New Thread for April

I just realized that I hadn't started a new thread for the month. So here it is. March has been up and down and the first week of April is going to seesaw too. 80s tomorrow, then back down in the 50s & 60s the rest of the week. I have lots of peonies coming up, and Holly thinks she had nicotiana popping thru the soil already. I brought home Parsleys and some Cinnamon Basil & a pretty blue flower whose identity is a total mystery to me and shared with Holly. It was so cute to hear little Skyler try to repeat what I said they were as he handed them to his mother. Her term for things like the blue flowers is Idunos. I think it is a good one.

GOD bless and keep each of you.

Oh! Peonies! I has been looking for this plants around here! but I wait to finish all the RU first then I start to get plants soon on ground.

Anna

My dog, Rusty ate 3 poor babies rabbit! I was so upset!

Rusty, I am bringing a few peonies to the RU.

Thanks and also I did brought pink peonies and I hope I get your peonies at RU.

Anna

I will try to have some dug at my grandma's if we are able. The ones I am bringing are Walmart ones. White and Red. But still pretty.

I hope your all ready for the next few days of cold. I got over 100 hosta in leaf. If it was nothing but eye buds they would go through through the next few cold nights, but not in leaf. They would look a mess the rest of the season if they got frosted at this early point. I been up since 4 am getting all the pots together to cover them. Also to empty the box trap of the last ferrel cat we had here on the point. I took him about 10 miles away and let him loose. He was a big devil. Those ferrel cats are really nothing more then house cats that revert. I read a book about cats and they say there is only 2 tiny things in a cats genes that seperate a house cat from a wild version. they say no cat is a true domesticated animal. I believe that it helps me understand my own cat.

Ozarkian, you had your work cut out for you. Hope you're resting now. We are going to be in the 20's almost every night this week. I'm glad it's before the fruit trees bud out.

We let the male ferals stay just to keep the rabbits down. (Sorry Anna.) We take all the females in.

I caught mama rabbit making a nest in the iris. I don't know if she'll use this one, but it's dug deep.

Oz, please take feral cats to a shelter. I don't know how far you are from Warsaw, but there is one there that will take in cats and get them to a no kill shelter. Dumping them just compounds the problems when they mate. We also try to capture ferals and have them neutered or take them to a shelter. Holly has been working with one for several months and can catch and hold it every morning by now. She will have it neutered as soon as she feels it is tame enough to come into the house for a few days when it is neutered so it can heal safely. Her momma kitty was a dumped kitten when we got it. Either they took her or she went to the local shelter. She has been a wonderful pet for Skyler.

Some heavy rains and hail in Sedalia this morning. We got light rains, period. And now the sun is shining brightlly so I need to go outside and do a few minutes work. Oz, thanks for the warning about the hostas. I think that covering them with pots will be be my few minutes work outside. A heavy object on the overturned pot will hold it in place.

GOD bless and keep everyone.

Well, we got heavy rain here at home. I just missed it and mom almost got blown off the highway because the rain was blowing sideways and blowing so hard she couldn't see. She says she has never seen anything like it. We got heavy rain AND hail at work. It hailed so many times I lost track. I think it hailed 4 or 5 times when I was in the Chapel with a fellow gardener. It first hailed when I was in the Administration building-once, then Chapel, then about 3 times when at the Daycare. We got up to quarter sized hail and maybe bigger. I have dents in my hood from all that hail. Lots of lightning and thunder too. We had a little flash flooding too.

Leaflady this cat must have weighed in excess of 15 lbs. He had attack my cat one time and he has killed a couple of others. I understand your feelings but he is very lucky he survived the trapping. My first intentions were to shoot him.

Oz, I think you should have followed your first inclinations. If that is that cat's disposition he is nothing but trouble to this world.

I have my hosta under sheets and pots as well as other plants. Holly has a lot of plants covered too. I pray all our peonies and apple blossoms make it thru this period of cold temps. I am thinking of starting a fire in one of the burning barrels that I can move over between the apple trees and letting it keep the temps up for the apple crop of next fall. Same for the pear tree. Holly said her strawberries are in full bloom too so she will cover them too. It is really hard to tell a plant it can't bloom until later in the month when it has been so nice and warm the past couple weeks. So we just have to protect them as best we can.

