Paula, My DS didn't go to the Palo Pinto/Possum Kingdom area. They sent their crew on a day he wasn't working, but he has stayed in touch with them. He said they finally got to take a shower and sleep after 2 days out fighting fires and they wanted everyone to know how very kind all the local residents, volunteers and folks at the Red Cross shelter had been to the firefighters. Anything the firefighters need is being supplied.....clean undergarments, socks, lip balm, etc. I think DS would dearly love to be out there at the fire. He said the airport sent a brand new $900,000 fire engine that wasn't even officially 'in service' yet. It is a huge truck and should be able to help protect a lot of structures. San Angelo is in such a beautiful, albeit rugged and dry, part of the state. I cannot imagine being a gardener and living there. What you can plant there certainly is highly limited! The Possum Kingdom lake area is so spectacularly rough and rugged as well. Unfortunately, many of the trees around PK where the wildfire has grown to about 200,000 acres, are cedar and mesquite trees and both burn like crazy. Luckily, they often regenerate quickly from their roots in some cases after wildfire, because it takes a certain rugged type of tree to grow out of that limestone rock. Parts of the Possum Kingdom Lake/Graham area got about 1.5" of rain last night, which ought to help in the areas that received it, but most of that area didn't have rain. We had a raging Tstorm last night that dumped a half-inch of rain here, but we had lightning and thunder for hours. The storm-line moved through at 60 to 70 mph so I bet I have more tree limbs and leaves on the ground today, and probably more plums on the ground as well. The wind has brought down so much fruit in the last couple of weeks that I'm beginning to think I won't harvest any fruit as well. (Guess the poor harvest is to balance out last year's amazing fruit harvest.) There's a slight chance of severe weather tonight, so I guess the best we can do is simultaneously hope that rain falls for everyone but that the severe portion of the weather fails to materialize. Dawn

Amy, Tim and I were joking that the single red branch might be turning red because it is dying. I don't think we're right about that, but I have pondered why only one branch has leaves that have changed color. I do see quite a bit of red poison ivy in the trees along fence lines when I walk the dogs. I don't care if it is poison ivy (not our property, not our problem), I love seeing the red foliage. Seriously, though, on trees whose leaves turn red, those trees need the specific combination of cool nights and bright sunny days to make red leaves, and some years we don't get that combination so we don't get much red foliage. When one branch or one part of a tree turns red and the rest doesn't, scientists believe that the part turning red first just happens to have the perfect microclimate. I am not sure I buy that explanation. Why one limb on a tree that's 30' or 40' tall? Why not 2 or 3 limbs or 6 or 10? (sigh) Mother Nature has many mysteries we really do not understand. Today we went to the CostCo in Southlake, TX, because I wanted to go to Central Market just up the road a bit after that. I'd forgotten how gorgeous that specific CostCo's landscaping is. You can tell their landscape architect must have specified trees that have good autumn color because most of the trees planted in the parking lot medians have great autumn color already---mostly Chinese pistache is what is red there right now, but also some sort of cypress trees, sweetgum and maybe some Shumard red oaks (that aren't red yet) along the perimeter. I was looking at the pistache trees today and loving their foliage and red berries. Why haven't I planted Chinese pistache here? I'm going to plant 2 or 3 next spring. Amy, I still have a lot of Red Creoles that haven't sprouted yet. Also, Copra, Highlander and Red River. Those are the Dixondale varieties that store the longest for me. That's how I get in trouble, by the way, with planting too many---picking all those long keeping varieties means I have a lot to plant in order to have a lot to store---and then we have more than we can eat fresh even after I've made tons of salsa and chopped/frozen tons more. I need to have more discipline and pick just one long keeping type each year instead of several. I think Nelson is getting scarce because a lot of places sold out of it in 2017. I think Jung still had it the last time I was looking at seeds on their webpage. Who knows if the sellers that sold out in 2017 will have it again for 2018. It could be that there was a crop failure at the seed production level since many of the USA retailers all buy their seed through the same big wholesalers, who in turn buy their seed from overseas producers. Nancy, George (MacMex) lives near Tahlequah and he posted a photo on his FB page of a cabbage covered in frost (cabbage is fine) this morning and said the low there was 25 degrees, so he must have gotten some of your cold if your garden escaped relatively undamaged. Maybe the cold didn't make it quite to your place last night. We're supposed to be about 5 degrees warmer tonight that we were last night. We'll see. Rebecca, My garden is toast. It is okay, but I will miss the Lima beans our big lush plants would have been producing for about another month. I thought about covering them up, but the trellis is 6' tall and about 25' long and I didn't want to wrestle with getting row cover over that trellis and weighed down along the egdes in yesterday's wind. I hope giving your back some extra rest today is helping it, and the fact that OSU won couldn't hurt any. We had the game on the radio while we were out running errands and doing grocery shopping. You're like me. No matter how many seeds and containers you have, you always need more. It is a peculiar affliction we gardeners have, of always "needing" more. lol. I'll tell you what makes me feel old---my nephew has a 14 year old stepdaughter!!!! Yikes. I am not sure how that happened. I believe her mom was very young when she had her, but still......it seems like the nieces and nephews themselves were graduating from high school just a few years ago (been more than a decade though, even for the youngest one) and now one of them has a stepdaughter in high school this year. That sort of freaks me out. However, the rest of my nieces and nephews' kids range from newborn to about 10 years old, so they're all ages. Still, I do feel old age creeping up on me. Jacob, That pepper plant really is a champ, or is in a perfect microclimate. I miss the green already. Everything here has gone the color of wheat except for the tree foliage. I cannot believe the difference in how everything looks now compared to just a few days ago. Rebecca, There you go, you enabler you! Go, girl, go! If you and I are going to have far too many seeds (and you know that we do, and probably Amy too), then everyone else needs to have far too many seeds as well. Perversely, not that my garden is frozen, I want to plant something. I probably won't though. Maybe I'll sow some lettuce seeds indoors. It was nice today to walk wherever I wanted and to not have to watch out for snakes beneath my feet. If we have any days that go back up into the 70s/80s, I will have to watch. They don't necessarily go down for the count after the first freeze, and will continue to be out now and then either hunting for food or capturing heat by lying on concrete until we get good and cold and stay there. I'm watching TCU play Iowa State right now, and TCU has not had the lead yet in this game. I'm wondering if ISU is going to pull off another upset and beat the #4 team in the country. It could happen. I hope it doesn't. Dawn

