Friday night it got down to 37 F. here. Last night it was warmer. I forget now, but I think it was close to 50.

The garden is producing really well right now. I'm kind of sad to see things coming to an end. I've got LOTS of sweet potatoes to dig!

George

George,

I'm sad to see it coming to an end as well. I always pray for a long, mild autumn because the autumn garden produces like mad.

Yum yum. Sweet potatoes fresh from the garden in the autumn. What could taste better? (And their wonderful flavor makes all the digging worthwhile too.)

We have a huge squirrel invasion this year and those little suckers are bold. I believe they will not stop until they have every pecan off the tree. We've never had many squirrels in our yard although our neighbors always have lots. Either our dogs have stopped chasing them, or the squirrels are just busy preparing for a long winter and aren't letting the dogs deter them. The squirrels are coming into the chicken pen and coop and getting hen scratch. They also are raiding the cat food dish for dry cat food, and are drinking from the chicken waterer. They even follow me into the garden....walking right through the gate behind me. If I had to base a winter forecast solely on squirrel activity, I'd say it is going to be a long, cold one. (sigh) And I hope I'm wrong. I like my winters short and warm (not that I necessarily get that kind of winter, but I always hope for it).

Dawn

I think we're in for a cold winter. The acorns are very plentiful up here, and that tends to be a good indicator. Last week we picked up a couple bags of Burr Oak acorns. I hulled some and made acorn biscuits. Yum!

You're right about sweet potatoes. They are a mainstay of our garden even though they get little attention during the summer months.

George

Oh, George, acorn biscuits. That's a lot of work. I made acorn bread once, just to see if I could. I can see a lot of acorns in the trees on the edge of the woods, but my Burr Oaks are deeper in the woods in snake territory so I haven't been in there to see how many acorns they have on them yet. We do have a heavy mast crop in general, though. And, not only are the squirrels busy, but the red ants seem terribly busy too.

I know the Climate Prediction Center forecasts a mild winter, but the Old Farmer's Almanac forecasts a colder one then usual. And, of course, who do you believe? In general, they can't even forecast the weather that well three or four days in advance, so why should we believe a forecast made 3 months or more in advance? LOL

Texas does have a huge problem with fall army worms and, for reasons I don't understand, I usually have a colder winter here in southcentral OK when the army worms are bad, but the worms are bad in Texas, and not here, so I don't know if that means anything.

Personally, I have a feeling southcentral OK will be colder than usual and drier than usual, but that's just based on a gut feeling.

Dawn

Well, now here I've only been reading GardenWeb posts for about five minutes and I've already learned another thing. George and Dawn, I had no idea acorns were humanly edible. So what do you do, just shell them and grind them and use in place of flour, or...??

We have yet to have freezing temps here in Dewey. I apparently planted my fall tomatoes too late and I'm just now seeing some green ones. Probably the cold wave that's predicted in a few days will get us. I would be still picking yard-long beans but I quit going out there. The Scarlet Runner and Painted Lady beans have all finally set bean pods, and I'm getting a few Swedish Brown Beans from only one plant that I planted as an experiment.

I dug my sweet potatoes last week and got quite a few. Some are huge. It was labor-intensive getting them out of my raised bed, as quite a few of them made an attempt to grow onto the inside wall of the bed and probably hooked a "toe" under the edge. They went quite deep and I'm sure I have missed a few. My raised bed got an intensive hand-tilling. The sweet potatoes really spoke to my frugal instincts, as they came from only one sweet potato, bought at the grocery store, that sprouted.

I'm getting lots and lots of peppers now. They seem to thrive in the cooler temps and are still blooming. I'm debating as to whether to hand-truck the containers inside during the frosty nights. But I'm so tired of picking things and trying to get them into the freezer or our mouths in a timely manner. I have enjoyed the summer and have had more flowers and more success with the garden than ever before but I'm ready for a winter respite. I have romaine and butter crunch lettuce and five cabbage plants that I'm going to try to build up around so I can extend their season.

I've not posted here in a long while because we've been busy trying to get our rent house ready to rent. We had planned to buy the house next door, but the contractor who was fixing it up turned out to be a little less than honest. Our insurance company told us they wouldn't insure it without a new roof and he started developing creative scenarios as to how we could close on the house without one and tried to make us believe the delay in getting it done was because of the subcontractor. We spoke with the subcontractor and he said the delay hadn't been him and that there was a possible problem on one end of the roof. The contractor was continuing to try to schedule a closing every couple of days, which we would say no to because he wasn't done with quite a few things he had promised he would do. Finally he e-mailed me and said if we didn't quit dragging our feet he'd have to offer it to someone else, and that he thought he could get quite a bit more for it than he was offering to us and that he had been bending over backwards to accommodate us. That was just not true. So that kind of hacked us off and we told him to go ahead and put it on the market, then. It took him another month, but he finally got the house where it looks like it's finished (though still no new roof) and he has been advertising it at $10,000 more than he was going to sell it to us for. We don't notice people lining up to look at it.

