Greta, I hope it works for you too. Teas & chinas are habit-forming for sure. Pam, we did have a very good time. Terry, the mountain / valley shots were taken atop Mount Magazine in western Arkansas. It's not far from Paris, Arkansas. We spend almost every spring break in Eureka Springs, just a stone's throw from Missouri. I also love Hot Springs, and have been there many times. I drove through Pocahontas one time when I was a kid ... I'm not as familiar with that part of the state (the eastern part). The western half of the state, I know well. I'm glad the pics brought back memories of spending time with your grandparents. 30+ years is just a blink of an eye, when you have memories that good :-) Randy

Ellie I have no idea what I am doing with hosta or daylily seedlings! I obviously have too much time on my hands and need to stay occupied so I tend to stuff. It keeps me off the streets and out of the bars, so that is a good thing. I'm sooooo sorry Royce that we brought back that awful memory of your proposal to the obviously ignorant woman. I'm quite sure she has lived a miserable life and missed out on a golden opportunity for bliss. I, for one, was trying not to cause you additional embarassment after your painful rejection, and was trying to be tactfuly in helping you acquire a house mate. I thought house mate was a better term than babysitter. Surely there is an indigent or homeless type person, willing to work for room and board, to keep a watchful eye on you when you and the STUPID equipment are out and about. On days when you mope about and don't play with equipment, they could be off duty. Congrats on running the tiller and not having the tiller run you. Brooke

Congrats on your new gardening adventure!! I wish I had easy access to horse manure for composting. Too bad you're not my neighbor AR Dramaqueen, I'd GIVE you all the perennial herbs you could want. Every year I beg friends and family and yes even strangers to come and take divisions from my yard. Herbs are very, very easy to grow in the ground but in my experience hard to keep happy in pots. If you can make a herb bed somewhere in the yard your herb gardening venture will be so much easier. Particularly when starting seeds, moisture levels are critical. You may want to check locally to see if there are any other herb gardeners close to you. Most gardeners are thrilled to take you on a tour and provide you with starter divisions. I still remember my dad taking me to a "yard sale" when I was about 10 years old. An elderly lady was selling her daylily plants in preparation for moving to a retirement village. We took an instant shine to each other and she spent a lot of time showing me how to pollinate flowers to make new hybrids, how to divide and set plants, etc. You could see that she had a lifetime passion for gardening and was happy to "set the seed" in another person. By the end of our visit to her yard I had a station wagon full of lovely plants and a head full of information. I don't know that she even let my dad pay her for the plants, I can't remember. I do remember that 6 or 7 years later my high school science project was on hybridizing daylilies and that I credited Pansy Corriher for the information and starter plants.

Nobody in this area of the country will forget that "once-in-a-hundred-years" freeze we had last Easter! I plant by how the weather feels... with one eye on the calendar, but I believe more how soil and air feels and stuff like how far the oaks have leaved out. "Plant corn when the oak leaves are the size of a squirrel's ear", etc. Frost hardy salad greens were in regular harvest stage and they were all fine. However, I had Black Aztec sweet corn 4 inches tall, assorted summer squash at first true leaves, Red Pontiac potatoes coming up well, all varieties strawberries blooming, figs had leaved out already, Super Sugar Snap peas a foot high... then we're being told it will be 25 degrees tonite!! Ron and I were able to cover most of the strawberries with heavy plastic sheeting (for me to remove early next morning when temp rose above freezing), and I dropped 3 gallon plastic nursery pots over the squash and potatoes (some 8 inches high). Next morning I took mental notes, and I immediately ordered more corn seed. I watched and waited on somewhat damaged squash; they stood still; I replanted beside them, and the new seedlings outgrew those that had "survived" the frost. Biggest potatoes had to resprout and were late and I eventually pulled them to make way for next crop. Those just emerging were fine with the makeshift protection and produced a crop. Strawberries at outside of beds were frozen, but a lot in center were OK... I figgered I lost 35% of the crop. Figs leafed out again and fruited a month late; Peas froze to ground, but most plants sent up base shoots, and I got a crop after all. My soybeans did not come up, and I found them as rotted mush, frozen with their bent necks less than 1/2 inch from emerging! The rest of the seed was planned to follow the corn first of July, but with start-over making corn late, I never got to plant soybeans last year. When I went to plant replacement corn, I kept find roots obviously still alive. I tossed out the first few, but then I got curious and left them in the ground. A fair percentage (35 - 40%??) sent up new shoots and cropped, altho later than the replants beside them. Mostly a nuisance to a gardener, but shows that variety would survive as a species even with a late frost some years. Worse news on trees. No acorns; no persimmons; no tree fruits of any kind around here (except my figs!). Trees did recover but a major amount of wildlife winter food was lost forever. Black walnuts sleep late in the spring, and they were fine. My antique roses (mostly Rugosas, Gallicas, Albas, Noisettes, Hybrid Musk)simply regrouped, leafed out again. The one-time bloomers (Albas and Gallicas) lost most of their flowering capacity for the year; the other groups are remontant; they just regrouped and flowered as usual, but a month later. Most hardy perenniel flowers and bulbs were not significantly affected. Your woodchuck recipe - still laughing! Back in the last century, I was joking about writing a cookbook for sale at local tourist traps: HOW TO COOK YOUR GARDEN PESTS. Most garden raiders can be found in game cookbooks, even a few with more than 4 legs. I did the research, but I ain't crazy about dressing out warm-blooded animals. Dressing woodchucks: The smell, the general ugliness, and that very tough skin that almost repelled my knife. I pretty soon figgered out something else I wanted to do worse that morning... My first almost-dinner woodchuck very shortly turned into deer repellant tossed under the tree where the herd gathers to lay up during the day and plot their night raids on my ripening corn. Assassinated feral cats (my neighbor feeds a population of them!)are also used for deer repellent. Anybody caught playing "lion at the waterhole" with birds at my birdbath will be offered a trail of canned mackeral leading into the Hav-a-Hart and will quietly disappear forever. Possums I drive 10 miles and turn loose; rabbits I just turn out locally. But woodchucks just eat too much too fast, plus they dig under my cages and barriers. One way trip for them, too. Fortunately woodchucks have 3 Achillies heels: too stupid to change their paths once discovered; day feeders so I can find them eating and see where they run so I know where to set the trap; one litter a year, so I can often get Mama and all the kits in 36 hours or so, and they're history until another one moves in. I check DAILY for signs of feeding everywhere I have a crop planted.... sometimes I'm still too late! I would expect them to taste a lot like wild bunnies and squirrels? Confirm, please. My brother in Wyoming supplies us with top-quality venison every year as a Christmas gift, and often include a few other sundry species. But as long as Arkansas whole fryers keep going on sale for 49 cents a pound, the pest cook book will probably stay on the back burner. Gee, not a word about fava beans in this one... note they are still fine today... in 54 degree sun and wind, with rain and cold on the way again... Jan