violet, you have to go back when everything is greened up! She has fish ponds in a grove of trees and has built a stream in the woods behind her shop. I have already been there twice this week. I bought three blueberry bushes, a rhubarb and some herbs and perennials, also a few perennials that I don't do from seed for hanging baskets for shade, impatiens and ivy-leaf geraniums. I may go back and buy the Caroline raspberries. She is also the one who has an open house during Christmas showing her house decorated. She is an absolute Christmas freak! All she asks is a donation for the Humane Society. I want some of her grasses and hostas, but will wait until they come back....also her climatis ..... are priced way under normal market. Oh, I forgot I bought a pair of those fantastic gardening gloves by Atlas. I think they were about $2 cheaper than the pair I got at Hummerts. I absolutely will not garden without them. She has great plans.....another greenhouse; online shopping, which should be up and running in a week or so and she now takes credit cards. What could be better? and she is about 7 minutes from my house. She also is a poultry afficianado.....we love to hear the geese get excited when we are there.

That was neat, I'd forgotten about that. Their coach is associated with the Rodeo of the Ozarks and the Heritage Trail. They ended their ride in Fayetteville. The group that passed my house were celebrating the 150 year anniversary. I can't remember for sure where they started, (Pea Ridge??) but ended up in Fort Smith at the Old Fort Days Rodeo. The sign in the background of the first picture is at my father-in-laws. He built it to identify the Overland Trail taken by the Butterfield Stage. I later learned that Confederate Soldiers marched up the Overland Trail from Fort Smith to Prairie Grove...I think. Anyway...glad you enjoyed jerry

Hi june...I use a Nikon d40x with a 55-200 zoom...this game was a scrimmage set up for a local charity, just lucky it was an early game....next Tuesday our team will play in something called Hootens Kickoff Classic (a big deal for our little school)...also an early game...after that, I will be at the mercy of the lights. Shooting from the sidelines is much better for pics, but I didn't get into the game like I would have from the stands..thats a hard trade off :-) My daughter used to barrel race, gave that up to perform with the Rodeo of the Ozarks Rounders....a drill team that performs at local rodeos and promotes the Rodeo of the Ozarks..she really enjoys being a part of that orginization. I have my camera with me most of the time...I have taken some really weird pics....like last night a frog was in the window of my shop eating bugs...so he got his picture made....I have several pics of this little bird, begging for attention, while sitting proudly atop a pile of horse apples...its a stupid subject, but a funny picture!! So I agree with you...it is really fun!!