In the meantime, a house across the street from us was put up for sale. The price was very low and we knew there were probably good reasons for that but we went ahead and bought it. We've been over there every day working on things and probably won't be ready to rent it till December at the earliest. There's termite damage and dog-accident damage everywhere there is carpet, that has gone through and stained the hardwood floors. Our neighbors were much relieved that we bought it because they worried that it would become a "ghetto house". I think we can still come in under what we were going to pay for the house next door by quite a bit, and get close to the same rent we were planning on charging, but it doesn't have a big back yard and I will not be able to use any of it for gardening space like I was planning to do with the house next door.

It's still possible the contractor may not be able to sell the house next door and may come over with his hat in his hand. If he does so, and puts on a new roof, we may still buy that house, but not for what he wants for it. Time will tell.

The squirrels are quite busy here, too. I still have lots of bees and butterflies in my back yard. But I have not noticed hummingbirds lately. My neighbor's two cats have moved in to my front porch and they greet us every time we step out. I do not feed them and they still look like they're going home to eat. If I fed them they'd be totally mine. Very loving cats, but I don't really need any more animals to take care of.

Hi Ilene,

I haven't been hanging out here too much lately. But I do drop in now and then. It's always good to visit with folks.

I believe any acorn can be used for human consumption. But many are high in tannic acid and inedible unless they are leached in water to get rid of that substance, which, by the way, could be used for tanning ("TANNic:" get it?) hides. Members of the white oak family are often "sweet." That is they do not have tannic acid, or at least not at noticeable levels. Burr Oak is a member of the white oak family, and it has nice large acorns. So it is ideal for processing.

But Dawn is right on when she mentions that it is laborious. I use dial up and had to do some downloading one night, last week. So, while baby sitting my connection, I cracked, hulled and picked enough acorns to make some flour. They had weevils, so I also had to dig them out of the nuts and cut out bad spots.

Basically, here's the scoop on using acorns. Dawn, do pitch in if I forget something.

1) You collect them. I always taste one before collecting more. Last year I found a white oak which had bitter acorns, bleah!

2) If you aren't going to process them right away, bag them and drop them in the deep freeze for a couple days. This will kill weevils and stop further damage.

3) Hull the acorns. I find that water pump pliers work great.

4) Cut out bad spots.

5) Toast the hulled nuts, say around 300 F. in the oven. Toasting makes them much easier to grind.

6) Grind them. I use a hand mill, the same I use for corn mill.

7) Mix acorn meal with regular flour at approximately 50 percent. It works very well, though I'm sure it does not contribute to rising yeast. It probably has no gluten.

Last week I made pancakes: 1/3 wheat flour, 1/3 homemade corn meal & 1/3 acorn meal. They were delicious. Then I made baking powder biscuits with 1/2 wheat and 1/2 acorn meal. They came out nice,light and fluffy.

My wife froze the rest of the acorns. Any time now, we'll get them out and work on them some more. But hulling acorns is a lot like shelling corn or shucking beans: I only do it when I have another reason to be sitting still.

We're going to start some of these Burr Oak acorns in containers, out in the garden, so we can transplant them. We'd like to have some on our property. But I know I'll have to put up barriers around each and every one. Goats are death on young trees!

Anyone know how long it takes from the acorn before a Burr Oak produces?

George

Hi Ilene,

Wow! You've been busy. I hope everything with the rent house works out OK. I wondered why you hadn't been posting much lately.....now I know it is beacause you've been too busy.

If you want to save your peppers from freezing but not have to deal with processing them right away, just pull up the plants roots and all and hang them upside down in the garage, a shed, the attic, etc. You can let them dry and use them as dried peppers next year, or just come back to the plants in 2 or 3 weeks and harvest them. By the way, you can do the same thing with tomato plants if the fruits are large enough that they are about to break color and start ripening.

Like I always say, I learn something new every day on this forum. This week, I learned I wasn't the only one to make bread from acorn meal. (That was a shock!) George gave great directions. If you use ANYTHING other than sweet burr acorns, though, you will have to soak the acorns in water for days and days and days, to leach out all the tannic acid. You change the water daily, too, to prevent bacteria from growing.

