HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, CERESONE!
And Best Wishes for many more to celebrate!
We have No. 50 coming up in a few months. Children making plans for a celebration, wish they wouldn't. A nice dinner out would be fine with me. A break from preparing meals at home. It's becoming difficult to plan meals for us. Our likes and dislikes are so different anymore, with each having medical problems that prevent intake of so many foods that we used to prepare.

Seems like there are many more leaves this year, than in recent years. Every square foot of the property seems to be covered with several inches of them. Some I mulch in place, others I leave on the beds until spring, before raking or vacuuming and mulching. Have some beds that will be expanded before spring planting and one very large one that must be redone and enriched.
Must prepare a new area for tomatoes next year, as this year's crop was mediocre. Lots of blooms, but they fell off before setting fruit. Even hand pollinating some of them didn't help. County extension agent said it was due to lack of abundant rainfall, although they were watered regularly, that didn't seem to help them bear. Home grown one's taste sooo much better than those tough skin things you find at the market! It's worth the effort to grow my own.

A little rain during the night, not much in the gauge or rainbarrels and 25°colder and very windy today. Friends in northern states had near blizzard conditions over the weekend. I'm never ready for that anymore, having served my time enduring those conditions in Illinois, once upon a time.
Time to celebrate the Christmas season! and welcome a New Year.
Seasons Greetings to everyone! :Rb

Hurrah! Hurrah!!!!!! I'm back (at least temporarily) My MSN2 has been everywhich way but loose.Have'nt been able to get on line except for a few minutes the other day. Boy!! did i miss you guys. Here's a big hug to everyone who has ever been on Ozarks Forum. Keep your fingers crossed that everything has been fixed. Toes too!!

I've come across quite a few friends from here on different GW sites. Lately i've not been anywhere but hope to soon. Christmas is always a busy time for me,also my favorite time of year. Tomorrow i'll be ringing the Salvation Army bell at Clarksville Walmarts(my favorite Christmas activity) So don't forget to throw your pennies in the bucket. It never fails someone always tells me it's the only change i've got. Gee!! pennies add up to a can of corn. I'm proud to get one penny at a time.

I've got leaves everywhere too and they keep everything nice and warm till spring and then i rake in spring. Tho will probably have to hire someone to rake for me this spring. Maybe i can get some city folk to come and rake for the leaves ceresone. LOL!! Just kidding everyone.

Did i get to tell anyone DD and i took Thanksgiving Dinner to SIL in Memphis and had Thanksgiving in a motel with two other workers that did'nt get off that day. We had a lot of fun. and i got to shop at a walgreens,which we don't have here and of course wally world. Thats all i had time for. I found a small Nativity scene waterfall and a light pink Christmas cactus,it's almost white with light pink overtones.

DD and i are going to a Madrigal this friday. Thought i'd show off a second. I,ve never heard of such before. It's put on by our local highschool choir. It's a feast that dates to the renasance. (SP) Everyone in period costume and the menue is as period as possible and the choir sings period songs. DD reads a lot of books about that time. so thought it'd be a good Christmas present. I know everyone's heard of it but me.Oh well!!

My poor tomato plant died and thats enough said about that poor plant.

CONGRATULATIONS!! CERESONE AND MANY MORE!

Soon it will be for you razorback. #50 is a big one. So let your family have fun.

Wishing everyone a peaceful Christmas.
vickie

Happy anniversary Ceresone and hubby. We were married 46 years last March.

I finally gathered up the last two garden hoses and stored them away and have started burying my kitchen scraps/compost under the mulch here and there rather than on the compost pile. O f course, that means I will have potatoes sprouting everywhere next spring!

vickie, sounds like you are doing some interesting things lately. I think Springfield used to have a madrigal feast for some charity or other. I don't know if your daughter is reading fiction or not about that time period, but Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks is really very good, about the plague and how tragedy affects some lives.

I picked up three bags of shredded leaves (speaking of leaves) from my FIL yesterday. They live in town and are very "city" people. He could mulch is roses but, instead buys something for them. That's OK, I reap the benefit from them. I am letting my yard leaves mulch in place.

Rb, I am planning a new tomato patch for next year too, and for the same reason. I have already sprayed it with herbicide and will hit it again next spring. I have never had a good tomato crop since we began gardening in this old garden spot in 1993. The previous owner had lived here 50 years and used farm fertilizer every year, something I am definitely not a fan of! The ground was like cement and would crack open like the Sahara Desert when it dried out. I have finally got some good organic matter back in it after years of mulch. I finally decided new ground was the way to go. My Dad used to tell about how the tomato farmers would move to a new hilltop each year when raising tomatoes for the canning factory in Nixa.

