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Good morning, FRiends and fellow gardeners! We finally have power again, some dog-gone big and vicious storms ran over us last night here in NE Louisiana. If anybody figures out how to get a solar system to work at night without spending $100k on batteries, please let me know!! lol Received anywhere between 2.5" and 5" of rain, depending on the field. The 2.5" we registered here at the house can't possibly be right ... the rain was blowing so sideways that I don't think half of it got in the gauge. It was sorely needed and I am...

Good morning everybody! I hope you've had a peaceful and productive week. Last week I posted photos of my cowpea patch and it has changed drastically since. Not only did they blossom, I have pea pods that are already 5" long! We will be picking before too long.Thanks to all who posted photos last week. It was a beautiful thread.Looking forward to reading your comments about what is happening in your neck o' the woods. The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are...

Apologies for the late posting of the thread ... I have been on the go since I woke up this morning, and didn't even think about it being Friday until we were 20 miles from the house.I harvested another 15 gallons of honey last Sunday ... boy am I rethinking how many bees I really want to have. Honey robbing in 105 degree heat is no fun, even with a camelback of cold drink under my suit. Got 3 new queens in the mail and installed one in a hive that I had split into 2 hives, and the...

Good morning, FRiends, fellow gardeners, and yet-to-be gardeners!Thanks go out to all that participated in the thread last week. Beautiful photos were posted, and info was shared that will make big differences in the gardening lives of our members.If you can ... please remember to add keywords that will make our threads more useful when searched. I think that I was the only one that added keywords as the thread progressed. My thoughts and prayers are with everyone that needs a good rain. Drought is an awful situation. I am off to the back end of the yard to...

Good morning and happy Friday (the 13th) to all of my FRiends and fellow gardeners! My special thanks go to Ellendra for posting the thread while I took a week to go to the mountains. I was hoping to find relief from the heat, only to find that it was in the 90's in SE Montana, not much cooler than here in Louisiana.I began the long process of becoming a fly fisherman, and I am hooked, so to speak. Just what I needed ... another hobby to compete for my limited time!Today is the first time I've seen the...

Anybody enjoying the heat???? Good morning, FRiends and fellow gardeners! My thanks to Red Devil_232 and his beautiful tomato plants for hosting last week's gardening thread. Here in NELA, we welcomed the first day of summer with temps in 3 digits ... at one time yesterday afternoon, our digital weather station had the temperature outside at 102.4! The remote unit that is transmitting the temp is on the north end of the house, tucked up under the eve and out of the sun. Whew!Lots going on here. We've been enjoying sweet corn (var. Serendipity) all week, and the harvest...

Good morning! Hope that all of my FRiends and fellow gardeners have had a good and productive week.Began the Spring harvest in my apiary yesterday, which yielded 7 gallons of beautiful honey from 3 hives. Still have 3 hives from which to pull the honey boxes, and the remaining hives will not harvest until Fall because they are relatively new. Bit of trivia here ... a gallon of honey weighs 12 pounds.The wheat harvest is over and the farm is buzzing with tractors getting cotton and soybeans planted on the wheat ground. The field corn has tassled and pollinated,...

Good morning and happy June to my gardening FRiends and fellow gardeners!You may have noticed that I titled last week's thread "Keywords", and then totally forgot to write the first word about the topic. That illustrates perfectly how frazzled my mind is these days. As I was getting ready to hit the post button, I kept thinking there was something I was forgetting, but finally convinced myself that it probably wasn't *that* important, and I posted the thread. I apologize.There has been more than once that great information has been posted by one of our members, but I can't...

Huge thanks to Red Devil_232 for posting the thread last week!!! It is absolutely crazy around the farm, with everybody going in different directions at the same time and trying to stay coordinated with one another.The wheat harvest is well underway, and the yields have been above our wildest dreams. The field corn has tasseled and is pollinating nicely. Several hundred acres of cotton have been planted and it is now being fertilized, sprayed for weeds, sprayed for bugs, etc. Still have about 900 acres of cotton left to plant behind the wheat.My sweet corn patches are looking good,...

