Mia, I hope your tender plants survived the cold. Maybe the cold air hadn't managed to infiltrate the garage via the open door quite long enough to hurt them. Often, plants like citrus trees can take a certain degree of sub-freezing temperatures for up to 4 hours before damage occurs. I left two citrus trees out all night last spring when we went off to a wildfire and it was dark when we came home and I simply didn't see the trees (they were sitting right by the garage too) and forgot to bring them inside. The next morning I found them frozen (I believe we had dropped down to 23 degrees when we were forecast to stay above freezing anyhow) and figured they were goners. I watered them and moved them to a protected area, and a couple of weeks later they started leafing out. They are alive still, though they lost a year's worth of growth to that cold overnight experience. Okievegan, Alright! Make the list. Organize it and then we even could assign different people different months to moan and groan about whatever is on the list for that month. : ) Seriously, though, it has got to be incredibly hard to make a living in agriculture here because Ma Nature has 1,001 ways to destroy your crop.....and often throws multiple issues at the plants all in the same day! When I lived and gardened in Texas a mere 80 miles south of where we live and garden in OK, gardening seemed so much more simple. I planted stuff. It rained. The stuff grew. We picked it. We ate it. The End. Here? You have to fight flooding rains, searing drought, high winds, tornadoes, wildfires, hail, etc.,before you even can hope to get a harvest......and then the next day you have to get up and fight all of them all over again. To get a great crop here I use tall garden fences, lightweight row cover, heavy weight row cover, bird netting and chicken wire over hoops for hail protection, mulch to keep the soil cool, drip irrigation to keep the garden watered, raised beds to keep the plants from drowning during heavy rainfall, etc. In Texas I just put the stuff in the ground and it grew. Why is it so much harder here????Gardening doesn't have to be as hard as our weather makes it, but here we are, and the weather we have is the weather we have. What are we going to do? Pack up and leave? I don't think so. (And, to be fair, the same part of Texas where I gardened so blissfully in the 1980s and 1990s has had its share of wicked weather challenges in recent years, so maybe it is harder there now than it was when we lived there.) My dad was a gardener, as were virtually all his brothers and sisters, and their parents before them were farmers, and my mom's dad was a rancher. So, I know from experience that there are many challenges in agriculture, whether you're a home gardener or a professional grower. Primary among those challenges is our erratic weather. The weather always has caused trouble for folks growing plants, but it seems like the weather-related challenges are so much more fierce now than I remember from past decades. I feel like Mother Nature has just gone berserk ever since about 2005. I want our old mother back! Dawn

Well, I can hardly believe it. I got out, the second time, a little late, since I was canning some beans, and the damage was hardly more than the other two days. Yet the other two days we didn't have frost until sunrise. Today we did. At any rate, the beans are doing okay. I did cut down one row of pole beans in order to use their cattle panel for something else. But Jerreth and I picked 4 1/2 lb of beans off of it before we did. Tonight I can't afford to do much to protect any plants. Most Sundays I'm up before 4 AM, and out the door by 5. Ilene, we had a great year for beans. Our favorite Tennessee Cutshort produced right through the entire summer, only slowing down during the worst heat. The row I cut down was the first one to be planted. This bean is especially nice for us, with our busy life style, since it stays tender for so long, even after picking. I also put in a couple poles of a mixed white greasy bean, from NC. It was much like the greasy bean which we grew back in 1985. We both liked it A LOT; extremely productive and vigorous and with very high production. I planted this mixture, which is all white seeded, with some of my black greasy beans, hoping for a cross, since my black greasy must be from some NC climate which has prolonged cool fall weather. It always just barely makes seed. So, I'm hoping to get a cross which will produce a faster yielding black seeded greasy, like what I had in 1985. Another bean which was a winner this year was the Cherokee Striped Cornhill bean, a traditional Cherokee cornfield bean. I got it from a member of the Seed Savers Exchange, in order to share with a local historical garden, and, of course, I planted a couple hills in my corn. This bean produces a couple weeks earlier than the Genuine Cornfield Pole bean, which I grew back in the 80's. Its seed looks about the same however. But the pods! Wow! Some are nearly 9" long. They have heavy strings and the pods remain tender right up through the green shell stage. This bean also produces prodigious amounts of seed. So those were our stars this year. Any bean would have done well. But these truly excelled. George

Basements are not rare in my area of the south (TN). Many, I would even venture to say most, homes here have a garage, but many houses have basements. This is our third home and we have had a basement in each house. On this and the last house we had a basement with a garage on the main (living) level. First house was combo garage/basement. Jane - there was some damage in Knoxville, but I'm about 30 minutes from there. That's where I work and where my dad and my sister and her husband live. We had about 40 windows out of the building where I work (college campus) and lots of downed trees, limbs, etc. My sister had a couple of storm windows broken as well as hail damage to one vehicle. My dad did FINALLY get power back on Friday evening (was without for 5 days), only after a neighbor called and complained that she had felt sick after breathing fumes from the ruptured transformer on their property. Within 30 minutes there were 6 trucks and just a bit later from another area, a special truck and crew that removed the transformer and dug up soil around it. Scary. My dad and others on his end of the road have wells - so water has been tested. This is a small county road - only 8 houses - all with acreage. Those further back from the main road have wells. Thanks for asking. My brother is in Ft. Oglethorpe, GA which is close to Cleveland and Chattanooga and he and his wife were quite upset at the amount of damage. She did her graduate work at Lee University in Cleveland and they lived there before moving to Ft. Oglethorpe. tina

Thanks! Linda :) We are fine, had blankets & pillows ready in the hall - we live in a brick ranch w/no basement. 99% of the time we celebrate no basement! - what w/all the flooding we seem to be getting:( But last night was one of the 1% when we wish we had one! Our city tornado sirens failed to go off - apparently a power surge blew them out - but fortunately we heard the warning on TV. DS had his house hit twice w/lightning - lost a lot of electronics even tho they have the super-duper-colossal surge protectors. Guess a direct hit isn't guaranteed!:) A lot of bad hail damage at the north end of the city - we are in the south Praise God! Some houses literally have holes in their siding as big as basketballs! Lots of windows out - a friend lost his windshield while driving home from work! Scary thought, that. Today we are supposed to get more rain (what else is new??!) possibly a lot. Neighbors have a new lake in their back yard - where's that kayak I was hearing about?? I'm going to keep working on graduation & baby quilts until I either float or blow away. Can't stop mother nature - I might as well be productive:) How did everyone else fair yesterday/last night?? ~Cindy