George, I thought your directions were terrific.

Ilene, the Native Americans made flour or meal from acorns--that's what got me interested in it.....I was working on a "Native American" unit with DS's scout group when he was younger.

George,

We transplanted small burr oak seedlings from our woods to our yard 7 years ago. The trees were VERY small and probably were only a year old when we moved them. They were about a foot tall above ground, and their tap root was about as deep when we dug them up. I wasn't expecting nuts until the trees were 15 or 20 years old, but each tree produced a few (5 to 7) last year in their 7th year in our yard which probably was their 8th or possibly 9th year of life.

Dawn

Thanks for that information, George and Dawn!

There are burr oak trees in the park in Bartlesville, I may go see if I can gather any, or if the squirrels have already beat me to them. Squirrels are like a protected species in that park. People actually bring things to scatter out on the ground to feed them. To me, a squirrel is a nuisance, robbing sunflower seed from my Cardinals, stealing my neighbor's tomatoes, stripping peaches off fall peach trees and breaking in to houses in order to build their nests and have their young in the attic. We have to be constantly vigilant. It helps to have a dog that likes to chase them, though if they didn't run he'd turn tail and go the other way. And if he caught one he wouldn't know what to do with it. Pearl has even chased a couple, when they accidentally disturb her nap. She likes to sleep in the seat of the riding lawn mower. Sometimes if I gather black walnuts, I'll put them in mesh bags and hang them from the rafters in the same area. The squirrels come to try to figure out how to get to them and in the process, they happen upon Pearl. She's 14 years old now and mostly sleeps and eats, but a squirrel that nearly walks on her is still enough to get her going.

Dawn, I don't know if I would be up to soaking the small acorns. It sounds pretty labor-intensive. Of course I'm no stranger to that, but you have to draw the line somewhere. LOL! That's a good idea, George, about freezing them. I always pop my flour into the freezer to kill whatever weevil eggs happen to be there. Sometimes I leave the flour there till I'm ready to use it, but in times of heavy freezer demand, I'll take them out after a couple weeks and store them in my pantry.

I almost always gather black walnuts. There's a tree out in the park, only about 50 yards from my back gate. If I don't gather them, I dig dozens of seedlings out of my raised beds. Apparently the squirrels do find times when the dog and cat are inside. I really don't want black walnut trees growing in my yard as they poison the ground around them and I have little enough places to plant things. Kids that frequent the park will gather them, too, and use them to throw at each other and sometimes at windows. Kids can be so destructive. I also discovered there's a native pecan further out in the park further beyond my gate than the black walnut, but if I want those I will have to hustle to get there before anyone else as there are lots of people who know where all the native pecan trees are. DH doesn't like me gathering black walnut or native pecans. He thinks the pecans are too small to bother with and he doesn't like black walnuts. Generally I freeze the black walnut meat pieces and use them in pumpkin muffins and sometimes banana bread. Most of the black walnuts are already on the ground under the tree and we haven't had a frost yet. Do either of you know if they will be any good? I have always waited till after the first frost to gather nuts, but I'm not sure if I really need to.

Like you, George, I'm a multi-tasker. I'll shell beans while sitting on the back porch having coffee with DH, or while resting from working on the house across the street. Yesterday I picked all the beans off the vines. I was worried about not getting any beans off the Scarlet Runner and Painted Lady for nothing. As soon as the weather cooled off, they started making beans. Same with Fortex, I've gotten some really nice beans from the vines since the weather cooled, but hardly anything up until then. The only problem I've found with Fortex is that it seems nearly impossible to get them mature enough to make seed! They can stay on the vine forever and get huge, and they're still stringless and tender. Since I like to save seed, it's a mixed blessing.

Yesterday I only worked on the rent house for a little while. I was up half the night with Jesse, who developed a migraine in the middle of the night and threw up. He's old enough to take care of things himself, but I sleep in the bedroom across the hall from the bathroom so I hear everything. So I just didn't feel well all day yesterday. We have had the electrical redone, and had new HVAC installed. We have a fellow coming this weekend to do some of the carpentry and I've been tearing off in preparation for him. I helped tear up oak floor around where there were holes for floor furnaces, and DH will probably finish getting the new strips installed today. As soon as he gets that done he can fasten down the Hardy board in the bathroom where it butts up to the oak floor and I will start laying tile in the bathroom. So much to do, trying not to look at the big picture. We're trying to do as much ourselves as we can to keep the costs down, but so much more is falling on me than it would normally because DH had his knees replaced this summer and even though he has healed wonderfully well and way ahead of expectations, there are still a lot of things he's not supposed to do yet. I have discovered I really hate demolition when it involves old insulation. I don't care much about installing new insulation, either. Our UP's man stopped by the other day and said he'd like to get his mother moved to Dewey from Ochelata to be nearer to him, and expressed an interest in the house. I'd really like renting to an older lady, or an older couple, but not if they have a dog. The combination is apparently lethal for hardwood floors.