Good morning FRiends and fellow gardeners!! Here's wishing all mothers and grandmothers a very joyous and beautiful Mother's Day. We rock! It has been a very busy couple of weeks in my yard. Lots of projects going on and I was able to finish a few of them in between serious dumpings of rain. My rain gauge has registered just over 4" since Monday. We have a 50% chance of more by the first part of next week. Need to be harvesting wheat, but can't really be upset with the rain after the drought we experienced last year.A look...

Good morning FRiends and fellow gardeners! I really enjoyed all of you that participated in last week's thread. I've been so busy that I didn't have time to respond to each and every comment, but I think about what y'all write and the photos that you post while I'm out working on my own projects. You truly inspire me!Looking forward to reading your updates this week. We welcomed 2 new members to the ping list last week, bringing us to 525 members. That is fantastic, and we are on track to add 100 members this year.In my own little...

The mother of a 13-year-old boy fatally shot when police say he tried to rob a couple said she is in shock that her son is dead -- and even more so at the circumstances surrounding his death. "I don't want it put out like he was a bad person or a mean person, because he wasn't," Latonya Walker, 38, said Tuesday. "This is not him, not who he was. Anybody that knew Ja'Quares knows that." Birmingham police said Ja'Quares Cortez Walker was in a car that pulled into the parking lot of the gated Skyview Condominiums at 407 Skyview...

Good morning everyone! I'm looking forward to hearing your gardening challenges and successes today. Please check in and let us know how it's going.This morning I've put together a little pictorial of how Mark and I cut a honey bee hive out of a wall or similar place. This is a medium-sized cutout that we did back in March. The hive was located in an old shed that the owner wanted to tear down, but they were trying to reclaim windows and the old boards and the bees weren't having any of that. So, the owner got her building...

Good morning to my FRiends, fellow gardeners, future gardeners, and lurkers! It is beautiful and sunny today here in NELA. We received 2-1/2 inches of rain earlier in the week and it is still very wet in the yard and garden. I've been keeping busy with my bee yard ... I got called about a swarm day-before-yesterday, about 25 miles south of my house. I still had all of my bee catching equipment in my truck from doing a hive cutout last weekend, so off I went. Below is a photo of the swarm when I got there, and...

The Wizard of OzThe Treasure of Sierra MadreThe Three StoogesThe GodfatherIt's a Wonderful LifeGone With the WindBonnie & ClydeEnough of movies ... here is some reality:

Happy Friday the 13th, and good morning fellow gardeners and FRiends! I hope that you are enjoying weather as beautiful as what we are experiencing here in NE Louisiana. Nights and mornings are cool and breezy, and the days very warm.I've planted 1.6 acres of bi-color sweet corn. We checked the seed the next day and it had already sprouted, and was pegged the following day. Perfect conditions!Looking forward to hearing what's going on in your neck o' the woods. The Weekly Gardening Thread is a weekly gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds....

Good morning, FRiends and fellow gardeners! The weather has cooled-down a bit, the sun is shining and my grandgirls have been here all week. I am one happy blonde today.It rained again 2 and 3 days ago, so I haven't even disked up the garden spot yet, but that will get done Monday.All of the fruit trees and bushes that I've planted are doing very well and the regular rains have been perfect to keep them moist and off to a great start! Some of the raspberries that I planted were established plants, and some were bare-root canes. Many...

Good evening, FRiends and gardeners! I deeply apologize for the delay in posting this week's thread ... this is an extremely busy time here on our farm, and when you've got just a handful of folks farming 3,000 acres, there are times when it is all hands on deck all night long. The rain has been spaced exactly right to be wrong, and we were down to the wire getting our corn crop planted.With that out of the way, how in the world is everybody doing with their gardens and plans for gardens? We have so many members with...

