It's been a minute since I have written anything let alone even visited this site but gardening season is coming ever so fast and I am needing to get busy planning my garden for 2024.
I did finally get all the bulbs planted a few days after Christmas and just in time before winter decided to visit. It has been cold and wet since Christmas.
We have been enduring an arctic blast for the past week or so with temps below zero and windchills down to -20. We have used all of our firewood so the house just isn't as warm and cozy with just the central heating.
We have had about 7 inches of snow total since January 1, 2024 which is mostly still on the ground, but it is finally warming up outside and should all melt off within the next week or so. Day temps back in the 40's! Whoop! Night temps in the teens so that will help kill off pests.
Spring is right around the corner and I need to prepare for seed starting and hubs needs to get his rear in gear and get my raised beds built. I'm not doing in ground planting in this sand anymore and the tubs I used last year didn't work well. We are either going to up our food growing garden space or not do it at all. I'm tired of working my tail off for failure. We are either all in or all out.
I gotta do something with grasshoppers and sandburs as well. Those two issues are our greatest challenge to growing anything aside from the poor soil.
I can't get my hands on NOLO Bait anymore and I don't know why. I guess it's been outlawed or something since I haven't been able to get it for a couple of years now.
Maybe if we till the soil a couple of times to expose grasshopper eggs to the cold this winter but that brings sandburs to the surface and makes the weeds worse. At least sandburs doesn't eat everything in sight like the locust hoard of grasshoppers does. It's worth a shot, I guess.
I don't want to spray any kind of pre-emergent herbicides or insecticides. I want to grow as naturally as I possibly can. What is the point of growing a garden if a person kills all the life already in the garden both beneficials and pests? I suppose the pests have their role in the ecosystem as well. They are just a pest to me. 
And if I am growing plants for the pollinators I don't want to lure them in and feed them just to off them with -icides.
Welp, I need to plan some more... 
I've been awful sick so we haven't gotten all the bulbs in the ground yet. I did get the alliums planted around the roses and did a couple of lasagna pots with daffs, tulips and Tommies. I got the leucojeums planted in the box hedge along the front porch. I have no idea what I'm doing I'm just having fun planting and hoping it all looks pretty in the spring. I just need to get over this bug so I can get the rest of these planted.
I bought 2 Purple Pillar Rose of Sharon's (Hibiscus), 2 Aphrodite Sweetshub (Calyanthus), 1 Fluffy Arb (Thuja), 1 North Pole Arb (Thuja), and 1 Winecraft Black Smokebush (Cotinus) on sale at provenwinnersdirect.com. Most are so little that I am overwintering them in the large raised bed where I grew the tomatoes this year. They should be protected without being coddled. Plants need to be tough to survive NW Oklahoma weather. They can grow up a little and I won't forget them since I will see them every day. I'll have to water some this winter.
We planted a couple of Blue Point junipers and some of the Tommies in the large pots on either side of the front porch entry stairs. It hurt my feeling to pull out the Bubblegum Supertunias.
Those plants are just monsters. They were just beautiful all summer.
We have had up and down temps for the past several weeks. Some nights the lows get down to 20 degrees or so and daytime highs around 40 and then the next week we are seeing lows of 40's and highs of 70's to 80's. We did get an early freeze and my October Glory Maple's leaves just froze in green color so no beautiful fall color from it. Eventually, they will just fall off. The roses froze as did everything else that is tender. It looks so sad. A month ago everything was so pretty and green and blooming still.
Now is the season to plan new beds and prep soil and work on composting and spreading into beds for the winter months. Speaking of winter, we don't have the cold, cold winters anymore. We might have a long cold snap but it doesn't last for months on end. I remember two years in a row we did get those arctic blasts of temps well below zero for a couple of weeks at a time. I believe it was December 2022 it was like 20 below zero for a week or more and that's to say nothing of the wind chill... It was brutal. It killed several trees we had planted that year.
There is still much to do outside.
I guess the gardening season isn't really over, it's just changed... 
I received a 42 pound box from Colorblends.com today full of the most beautiful bulbs for spring today!
I am excited to see these grow this spring! I have never planted bulbs like these before. Now i just need to figure out where all of these are going to go.
In the box are:
200 Tommies crocus which grow 3-4 inches high in well drained soil in full sun to part shade and bloom a lovely purplish pink and bloom early
50 Snowflake Gravetye Giant leucojeum which grow 24-28 inches high in moist soil in full sun to part shade and bloom white & mid spring
25 Sir Winston Churchill daffodil in full sun and well drained soil. They bloom white w/ orange eye. Bloom mid spring.
400 Cakewalk Tulips blend growing to 20-24 inches high in full sun and will bloom longer in part shade. Well drained soil. mid to late spring.
10 Allium Stipulatum bloomin lilac pink and growing 42-46 inches high in full sun to part shade. Well drained soil. Species and may self sow. Late blooming.