We are getting rain this morning. I'm glad I got all those beans picked yesterday!

Ilene,

I'm not crazy about squirrels either, and for the first 5 or 6 years that we were here, I marveled at the fact that we had hardly any squirrels at all. Considering that at least 10 of our acres are nothing but overgrown woodland full of all kinds of oaks, black walnuts, hickories and native pecans, I thought we'd have a gazillion squirrels.

However, squirrels live in the trees at the horse ranch across the strees and, over the years, they have begun crossing the road to our garden to harvest nuts. Still, since our old Australian Shepherd, Sheila, hated squirrels, she'd run them off...running madly from tree to tree as they traveled through the treetops. Two years ago, though, Sheila began going deaf at the age of 11, and now the squirrels have free rein, and we have tons of them. None of the other dogs are bothered by the squirrels....they'd rather chase deer, rabbits, armadilloes, bobcats, coyotes and great blue herons. (If a heron lands in the pond, the dogs will pursue it as it flies away. Of course, they're never going to get it, but they don't seem to know that.)

This year, the squirrels are even coming to the chicken coop and GOING INSIDE looking for henscratch. Some mornings, when I go out to open the doors to let the chickens and guineas out to free-range, the squirrels are sitting on top of the chicken coop (it has a tall, peaked roof) waiting for me!

I don't know if the walnuts will be good or not. Sometimes when they fall early they are, but sometimes they aren't. I don't know why.

I'm glad you got the beans from your Scarlet Runner and Painted lady. They seem to produce much less in warmer weather than a lot of beans, but they sure do well once it cools off. One year I grew white runner beans and they produced better than the scarlet ones in the heat.

Dogs ARE rough on hardwood floors. We had red oak floors in our house in Fort Worth (it was built in 1944 and we bought it in 1983) and we had to sand and refinish the floors to restore their beauty, but they were gorgeous! We did it ourselves, room-by-room, and it was an ordeal, but it was worth it. My brother paid someone to redo his, but they did the whole house at once, so he and his family had to move ALL the furniture to the garage. Then, they went on vacation for 2 weeks and came back to beautiful hardwood floors. It took us longer to do our floors ourselves, but he spent a lot more money.

Don't overdo it working on that house! You can just wear yourself out with projects like that.

I went through a period of about 10 years where I had miagraines, and our son suffers from cluster headaches, which are even worse. For the miagraines, I finally found a supplement called Migra-Health which 'cured' me of them. It took 2 months of consisently taking it, but then the headaches stopped, and now I might have 1 or 2 a year. I think the Migra-Health had megadoses of some of the B-vitamins and magnesium. Once I read the back of the label, I just bought the less expensive B-vitamin tablet and magnesium tablets and took them every day. As far as I am concerned, this was a miracle-cure for me because I used to have miagraines every month, and sometimes they'd last several days. I hate that Jesse has miagraines at such a young age. I am glad your husband's knees have recovered so well as many people don't heal as quickly as he has. Our 86-year-old neighbor had both knees replaced this year and has joked that he'd have done it many years ago if he'd known he'd live so long! LOL

I saw your rain on the radar earlier this morning, and thought to myself "Uh oh, looks like Ilene is getting it." (I wish we were!)

Dawn

My dad had TERRIBLE migraines for over eight years, when I was a teen. His doctor, after sending him to a couple specialists, concluded that it was psychosomatic. Only when his doctor retired, and he had to change to another, did he discover that it was due to being over medicated with his heart medicine!

Dawn, that's great news to hear about Burr Oaks producing in 7 years! Someone had told me that it would be 40! We were still going to plant them. But it's nice to know that we have a chance at partaking in the fruit.

There are some other white oaks which are also sweet. But so far, I haven't run across them here in OK. In NJ they have some which have small to medium acorns which are absolutely delicious. One can find them by following the deer. Here in OK I found my first white oaks with bitter acorns. They were so bitter that when I tasted an acorn it would give me an instant, but thankfully fleeting... headache.

Ilene, I trust you folks weather this time and come out into a more tranquil one.