Good morning, FRiends and fellow gardeners! Hopefully everyone has received beneficial rain this past week. We've had an additional 2 inches, which was a blessing because just to the south and southwest of us as much as 10 inches fell. While the area needed the rain, it didn't need it all at one time.Looking forward to reading what you're doing with your gardens and plans this week. Photos will earn you bonus points! :^) It is too wet for me to do anything in the garden, but I do have lots of raspberry bushes to get planted. Then, the...

Good morning FRiends and gardeners! During the rain this past week, I've had a chance to do some reading and found some articles that may be of interest to you. So this week I am sharing links, and I hope you enjoy them and find some useful information. I also hope that you'll check in and let us know how your garden/garden planning is coming along.In Kitchen Garden Creation, you'll learn about growing culinary and visual delights in the same place.The following links are for those interested in improving the structure of their soil. If you have rocks or...

. Good afternoon gardeners! After a high of 81 degrees yesterday, we are at 50 degrees today after experiencing high winds and 3 inches of rain last night. Radar would indicate that there is more rain to come, as I see it in Texas right now. I hope that all of our Texas gardeners are catching up on much needed rain! PTL!We have so many new gardeners in our group, in addition to folks with the desire to begin gardening, that I thought a primer on transplanting might be useful. Please feel free to add to the discussion with...

. Good morning fellow gardeners! Here in NE Louisiana the weatherman claims we will reach 90 degrees today. He is really starting to get on my nerves ... doesn't he know that this is the first week of March, for pete's sake? He could shade the truth and tell us it's going to be 68, it's not like he's given bad information before, he does it at least 3 days a week. But, I digress.First off this week, I want to share a link that fanfan, one of our gardening FRiends in Canada, sent to me earlier in the...

. Greetings from hot and sticky NE Louisiana! We set a record high yesterday at 89 degrees. I miss the mountains of Montana already. It averaged around 15 degrees while we were there and I was walking around in shirt sleeves. Without the extreme dampness, the cold is really comfortable.I want to extend a big THANK YOU to Red Devil_232 and Ellendra for taking care of the thread in my absence. Y'all did wonderful work and I appreciate your efforts more than you will know. I had expected to be able to post the thread for the past 2...

I have a dear friend and neighbor who is elderly and not in the best of health. Day in and day out during gardening season she sits at her kitchen table and watches me work in my yard and garden, living vicariously through me. Once or twice a week I'll take her some vegetables and we discuss gardening, which was such an important part of her earlier years. You can see the love of gardening in her eyes every time we have a talk. I asked her one day to tell me the difference between dirt and soil. Soil,...

SUPPLEMENTAL VOL. 1 USDA Unveils New Plant Hardiness Zone Map The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today released the new version of its Plant Hardiness Zone Map, updating a useful tool for gardeners and researchers for the first time since 1990 with greater accuracy and detail. The new map — jointly developed by USDA's Agricultural Research Service and Oregon State University's PRISM Climate Group — is available online at http://www.planthardiness.ars.usda.gov . ARS is the chief intramural scientific research agency of USDA. For the first time, the new map offers a Geographic Information System based interactive format and is specifically...

It was just a couple of weeks ago that I was really glad that the last of my garden had frozen. Being blessed with a long growing season is not always what it's cracked-up to be. You understand ... gardening is hard work! When it lasts from March or April until December, it can get tedious.Then, yesterday, my first order of seeds that I don't need came in from John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds. Four beautiful little envelopes that sound like maracas; Baby Lincoln Leeks, Tres Fine Maraichere Endive, Beaumont Broccoli, and Large Fruited Mixture Ornamental Gourds.I am stoked.Yep,...

Good morning everybody! It is cold and clear here in NE Louisiana, zone 8a, we should reach 50° today under sunny skies. We've received several inches of rain in the past 3 weeks, so there will be no garden prep for a while yet, but the sunny sky has a way of getting me in the mood. In last week's thread we discussed our seed and supply catalogs. This week I intended to discuss saving seeds from our own harvests, and starting seeds indoors. In preparing, I actually found a couple of articles that are very informative and give good...