We have some lilacs in full bloom right now. They are so pretty. I wish they would put off shoots so I could share them. The clematis that I moved last fall because it wasn't doing well anymore where it had been for years is doing wonderfully. It was determined to be a ground cover. So I divided what I could get of the roots and moved them to each side of the base of an arch on the other side of the yard. I'll try again to get it to climb but if it refuses again a ground cover in that area will be ok.

GOD bless and keep each of you.

Leaflady---- One thing I forgot to say about the cat is he was born wild. His mother before him was wild. I can remember seeing him when he was young. I remember the lady next door finding him cornered in a shed when he was still a tiny thing. And he gave her a real bloody hand when she stuck it down there. Everything he owned that was sharp went into action. I had not seen him in sometime and niether had my neighbors. We all thought he had moved on. I think he went to total night stalking and roaming. I was shocked at the size he has become. My daughter has 3 cats. She has a very good book about cats. According to the author the cat is the only animal living with man that resist domestication. He said there was only 2 small things( I do not remember what they were) in a cats DNA that seperate our present day house cats from the wild thing that still exist in parts of the world. Helped me understand our own cat although she acts more like a dog than a cat most of the time.

LOL. A cat acting like a dog? Gotta see that!!

Oh boy! It getting so cold down here! At 7:28 pm 44* wind chill 41*!

I bring all my plants back to attach garage already!

It will be last frost date this week.

We freeze warnings in effect up here and there is already damage to plants at work. Alan is not happy but like he said, it happens. Another coworker has fruit trees at his house and they have all put on blooms already. Some of them are cherry trees that would hav fruited for the first time this year. Now he doesnt know if they will or not because of the freeze this week. My apple tree is in bloom but the apples are so sour I don't care if it puts on fruit. I would just take them to work to find out what kind they are. lol

It is supposed to be down the the 20's again tonight. The last I heard we were supposed to be getting record lows through the rest of the week and into the weekend. I got quite a workout last night bringing pots into the house. I noticed that my akebia vine that had been growing so well got bitten back pretty severely. I had planted some pumpkin and gourd seeds last year from some autumn decorations and they had really been popping up. They are toast. Everything else was looking pretty good though.

Well pepper Lady our dog goes for two short walks a day. The cat goes also because that is what we are doing and Gilly wants to be included.
When she wants in Lady will bark at the door. Gilly has learned to do some odd kind of scream at the door when she wants in at times. She will also join in with the dog at times for the same reason.
The dog gets a bite before we go to bed at night. It usually is about 9pm. Well we stared giving gilly about 1/2 shotglass of milk at that time. Now, you can be assured that when it gets close to 9pm that cat will be in coming to where you are and you know she wants her milk. Sometimes it is the dog and sometimes it is both at one time.
Another thing about Gilly is she is very family orientated. She spends most of her time close to any family member when we are outside. That is rare for a cat.
She has a full set of claws and has never ever scratch any of us or destroyed a thing in the house. Sometimes when she is standing there with her paws on your leg (usually wanting out are her milk) and your not paying attention she will give you a a short prick with those front paws to get your attention.
And here is something else! She minds about 50% of the time. There are a few things she gets cat like about but I can call her and she comes right away about 50% of the time. If I want her to stop something she is doing she stops about 50 percent of the time and there is never any of the sas so many cats give you about it.

LOL.

I can remember it getting this cold in April ,of course I am not in the whiper snaper age group. I remember getting caught down at Lake Wapapello in SE missouri in a 11 inch snow storm a week after Easter. Had to drive back 160 miles to St louis towing a boat trailor. Was one of the worst drives I ever had.

Oz, I can relate to your cat and dog. Ours are like that too. We have one white female who was so sick as a baby that she couldn't drink or eat well. She had that pneumonitis that some cats get. They usually died when I was young but now they know that Sulfa drugs take care of it pretty well. Once a cat has had it they supossedly never get it again. If they die it is from starvation not the pneumonitis - or so the experts will say. Anyway, we didn't think she would live thru it but she did. But she didn't get milk as a baby so now she craves it. She will come to the kitchen when I am in there and very clearly say milk. And until she gets it she is a real pest. I have been well trained by her to just stop and give it too her. Only now the rest of the cats have decided they like it too so it takes more milk. I usually give them nonfat but sometimes add some evap to it. When we got fresh milk I gave them that and they loved it. I had a hard time getting her/them use to the other when I couldn't get it anymore. Our cats are usually quite obedient. They pay a heavy price if they aren't(time out either in the utility room or outside or eventually a pop with the cattle switch or water sprayed on them)so they have learned. Except for one who is a psyco cat and has serious emotional and behavioural problems. I took her from her mother too soon and believe it or not, old Hogan dog let her nurse on him for over 3 years. I thought I would never get him to stop letting her do that. It started when I didn't know why he growled at her one day not long after we got her and yelled at him for it. So he always thought he had to let her do it. He was a bit too obedient that time. It was some time and the habit firmly ingrained before I found out what was going on.

