The biggest challenge in my garden is:

Weeds and more weeds and more weeds. and the list could go on and on.

No I wish I was San Juaquin valley climate and soil, but I am in Kern County, on the border of Los Angeles County. I can stand in my town and run across the street and be in the other county. zone 11 Sunset. grrrrr.

You poor thing, living at the beach, let me poke myself in the eye so I can work up a good tear for you. lol

LOL Hellnzn11....that sounds like something 'Maxine' from all those Hallmark cards would say.

I might have to borrow that one =)

lol

I can't believe that Petalpants only watched part of that video!!!
Some of those ladies were definitely wearing "petalpants"!
N'est c'est pas?

Of course, if you abandoned the video in deference to teenage boys, you may have missed the real "petalpants"!

But, if you're a dedicated "Country" girl, this may be better. Shania does things that I'm not sure you can do in French here! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHbdC1U1EaE&feature=fvst

Meanwhile. Mr Conan is contemplating attending the French National Corgi Show again this year. 2 years ago, he was 2nd place in the "Puppy" Class. He didn't go lat year because we were in The States, and this year he's old enough that he'd have to enter "Open Class" with dogs that have won numerous championships. Tough training to compete. And he really is a pet. We're still thinking this one through.

Sorry to hear you lost your dalmatian so recently. It is hard to get over the loss of a long-time companion. We found our Troika crippled by a Russian troop carrier behind the UN Office in Dushanbe, Tajikistan in the last months of the civil war there. We had her for almost 15 years. With her 3 legs, we always got comments --- some not so kind, but she was loyal, loving, and her death left a huge gap in both our hearts. We got Conan because we thought Troika was at least part Corgi.
Well, maybe she wasn't, but getting this dog was one of the best choices we have ever made. He brightens our lives!

We don't have "Labor Day Weekend" here. Hope you all survived it back there!

Jim

It's more like "Non-Labor Day"--lol

Marsue, it was 'Labor Day weekend' literally for my husband, as he had to work all 3 days, but my teens were all home. FrenchyJim, I watched Shania's video, but I didn't think it was Too bad in the clothing department; and in fact, I like that song! Her outfit was skimpy, but the other one, Lady Marmalade, just looks really trashy to me...I Did re-watch it awhile ago. We are going to brave the rain tonight and go to a concert that we already have tickets for: Sugarland, and also Billy Curington. We got tickets 2 months ago; and we didn't buy any for our kids--- it's like a Date Nite!! Jim, let us know if you enter Conan in the dog show! We'll be rooting for you if you do! =)

Well, that sounds like fun!
Hope you have a great time!

Never heard Sugarland or Billy Curington, but I'm a Shania Twain fan!

I LOVE to listen to Sugarland sing but I hate watching her. to me, she is like Celine Dion...way over exagerated when she's singing. imho. lol and I'm an expert. not. They are locals from the Atlanta area. I keep telling my daughter she needs to hang out at the same bar/club where they started singing together. she could sing or sell songs she's written. see, I think she needs to make it big so I can be a roadie. or stage manager, lol anything.

Jim....I can send a sample on yahoo to you if you like. I bet you've heard them.
.

Oh, no, Phyl!!! Not ANOTHER Celine Dion detractor! I think I may be the only person I know who actually LIKES her! Of course, I've never seen her perform, so maybe that explains something.
Thanks for the offer of sending me a sample, but I did get to hear some of their music on their website. Not bad, in a fairly non-offensive way (about like Celine Dion, perhaps), I'll admit I always preferred my C&W a bit rougher in the style of Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, David Allen Coe and early Johnny Cash. I'd never heard Sugarland, as there is a dearth of C&W music over here!

Ok guys, we are going into the outer limits. I like Sugarland too. We have steered off course but as you said, Who cares, everyone else has moved on and stopped watching us.

I just dug up a bunch of plants that were not doing well in the location where they were, so it is sort of exciting to see how they do where they are now. I will probably have to see in Spring though.

potagere is an outlaw country guy. i like your picks. you'd fit right in over here in texas pot. i gotta extra gun you can borrow.

Well, you know, I have this old LP (remember those?) of "Circuit Queen" that Marcia Ball signed in some Austin honky tonk that no longer exists after a long night of line dancing and tequila slammers!
I see that she is going to play in concert in Switzerland in November. I wonder if it would all be the same,
Well, no; no need to wonder.
It wouldn't.
But it could still be fun, don't you think?