January is not the most hospitable month of the year to be sure. If you're like me those cold dreary days are best spent curled up in a chair (for the guys that don't *do* curl -- sit there very manly) with a cup of tea (insert the manly beverage of your choice) and a stack of garden catalogs that you need a front-end loader to move (got you with the front-end loader, didn't I?).I've got to hand it to the catalog people, the covers are exceptional this year and, by golly, with all of the $25 to $100 coupons...

There exists somewhere in FReeperland, a master list of all of the ping lists, and I used to keep a copy of it on my computer. Unfortunately, when my old computer died, it did so suddenly and I didn't have that particular file backed-up.Jim suggested that I post a thread asking for assistance, because he did not have a link to the thread that I'm looking for. I sent a FReepmail to the FReeper who used to keep the master list and I didn't receive a reply. After looking at the posting history of the FReeper, I see that she...

When dawn breaks on the Texas horizon Saturday morning, hundreds of thousands of hunters will be lying in wait with rifles in hand. In the Lone Star State, opening day of deer season is as coveted as the Cowboys and cold beer. "The night before is as close to Christmas Eve as you can get without presents under the tree," says Mike Cox, a spokesman with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. Hunters, however, could be in for a cruel surprise this year. Texas just suffered through its hottest summer ever and is in the midst of an unrelenting historic...

Megyn Kelly and Carl Cameron reporting that Chris Christie will appear in Dartmouth tonight and endorse Romney.

Following approval of a revised wolf management plan by the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today proposed to remove the gray wolf population in Wyoming from the Federal List of Endangered and Threatened Wildlife. Due to recovery efforts and the provisions of the revised state plan, the Wyoming wolf population is healthy and stable, current and future threats to wolves have been addressed, and a post-delisting monitoring and management framework has been developed. Today’s formal proposal follows an agreement with the state of Wyoming that serves as the blueprint for returning wolf management to...

6 African-American Teens Drowned In Louisiana River Monday POSTED: Tuesday, August 3, 2010 UPDATED: 7:00 pm EDT August 3, 2010 JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- A study shows 69 percent of African-American children have low or no swimming ability. After six teens -- none of whom could swim -- drowned in the Red River in Louisiana on Monday, the importance of learning to swim and the disproportionate number of minority children who can't swim has become more evident. According to numbers gathered by the USA Swimming Foundation, nearly three out of five black and Hispanic children do not know how to swim...

Dear Friend, Yesterday I filed a resolution of disapproval in the U.S. Senate to prevent additional bailout funding from being released. On Monday, President Bush made a request on behalf of the incoming administration to release the second half of the $700 billion that Congress authorized over my objections last fall under the Troubled Assets Relief Program. I have serious concerns with these funds being released, and I believe that we need to think very seriously on this matter. For this request to be approved, Congress is required to do nothing, and a formal resolution of disapproval must be passed...

Louisiana Secretary of StateUnofficial Election Results Inquiry Results for Election Date: 2/09/08 02/09/2008 20.19.24 Presidential Nominee, Democratic Party 7 of 3,966 precincts reporting Click here for Results by Parish 86 2% Biden, "Joe" - 1,973 39% Clinton, Hillary - 43 1% Dodd, Christopher J. - 709 14% Edwards, John - 35 1% Kucinich, Dennis J. - 2,038 41% Obama, Barack - 122 2% Richardson, William "Bill" - Presidential Nominee, Republican Party 7 of 3,966 precincts reporting Click here for Results by Parish 3 0% Curry, Jerry - 2 0% Gilbert, Daniel - 92 3% Giuliani, Rudolph W. - 681 25%...