I don't think the hosta here suffered too much. Tho I was so tired last night I forgot to recover the ones I uncovered yesterday morning. Holly and I decided to just leave them covered all day and probably most of the week. I'm home at least part of today. Most of the larger ones never got uncovered. If some of them got hit badly, Oz, is it possible to just cut them off at ground level and let them come back up? Or will they do that? I have gotten some in trades that looked as tho they had been cut off and they came back ok. But they hadn't been cold bitten that I know of.

GOD bless and keep each you.

I would not try that Eva. I think they woukd not come up again till the next year and you would loose a years growth. If these get burnt it will be in the first flush and maybe older leaves will cover them over.

Thanks, Oz. Your advice is so valuable to those of us you only know that we love hosta but know precious little about the plants and how to best care for and raise them. Jack only knew that they were very pretty and he liked them. He did not know they are closely related to common plantain plants. At least that is what I have read and heard. He especially hated the narrow leaf buckhorn plantain. We sometimes ate the wide leaf one cooked with poke, young small horseradish leaves, dandelion leaves, some kinds of dock that grows abundantly around here and spinach with some onion and garlic in there.

It has finally reached 44.6* here. I can hardly wait until next week when it is suppose to warm up somewhat. We certainly enjoyed this past Monday tho with its 81* temps. Since our last frost date is May 15th I have learned the hard way not to get in too big a hurry with tender plants. I remember my mother putting tomato plants out and covering them with glass qt jars on cold days and nights. I have tried that only to forget the poor things on really sunny days and cook them beyond saving. If I start any seeds for tomatoes this year it will be late next week or the week after and I'll just be prepared to keep them in larger and larger pots until after the first week of May at least. And then be ready to cover them for the night for a week or so. Jack has told about remembering a frost the 1st week of June just once in his lifetime. He said it wiped out crops all over the area and farmers were financially devestated because they had to plant again.

GOD bless and keep each of you.

Here's the last frost date:

http://www.victoryseeds.com/frost/mo.html

Have a nice Easter Day this weekend!

Leaflady---- They are Plantation Lilly bye botanical family. Hosta is a sub family of that group. I will be bringing some to the RU and aslo mayb e a few examples of mini hosta. Those I will be holding onto. What time is everyone suppose to start getting to the park.

This message was edited Apr 5, 2007 1:04 PM

EvaMae, was it 9am last year that you and I were there?

I got there real close to 9 last spring

I think we can be there by nine. Still bringing my grandma and hopefully Tammy will remember to come. She had a blast last time.

I think I need to be there a bit more like 8 or so since we don't have a reservation. They only do reservations after May 1st. Which is saving us $20 but means someone needs to be there very early to secure the shelterhouse we want. Kris and perhaps her children if they come may have to stop by the farm & pick up the rest of my things. Or I'll have to have the van loaded Friday night before I go to bed so I can just feed & water the critters and leave home on Sat. morning.

Darcy beagle walked all the way outside from the utility room and back inside later all by herself on all 4 feet this evening. Well, the left back leg wasn't always touching the ground/floor with every step, but it was most of the time. So tonight she gets to stay in the kitchen & the 2 terriers are in the utility room for the night. Hogan poses no threat to her no matter how much she cries out. She still isn't eating or drinking much tho and that concerns me.

GOD bless and keep each of you.

We got snow tonight In theTulsa area , had first iris bloom yesterday and snow now ??? .
Not sticking, stilll above freezing,
weird weather last time i saw snow in April was 19 73
Iris >>> SLOVIC PRINCE >>>>TB

EvaMae, we can swing by your house and get whatever you need. Just let me me know for sure.

