Lovely! I planted lettuce seed out a couple of weeks ago - beautiful warm day - then it turned back into winter (29 degrees for several nights and a deluge of rain) and I fear the seeds won't germinate. I am waiting for consistent warmer days and nights to determine if I need to replant. Weird weather for South Carolina.

I can honestly say I have never seen a pink rainbow - wild! Today rain was forecast. We had some earlier but not for the remainder of the day. Cold north winds are heading for us during the next week with rain and colder temps. Have to wear those rain pants to work this week. Nothing worse than arriving at work drenched! Umbrellas are pretty much useless when the winds are high so I strap down with rain gear head to toe. We spent today visiting our aunt - I made sure to have breakfast and very light lunch because I knew there would be about a 12 point chicken wing, pizza and sponge roll for us...there was. I had 2 chicken wings, waved my WW Shopping Guide around and researched the meal before eating (new strategy...this woman always bugs me about having more and I have declined numerous times)...today she was interested in my weight loss. I had a BIT of everything, enjoyed it and told her how happy I was with things. Also chatted about all the opportunities and events I have to decline EACH week at work for hospitality events...so she is getting the message finally. I am always up tight about this visit every other week because I dreaded the who act between us with the food - but I have been sticking to my guns and actually walk my plate right into the kitchen sink as soon as finished and throw it in the dish water. Can't take seconds when your plate is gone. Can't make my point any stronger than that! I want to reach my goal more than a beer, more than a cheesecake, more than a night out...this is the third year running I have tried to do this and the first time I have made it past a certain point with INTEREST and DETERMINATION to continue. I see myself smaller, I have faith and can now see the difference from when I started. It has been slow. Sometimes too slow...so I give myself small rewards, reread the how to guides, dotties site, discovery health site and then, when I finish reading remind myself how disappointed I have been with myself the last few years for giving up. That is the truest feeling I have to motivate me. I am going to reach my goal - no matter how long it takes. It feels great wearing size 12 for the first time in YEARS. I feel great getting this far. I am feeling much better. I pat myself on the back for sticking with it when I was emotionally drained and down - eating right helped me feel better. What motivates you? Cheers for now, McPeg

Denise, Fig trees are pretty late to come out. Just be patient with them. It is not unusual for them to die back completely to the ground and then to be late to show new growth. It is just one of the frustrating things about growing figs here. The good thing is that once they start regrowing from the ground, they grow quickly. Two of the latest blooming peaches (they have chilling hour requirements of 1000 hrs or more) are Contender and Reliance. I don't see Contender in stores here often, but do see Reliance from time to time. Both are available from Stark Bros. Those are lovely cabinets! Nancy, The sleet part doesn't sound good, nor can it ever be good when Wyoming is warmer than we are in the month of April. Oh well, I just keep thinking "Lee warned us....". Because. he. did. (grin) We only dyed two dozen eggs---a dozen with a blue/purple Galaxy kit that had rub-on transfers of the stars, the Milky Way galaxy, etc. and a dozen in pastels that have a pearlized/marbelized finish you apply after the dye dries. I didn't think that dye ever would dry. We also had 60 (says Tim and Lillie, and I say 61) plastic eggs to hide. Tim says he hid 60. He counted. Lillie says she found 60. She counted. Yet, when I went out to the garden to throw row cover over the two beds that include tomato and bean plants, I found a plastic egg at my garden gate. So, I say 61 eggs. Regardless, the Easter festivities are over, our temperatures now are dropping (we were 64 at midnight, and still 55 until about 4 p.m., but no longer....) and it is sort of misty/foggy but maybe with not quite enough rain to call it light drizzle. Our prank was to fill Lillie's magical, mystical golden egg with brussels sprouts. Let me explain. She has gone on and on about how we have to hide the golden egg (my reply: what golden egg? why? we never had a golden egg when Chris was a kid) for a couple of months and it has to have a spectacular surprise in it. Oh, and how she must be the one to find it, and with no help. Hearing about it daily about drove me out of my mind, until I finally started teasing her on being fixated on a golden egg that we didn't have, weren't