George

George,

I actually think they produced 1 or 2 acorns each the sixth year, but am not positive. I found the acorns on the ground under each of the two young trees, but though it was "impossible" for the tree to have produced them that young. Then, the next year, more acorns on the ground, so I felt more confident they came from the 2 young trees. The nearest mature burr oak (the mother tree of these small trees) was more than 100 yds. away, so I didn't feel like an animal or the wind carried those acorns out of the woods, up the hill, and into the yard directly under the small burr oaks.

Yucky, cold, cloudy, windy and already two grassfires today, made more difficult to fight by the rowdy winds.

Dawn

Well, we've had rain all day, and it's been chilly and overcast.

Dawn, I'm really interested in your vitamin treatment for migraine. Jesse has always had them. When he was little, they would strike him at about bedtime and he would throw up repeatedly. Since he didn't communicate that his head hurt at the same time, we didn't make the connection. And since by the time we got him in to the doctor he wasn't throwing up anymore the doctor didn't know what was going on, either. It was an ordeal for him. Finally he communicated to his mother that his head was hurting at the same time and she figured it out. Usually he will feel it coming on and if he takes something right then, it will go away before the throwing up begins. We use Excedrin Migraine and it seems to do the trick. But if he lets it go to the throwing up stage, there's nothing he can take by mouth reliably, although we've found it helps if he takes the Excedrin immediately after the first throw-up session and then gets immediately into a warm bath with all the lights out. We've tried the "Head-On" stick, which does absolutely nothing for him, and the little sticks of prescription cream that is put on the wrists that works sometimes but not always.

I didn't find any Migra-Health but I did find this at Amazon.com, 60 tabs for 16.89. I priced Vit. B2 and found it's $10 for only 30 tablets so I might be better off just getting the combination. Does this sound like the right stuff? If so I'll order some:

MigreLief - dosage one in the morning one in the evening. Each tablet contains: Riboflavin 400mg Magnesium 360mg Puracol (Feverfew Whole Leaf) 100mg Contains no yeast, milk, corn, wheat, gluten, soy sodium, salt, sugra, flavorings, preservatives or artificial colors.

George, I just hate doctors who tell a patient something is psychosomatic. That's just doctor-speak for "I don't know". And it makes the patient feel like a nut-case.

Ilene,

I've linked info on Migra-Health. I had forgotten it had feverfew in it, and I didn't buy and use feverfew, only B-6 and magnesium. To tell you the truth, I was surprised it worked, but I figured I had nothing to lose by trying!

I can't remember how much magnesium and B-2 were in the Migra-Health but it was a lot more than the daily recommended amount. So, once the headaches were under control (well, OK, once they were pretty much gone), I cut back to the recommended daily allowance for both the B-2 and the magnesium.

In the past I had used Excedrin Migraine which sometimes, but not always, worked and, also, Imitrex. (I just hate using a chemical solution if something natural like vitamins will work.)

The Migrelief sounds similar to the Migra-Health since it has the B-2 and feverfew.

I hope you are able to find a natural solution that helps Jesse.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Migra-Health

That was an interesting article. It mentions Coenzyme Q10 also as a preventative. I think I have some of that around the house that I bought for some reason or another.

I noticed on the reviews for Migrelief that some people said after everything stabilized they dropped down to one pill a day rather than two, but one person said they took three a day, actually. That's a lot of Vitamin B2.

I'm kind of concerned about the Feverfew as I've heard there's a backlash when you stop using it. I'll call my local health food store and see if I can get a better deal on the B2 and magnesium. On the Internet, B2 and magnesium separately cost more than the Migrelief does for the same concentrations. I thought that was kind of odd. It's $16.89 for a 30-day supply but the shipping is $4.99.

Right now he's in the throes of allergic rhinitis. Everything he's tried that's over-the-counter has not helped one iota. I even gave him a Singulair yesterday and it didn't help, either. Last night he tried some saline nose spray because he said he felt like he had mucus up high in his nose that he couldn't blow out, and he said that helped a little. I guess I'm going to have to call the doctor on this one. For the past six months, it seems like it has been one thing and then another for Jesse.

Ilene,

If he has allergies, I'd probably steer clear of the feverfew. I first found Migra-health at Wal-Mart, but they stopped carrying it shortly after I bought my second bottle.

If you have any sort of health food stores (we actually have a small one in Ardmore), you might look for Migrelief or something similar there.

