Earl My Ears Are Bigger then Yours

LOL Paul

Happy Birthday Paul.

Happy Birthday Paul,
How much do you have to pay Groucho Marx to garden NAKED!!!! ---
and why would you WANT to! ROTFL! Kaelkitty.

LOL can you hear me now HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Paul, I just love your sense of humor! (a little dry at times, maybe, but I get it!) I hope you had/have a HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I'm old enough to remember Streaking back in the 70's, and I think it's having a come-back..... maybe he was just having a little celebratory whoopty-doo through the EE's! You go, Paul! ;) Earl, nice fresh-looking pic! Where's your Groucho glasses? We need something more to establish size.... I think Paul challenged you. (you guys! always comparing the size of something!) LOL

OMG! Phicks! You are nuts. LOL

Paul.... with those eyebrows you look like my Mum!

Hey Mike I Might Just be your Mum

You better get ready to send me a big xmas present then! lol

Paul can you remember that EE i bought, i posted it in aroids months ago?
Well it produced runners which rooted. I'll send you one as soon as i can work out how to smuggle it through customs!

The you can grow more big ears too streak through.

Mike

i have a envlope on my table with your name i keep adding things

Just don't add those glasses! lol

AuntB here is recent pic of how tall my ee have gotten. They are growing like weeds.

Very nice looking weeds.

How wondeful! Lucky you! Those are beautiful... weeds.. hmph! (those southern guys really rub it in for us up here in Zones 5 & 6, huh, 2pugs?)

Oh, BTW, I have to post here that there will be no streaking at the Big Ear Fest! AuntB, I know you're disappointed but we have to draw the line somewhere.

Man!!! WELL SHUCKS! Can I at least bring the glasses? Big glasses, big ears...... ?
Look at the big ears on this thread guys! There's a lot of humor filler in betwixt the pics, but these are what I call HUGE ears!
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/774764/

Yes these southern guy know how to rub salt in a wound. The hugh thick towel I have laying on my key board needs to dry out some, I just replaced it with a dry one.

I should go bring some stuff to the basement, it's chilly today, I'm making vege soup... (like, I don't expect any sympathy or anything, but calling them weeds!?) that's down right irritating. lol

I just took my shower and I put on a pair of sweats, and socks. But I do have some windows opened to air out the house.

AuntB, 2pugdogs, Just got our first coooooooool front this morning. Wind blew over two large potted ( 45 gal) Plumerias. It has rained off and on all day.The wind and tree limbs really tore up my ee's.The temperature was 85 yesterday, today 65, tomorrow back to80's ?? But it's nothing like our Texas and Kansas Blue northers yet to come.So sad! Makes it time to start putting up grnhouses. AuntB i sure would love a bowl of your home made soup!!! Jerry

Will it got down to 43 last night, so today I am going to start putting the Hibiscus and EE's in the GH. Man that is a lot of work. But it needs to be done.

Home made Vegetable Soup sure does sound good. AuntB what time are you serving, maybe Jerry and I could make it.

got cool here last night to 75

Rub it in Paul. I would love 75.

Yes, when it gets down to 65 here, it's time to break out the snorkel coat. Three blankets and a fire in the fireplace, too!

When I changed the bed yesterday I did put a blanket on it, turned the AC off. Oh the AC hadn't been running much. Yesterday I had some windows open to air out the house and I had shorts on then after I took my shower I put on sweat pants and socks. Never closed the windows until after dinner. My DH is going to have to go cut some wood, we don't have a fireplace but we have the next best thing a wood burning stove which we use for most of our heat in the winter. OMG I'm not ready to start using the wood burner.

Well, it IS the middle of October... we had low 40's last night too. I'm going to move the bulk of it in this weekend... everything is still pretty outside, the hibiscus are slowing down with the cooler night temps, I have brugs blooming, marigolds, impatients, but it won't be long and everything will be brown outside (yuck!) .... I had my little chimenea burning last weekend, while I was preppeing stuff to bring inside, that was cozy. I should prepare to use my woodstove in the basement, I haven't used it in a few years, but I hear heating costs are going to be out rageous this winter. We're hoping to get up to 75 during the day here in KS... Sounds like you guys in FL need to put on extra winter blankets, too! ;oP

Just so y'all know, I grew up in Maryland, so I wasn't always in Zone 10a! I grew my first tropical garden up there in the 1960s, with banana plants, a few EEs, castor beans, hostas, sumacs trained to look like palms, and other things. I also spent a brutal winter in Marshall, MN in the 1970s; don't know how people live up there. Even when the temps were in the 80s, it still felt cold. That was where I found out that air can be so cold that it actually hurts when your skin is exposed to it! Dismal doesn't begin to describe it.