interested in and weren't going to have. She still went on and on and on about it endlessly. So, a couple of weeks ago I told her that I was so tired of hearing about it and that if she didn't stop talking about it, I'd buy a golden egg and fill it with brussels sprouts. She kept emphasizing it had to have a great surprise in it. I told her that brussels sprouts would be a great surprise. It all was a long running joke that she wasn't taking seriously until we bought a bag of brussels sprouts at the store yesterday. The look on her face when I put those brussels sprouts in the grocery cart was priceless. At home, she took a new approach, begging Tim to hide the golden egg so well that she'd never find it. Apparently she decided I am a woman of my word and that there really was going to be brussels sprouts in the golden egg. Guess what? She was right. I am not cruel. When she sat down her basket and started taking out the plastic eggs to open them up, I suggested she first take the golden egg (only a bright yellow egg) and put all those brussels sprouts in the fridge before they started smelling up her Easter basket. She promptly complied and, when she opened the fridge, sitting next to the brussels sprouts bag, there were two "LOL Surprises" toys on the shelf. So, she got the spectacular toy she loves and had hoped would be in the golden egg, and we got the fun of seeing her react to brussels sprouts in her actual golden egg. It was hysterical. She promised solemnly that there would be no talk ever again of a golden egg at future Easters. We'll see. Our forecast low for tonight has dropped to 38 and for Tuesday night to 35. Tim and I covered up the two raised beds that have some tomato plants and some green bean plants in them. We might not have needed to, but with a 38 in the forecast, I figured better safe than sorry. Tim is sicker and sicker. I told him I think he has the flu and not a cold. He won't admit it. He thinks that because he had the flu shot last fall, he couldn't possibly have the flu. I think he is wrong. He is just too stubborn to admit it. He is not planning on going in to work tomorrow morning. This is going to be the longest and most boring first week of April we've had in a long time. rere's not much that one can do out in the garden in this sort of weather. I brought in all the flats of plants from the front porch, even though lately they've been staying out 24/7. I'll probably put them outside tomorrow and bring them in again the next couple of nights. We will be cold, but not nearly as cold as places further north. We have had small numbers of hummingbirds recently, about a week or two earlier than usual. Suddenly we have a lot more. I suspect a bunch were arriving here on their way, just passing through on their way to points further north, and the cold front hit. So, here they are, feeding like crazy at the feeders. I'll refill the feeders with fresh nectar tomorrow. I am tired (apparently I am no match for a 9 year old's energy) and am planning to go to bed early. I'm trying to stay awake long enough that at least it will be dark when I go upstairs to go to sleep. Really, I don't care if it is light or dark, but even when tired find it hard to fall asleep before it is dark outdoors. I looked at the garden while covering up warm season plants and there's hundreds of warm-season volunteers uncovered. Either they'll sink or swim on their own, and it doesn't really matter. If they die, more will sprout. More always do. Dawn

Larry, I'm glad you weren't getting too much rain this morning, and sorry it found you later in the day. I saw that there was a pretty bad tornado in Jonesboro today, and didn't even realize any part of your state was under a Tornado Watch until I saw a video someone posted of the Jonesboro tornado on the ground. I hope everyone in the Jonesboro area made it through that without death or serious injury. That's a nice plant nursery you have going there. It cannot rain forever, and when the rain finally stops and you are able to plant, you'll have a lot of wonderful plants to transplant into the ground. Nancy, Oh, elms are a thing here too. Honestly, with about 10 acres of wild, left-to-grow-as-it-sees-fit woodland, anything that seeds prolifically is found in abundance here. About the only thing we do is try to remove the cedar trees every few years, as they sprout like weeds too. I spent quite a few years cleaning up the woodland every winter, but it was a never-ending task, and keeping up with it was a full-time winter job, so nowadays, I just try to keep all the tree seeds out of the garden and let them do their thing in the woodland. This means at the very least that I spend a significant portion of each spring pulling out sprouting oaks, pecans, hackberries, redbuds, elms and mulberries from the garden beds and pathways, and fenceline too. If