blooming until about a month ago. The long lasting flowers have held up well even though we have had several nights of freezing temps. I like it when I can find something that is pretty this time of year when everything else is dying.

If you have followed any of our other posts - you know that we have used the left over barn wood from the two barns we tore down to do just about everything. Here is one more idea we came up to use some more. We wanted a way to mark the various rows of our gardens – mainly for appearance and to help identify plants and rows for visitors to the farm.

We still have a fair amount of the barn wood left over – including a lot of small 24 to 36 slat and floor pieces. We trimmed them all down to be about 3″ wide by 20″ long – and then added a simple rounded curve on each end with a jigsaw before stenciling in the names of our plant rows. We then pre-drilled a couple of holes on each end. Then then drove 3/4″ x 18″ stakes into the ground. After that – we attached the painted boards to the stakes with some inexpensive course black drywall screws (We figure if they rust a little it will just add character) and we were finished!

The result - a creative way to identify our garden with unique signs – created for free from our stash of old barn wood! We thought about adding a clear coat to the signs, but figured it was best to let them naturally fade and bleach with the sun. All in all, a great way to use up some more of the wood and not have to spend a dime on signage for the garden. It took us about 2 hours to make and paint the 25 or so signs – and 15 minutes to put them up.

reaches a full size and the fruit becomes a pale green, it begins the ripening process. After the tomato reaches a stage when it's about ½ green and ½ pink, a layer of cells forms across the stem of the tomato- sealing it from the main vine. At this point there is nothing moving from the plant into the fruit. At this stage the tomato can be harvested and ripened off the vine with no loss of flavor, quality or nutrition.

Red pigments in tomatoes don't form above 95°F so tomatoes ripened in extreme heat will have a orange-red color. Tomatoes held indoors at cooler temperatures will ripen slower. You can speed up or slow down the ripening process by raising the temperature (to an optimum of 85°F) or lowering the temperature (to a minimum of 50°F). Tomatoes develop their optimum flavor, nutrition, and color when the tomato is in the full red ripe stage but this doesn't have to occur on the plant!

this house we knew it would be a rescue mission. With no plumbing, heat and very little outdated electricity, it was suitable for the bees and squirrels, but not for humans. After almost six years of living in a construction site, our hard work is done! The decorating may never end, but the construction has!

covered in little black looking flies. Now it's flowering and they're beautiful, but the rest looks terrible. Anyone else have this issue? What's the solution?