When I next get to Texas, I need to check you out, mamajack!
Most of my Texas acquaintances done got just plain casual about holding guns,
and they are old folks, crammed up in the cities, waitin' on Mr Death,
riding the music of their youth, and, all too often, they turn those guns on theyselves.

I was thinking about my garden and all my projects,
And I got a few things yet to do,
Even if they don't earn big points in The Scheme of the Universe.

(For serious gun lovers, I've got a fun tale about shooting guns in PRC China)

Oh, wow, Willie Nelson, we have seen him in concert at least 3 times! His 'whiskey' singing voice is fantastic! ---nothing like him singing, "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain", amongst many others; people say He's Old; I say, So what?? We love his singing, and his concerts are long---you definitely get your money's worth. The Sugarland concert was really good, but you know some of the songs cross over to other types, just depends on the song; some are almost like rock. I do like some of the old classic-rock songs also, but for the last 30 yrs. or so it's been Country. Of course, Johnny Cash is a classic, with his deep voice! We have been to see Alan Jackson before, and had close seats; he was great, and better-looking in person! =) And we saw Brad Paisley also, Fantastic, his singing and guitar-playing! ---Have to go, I'm getting all worked up thinking about them, and I'm trying to get over the Flu... (cough, cough!).

pot if you drink you some tequila it'll come close to being the same. hehe and you are a poet. but the younguns have guns too. lots of texans are hunters still where there are places left to hunt on. and thank God that texas still has a few places left. when you live around dallas it feels like there is no open space left in the whole world. until you leave. always makes me smile to see...........nothing. and serious or not i want to hear the china gun story.

Oh Jim, I have all her cd's and cried in my beer with many of her songs. (well, cried without the beer) but I simply enjoy hearing her than I do watching her sing. i think it got worse after she started doing all those shows in Vegas for all those years. But Willie? it doesn't get much better than him. Slow dancing to 'I must've been crazy to fall out of love with you'. be still my heart. "And I may not be normal but nobody is
so I'd like to say 'fore I'm through
I'd have to be crazy
plum out of my mind
to fall out of love with you

i wonder if he's married? =)

Sorry, Phyl, but ats per latest accounts, Willie is still married to his 4th wife! Based on his marital history, however, he ought to be just about due to become available again, so there IS hope.

I've never been a hunter, mamajack. Well, that's not true. I had a friend in high scholl who was a hunter, and he and his dad took me out once on a pheasant hunt. Man, we drove up and down country roads and we walked seventy-eleven miles through stubbled down corn and wheatfields and we hardly scared up so much as a sparrow. We were hunting without a dog. And, eventually, Elton and his dad each got their 3 cocks, and then they insisted that I had to get a bird. So we drove some more and walked a few hundred more acres, and somewhere out there just east of Eden (yes, it's true, we were hunting the Palouse, just east of Eden, Washington), as we were walking this one old boy's field, and I was toting Elton's shotgun, up roared this entire gigantic flock of about 500 pheasants and I raised the gun and just pointed at the center of the flock and fired. Well, one poor bird must have jigged when he should have jagged, because I got him. I walked out across that field and picked that bird up and felt him warm in my hand, warm and lifeless, and I stroked his feathers and I touched his blood with my finger and I tasted it and I knew I wasn't and wasn't ever going to be a hunter. I took him home and showed him to my mama, and she said "I'll tell you how to do it, but you're gonna clean that bird, not me." And she did and I did and we all had a bit of roast pheasant that evening, and even though I made sure that I got the bit that had all the shot still in it, it made a real fine meal. But these days, I buy my poultry and my meat at the grocery store or at the butcher's. From time to time, one of my neighbours who does hunt brings me a pheasant or a hare or, on particularly festive occasions a bit of wild boar. And I skin and clean those birds and rabbits and I roast or pan fry or otherwise cook those animals and eat them with gusto. And I guess, if push came to shove and I had a young family to feed and I had no alternative, I could go back out again and learn to kill, but my heart would never be in it. And, truth to tell, I really just don't understand, in a modern nation, where the food is all there in the supermarket, what is the thing about hunting. I mean, in a way, I "understand" hunting. I always wanted to find a real hunter to teach me to hunt. Not to kill animals, but to know their ways and to find them and to track them and to get close enough to see them almost "face-to-face". But most of the hunters I ever knew never really "hunted" and they killed their prey from far away with scopes and high-powered rifles; and the serious men, the ones who used un-scoped guns and low loads or hunted with bows would never take me seriously because it was clear that I wasn't out to kill a single thing. So I know scat and I know tracks and from time to time I've gotten lucky and come face-to-face with a flock of bighorns or a herd of chamois and the thrill was fantastic. But, a bunch of good ole boys out in the woods with guns and whiskey? Guess I've just never been that much into male bonding!