We saw geese flying over yesterday, but they were headed SE.

Made suet cakes for the birds are are seeing lots of chickadees, finches, and woodpeckers at them. We saw two
pileated woodpeckers last week and hope to draw them back.

What other gardening forums are you all visiting. I seem to be in a rut!

ceresone and razorback- happy anniversary to you both!

have filled up all my leaf bins and they have been inoculated. i love the smell of leaf mold. guess it goes way back when my mom was fishing and i would dig her worms in the woods by the river. this was on the new river in west va. dad was still in korea. i won't go into the hellgramite catching. painful lessions.

my aerated compost tea buckets are working nicely. have 2 aquaruium pumps that were picked up at a flea maerket. bought a bag of alfalfa pellets and some brer rabbit molasses. letting it brew about 24 hrs. don't know how much good it will do in the colder weather but the practice is paying off.

gldno1- am working on your cattle panel bean arbor. great idea. did a BOM on it last nite and will probably start construction this week. i enjoy finding new ideas for garden structures/ methods like the straw bale gardening.

some of the forums here at gw i check out are: soil and compost forum, greenhouses and structures and the tomato forum.

william- trying to do it in yellville.

I move my tomatoes around the garden each year, and for the last 10 years, have always ordered Tomatoes Alive from Gardens alive catalog (good stuff) plus I always add epsom salts and crushed egg shells to the hole before planting, dont know if thats why, but I'm always pleased with the results. Everything else in the garden varies, except this, because I'm always wanting to try something new-to me anyhow.
Seems strange to think if I could have lived with my first husband, I'd have been married 56 years now, and that I have a daughter, somewhere, thats 55 years old! Stranger yet that my hubby has Brain Cancer, and thats what killed my ex last year.
William, do you think your mixture would help the whole leaves on my garden beds?I've already put cottonseed meal over them.
And Razorback, there was a article in the paper about the leaves being bigger than anyone had seen them this year--late freeze effect, perhaps?
And Oakleif, you have more energy than I, we dont even go see the Christmas parades anymore.
Gldno, the potatoes that sprouted where they werent supposed to, had more and bigger potatoes than the rest. How's the barn clean up coming along?
I also go to a lot of different GW forums, plus Baker Creeks (Idigmygarden) and homesteadingtoday.
Here's hoping this weather holds, I have one more pasture I can run the horses in, but there a 7' trench where a pond dam was cut, so its dangerous.
Have fun today!!

ceresone- i think the only thing better would be fresh chicken manure. that stuff is hot!

william

We did about 2-3 hours of cleanup yesterday afternoon. It was warm enough we had to take our jackets off. DH moved about 6 of the 8x8's and I cut up a couple of trusses into boards we could handle. I think we could build a house out of this stuff! It seems to be an endless thing.

ceresone, when you move your tomatoes each year, I am assuming you have to pull up and move the stakes also. I have been using steel posts for that which makes it a huge lot of work. I got the idea that I could just leave them in the same place and keep the ground well supplied with fertilizer and that they would do well......didn't happen. I should get this ground soil tested this winter. I have used epsom salts too.

Have someone coming for the stove and refrigerator so will need to empty the bottom freezer soon. Not looking forward to any of that.

Gldno, I put my tomatoes on cattle panels too. I've had the bright idea this year, since I also use them for cucumbers too, to switch beds this year.
Another bright idea? Our fences around gardens, yards, always seem to be in the wrong spot. I have a lot of chain link posts, so I'm going to make a concrete mold, where I can put concrete on the bottoms of a dozen or so posts, and have them where I can just roll them to where I need them, and attach cattle panels, wire, etc. Hope it works, some of my bright ideas dont!
I'm still undecided if I liked my hoop garden, or not. I had Christmas Limas, and cucumbers on them, it seems the others did better, but could have been other variables.

Brrr It was cold today. I need a good day to dig up my elephant ears since I haven't done that yet. The forecast looks kind of icky though, even a little chance for snow tomorrow.

I put out a couple suet cakes and was surprised how quickly they disappeared. I need to get some more and some bird seed too. I saw lots of birds hopping around on the ground looking for crumbs under my suet feeder. Poor things.

Am I too late to wish you a happy anniversary Ceresone? Congrats! I'm sure each one is special. I know your husband has been sick a long time.

My hoop house gardening started life as a frame for a hoop-house greenhouse which worked beautifully until another tornado (just the edges of the storm) which tore the roof off a neighbor's barn that time, ruined it. I then recycled it as a frame for the pole beans. I hate bending over picking anything.

