyone in the county, we have a quiet week or two because nobody wants to be the person who starts the next big fire. So, we're hoping for a couple of quiet weeks. We might still have medical calls, motor vehicle accident calls, etc. but if we could get through the holidays without another big wildfire, that would be so awesome. There's rain in our forecast for next week around mid-week. Have y'all seen that? Then snow in the forecast for the weekend, though I still have a wait-and-see attitude about that. Here's the 7-day QPF and it shows some great rainfall for some areas over the next 7 days: 7-Day QPF A majority of our fire chiefs in our county want our burn ban extended when the county commissioners meet next week, and I think the county commissioners want to do what the firefighters want. Now, here's where it gets tricky. Your county needs to meet certain extreme fire danger parameters to pass a ban, and having 0.50" of rain within the next three days negates the extreme fire danger. (It doesn't really negate it, but that's how they wrote the law, so.....) I think our burn ban may be in trouble. All I have to say about that is that we have had pastures catch fire (from downed power lines brought down by sleet) even when we have had sleet and snow on the ground, so I'd rather we keep the burn ban no matter what. I guess we'll find out on Monday. And, with so many people sick with the flu right now and others traveling for the holidays, I wonder who will be home to fight whatever fires occur anyhow? I told Tim today that everything I did all week long was for someone else--every day all day. That's not surprising---it is what we women do, right? We take care of everyone else. But, I warned him, tomorrow is my day for me. He didn't give me a hard time about it either. He's just so grateful he was able to gift 50 people at work (instead of 200, since I drew a line in the sand and told him not to cross it) with salsa and other goodies from the garden that he would agree to anything right now. My laugh of the day? One of his officers took her gift home and was sitting there eating her bread-and-butter pickles. Her husband, who works for the same PD, came in and said "oooh, pickles" and she told him "mine, all mine". lol lol lol. I don't think he works for/with Tim directly any more so he didn't get his own jars of anything this year. Personally I would have shared the jar of pickles with my husband, but she certainly is free to do whatever she wants. (grin) I am tired, tired, tired. I'm going to go to bed and I hope to sleep at least 8 hours. So help me, if the pagers go off overnight, I'm going to throw the fire radio across the room in aggravation. Dawn