No bears here or Rainbow people. Do they gather in a different spot every year or is that a yearly thing for you? Hope they wouldn't leave a bunch of trash behind.

I have lots of coneflowers blooming too. They have all volunteered from a single 'Magnus' that I bought a several years ago. Lots of pretty ones. Going to try to post a thumbnail -

My butterfly bush has just started blooming. I'm looking forward to seeing some butterflies. It always attracts a lot.

I took my kids to the gardens at Close Park this week. They have a butterfly garden there but not a butterfly in sight. Maybe it's just too early to see a lot. I took some photos that I will post later.

My rose campion is still blooming. It already has a bunch of seed pods on it that I will need to cut off.

My annuals are starting to take off and some of my winter sown seedlings are starting to bloom. Some are still very small.

We got an afternoon shower yesterday and the day before. We've really been blessed with rain this spring. I've barely had to water anything at all, even my new seedlings. I've been seeing quite a few mosquitos though. I'm sure they're all laying eggs by the millions. Everyone make sure you have no water sitting around for them to lay eggs in.

Hope the Rainbow people don't get out of hand.....

We got about 1/2 inch of rain a couple of days ago too. It is so nice to not have to worry about watering. It is also amazing how much taller all the plants are this year...I am guessing all the rain.

I have phlox, rudbeckias, daisies, daylilies, petunias, snaps, salvias, a couple of clems, feverfew and the russian sage is beginning to show color....all in bloom now.

Are any of you familiar with persicaria polymorpha? I bought it several years ago in a end of season sale from Wayside. I decided to move it this year and got four plants from it. Two are blooming now. I really like it...it is almost shrub like and should get about 4 feet tall next year. So far nothing bothers it, either disease or bugs.
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That is interesting that the Rainbow gathering is near you. I think they meet in different National Forest areas every year. My thirty something niece is a regular at these things. She says it is all good fellowship and peace and love. They are very well organized and try to leave an area better than they find it. There is almost always trouble with the cops and locals. This is the first time my niece has gone since she had a baby three years ago. My opinion...I think it is mostly about abundant drugs and sex. Let us know how it goes, Vickie. They welcome visitors.

Christie, thanks for the tour of Close Gardens. You saved me a trip across town. I love to go there. I like your thumbnail pics. They work fine for me. Now that you've told us what you go through with your poor internet service I'm extra thankful for the pictures you post.

I worked in the veggie garden this morning. That is unusual for me as I usually go out in the evening. I decided to not add any compost to my tomato plants this year as they are always huge tall plants with not so many tomatoes on them. Sure enough the plants are very short and are covered with tomatoes. My early girl plants look exhausted already. They have several big tomatoes on them. I've picked three already. I buy the plants early and keep them inside under lights until it is warm enough to put them outside. I can never have tomatoes soon enough.
Anise

Christie and gld,loved your pictures as usual.
Going to look up persicaria polymorpha. It's a pretty plant and i love the bug free part.
The Rainbow people meet at a different Nat. Forest every year.I'm not worried about them ,there are too many law inforcement people from all over the state here to keep an eye on things. I really hope no one on either side does anything hot headed. They are supposed to police themselves pretty good. And they do clean up good afterward,so i hear.
vickie

Hello all, quickly popping in. I've been too busy for much gardening. I did pull up all my turnip greens, lettuce remains and onions and carrots that were being shaded and doing nothing due to the huge leaves of my monster zucchini. Apparently, the suddenly open ground in my garden was an invitiation to the squirrels to frolic and steal! Lost some tomatoes, including ALL of my cherry tomatoes growing on my Tiny Tim, which was simply picked bare by the fluffy rats! Also had a deer come thru and graze my pole beans. So far I've picked 10 total, thanks to Bambi.

But my flowers are going nuts! My daylilies are also in bloom and my combination Wave petunia and Swiss Chard container on the front steps has overflowed. It looks just lovely. My late-planted cucumbers are finally taking off and vining. I can't wait for them to set fruit!

We're also back to rain. At least I don't have to water the garden!

Well, we still dont have rain--does 99 percent humidity count?
I've got almost 2 1/2 bushel onions and garlic hanging from the shed rafters to dry, cutting cabbage, and cauliflower now.I had several cauliflower made it thru the hard freeze, not a success! They re bitter. Plants later are fine.
Believe rabbits have helped themselves to my just planted fall cabbages, looked skimpy this morning. They were for sauerkraut, these early ones I plan on making freezer slaw, found I didnt put up nearly enough last year.
Peas are finished, and pulled, beans and cucumbers blooming. Tomatoes are huge, no sign of red yet. Dug about half bushel potatoes, more still have green vines.
I had no idea Bee Balm got 6' high!mine is, and blooming heavy (I didnt know it spread so fast either!) All my Echinacea are blooming, the white is outdoing the others. I planted Sundown and Harvest Moon last year, as well as the double decker-they didnt make it thru the freeze. Need to start pruning the spring blooming shrubs too--not enough hours in the day--(cool hours)
Anyone have fruit that made it? understand theres peaches in North Mo. for 22. a bushel.my trees had little peaches, and I had cherries already, when the cold hit. grapes and apples blooming--all gone. killed the top half of my persimmon tree too.
Wild blackberries are set on.
And, thats my week, Praying for rain.