Looks like another possibility for moving things around without having to pull up stakes and move everything would be have several rows with the cattle panels or tomato stakes and just rotate between pole beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, gourds, etc. Of course the initial cost would be kind of high. I am thinking of that "after" I have pulled up all of my stakes!

I need to do a lot of planning this winter so I will be ready next season.

No more gardening catalogs so far.

I want to try to find some lettuce seed to try a couple of flats out on the porch under my lights.

I am hating this cold with the strong winds.

Knowing I won't work out when it is too uncomfortable, we headed for the library yesterday afternoon. I picked up 6 books............so guess what I will be doing.

What do you read, Gldno? I'm addicted to mystery, but when out have been known to read anything.

ceresone........
I also have seen a number of articles recently about plants becoming larger and more vigorous. That is being attributed to the incresed level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Most of the blame is being placed on the power cos and their coal fired plants, but the droughts we've experienced in the past few years also has contributed to an increase in CO2 levels. Without moisture, plants can't process the CO2 through photosynthesis and derive energy in the form of sugars and starches they require to prosper. Oxygen, the waste product of water used in the process, is also lowered.
Eons ago plants stalled in the evolutionary process and in the absense of water, they begin to fix Oxygen, which provides no energy, and emit CO2, thereby reversing their normal cycle and making matters worse.
There is an upside to the increase in CO2 levels. Given adequate moisture, crop yields will increase and bumper crops will become the norm. None too soon, as the world population surpasses 6 billion souls, many of which die of starvation each day. Sadly, it's usually the young children, that can't fend for themselves.
Looks like frozen precip is headed for the Ozarks, already in KS and Northern OK, around Ponca City(nice little place)!
Is anyone wishing for a White Christmas?
Happy Holidays! :Rb

The frozen precip has arrived! At least here anyway which is northwest of Springfield. Not too bad yet, just a thin coating of ice, but it is still falling and the temp is just 30°.

ceresone, I had never read mysteries before but my sis in Iowa brought us down some and I got a bit addicted to them. I still prefer a thick, complicated novel about the south and the people therein............like the Civil War era most of all.

I keep a list of all the books read and what they were about.

DH who had never read much in his life, much to my surprise and delight, is now reading with me....not my kind of novels, but he likes the mysteries. Some favorite authors:

David Baldacci, think we have read all his books, P.D. James, Tami Hoag, and Robin Cook to name a few.

I watched Newt Gingrich on Book TV last weekend and he loves mysteries and talked about his favorites....caused me to checkout a sampling yesterday....jury is still out.

They were: Robert B. Parker and John Hart
He also has a thread of reviews on Amazon which is very helpful. I now have one by Tony Hillerman, Richard Bausch, Stuart Woods, and Brian Freeman (all reviewed on Amazon).

I am currently reading Sufficient Grace by Darnell Arnoult and probably next will read Down by the River by Edna O'Brien. I got these from another good southern writer Lee Smith's website. Like you, if desperate, will read almost anything.

I also enjoyed 1776 and John Adams by David McCullough (bought those two).

Next to gardening, reading is my favorite thing to do. I read mostly non-fiction. This past summer I was reading about cooking, eating, and our food supply. I started with Ruth Reichl. She writes in sort of an autobiographal fashion from starting out working in restaurants ,to becoming the food critic for the New York Times, and then on to being editor of Gourmet magazine. I ended by reading Animal, Vegetable, Mineral by Barbara Kingsolver.

This fall I read about Blackwater because I didn't know anything about it. That got me interested in reading books about the war in Iraq. From there I started reading history books about the period from World War 2 to the present. I particularly liked reading Arthur Schlesinger's books because he seems careful of his facts and also was present for much of the history he writes about.

My sister reads mysteries and her all time favorite is Agatha Christie. She loves the series by Janet Evanovich. She even got me reading the Southern Sisters mystery series by Ann George. They are set in Birmingham Alabama and are quite funny. My personal favorite fiction is the Mitford series by Jan Karon. A little mystery, a little romance....

We just subscribed to Net Flixs so we will be watching movies for awhile. We watched Good Night and Good Luck last night as well as a documentary called God Has Forgotten Us. It was about some young men who'd spent ten years in refugee camps in northern africa and then they were brought to the United States. It showed their reactions to our fleniful food, electricity, and running water. It was very sad to watch as they were so homesick for their family and friends here in the midst of plentiful material things.

I also enjoy Book TV on the weekends. I learn a lot there and get ideas for more must reads.