Poor Jesse. Sometimes it seems everything happens at once like it has for him. Our son had a lot of cluster headaches his senior year of high school, and significantly fewer since then, so I've always wondered if senior-year stress contributed to their frequency.

Dawn

I'm just back from a trek to drug stores and such in Bartlesville and have come back empty. Walmart, Walgreens and K-Mart didn't even have B-1 and magnesium. The health food store had it, but not in the strengths I was looking for. What else could I expect, really.

In looking to see if I could buy Magnesium and B2 separately online, I happened on the fact that the amount of B2 in the MigreLief is like 22,000 times the FDA recommended dosage. On the one hand, I don't much trust FDA. On the other hand, it's a little scarey.

After doing a little more digging around, it kind of looks like the magic ingredient in the compound is the magnesium. Amazon.com has a book listed called The Magnesium Miracle by Carolyn Dean -- have you read it by any chance? According to the reviews, she recommends magnesium for all kinds of things including migraine, high blood pressure and muscle spasms. Even WebMD has an article saying most Americans don't get enough magnesium. The magnesium, though, is reported by some to cause stomach aches and loose you-know-whats. And some say there's a question of absorption if it's not in balance with calcium, although others say there's more danger in having too much calcium and not enough magnesium rather than the other way around. Now I'm just totally confused. It's never easy, is it?

I know that Jesse doesn't sleep well a lot of the time, and that's one of the symptoms of not getting enough magnesium, as well.

Not sure which way to go at this point. I do agree with you that the Feverfew may be a problem with him since he has some allergy issues. His allergies always flare up right about now and die down once the weather gets colder, so I think it's pollen.

This HAS been a stressful time for him, what with working at WMT all summer. He really hated working nights, and got himself switched to days when school started but as a cart-pusher. Apparently one of the other cart-pushers was a football jock from school who had a history of harassing Jesse at school, and he did the same thing at work. Jesse said he complained about it at work but nobody did anything, so he told the kid if he didn't leave him alone he was going to beat him up. Well, that constituted a threat, and the kid complained, and they fired Jesse immediately as they have a no tolerance rule. But it was just as well because that job would've had Jesse out in the weather this winter. He just got hired at Braum's and seems to like it better. It being senior year is not as stressful for Jesse as it would be for some, as he only needs 3 credits to graduate and so only goes to school in the mornings. Of course there's still all that drama at school. Bless his heart, he is just not college material at this point, though later on maybe he can be, after he gets motivated by how hard you have to work for such little pay when you don't have a degree. Senior pics have been taken, cap and gown and announcements have been ordered. The only hard class he has this semester is Government and next semester will be all easy classes. I am SOOO getting sloshed on cheap jug wine after I see him get his diploma. LOL!

Ilene,

I haven't read the book, but I've heard about it and think it probably would be worth reading.

After I began taking the Migra-Health, I noticed several improvements in my health and not just the fact that my migraines diminished and then went away. I slept much better and......well, I didn't have to worry about getting enough fiber in my diet. How's that for a polite way of saying it? I also didn't seem to have as many 'aches and pains' and just felt better (healthier, happier) in general. I was worried about the high amounts of magnesium and B-2 in the Migra-Health but the headaches went away and I didn't seem to have adverse health affects, so I felt like it was OK.

You could start Jesse on megadoses of magnesium roughly half of what is found in Migrelief and see if it helps. You can always up the amount if it isn't enough to help, and by gradually increasing the dosage, his body could adjust to the magnesium.

Once I started taking my own magnesium and B tablets, I took 4 magnesium tablets a day and 2 Bs. I don't remember the amount of each magnesium tablet, but even at 4 tablets a day, it was a much lower megadose than the one in Migra-health. And, I didn't take a simple B-2 (because all the B vitamins are important). Instead, I bought and took (and still take) the Spring Valley Super B-Complex tablets sold at Wal-Mart. I do take 2 a day instead of one because the higher dosages in Migra-Health made me feel so good that I didn't want to cut back completely. I also take Calcium daily.

It is unfortunate that Jesse had to deal with a school bully at work too, but it happens. Kids seem so much more cruel these days than when I was in high school in the 1970s.

I think a lot of the stress of senior year really isn't even the classes......it is the 'unknowns'.....not knowing what comes next, or how, or when, or why, or where!

Hey, don't go for the cheap wine. Are you kidding? When it is time to celebrate Jesse's graduation, only the best will do! You've earned it, you deserve to have it, and it will be SO worth it.

