Choices for the Fall

Okay, so now that the fall gardening bug has bitten me I am itching with anticipation of getting my garden started again, provided the horrific heat and humidity comply and go away - far, far away.  Yes, I admit it has come to this... most of my garden planning is based in a pure fantasy world where nature cooperates and provides reasonable temperatures, rainfall and insect control - nothing at all like the actual world surrounding me.  Yet, it is this naively, optimistic avoidance of reality that is the backbone of gardening on the Gulf Coast.

I am planting a fall garden because in other parts of the world there is this thing called Fall.  I know there is because I have seen the after school specials and movies depicting it even though I have never in my life experienced Fall as a season.   Oh sure, we sometimes have 'fall-like' weather, meaning the temperature gets reasonable, the humidity drops and human beings in this part of the world emerge from their air conditioned enclosures like groundhogs hoping to see (or is it not see) their shadows.  We make all sorts of resolutions (I will go for a walk every day!) and discoveries (Is that a cool breeze?) and then the next day it is either back up to 90 degrees with 90% humidity or down into the low 40s with driving rain.  Our regions bipolar weather disorder allows us to experience a years worth of climatic events over the course of a week and sometimes in a single day.  There is no 'season' except for summer and Mega-summer which fill up about 6 to 7 months of our year.

But, because other places have Fall and have fall gardens, I too feel the need to have a fall garden.  To do this all I have to do is ignore the weather.  So, with my fantasy life fully engaged, I plan my fall crops.

Here is what the guide regarding my planting zone 9a says to plant.   I always figure that little "a" attached to the 9 stands for 'approximate' or 'absurd' or maybe 'abandon all hope yea who plant here' - but I go on in spite of it.

For September it says I can plant:

Beans
 We had a great bush bean season from the spring/summer garden and so these will go into the center bed where we had the okra.  I will be planting them from seed, so I need to get hopping on this asap to maximize their productivity.

Broccoli
 I have never grown broccoli successfully, probably due to the fact I have never paid the slightest attention to things like 'when to plant the broccoli'.  I am going to pass on this one even though I love to eat broccoli - part of the problem actually.  Even if I got the broccoli to 'brock' I don't think my plantings could keep up with my consumption.

 Cabbage
 I was a novice to the world of cabbage until this last spring but now that I have had success, sign me up again.  I am pretty sure my success this spring was a fluke since I put it in at the very last possible planting date.  Maybe planting it now at the start of a season will yield even better results.

Carrots 
 This is really a toss up for me.  I have planted carrots before and sometimes have done rather well, but not the last two attempts.  I have put more into the last two tries than all the tries before with deeply dug, sandy soil and constant vigil bordering on cheer leading.  I feel sort of rejected by this root crop so I am putting it into the no category for now.

Celery
 Never tried it before.  It looks like it might be very simple to grow, much like parsley.  I guess I am hesitant because it is so cheap in the stores and quite frankly I can't remember the last time I ate celery.  Pass for now.

Collards
 My collard greens were big and beefy and quite frankly one of them is still surviving right now in the garden (if you count surviving as being somewhat smothered by sweet potato vines.  So, I can grow collards.  But I don't actually want to eat collards.  Ah the vegetable gardener's dilemma - being good at growing something you are not wanting to put in your mouth.  Pass for now.

Cucumbers
It was actually news to me a few years ago that cucumbers could be planted again in the fall.  I guess I associate them with spring and summer so much it never dawned on me that the temperate fall would be a good bet for them.  I planted some sort of wacky heat/humidity loving weird cucumber type whose actual plant name is eluding me.  If it grows great I will be kicking myself for forgetting what type it is.  If it is a dud, then I will never again try a wacky cucumber variety.

Kale
 It is a beautiful plant that grows very well for me and then I just leave it there because like collards, I am not a big fan of eating greens.  Maybe I will just to have its beautiful leaves gracing my garden.




 Lettuce
 There have been several great lettuce crops in my gardening life.  There have also been some beautiful patches that I have ignored.  It all has to do with the selection.  This spring I made the mistake of planting a mixture that was various greens as well as a few lettuces.  Not for me.  I will get some select either leaf or bib lettuces and try for this fall.  I am also going to try planting more each week to see if I can keep up with my consumption.

Mustard
I grow it every chance I get, even though, like the other greens I seldom eat it.  Never mind that, the leaves are beautiful and it grows wonderfully.

Onions
 My onions barely onioned this spring and I am not sure why.  Part of it is that I don't know exactly what I did that made my previous onion patch so successful.  I am not even sure if planting a fall onion bed will result in onion bulbs or just green onions, but damn the torpedoes - I am already in and going to plant some more as well.