Robert Spencer, one of the America's foremost experts on Islam, says members of the Democratic National Committee may have been ignorant what the words meant when an Islamic imam recently gave the invocation at the party's 2007 winter meeting. Hear This ReportOne of the nation's leading experts on the Islamic religion says those in attendance at the Democratic National Committee's 2007 winter meeting were apparently unaware of what an Islamic imam was really saying when he gave the invocation. Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, a project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, says the imam from a Shiite Muslim...

Though Bobby Jindal hasn't announced whether he will run enter the upcoming governor's race in Louisiana, I am encouraged that he will once again challenge Kathleen Blanco for the position. Earlier today I received the following email message from BobbyJindal.com: Diane, We are looking to recruit a few individuals to help us organize our Grassroots efforts for Bobby Jindal in your parish. We would love to have your help and input! Essentially, the Grassroots Leadership Team will be the organization of the campaign in your parish. The team will help organize and coordinate the grassroots efforts of the parish. It...

The hero-to-villain odyssey of Jabar Gibson took another nose dive Thursday when the 21-year-old was indicted on federal drug and gun charges, less than eight months after he gained national acclaim for driving a group of Hurricane Katrina evacuees from New Orleans to Houston in a commandeered school bus. Gibson faces five to 25 years behind bars if convicted on charges of cocaine trafficking, heroin trafficking and possessing a gun while dealing drugs. Authorities said Gibson was carrying 1.7 grams of cocaine, an undisclosed amount of heroin and a .357-caliber revolver when he was caught by New Orleans narcotics detectives...

Wed Feb 22, 9:22 AM ET SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - San Francisco, a leader in urban recycling, is preparing to enlist its canine population for a first in the United States: converting dog poop into energy. Norcal Waste Systems Inc., the city's garbage company, plans to test collection carts and biodegradable bags in a city-center park popular with dog walkers. A city study found that almost 4 percent of all the garbage picked up at San Francisco homes was from animal waste destined for the city's landfill, Norcal Waste spokesman Robert Reid said. San Francisco has an estimated 120,000 dogs....

  Miffed and Piffed President Clinton is reportedly miffed because Al Gore dissed him.   I'm not quite sure where the word "miff" originated, but I'm fairly certain it's a derivative of the Mesopotamian word "piff", which basically means to furiously evacuate one's bladder and/or bowels in an excited matter.  By all accounts, White House janitors had a wet clean-up in the Oval Office after Mr. Clinton caught news reports that Al Gore was deeply distressed that Wild Bill would ride the bologna pony in the White House and then lie about. In fact, Gore called his boss' behavior ...

  Something to do this Fourth of July   To paraphrase Lincoln, it is beyond our abilities to consecrate this day of celebration and solemn remembrance better than, or even as well as, our predecessors have by their thoughts, words, and deeds.  But in the midst of our respective, private means of celebrating we do owe it to them, ourselves, and our offspring to remember, however briefly, why this day is commemorated. The Colonial Congress had assembled for a variety of reasons.  Some perceived it to be a means of collectively bargaining with the British Crown and Parliament.   ...

  The White House and the military Military intelligence is considered an oxymoron in many circles.   Whether the result of misunderstanding or keen perception is a debate for another time.  What will be discussed is how this administration can so totally screw up militarily, vis a vis Kosovo. One of the most troubling aspects of this administration is not its lack of military experience present, but its attitude.   The president's draft dodging entailed a letter in which he expressed an utter disdain and dismissal of all things military.  The first family's personal abuse of military aides has been ...

THE GOP TASTES LIKE CHICKEN Essay/By Jack Ryan   Not a news hour goes by where someone is not speculating on how our "victory" in the Balkans will affect Bill Clinton's legacy.  Now I'm not certain what galaxy most of these news-hour losers woke up in, but Mr. Clinton's legacy was signed, sealed and delivered the minute the Monica Lewinsky scandal erupted in January 1998.  Legacy?   War?  Victory in the Balkans?  If Tom, Dan and Peter took the time to pull their collective noses from the White House's collective rear ends, they'd see that the first word in the ...