Howdy friends,
Maddie here. I was just wanting to report that in the lastl three
days strong rain fronts have blown across the corner of where I am now
living (it was different when I was up on the ridge and could see the
weather coming from the Western part of the country, sometimes hooking
from the south which was where the smokies were at) and there have
been some seriously thumping down of rains, I tell ya. The last storm
had wonderful nitrogen feeding lightening strikes and the next day I
was blown away by the overnight change in the BEANS.........now three
days later the beans are threatening a coo if I don't purchase some
cane poles soon for them to climb upon, and the other day James came
home as I was showing the man/child Patrick how to use the new
lawnmower, (it has a rear traction engage that he needs to be aware of
or it will get away from him quickly) when it started raining. so
quick, lets stop what we're doing, and put it on the front porch, and
then I went back out into the now pounding rain and got wonderfully
soaked. It was wonderful. I even tormented the man/child and kicked
water from the puddle in the low spot in the front sidewalk.......LOL
gbseg it thumped down a good twenty minutes and I was eventually
soaked to the skin and had to come in as James wanted me to build the
pizza's for supper and it was already after 7 in the evening.....
Now I see I have flowers on the bi-colored pelargoniums (geraniums
for those who like the common names) that are hanging in the iron rack
on the western end of the porch, so far it's the tri-colored one, not
the white edged one yet. The salvia that is in the earth box are
starting to bloom from the bottom up and they have started getting
wierd facination growth patterns on it. I'll take another picture of
them and share with someone who e-mails me on my yahoo addy.
I now have four tomato's, the radishes have been thinned, and there
are two more zucchini blossoms, and two more leaves on the rhubarb.
I've gotten purple feets twice now from standing barefooty on the
grass in the upper back yard as the long drupe mulberries have tempted
me to pick and eat. I adore anything fruity. The birds have finally
discovered the secret (the hackberry unfortunately are hanging too
close to the branches with the berries on them) of the bounty, and
scold me as I stand on the adarondack chairs (real ones) to gain
height to get MORE berries, and when I had my reachable but not nearly
enough fill of them, realized I needed to get to the library to get
online and didn't notice until I slipped my sandals on that I had
purple feets! LOL
With Solstice approaching, and the days getting longer and longer
to the point where I have to deliberately remember to cook before its
9 in teh evening.........there's not enough to do in the yard, but
still there is enough. I have gone to a link that shows how they've
finally updated our Horticultural Climate growing zones across the US,
and am sharing the link. When you get to the page, there is a
"scrubber" tab that you can slide to the right and it will change the
year to 2006. It's about time they changed it after 18 years!

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/clim...ning-map_N.htm

lets hope you all can get to the map.

thanks for letting me share. I'll update you all when there's things
to update..........

I hope those out there in the MidWest are drying out and my thoughts
are with all of you gardening where you are........
Maddie up in the green bowl, surrounded by the Cherokee National
Forest and Appalachian mountains in Greeneville, Tennessee now
officially zone 7b!!