They came out and filled our propane tank 2 weeks ago and I just about fell over. Total bill was $453.00. I have had winters before we installed the wood burning stove that they would fill our tank once a month starting in Dec. Last year the propane only heated the hot water heater, and it was a back up mainly at night. I even got a electric heater and put it in our bath room so when we are in there taking a shower we use it. All washing gets done in cold water which helps save a little. Then I have learned to take shorter showers, my hubby being an ex sailor knows how to conserve on water in the shower.

I can remember when I worked (at Boeing) and was smoking we would have to go outside to smoke, and yes that cold can cut clear through the skin to the bone and your skin and bones would hurt.. Thank god I got smart and quit that habit of smoking. It has been 10 years now.

So Linda, there is somewhere worse than 5 & 6 - 4, 3, 2 and 1! Funny you mentioned growing sumacs as palm trees, LariAnn. I see them growing in pastures, I've often wondered if I could dig one and some how, fit it in with my tropical look...

I am going to have to check and see what a sumacs looks like, for all I know I may have them growing in my pasture.

Well, gosh, Linda... I'm already paying $400/mo for gas to drive to work, now I'll have to pay $400/mo for gas to stay warm in my house (which pretty much I'm only there long enough to sleep), probably another $300-$400 for electricity to run the furnace fan and trash pick-up & water... $400/mo for groceries, plant & pet food, $400/mo hm. phone, cell phone and Direct TV, and my car payment............doesn't leave poor ol (not olD) AuntB much money for trips and plants ;)

I bet you have them in your pasture, Linda. They grow in 'clusters" or groves, usually.. Kind of like a little tree, straight stem with the canopy on top... like a palm tree, kind of...leaves turn red in fall...

Here's a link for Staghorn Sumac (Rhus typhina), which is the one I dug up and used in my little jungle. The way I trained it was to keep it from branching by removing all the buds except for the terminal. It looked most like a palm in the spring when it just had new leaves and they were all bunched. I had a few together so it looked like a group of palms. I need to go into the "vault" and see if I can dig up pictures of what I was growing.

http://www.oplin.lib.oh.us/tree/fact%20pages/sumac_staghorn/sumac_staghorn.html

Thank god my car sits in the garage 3/4th of the time. My electic will run around $150, I know what you mean about having enough money to buy all the things we have to have, like potting soil new plants, trips.

I will have to go up to the pasture this afternoon suppose to warm into the low 70's by 5pm.

Oh, Linda what fun! I love tramping around pastures and collecting cool plants and seeds.. so peaceful out there. (watch for snakes) The staghorn looks a lot bigger than what I've seen around here, but maybe they don't have the opportunity to grow so big in Kansas.... The "bloom" (feathery looking red thing in LariAnn's link) does remind me of the ones I see, but they are only 4 or 5 ft tall this time of year... I'll try to remember to look for some on my way home.

That's right, watch for snakes because some of them make good pets and would make your jungle even more realistic. Ask AuntB, I'm sure she'll volunteer to do a little snake wrangling in your pasture! Of course, she might want a snake in return, so be ready.

Come on AuntB you can have the smakes.

AuntB , Those "clusters" in creeks and in pastures we call poison sumac. It breaks me out just like poison ivy. I allso got a bad case of it one nite when useing it in a camp fire. Like the old song says your going to need an ocean of calamine lotion,and i did! Jerry

OMG I sure don't need anything like that.

OH NO! Guess my "wild sumac as an elegant tropical effect in the backyard experiment" is in the dumpster... No itchy scratchy for me! Thanks Jerry. And Linda and LariAnn, Snakes is where I draw the line! Hate em, don't like seeing them, touching them or knowing they are around. As long as they leave me alone, I leave them alone. No snake wranglin for me... but I do know if I were out kicking around in a pasture this time of year, I'd keep my good eye open for them.