I just got back from Paris, riding the TGV both ways. What a shame they don't have trains like this in America. I remember once riding the Empire Builder out of Spokane to Chicago and the City of New Orleans down to St Louis. What a trip! But these European high-speed trains cut the continent into easily manageable pieces. 3 hours from Paris to my nearest train station (a 15-minute drive with free long-term parking). And what always strikes me on these trips (or even the long distance trips we make across Europe by car) is how different it is than what an American expects. There really are no suburbs, if you can believe that! There is no long, slow slog through areas of factories, strip malls and/or auto sales yards, or through rat-a-tat riprap cookie cutter housing developments. One minute, you're in the country, and the next minute, you're in the city, wham bam thank you ma'm! And the other thing is that even though, in comparison with America, each of these countries (heck, the entire continent) is small and it's been occupied for something like 6000 years (if you're a Creationist) or 600,000 years (if you're not) and, in any case, there are still these vast areas where there is nothing but Nature! It really is astounding. And, for history buffs like myself, it is nearly incomprehensible how such vicious battles that took so many lives could have been fought across so much of the terrain.
Fate, of course, exists in what must be one of the smallest counties in America. Maybe that's why you feel "hemmed in".

I think I need to save the "Shooting Guns in China" story for another day.

Potagere/Jim

Jim, I'm so jealous. in a good way. I have such fond memories alllll over France. well, Europe period. I am thankful that I am an Army brat and that I was old enough to remember most of the places we lived in. I feel rather blessed, actually.

When I visted my Aunt and Uncle who lived in Wimbleton, UK (Wimbledon?) and with whom we took a long weekend trip to Paris via the Eurostar (I think that was the name...the memory pills haven't kicked in for this week, lol) are in town (now they live in Thailand/Austin, TX) so we've been talking about that trip so much. I mean, we barely ate the picnic lunch she packed for us and got everything put away, and wham! We were in Paris. From London!

that was in April 1999, and the Eiffel Tower was counting down the minutes till 2000.

thanks for the memory,Jim. now stop that! Willie Nelson - Paris. good memories, indeed.

Jim...my aunt is amazed at our WS..however they don't have winter in Thailand. but she's going to send seeds to me of the "real' hot peppers. My uncle(from here) brought his lot to her for dinner last night and she didn't even blink an eye, while i didnt get my taste buds back till hours later!
he had these small green squatty peppers that were almost lime-carribean tasting. H.O.T. How did your peppers fare this year?

Hi, Phyl, Well, the best things to do in Paris are walk, visit galleries, and eat!
I'd love to get some of your uncle's pepper seeds. Do you know what they are called?
I'd also love to get seeds for Thai bird chiles and for the tiny (pea-sized) Thai eggplants (makkhue puang), so if she sends seeds to you (or even directly to me), I'd be glad to reimburse her!
I mis Thailand, the markets and the delicious and cheap street food!

My peppers mostly did extremely well this year. I have loads of chiles and am still eating fresh red, yellow and orange peppers and freezing quite a few for Winter use. My only failure was a Cancun habanero that bloomed a lot but just never set peppers. I'm going to try overwintering it to see what it might do next year.

Jim, I'll find out about the seeds and let her know what you're looking for. After seeing my dad's moonflowers and my Japanese Morning Glories, I'll have seeds going to her as well.

She's invited me over for a month or two. Now she lives closer to the beach....I wish.

Oh, hey, maybe we'll go in your place!! Where exactly does she live?

haha no fair! I'll find out. all i remember is it starts with a P and its near a beach. she's moving to a 3 bdrm house that has a gorgeous fence built around it made out of the same stuff the house is. I cant wait to see what she plants on the fence.

I gave her the name of seeds you were looking for. I'll keep you posted. We've promised to trade pepper seeds too. How do you freeze yours? ive got a ton here that i'm not sure what to do with. I planned to chop all the bell peppers today along with some onions. She made this concotion of water, vinegar and Nuoc Mam (fish sauce, which has 1420mg of sodium!!) that she covered real thin sliced peppers in a jar to keep in the fridge. i may do that with mine too because i'm on a thai cooking-stir fry-HOT pepper fad =)

uh do we need to change threads? where are the MSNs???