Howdy Neighbors!

Thought I'd pop in from Oklahoma to see how y'all are doing over there.

From ceresone's comments, I gather that some of y'all are not having a lot of rain? Well, you can have ours if you can figure out how to get it from here to there.

I dearly wish we could send you the rain that is tormenting our state. It is flooding all over the place and many Oklahoma gardeners are deeply depressed as the continuing rain has wiped out many veggie gardens and is making normal gardening chores impossible to accomplish. While the rain has been beneficial in many ways....like refilling the aquifers after the 2005-2006 drought and, of course, refilling ponds and causing trees, shrubs, groundcovers, etc. to grow like crazy.....it has been harmful in others, including the flooding of agricultural fields, loss of crops, widespread fungal and bacterial disease, etc. etc.
After the big wildfires of '05-'06, we all swore we wouldn't whine about too much rain ever again, but we've already had as much rain here in Love County as what we get in an average year (over 30" and more rain is falling right now), and the Red River is flooding.

Vickie, I had never heard of the Rainbow people. How fascinating that some hippies are still around. When I was a child in the 1960s, we had hippies living in a local park near our house in Fort Worth. They were very peaceable and quiet, but law enforcement ran them off....saying public parks were not living places.

And, I didn't know you had bears....but I haven't visited this forum in a long time. I am not terribly afraid of wildlife (we have panthers and mountain lions pass through our property occasionally and they DO scare me a bit, especially when they roar, growl or snarl at me) but I think I would lose it if I ever walked outside and saw a bear!

In southern Oklahoma the plums and peaches have been wonderful, having barely squeaked by and survived the late freezes. The further north you go in Oklahoma, the greater the losses of fruit to those same late freezes in April.

A lot of gardeners are having trouble with their tomato plants. Too much rain is waterlogging roots, even in normally well-drained soil, foliar diseases are much more prevalent than usual, and the darned green tomatoes just won't ripen for many people due to the constant clouds and a lack of sunshine all this growing season. My tomatoes are doing better than most, but I am very far south and may have had a bit more sun than most.

Ceresone, I hope you get the rain you are praying for. Your garden sounds terrific, though, in spite of all the weather and wildlife. It was a great onion year here for us since they like all the moisture.

Dawn

ceresone, i can't breathe in 99% humidity. How do you get anything done?
I've got blackberries and tame muscadines. Our pear,plum and apple blossoms froze.

I go out early, about 6 am, and do my garden work, even at that time, water is dripping off me when I go in. Course, its usually about 9 when I get morning chores done.
If we could only get some of the excess rain others dont want, it would help. Mulch is wearing thin on my garden, going to have to find more.

We haven't had excessive rain, but enough that I haven't had to water the beds, and seldom have to water all my containers that are setting outside all over the place.:-)
My problem is the hooved rodents that are using the flowerbeds for their smorgasboards! I finally reached the breaking point yesterday, and spent over 2 hours erecting woven wire fence around the main beds. They had nipped off almost all the purple coneflower blooms, the lilys,(including daylilies), the Balloon flowers, and Lord knows what all else. ( I am not even sure what all I would have if it wasn't for their browsing.) When I saw that they had pruned the poor pink wiegela that was recovering from my severe pruning following THE Freeze, I snapped.They were starting on the sedums and hostas.Two Hostas that are out under my small bald cypress had regrown nicely from the freeze, but now they are stubs again!

The Electric power company came a couple of weeks ago and cleared a 40 foot wide swath through our woods, to the county road, over 600 feet long. Not a very handsome sight, but I appreciate the fact that none of our trees can fall on our line and cut off our power, espacially since my DH depends on a breathing machine several times a day.

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I am hoping that the open land birds will find the clearing and return until it regrows. We used to see a covy of guail, and see/hear Yellow-bellied Chats,a very comical bird.

The power crew returned Wednesday with their bucket truck and took down 2 oak trees in/by our yard. The first was dead, and will add to our good winter's firewood. The second was cut into firewood size chunks as he took it down, but will have to cure out for firewood. It looks sort of blank where the first was. I always enjoyed watching the birds perching in it. Now they will not be so visible until the leaves fall, but I am enjoying seeing more of the sky to the southwest.