I were to miss doing this for one single spring, my garden would become a woodland in the blink of an eye. The very first year after I removed all the invasive cedar trees, greenbrier and poison ivy from the north banks of our creek, we had a lovely little colony of mayapples spring up. I was excited to see them there. We never would have known they were there if I hadn't taken out all the invasive stuff. By then we had lived here several years and never had seen mayapples, so it was pretty exciting. That has been a general thing that happens here----remove invasive plants (whether native or not) and watch to see what shows up in the newly cleaned-up spaces. You can get some plants you've never seen before. Amy, Chris had that trouble with Jiffy organic seed-starting mix this year. I really didn't. Some white mold tried to spring up on the surface one time this year, and I saw it right away as it was just beginning to develop so I just made sure to run the fan in the room pointed at the light shelf to dry out the Jiffy mix more so the mold wouldn't grow. That was all it took for me. I don't really have a good alternative that is readily available in stores, unless you have someone around you that has a nice selection of Pro-Mix. Amy, We made a quick run to Home Depot to plant shop. It was pretty early in the day and the store was packed! I did notice that folks in the garden center were doing their best to maintain correct social distancing....everyone wanted to buy plants, and they had tons and tons of them, and everyone wanted to buy safely. That was enough of "getting out" for me to stop feeling like I had cabin fever so badly. I don't have to get out ever, but tell me that I can't get out, and I want to leave our place and go somewhere just because I know I can't or shouldn't. The kids have been careful to keep themselves and the grandchildren away from us for the most part, wanting to protect us oldsters, so I am sort of having grandkid withdrawal. They did stop by very briefly last week to pick up hoops, row covers and earth staples because they were expecting a freeze, but even as we walked in the garden, we tried to maintain proper social distancing while at least getting to chat with each other for a few minutes. There are many other people going through the same thing right now so I'm not going to whine about it. I know that none of us want to inadvertently spread this virus to anyone else on the chance that we might have it and be asymptomatic, and none of us want to catch it from anyone else either. I wonder how many months it will be before we can start to return to some sort of normalcy. Jen, I'm glad the seedlings are okay. You must have had a good rain. We had about 5 minutes of light rain in the early morning hours so it wasn't enough to hurt anything. Rebecca, It feels like full-fledged spring here and I have little to no concern about a late freeze. Our weather pattern has done a total turn-around the last couple of weeks. Today is my average last freeze date, so technically I still have a 50% chance of one, but I don't think it will happen. I think that is true for at least 80% of OK. I'd be a little worried next week if I was in northwestern OK....and the panhandle likely has more cold remaining too. I think your area likely will be fine. Obviously anyone from OKC northward probably needs to be watching next weekend's low temps very carefully, but it seems like most people could go ahead and plant now and just cover up on that last cold night or two. It is supposed to be 40 degrees here at our house Friday night/Saturday morning, so I'll keep an eye on that forecast, but what has happened lately is that they will forecast a cold night out 5 to 7 days in advance, and by the time that night actually arrives, the forecast low has risen by several degrees and I don't have to cover up plants. I doubt I'll cover up tomato plants if the forecast is for 40 degrees, but I might cover them up if it is for 38 degrees. So far, our last freezing night here for 2020 was around March 7th, although we have had some nights in the mid-30s since then. Just not lately. Even on the night Chris had a forecast low of 32, they only dropped down to 34. He did have his garden covered up just in case. That was about a week ago. Having said all the above, I never fully relax until after May 3rd because we went through a period more-or-less from about 2007 to 2013 where we had a late freeze or frost on May 3 or 4 every year (which explains why I acquired a ton of frost blanket row cover during that time). Because of that, I never can relax until after we get past May 4th. We haven't had one of those exceptionally late cold nights in quite a few years now, so I don't worry about it as much as I did when it had become a feature of every year. Rebecca, See there, if Dan Threlkeld thinks it is okay