Dawn

I remember a little bullying in grade school back between 1954-1960. But by the time we were in 8th grade that all went away. I was a fat kid, but about 7th grade I put myself on a diet and I got to have a normal teenage life. I was popular amongst the middle-class kids and I didn't aspire to be friends with the "upper class" so I was happy. During grade school, though, there was this boy who literally followed me around chanting "Fatty fatty 2x4, etc., etc. I don't remember hardly any of the other kids joining in but they laughed, and they didn't do anything to stop him. He died of cancer last year and several of the classmates that I still hear from, from time to time, made remarks about what a great guy he was and so on and it was all I could do to keep from reminding them that he was a jerk in school, drank beer during class in high school, mis-treated physically his high school sweetheart, who was a darling person, went off to Viet Nam and came home an alcoholic. Then I started thinking about how, even though he came from a family that was, in our small town, in the "upper class", he apparently was never happy. It must've been terrible to be him. For all my battle scars, I'm still glad I got to be me instead of him. I guess it all balances out.

I think that's a good idea about taking 2 Super-B complex. I'll get some of that, enough for all three of us. I think I can get magnesium in 100 mg at the local health food store.

Dawn, thanks for all your advice on this. Once again you have steered me onto new things to think about! If this helps with Jesse's migraines and with the muscle spasms I get in my back about once a year, we will be forever grateful to you. Hugs, Ilene

I think we had "THE BIG ONE," or perhaps I should say "we're having it now." I went out at 5 AM and there was already frost on the ground. When I looked at some pole beans which I'm still hoping to get seed from, there were ice crystals on the leaves. I hosed them down. But we'll see if they make it.

George

Uh-oh, George. It looks like we dodged the bullet here in Dewey this time. I got up this morning around 5 and it was 40 degrees. Still chilly enough by 7:30 to make the dog beat me home and put himself back in the yard during our morning walk in the park.

I've been having some trouble pulling Mesonet up, but according to the local forecasters we're going to get it Monday night.

How did your beans do this year? Did you get a lot? --Ilene

George,

Uh Oh. The Big One. That doesn't sound good.

I hope you were able to hose off the beans in time to save them. Since it was only a frost and not a freeze, I think they ought to survive, right? My beans haven't even shown any damage and we've been down to 31 two nights in a row with a hard frost each night. Are these your Mexican greasy beans???? Do you have more seed saved back "just in case"?

It is 34 and nice here this morning (compared to the previous 2 mornings). We're going to have a 'heat wave' here in southern OK this weekend.....around 80 degrees on Sunday and almost as warm today. I'm actually not happy about this because it means the snakes are likely to be up and about searching for a meal before they go back in their dens to hibernate for the winter.

Ilene, I think y'all are going to get it on Monday and we are going to get it on Tuesday. We've been told to expect 34, so I am expecting 26-29 since we almost always get much colder than forecast here by the river.

I looked at the NWS Enhanced Weather page and it doesn't say much yet about the coming cold front, except that 'cooler weather is coming'. I expect they'll have a better update later today.

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

Wow! Sounds wonderful! I'm just getting "into" beans. This year I planted, as an experiment, white marble, poquito, swedish brown, red nightfall, tiger eye and yellow dragon's tongue. I only had three seed for this last one and unfortunately, the ones I picked hadn't formed seed well enough and the ones that followed all got bored into by some insect. So I guess that one's out. The white marble was disappointing in that it didn't produce much and they were small and bean-shaped rather than marble-shaped. The real winners were swedish brown and tiger eye. They both formed seed really fast and were tough and fibrous when eaten as a green bean, though.

Of course I had my yard-long beans that produced really well, Fortex, which didn't do much in spring & summer but turned out to be a really good fall bean that got long and fat and stayed tender a long, long time. So long in fact that I didn't get hardly any for seed, and both Painted Lady and Scarlet Runner. So it's been "Bean Town" in my garden this year. But they were fun.

Yes, we expect our first frost Monday night, Dawn, and Jesse is looking forward to it. We were up late last night trying to unclog his nose. Zyrtec is apparently something ELSE that doesn't help, and we've tried so many things. Last night, because he'd already taken something by mouth that wasn't working, he couldn't take anything else, so he tried inhaling steam, drinking hot water with lemon and honey, and the "nettie pot" irrigation system, which didn't run through his nose because it was so plugged and therefore didn't help. He sat propped up on the couch and watched TV until late. This morning I discovered he'd gone to his bed at sometime in the night and now he tells me one nostril is finally clear. Last night was the worst night he's ever had. If he's not a lot better today I'm getting an appointment for him on Monday. --Ilene

George,

We may have to start thinking of your beans as 'miracle beans' if they keep surviving the frosts.