Thanks, Pepper. I'm sure I'll have to leave the grill here for you to pick up with your pickup. The big LP gas grill that is. It is faster than the smoker but I like the smoker flavor better. Personal taste. Having both will really speed up cooking. I'm thinking maybe we may bake some potatoes on the big LP grill. And do some big weiners or Polish or Smoked sausages from Aldis. Cheap, fatty, but delish. I don't have any more venison burger. I have plenty of chicken leg quarters tho. I told them tonight that I don't think I'll be there before 4. I'm getting excited about this RU. I have several magenta spiderwort & a couple wild type blues potted up already and need to get some Bowl of Beauty look a like peonies potted up too. I don't know if DD Kris wants the one I have potted or not. If not I have one already to go. Will have some unknown colors of dayliles I'm sure. And wild purple and white violets as well as solid purple ones. I'm low on Freckles as other plants have taken over where it is suppose to be. So I am moving it to another site little by little. I may have a few starts to trade or give away. I'm sure I can find hollyhocks to give away too. And either morning glory seeds or seedlings. Maybe some common purple throated white or solid white datura - aka Jimson Weed.

Temps in the teens predicted for tonight. The Harralson apple tree is in full bloom and the Braeburn is in bud stage. The Dutchess pear is in full bloom too. I am very concerned about them and the damage the cold can do to those blooms. I talked to an experienced gardener/orchard owner & it was not good news at all. I'm not sure about the stage of bloom the grapes may be in but heard on channel 4 last night that grape growers of MO are thinking they may lose a lot of their crop. The bright sunshine today was very deceptive. The north winds were very stron and cold. Like a blast right out of the arctic.

GOD bless and keep each of you.

Good Morning all,
I have been watching this thread a day or two...
We "got off easy" with only 24 degrees last night (they had threatened 19-21 degrees) but we have 2 more nights of those bitter cold temps to get through.
I am only one county away from Arkansas here in southeast MO.

Like most of you, I covered my hostas. Also attempted to cover budded roses, budded and blooming irises, heavily budded peonies, fully emerged/unfurling ferns, bleeding hearts, variegated blooming solomon's seal, and many other plants that are 3 weeks ahead of their usual schedule.

I am wondering about other plants, like the clematis (flower buds on them) and daylilies(a foot tall, leaves) and columbines (blooming and heavily budded) which I did not cover. Also, the trees all have leaves coming out.

Oz, I 'm no whippersnapper either and have seen it this cold in April, but not with record heat the weeks before. This is making me very nervous about the future, to be honest.

I'll try to report how much damage we got when the cold spell is over, and would like to know how everyone else fares. Just to learn what we need to cover and protect the most!

Hope you all get minimal damage,
Susan (Toxi)

I just got up and sure it darn so cold this early AM and it was 21* with wind chill 14*.

I has all of the plants bring in attached garage 3 days ago! So, I hope it will be warming next week! Cross your fingers!

This message was edited Apr 7, 2007 10:02 AM

Susan--- I second that about the climate. I been thinking though if it gets just to unbearable maybe we can prevail upon Leaflady to work some wonder with a little diesel fuel to warm things up a bit.

EvaMae, I will be more than happy to swing by and pick up the grill.

Hi all from Nebraska.

The past 3 days the low temperature has been 20 deg F or lower (this morning it was 18), and everything is beginning to look pretty sad. Most of my hostas were still in the 'pip' stage (no leaves unfurled) and they look like they'll pull through, but a couple that had already leafed out behind the hydrangea bush are limp. The daylilies are also dragging the ground, along with the tulips, and the early daffodils, the late ones are still standing tall.

Pansies are pulling through, but the sweet peas... sigh. Stems are shriveled back to the soil. English peas the leaves look like they are lost, but the stems still look good and hoping they'll pull through.

The apple trees are sitting there with buds exposed, I am not expecting much of a crop this year. So take that, squirrels!!! No sack lunches for you this year!

The cauliflower starts that I transplanted from their community pot to individual 6-paks last week keep asking me when they can go outside, I tell them early next week. All the other plants that had enjoyed the past 2 weeks of outdoor freedom are pressed up against the cold glass of the south windows, wishing they could be outside again.

I looked today and my tulips, are limp, and my bleeding hearts are all droped,the canterberry bells are druping, some of my peas are gone, the GK's planted sunflower seeds and they were pretty tall and their gone as well. All of the surprise lillies and iris are wilted to the ground. Afrraid not much color this spring. Maybe the peonies, might make it. I hope.

Daylily leaves are limp, irises and peonies look good so far, wildflowers are limp as are everything else except for the tulips which are still standing tall. Apple tree has blooms on it but don't know if it will fruit or not. Last year it didn't which is unusual. Hopefully it will this year so the horses next door can enjoy them.