And I had just removed the protective tent cover from over my tea pot topiary Wednesday "because it was so nice and sunny". ugh. This morning when I went out to the paper box, I looked over the garden gate to see the topiary enveloped in snow and ice. :( I had time last night, like a half hour, to go out and re-cover it before the storm hit, but of course I didn't. An old, tall, juniper in the middle of the courtyard is bent way over too. I removed the snow and ice from the affected side, but it didn't immediately spring back up this time like usual.

Thank you Meme. The little sign below it says: "The sun shines, birds sing, garden flowers the angels bring". I totally agree about planting in pots. i've been asked the same thing. I've got a couple more dilemmas. First, the deer didn't read that they were not supposed to eat begonias! This pot of Dragon wings was coming along beautifully, but when the weather got hot and dry they decided to try it out. Big brave guard dog Alfie says he'd chase them away if I'd let him out front at night ... ;-) Any ideas on what annual, or perennial that won't freeze dead, to plant here? The macho fern was absolutely gorgeous there, but it was very heavy and I didn't want to ask Bob carry it in and out of the green house any more. Another problem is the squid agave planted in this pot in early spring is now blanching in the hot sun. Even the 'Sid Vicious' cacti from Mara drooped in this pot in the summer ... But for this I have an idea! We were helping my sister cut back some things, including a contorted dead Indian Hawthorn bush. As I threw it on the pile for the city to pick up I thought about the various painted trees seen in photos of garden tours. (Scroll around on the link to see more.) It sure couldn't die any deader than it already is! And it wouldn't need watering -- that's for sure! So I rescued it. Here goes ... I started out with turquoise for the first coat because I bought a gallon for $10 in the "OOPS" section of the hardware store paint dept. Maybe purple would be better? Or splashed with cobalt blue? Whatcha' think? Maybe it should be blue like the pot. Love this blue one on Pam Penick's blog "Digging".