We just got a gas wall furnace installed in our basement family room. Now we will have a source of heat if the electricity goes off. We hope we won't need it but I haven't forgotten the bone chilling cold from last years ice storms and want to be prepared.

looks like you all better buckle up! i saw winter storm warnings for your area through tuesday!

the best.

william

I think most of you are out of the area of the predicted ice storms aren't you? Glenda, are you in the area north of I-44? I'm thinking you might be. It is very wet and rainy here and the temperature is hovering just above freezing. I heard some thunder earlier.

I have my amyrillis out of the dark closet where they have been resting. I haven't watered them yet as I need to do some repotting. Their bright colors are really a welcome sight in January and February.
Anise

Anise, we are about 10 or so miles north of I-44 so we are in the eye and already have ice on all trees, grasses and shrubs. It has been raining since 2 am and is still coming down lightly. When the temps drop tonight, I expect it to be disastrous. It is 33° right now.

I hope we are covered with the new generator....we better be!

I am not sure about Christie's location regarding I-44.

Well, back on again. Tech support has hopefully told me how to stay online. We'll see.
Thanks gld. for the book referance for DD i passed it on. My favorite books are mysteries too and non fiction from science to history to psychology to anything in print.

Have any of you read any of the books by Joan Hess from Fayetteville. They're abt a law inforcement lady from Maggotty, Arkansas. I read her books and roar with laughter. I hope no one gets offended by her characters. I grew up in AR and see people i've known throughout my life (exagerated of course) in her characters.

I love Tony Hillerman and his Navajo policemen. A good insight into Navajo people as well as a good mystery.

Of course Agatha Christie will always be my favorite. The Third Girl was the first book of hers i read and had to reread it because i did'nt beleive the ending was possible. It Was.
Another author i like is Nevada Barr. Her character is a park ranger, the stories set in National Parks. Good mysteries too.
Hope all of you in MO are doing ok. gld, you have been hit with all the bad weather possible this year. Now i hear we're all due for snow. We escaped all the ice.The cold front wavered back and forth just north of us but never came thru, tonight is supposed to be differant and cold. Here on the mt. we've had peasoup fog and i'm ready to pull my hairout from cabin fever.
Everyone stay Safe and Warm.
vickie

Received my Bluestone catalog yesterday. They have their usual 20% discount if you order in February. I don't think I will be ordering much next year...I still have a row of daylilies in the garden to move and two baskets of iris that I didn't get in the ground in the fall...that will keep me busy.

vickie, I have also read several Janet Evanovich. I am just starting Tony Hillerman's (never read him before) The Shape Shifter.

I just finished a couple of excellent books from Lee Smith's booklist from her website, Sufficient Grace and Down by the River by Edna O'Brien. So far the mysteries reviewed favorably by Newt Gingrich have been good. One was In the Night Season by Richard Bausch and Stripped by Brian Freeman. I told you when the weather is bad, I read!).

I love southern authors and books set in the south. I added Joan Hess to my list. When I read Ava's Man by Rick Bragg, I thought they could be writing about "my people". I had my son read it so he would get the feel of who we were and where we came from....and why the women stayed with their men. It was a revelation to me.

We are hoping the snow storm misses us but DH got his hay-feeding rigs all set up for the cows just in case.

There was an interesting piece in my last Fine Gardening about taking a photo of a flower bed or area you want to do and then making a sketch from it to try different things. Since I have to do something around the foundation where we removed the Yews and a border in the middle of the front yard for when the Maple (silver) trees will die and fall down or get blown down by a tornado, so I think I will give that method a try.

I have also done some Christmas cookies and a candy for the holidays. Cooking is another thing I love to do....sadly. Not good because then we eat it.
Ceresone, and others, where are you?

I wish I had checked in sooner on this thread. It is a good one. I hope Ceresone's new one will go as well. I'll attempt to follow it...

Ceresome, If I had remained with my disfunctional first husband I would have been married 57 years in June! Thank goodness I had no child with him. I have one son who will be 50 the 15th of January. He was born 10 months and 10 days after I married my second, and present, DH.
We have no daughters, but have 3 granddaughters. The oldest turned 14 the 24th of November.

Glenda, our anniversery is the 5th of March.

I am sorry about the bad weather that you more northern Ozarkians have already suffered! I hope that means the real winter will be much kinder.

Re: books...I have read at least one Hillerman book. I can't remember the name. I really liked his writing. ( I think the one I read is in a Reader's Digest condensed book. I have a lot of them.) I haven' done much lengthy reading since I got addicted to the computer. I 'did' read a book that I'd had some time, but not read. It is "Voices of the River" about the Mississippi and it's contributaries.( An old book). Very interesting, and caused me to do an awful lot of googling...:-). It took me a long time to finish the book. :-)

Marian