Amy, Jet's personality has undergone a tremendous change since his big brother, Duke, died. I think Duke was always the protector of us all, and now Jet feels it must be him as he is the oldest male. So, he barks at everything---he barks at Chris, he barks at Tim, he barks at our other dogs and our cats. He barks at thunder. (sign) He'll even bark at me if I come into the house wearing sunglasses and a hat. He is super protective and tries to put himself between Chris and I or Tim and I (Duke never did that). I think he is carrying his made-up oath to protect mama (the feeder of all pets and the giver of dog treats) a bit far, but mostly it makes me laugh at him. He might not appreciate that. This morning he did not bark at the thunder (I don't know why). He is 12 years old and going from gray hair to white hair (he once was jet black) so it wouldn't surprise me if his eyes and ears aren't what they used to be. He doesn't even chase deer, rabbits or squirrels any more, even if they are 10' away from him. He doesn't really even bark. He just stares at them and, if I am pretending to read his mind, I'd bet he is thinking something like "In my younger days, I would have run you off.....". He is sweet to me and very protective of me, but increasingly intolerant of the rest of the world. I just automatically put him upstairs in our bedroom if someone comes over because I don't know if I can trust him around anyone else--I'm not saying he'd attack, but he'd probably bark, and I would imagine that would make someone feel unwelcome. The Calloway's in Southlake has Renee's Garden Seeds too, but I usually order them during her late summer/autumn sale. Our proposed pantry off the north side of the house will happen, but I am almost positive it will not happen until Tim retires. At the same time we build it, we want to build a big sun room on the north side of the house...probably about 16' x 24' or something---a nice place to have nice indoor/outdoor furniture and a place we can sit in the summertime. The sunroom off the west side of the house, even with trees shading it late in the day and with an air conditioner in there, is just too, too hot for us to use it late in the day unless we really crank up the AC. The great thing about the west sunroom, though, is that it is a great solar collector in winter, so you can let heat build up in it, then open the door between the mudroom and the sunroom and let the heat flow through the mudroom and into the house and warm it up. I'd like to have a sunroom on all 4 sides of the house that I could use at will as greenhouse space or sunroom space or solar collector space, but that's never gonna happen. We have a nice wraparound porch on half the east side and half the south side of the house, but we just don't use them. The cats lay on them. Sometimes the chickens come up onto them (I wish they wouldn't), but if we're outdoors, we aren't sitting still. They are nice and shady though, and help shade some of the east-facing and south-facing windows from the sun, so I do like that about the porches. I had a hard time getting Zebrina started here. It just didn't thrive. Maybe my soil still was too high in clay content back then for it. Or, we were perpetually too dry. Over the years, though, something changed and now it is an invasive thug that even pops up and grows in the pathways, and sometimes in the grass or driveway outside the garden. Since it reseeds, it is possible the ones we have now are better adapted to our soil and conditions, but it is just as likely that the soil has improved enough for it. I like most invasive thugs that are volunteers from something I planted on purpose---if I am going to have to pull 'weeds', it might as well be pretty ones. I'm laughing about the bucket seat. You know, it is always something, and if it is not one thing, it is another. That's so true about gardening here. I seem most inspired to not do anything in the summer when Tim is at work. He's only at work for a few hours today and then he'll be some so we can go to that funeral. He only went in for the big Monday morning staff meeting, and he had to drive through rain all the way there. Miraculously, I fell back asleep after he left (which almost never happens) and I was sleeping so incredibly well when our fire pagers went off about 90 minutes late. Back to that 'it's always something' thing again. I bet if I was wide awake, the pagers wouldn't have gone off. The sun is out now and I bet we get steamy quick. We're supposed to have high heat index numbers down here this week, with them getting higher each day as the heat returns more and more. Oh well, we have had a good run of cooler, wetter weather and I knew it wouldn't last forever. Rebecca, Of course something wonderful will come out over the winter, probably in January or February after I've already got seedlings going. It is the way of the gardening world, is it not? Still, I like to beat the rush. I still remember when we had the big economic downturn of 2008-09 and tons of people decided that growing their own food was one way to deal with it. The seed companies were swamped with orders and shipping was weeks and weeks behind. It didnt' bother me, because I tend to shop ahead anyway, but a lot of people got really behind while waiting on their seed orders to come and I've never forgotten that. It motivates me to stay on top of things and order seeds in the fall. Renee's Garden Seeds has really pretty artwork on their seed packets---the same type of beautiful illustrations you'll see on Botanical Interests Seed Packets. You can look at their packets here to get an idea what to watch for in stores: Renee's Garden Seeds (Currently 50% off!) One thing, among many, that I love about Renee's seeds is that you can get some packs with 3 varieties in a packet, and each variety is dyed a specific color with non-toxic food coloring so that you can carefully select seeds of each variety to plant if you aren't going to use the whole packet. I grow a lot of her melons, lettuce, bean, greens and some tomato varieties. Also, a lot of her flowers and herbs. I tried growing Creole several times, both in the ground and in containers, and all I ever got was big monster plants that rarely produced much fruit, which is not a problem I often have. Maybe you'll have better results there than I had here. How crazy is it that the squirrels prefer OPs to hybrids? All my life I've heard the squirrels are mainly after the water and not the fruit, but now I am wondering if that's really true. If it were, it seems like they'd choose any tomato---so if they are choosing OPs, that makes me think they are choosing for superior flavor (like I do, lol). I hate, hate, hate stink bugs with a passion. I know that God created the world and everything in it, but I cannot help thinking the Devil himself somehow created stink bugs, leaf-footed bugs, squash bugs, squash vine borers and bermuda grass. Otherwise, why do any of them exist? Nancy, Don't overdo it on your first few days back in the garden. The pain is not worth it. I am always shocked at how sore I get in springtime when I'm suddenly out in the garden all day every day endlessly, trying to stay on top of everything for as long as possible before the heat and the snake season set in and cut my time in the garden significantly. Our garden in our early years here had tiny paths 12-18" wide. I wanted all the space possible for growing space, but we were in our early 40s then and life was easier. Now that we are older, a few years back, we widened most of the pathways to 2' wide, and now I'm wishing we'd made them 3' wide. One of these days we'll do that. One of my closest gardening friends down here has kept gardening well into his 90s, although now that he is in his mid-90s, his son does most of the heavy labor involved....and, they've always plowed with a tractor, which in a lot of ways is so much easier, except you cannot have the sort of raised beds we need for both better drainage and erosion control. I cannot imagine living into my 90s, much less still gardening at that age....but, if it were to happen, I'm pretty sure we'd be up to 4' wide pathways by then (hopefully long before then). If we ever get around to building raised beds in the back garden (also on the after-Tim-retires To Do List), I imagine we'll start out with 4' wide pathways in between 4' wide beds. It will mean giving up garden space for wide pathways, but it also will mean raised beds lined with hardware cloth to exclude the voles, so it will be totally and completely worth it. Even though we aren't quite in our 60s yet (Tim will be in a few more months), I'd rather do the planning and building for our golden years sooner rather than later....while we still have the energy to do it. One thing I've long noticed here is that the men and woman who retire and sit in the rocking chair on the porch do not live nearly as long as the ones who get outdoors and work in their flower beds, yards, gardens or with their horses, cows, chickens, goats, dogs, cats or whatever. I've also noticed those same physically active folks are involved in community activities and volunteer work and are busy all the time. I really think that staying active as long as possible, and as long as one's physical condition allows, helps a person live a longer life. Another half-inch of rain today puts us at 5.9" for the month of August, more than double our usual August rainfall. It is such a blessing and everything is turning green again. I just love it. Dawn