In the city, everything is coming up green, but further north and rural, we see mostly purple and gray. No school-box Crayola Spring Green or Fern for us. Native Oklahoma redbuds (Cercis canadensis) dot the countryside with color where they stand against charcoal gray, scrub oaks. The oaks don't trust our warm weather. They've been fooled before. As I write, dark gray storm clouds gather overhead, and raindrops splatter outside my open windows. We had fierce storms last night that spawned nighttime tornadoes (the most dangerous kind) at 1:00 a.m. They danced all around my house, one coming within three tenths of a mile. Another hit part of Edmond causing damage, but no one was hurt. I was asleep and heard nothing until the one land-line telephone we still own rang downstairs. HH and I woke and discovered we'd lost power. Losing electricity isn't unusual where we live. With the...

For the months of February and March, the Garden Bloggers' Book Club read Second Nature, by Michael Pollan. The book details Pollan's attempts to grow a garden on the old dairy farm he and his wife purchased in Connecticut in 1983. When, at the beginning of his enterprise, Pollan quoted Henry David Thoreau's Walden, I thought, "uh-oh." In college, I, too, was heavily influenced by Walden, and tried Thoreau's method of gardening without much success. It should be noted that Thoreau's bean field wasn't very successful either. At first, Pollan is a sympathetic protagonist against the various critters who want his tasty vegetables for themselves. I laughed aloud when he wouldn't fence his garden against a marauding woodchuck. When the woodchuck nearly drives him to firebombing its burrow, he realizes he must revise some of his gardening ideals. In the process, he discovers that, at Walden, Thoreau wasn't so much...

I wrote an article in the March issue of Oklahoma Gardener. I know, it's late in the month, but I kept forgetting to tell you. It's a profile on Sister Barbara Joseph's garden at her pantry for the homeless of Oklahoma City. This is a photo which didn't make it into the magazine. In fact, I didn't submit it. When I can, I volunteer on Fridays at the pantry, and you can guess where I help. Several of us work in the garden, keeping it watered, fertilized and trimmed. However, my friend, Katie, is the creative force behind the photo below. If you live in Oklahoma, you might consider subscribing to Oklahoma Gardener because it has great photos and information particular to our region. In the March issue, Steve Owens, owner of Bustani Plant Farm in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and former host of the Oklahoma Gardening television program, wrote a plant...

I didn't think anyone would ever tag me for a meme, but my Red Dirt Sister, Brenda, proved me wrong. Here are ten random things about me that you don't already know: 1. After college, I dyed my hair the lightest shade of blonde by using 40 volume peroxide. I wanted to be glamorous, and I thought this was the way. People told me I looked like Madonna. Looking back at the photos, all I can say is that they weren't telling the truth. I looked tired and old, and I was only twenty-six. 2. I met HH when I was fifteen, and he was twenty-four. I was his sister's best friend, and he barely noticed me, but I noticed him. I thought he was the handsomest and kindest person I ever met. Years, later, when I was twenty-seven, we re-met, and the rest is history. I guess he liked...