@puglvr1 Look forward to your chlorantha blooms, I've had mine for only 6 months. It started out as 3 cuttings about 20cm (8in) long and has put out tons and tons of growth very quickly. Each of the vines is now at least 3 feet long and there are at least 2 peduncles getting ready to bloom on each vine. @lightning96 Thanks. As stated before, don't worry much about the humidity. Although the plants will probably enjoy it, it's not necessity for growing Hoyas. If you have any questions about artificial lighting then feel free to ask, I've been experimenting with it for about 2 years. @greedyghost My chlorantha was shipped from Thailand as 3x 8 inch cuttings. It spent about 2 weeks rooting and then about 2 months doing absolutely nothing. Not to worry though, once it gets started it never really stops growing. I notice that at best, the vines grow several inches a day, and in October (5 months old) it started putting out several peduncles on each vine. The first round of flower buds all aborted except the two flowers you see above, probably because of uneven moisture (I was away for about a week). The second round looks much more successful (2nd picture), and I'm expecting lots and lots of flowers. H. chlorantha seems to be a quick growing and easy blooming variety, at least under the conditions I provide for it. If yours is growing fast, then I's sure you'll see blooms soon enough.

We've had about three quarters of an inch in the last two days. We didn't have any ice at all here, but I've been driving to Weatherford every morning this week to work and I got about halfway there this morning and had to turn around because the roads got icy. My car was never meant to handle ice and I'm not about to test it. It's pretty crazy how the road can go from fine to horrible in just a few feet. It's very dangerous. I love the rain but I'm ready for it to be nice out. I have a lot to do before it's time to plant and I'm running out of time. I'd like it to be dry and warm long enough to get everything done and then it can rain as much as it wants. I'd add "but not too much!" to the end of that, but it's not like it would ever do that here anyway. lol Leslie

Y'all, I was so excited that it was going to rain....and it did rain, but only 2/10s of an inch! We had so much thunder and such dark skies, but this storm was mostly "all blow, and no go" for us, as my dad used to say. Bessie, I figured if we were getting too dry here, y'all were probably getting too dry over there too. What a change from a month ago! G. M., It is strange how y'all always get so much more rain than we do, and we're only 1 county away from one another! Several days while you were gone to the lake, we had little afternoon showers pop up in Marietta and they had a pretty good rain, but we were left out/passed over out here in the county. I can remember some cool August weather too quite a ways back. Almost every August since we moved here, though, the weather has been brutal during the first 2 weeks of the month. Our first year here, my brother and sister-in-law and their 2 kids came (from Pennsylvania) to visit and Ardmore was the hottest place in the country for several of the August days that they were here....with temps in the 108 to 113 range. They have been back to visit since then.....but only during the winter months. :) It is only 88 degrees here right now.....on this date last year, we had a high temp of 101. I'll take 88 over 101 any day. I was watching the news from Minneapolis-St. Paul earlier. Last night, watching it in real time, took me back to 2002 and Webbers Falls. I really feel for the people in Minnesota--what a shock to have a major bridge collapse! Dawn

Carol, During the Red River flooding of 2007, parts of our Mesonet station were disabled for days and days. I think the issue lasted until the worst of the flooding subsided. At some point they went back and manually corrected what records they could, but much data for the Burneyville station for that month is incomplete and considered somewhat unreliable. It drove me nuts. I had to rely only on my own observations! LOL I need a rain gauge that measures 10 or 12" of rain. I don't need it often (hee hee) but once every 2 or 3 years we get 25-35% of our annual rainfall in one day. When that happens, depending on how fast the rain is falling, I have to put on my muck boots, grab an umbrella and run outside and empty the rain gauge when it gets close to the 6" mark so it won't overflow and give an incorrect measurement. In April 2006, we had 9.25" in one day and most of that fell in about 4 hours. I went out and emptied out the gauge when it hit 5", and then I went out and emptied it out again when it hit 4". Shortly after that, the rain pretty much stopped. This year, the 12.4" fell over a longer period of time--maybe 8 hours or so--and I dumped the rain gauge 2 or 3 times so it wouldn't overflow. Based on statistics, we shouldn't have a massive rainfall for another 2 or 3 years, but sometimes statistics lie. "Christmas Day maybe?" LOL LOL LOL Here is what I am thinking. I am about to catch up and I will have one of those days really, really soon. I have two large bowls of tomatoes on my counter to process, so I think I'll roast them and a few other veggies at the same time and maybe make roasted tomato-garlic soup. That takes care of them. Then, I'll pick tiny tomatoes this evening (too hot already this a.m.) and dehydrate them. Then, I shouldn't have to process tomatoes again for 2 to 4 days, although I pick daily. I'll pick okra at the same time I pick little tomatoes, add it to what I picked yesterday, and blanch and freeze that. That's another veggie I shouldn't have to harvest again until tomorrow evening then, and I usually wait until I have two days' worth before I blanch/freeze. I also should have enough purple hull pinkeyes tonight to either cook a batch or freeze one, and then I should be able to skip picking for a day or two because they are slowing down. So, if I can get black-eyed pes, okra and tomatoes all done today/this evening, I shouldn't have to process them again for about three days. LOL It isn't much, but it is the best I can do. That only leaves hot peppers and sweet peppers. OK, so I have a lot of sweet peppers coloring up and I can pick them and freeze them for future use any time. I might do that tomorrow. If I do, it will take me just a couple of hours to pick 'em, wash 'em, slice 'em or chop 'em and get them into the freezer. That, then would leave only hot peppers. I've done a very heavy picking of hot peppers at least every other week since mid-July. At the present time, it has been about 10 days since I did a heavy picking, although I run out to the garden and pick as needed for cooking or canning recipes. So, I might be able to go 5-7 days before I pick hots again since rainfall is low and growth is relatively slow. So, where this is leading to is here: if I pick and process okra, peas and tomatoes tonight (Thurs.) and sweet peppers on Friday, and postpone hots until Mon. or Tues., then I should have Saturday off! Well, I'll have to pick okra, but I can stick it in the fridge and blanch/freeze it on Sunday. So, you see, I might get a day off. Unfortunately, Saturday is our best chance of rain here (about a 70% chance of rain and they are saying it may be heavy) so it probably would be a good day to be inside canning. It is hard to make the 'day off' fall where you want it to fall. I might do all I can on Saturday if it is raining, and try to make Sunday the day off because I love to cook a big family lunch and spend the afternoon watching NFL football. We still need and want rain here, and I think that by the end of the weekend, maybe I'll be able to say we finally got some. And, all my food processing predictions assume the plants will ripen produce as I expect it to. Every now and then, you walk out in to the garden and discover that blackeyed peas are suddenly purple earlier than expected, or the okra grew especially fast overnight or whatever. At this point, I'm just grateful the fall beans, corn, cukes and peas aren't producing finished products yet. As long as I keep up with the still-producing summer plants, I will be putting up a little food regularly, but not huge amounts on any given day. I will have a big green bean and big corn day or two in October if all goes well. I really think the heavy food processing load is lessening though. I'm still doing frequent batches, but smaller ones. When the fall broccoli is ready, that will be a big day or two, but that's some time off. Dawn