Our frequent rains have caused the grass to grow vigorously. I mowed most of it again yesterday...still have the old chicken yard and old garden spot to do. One doe ( sometimes more) graze out there during the day most every day, so I leave them a little longer to try to entice them away from my flowers. It doesn't help much because they like a variety in their diet!
I wish they weren't so pretty ....:-(

Okiedawn - Wander over more often! We'll all be complaining about our hot dry summer very soon. Wish we could stretch out the extra rain and send some over to Ceresone too.
Marian - Sorry to hear about your deer problem. There's more every year isn't there! Do you think if you planted some deer favorites along that clearing it might keep them out of your yard? Or maybe that would just attract even more. : ( We have power lines that go through the back of our property. They come through occasionally and spray high powered everything-killer under the power lines in a pretty wide swath where there's brush.

I need Merry Maids for weeds! I have more this year than ever before. It's all this rain and the fact that I've spent all my time planting new stuff instead of keeping my old beds weeded. I have only a few plants remaining in my shade garden where we lost some trees. I moved most of them and I'd like to move the rest but was running out of good shady places to put them so now the weeds are taking over. What's wrong with me this year? I usually don't mind pulling weeds but just can't get in a weed pulling mood at all.

We have wireless internet now. : ) What a nice change. It's working great so far. My daughter was having a blast downloading videos off YouTube yesterday and I can look at garden photos now without losing my connection. : )

I have only two watermelon plants this year. I was counting on some old Moon and Stars seeds that didn't germinate very well. I only got one of those and one Georgia Rattlesnake that is really a volunteer from last year. I might try planting a few more seeds but it's getting pretty late in the year. Hope I haven't waited too long.

Christie, I am feeling the same way about weed pulling. I have done very little. Now I can't even get into most of the beds because of the fencing....so I have an even better excuse to not weed them! :-)
One friend suggested that the clearing would be a nice place to plant pretty things,and a mowed area. I responded that if I were 30 or 40 years younger I might be tempted. I am glad that they haven't used weed killer...yet. They were very careful around the fence and any of my shrubs.

I had one tomato plant volunteer in a large pot of Cannas, but the deer found it, and pulled it. It left only the stem and roots laying beside the pot! I am pretty sure you can still have a watermelon crop from seeds that you sow now. Of course it depends on how early our fall frost comes, but 'nothing ventured, nothing gained'.

Wow! How nice to have wireless. I seem to be stuck with this old dial-up system.

christie, how fast a speed did you get? I am getting really interested in it. Did you get the service melani told us about? Hope I am not being nosy but just want as much input as I can get before deciding.

I am in a lazy mode too. It seems if I don't work out daily, then inertia sets in...and I don't want to work out. My BIL was down and told me the blackberries are getting ripe....I hadn't been out there in two or three days! He also said I have a yellow tomato turning and another red. It is amazing what happens in a couple of days.

I hate to mention we have been getting nice 1/2 inch rains about every other day. I know how you all feel that aren't in that weather pattern. We used to stand in the yard and watch the rain go around us to the east and rain on Willard about 5 miles away! Very, very frustrating.

ceresone, my onions are bulbing up but very small so far. The tops are still green so I hope they get bigger. Two years ago I raised (for the first time) huge Candy and Super Stars. Last year was a flop and this year isn't promising.

Marian, so far, we aren't bothered by deer......just possums and raccoons. I will have to do something before the sweet corn gets ready. BTW, I love that wood fence. Flowers always just look better with that behind them.

Our road crews sprayed the ditches last year to get rid of Johnson Grass and now we have the most god-awful tall weeds you ever saw. I liked it better when we just had fescue and Johnson grass. Of course I understand the need to get rid of J.G.

I should take a look at the garden this morning. Our company just left (don't know if I mentioned that my sis and bil were down last week).

Have a good weekend.

Okiedawn, keep on visiting!

Gld - We signed up for the 512. I think 52 is the fastest you can get on dial-up but we weren't even getting that. I'll send you an email.

I haven't seen my raspberries blooming yet. Hope they're still going to. Should they have bloomed by now?

I planted Asian long beans and Scarlet runner beans this year. The Scarlet runner beans have lots of blooms on them now. Some have solid reddish orange blooms and some have orange and white blooms. Those are new for me this year. I planted them for the hummingbirds but I think they're edible. Just not sure they'll taste good.

The weather looked a little nasty for awhile. Most of the heavy rain missed us but we're not needing any so that's ok. I don't like the tornado warnings and hail that go with it.

Just checked a bucket out by the chicken yard, just under 5 inches. I had to wade water to get to the chicken house.

Christie, I think we have missed the boat on the raspberries. Mine didn't bloom either and I don't think they will unless we have the variety to give a fall crop. Mine were nipped badly by the late freeze.

I took a picture of the hoophouse made from cattle panels (3) for the pole beans and the lettuce I planted under it.
I love the hoop. I picked almost a half bushel just standing upright in the shade! My kind of picking. The lettuce looks promising too.
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