to plant tomatoes, it must be okay! Jennifer, This virus may not like heat, but thrives in it, unlike some other types of viruses that die down in the heat. Many countries that are in the midst of their summer and hot weather have had huge outbreaks of it, so the heat is not having much direct effect on it. As for as drinking hot beverages, that is a fake news thing. Once you have the virus in your body, drinking a hot beverage might make your throat feel better, but it will not kill the virus. If we could kill the virus merely by drinking very hot tea, coffee or whatever, then we wouldn't have 600,000+ cases worldwide and we'd all be drinking hot beverages because the CDC was telling us too, which they are not. I wish it were that easy to get rid of it! Keep in mind that if the virus is present in one's throat, it probably also is present in one's nasal passages and sinus cavities so even if hot beverages worked, they might reduce the viral load but wouldn't eliminate all of it from your body. Some people say that taking zinc logenzes at the first sign you have a viral infection, may kill the virus in your throat or reduce its impact but I have not seen any research that validates this either. It is just that with some other viruses, notably rhinoviruses that cause the common cold, zinc works so people probably are assuming it will work with this one. Unfortunately, there are differences between rhinoviruses and coronaviruses, so ultimately we will have to wait for research on zinc's effectiveness with coronavirus. I do think there is research showing that people who are deficient in zinc in their diet/body are more vulnerable to viruses in general, but if you take a multivitamin, you probably already get adequate zinc. I have noticed that you cannot find zinc in any of the stores so people may be buying it to take in the hope it will ward off coronavirus. Our Centrum multivitamins have 100% of the MDR of zinc in them, so I guess we've got that one aspect covered. This COVID-19 just hasn't been around long enough for us to have much research available on what does or doesn't work to prevent it or to lighten the viral load. With a novel coronavirus that has become a pandemic, we all are searching for answers to help us ward it off, but research so far seems to only support avoiding infecting persons, washing your hands thoroughly and keeping your hands away from your face. Perhaps in due time, there will be more research that provides more answers. You have to be careful what you choose to do. With the 1918 pandemic, there was a wonderful miracle drug available---aspirin. The usage of aspirin was fairly new and there was a lack of understanding about how much was too much, so many people took it in huge dosages (often recommended by medical personnel of that era). Nowadays, for various reasons, many researchers have come to believe over the decades that the overuse of aspirin in the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic contributed a great deal to the high death rates. I have read quite a great deal of what has been written about this phenomenon and feel like what they say about it makes sense. It is a terrible shame if, indeed, the over-use of aspirin caused many deaths that otherwise might not have occurred with the Spanish Flu. That's one reason I think we need to approach all possible 'cures' to the coronavirus with a great deal of caution---we don't want to take anything or do anything that would make us worse instead of helping us fight it off. With the internet, there's tons of misinformation out there that likely is not helpful and even could be dangerous. I had fun plant shopping, but only bought a handful of edibles---some peppers and some herbs. I wish I had taken more time to look at flowers and buy some, but the store was very crowded and I was uneasy being around too many people, so I didn't. Our bluebonnets in the front meadow look astonishing. They've never been this early before in such a large quantity. At first, earlier in the week, it was just a handful of early bluebonnet blooms but now there's dozens. I'm so happy to see them. No one else around us who normally has bluebonnets have any of them blooming yet, not even the folks down in Thackerville who usually have bluebonnets in bloom at least a week before we do. I didn't even see any bluebonnets blooming yet alongside the highway in Texas this morning. Another early visitor is a male luna moth hanging out underneath the porch light on the front porch tonight. He apparently hasn't found his female yet, so I think I'll leave the porch light on all night long tonight in the hopes that they will find one another. They are, after all, on limited time. It seems a bit early for the lunas too, but they surely are responding to the early warmup here that has had it feeling more like April or May than March. Dawn