Ilene,

Poor Jesse and those darned allergies. My mother-in-law had sinuses that clogged up all the time like that. At one point the doctor had to do surgery to clear our her sinus cavity...I guess dried-up mucus had built up in there and he had to remove it. She was able to breathe a lot better after that.

I'm more or less looking forward to the frost as it will knock down all the ragweed pollen.

Yesterday, during halftime in the OU game, I ran out to the garden and cut armloads of flowers (Laura Bush Pink petunias, Indigo Spires salvia, verbena bonariensis, Orange Profusion Zinnias, pink and purple globe amaranth, and yellow and orange marigolds), foliage (from Red Shield Hibiscus, a yellow and green Sun Coleus, a red/yellow/green sun coleus, and several different shade coleus) and ornamental peppers (mostly Poinsettia and New Mexico Sunrise/New Mexico Sunset, but a few others as well) and made big bouquets that we could enjoy inside for a few days. One had mostly pinks and purples, a second had mostly oranges, yellows and reds, and another had reds, greens and purples. Even DS commented on how nice the bouquets looked, and I told him I just wanted to enjoy everything a few more days because we're going to have a killing freeze on Tuesday.

Today, I am going to do what probably will be the final cutting of some of the basils, parsley and lemon balm. Well, the lemon balm and parsley probably won't completely freeze Tuesday, but they might. And I need to pull up some more pepper plants and hang them in the garage to dry.

Once we've had a good, hard killing freeze, at least I can clean up the garden without the company of the rattlesnakes. I've been hearing a rattle in there lately, but can't find the snake. (Not that I exactly want to find it, but you can't avoid it if you can't see it.)

Dawn

Well, I think we had a hard freeze last night. I had to run out, early, before I could survey the damage. Yesterday afternoon I had a hospital visit about 45 minutes away, so time was limited for preparations for the frost. Last night I had my daughter milk and I picked, and picked and ... picked: beans and tomatoes. Also, on Saturday Jerreth and I took down two cattle panels, with beans, in order to use them in a barricade around a large persimmon tree in our pasture. The goats and horses all like to hang out there, but we want the fruit! Anyway, those two rows of beans were decommissioned. (It was almost funny trying to carry those panels across the pasture as I was completely ACCOSTED by excited goats. They cleaned them off in a blink.)

Jerreth drove about 3 1/2 hours to take some meat to our son and his fiancee, so I had to handle most of last night's preparations. The last thing I did before bedtime was to cut and store all of our banana leaves in a frost free environment. Jerreth wants to use them for tamales (wrappers).

Ilene, I'm going to start a new thread and comment on beans. They are one of my passions.

George

I forgot to mention. I brought the Mexican Greasy beans onto our sun porch. They're still fine.

We got down to 32 degrees here, but it was only briefly, so no real plant damage (except the brugmansias look a tiny bit cold and unhappy) this morning, and we had wind, so no frost. Tomorrow morning will be a different story though as tonight is expected to be quite a bit colder.

We don't have goats, but the coyotes get all the persimmons from all the trees they can. Every time you come across a pile of coyote scat at this time of year (and we have so many coyotes out and about that I see it daily), it is simply full of persimmon seed. The coyotes must be very hungry or their taste buds don't mind the astringent flavor of unripened persimmons, because they begin eating them here in the July-August time frame while they are still green.

I'm glad the Mexican Greasy Beans survived.

Dawn

We had a light freeze early Monday morning. I noticed there was a light layer of ice in the bird bath. The weatherman didn't mention the possibility of it until almost bedtime and I was too tired and warm to go out there and do anything. Consequently the tomatoes got nipped.

I'm pretty sure we got it this morning (Tuesday). I had covered the three best tomato plants with blankets, threw a tarp over my cabbage and lettuce (I plan to construct some kind of covering for them as soon as I get time so that I can grow them into the winter), and picked all the peppers. I thought about moving the pepper plants inside, but I've got plenty in the freezer for our use through the winter and until next year's crop so I decided to just let nature take it's course.

I'm actually ready for a "vacation" from the garden. I have a quilt to finish and of course there's that rental house to work on. The wall got built last weekend, although the siding will have to wait till next weekend, and I have become "Demolition Woman". I nearly have the old front torn off. After the trim is removed, the windows just fall out. This is indicative of the workmanship that went into the addition that the previous owners built. After we have removed it, the concrete porch that runs across the entire front of the house will once again be exposed and usable and our renters (if ever we get to that point) will have a nice porch to sit out on in the evenings.