Peas
 Okay, this might sound like I am not a true southerner, but I just am not a pea fan.  Except for snow peas which are great, but I am not sure they do well with our weather.  I also don't get the whole 'inoculate the soil' business regarding planting peas.  Probably why my previous earlier attempts have yielding nothing.

Peppers
 If peppers would let me I would plant them in the dead of winter.  I actually one mild winter kept a pepper plant alive to the next year.  I learned the hard lesson about this - the second year they barely produce.  I already have planted two peppers - a sweet banana and a mild tam Jalapeno.  That may be all I put in for the fall.

Radish
 Radishes are almost guaranteed to come up for you, but my first 3 years I had poor to no results.  Then I had incredible results, but the problem is that I don't actually like to eat as much radish as I am able to grow, so once they get going I just sort of ignore them.  I did learn that if you have neglected your radishes to the point they are as big as turnips, you can cook them like turnips and they taste like turnips.  So there is that.

Spinach
 I have never yet gotten spinach to a harvestable condition.  They sprout, they grow a bit and then they just seem to be stunted.  Maybe I am expecting too much from the type I am planting.  Maybe my expectation is that I will get a whole cooked can of spinach from one plant.  Not a reality.  I have some seed, so it is probably that I will throw it into the dirt this fall, but I am not excited about it.



  

Squash
 I am excited about squash.  Specifically the butternut squash that I discovered last fall.  Talk about making you feel like you have done something right.  The plants grow amazingly long vines and they produce about a billion of these large squash per plant, but best of all, nothing seems to want to eat them.  I found my seeds last night and I am putting them in asap.

Tomato
 Even though I am not always successful with the fall tomato plantings, there have been many times that I have had Christmas tomatoes.  The Better Boy, Early Girl and Rutgers that I have planted seem well on their way.

Turnips
 When we mad the beds for the ceder garden was the first time I ever tried growing turnips for anything other than the greens.  I still feel like a champ when I pull those purple topped beauties from the soil.  Definitely going to plant them this fall.






So with all my choices it looks like I will be having a bean/cabbage/lettuce/mustard/onion/pepper/squash/tomato/turnip fall garden.

I am sure that many other things will work their way into the garden as well, including several types of herbs.  So, it is a loose plan with room to grow.

The Harvest Continues...

I think I am beginning to experience cornucopia fatigue.  The garden continues to produce at an extraordinary rate.  Now I feel I must qualify that statement a little in regards to 'extraordinary'.  I am not a novice to gardening by any means (the whole collection of my previous garden rants can be found here: Gardening Deja Vu, The Garden Never Sleeps, Garden Photos - part 1, Garden Awards Spring 2011,  Weeds - part 1, Garden Photos - Part 2, Gardening A,B,C, I am RAIN, Evil Tomato, Figs!, The Garden Marches On, Okra Odyssey, Garden Equity, Garden Check In and Garden Harvest - the haul so far). Some years you have great harvests and some years no matter how much work you have done or time invested - you get nothing. 

Forget Mother Nature.  Sometimes you get Father Wonka.

This year I am discovering the unrelenting agony of success.  Sure every year the garden needs me like a two day old abandoned kitten but this year I have the added guilt stab of the harvest.  If I don't get out there and pick those beans or tomatoes or cucumbers they are not going to pick themselves.  Oh no!  That luscious organic produce is going to go over-prime on the vine and blah, blah, blah... starving children overseas!  Or something like that plays out in my mind.

Okay, okay, so I go out and pick it all.  Just where does one store 68 tomatoes that are currently hanging out on my kitchen counter finishing the ripening process  (Let me tell you the myth of 'vine ripened' tomatoes - you might as well just call them bird pecked tomatoes and toss them right into the compost pile...).  There is only so much room in the fridge where I can store the five gallon-sized bags filled with cucumbers.  And the beans... well, okay, those are pretty small, but still - two pounds of beans is a lot to have hanging out waiting to be cooked and eaten.

We are overrun and by now even our friends and family are getting a little gun shy about me approaching them with plastic bags.  "More cucumbers?" they say, looking for the nearest escape. Yes.

So, let me reveal the garden productivity for this last week from 5/23/12 to 5/30/12:

Cucumbers

Total weeks harvest = 20 pounds

Although the pickle plant is suffering from mildew, it is still producing some great tasting offerings and the burpless hybrid are doing what they always do.  They are completely impervious to any plant disease and rocking the garden with constant productivity.  The only thing that will stop them is the upcoming unrelenting heat which will bake the flowers to dust before they can set fruit.  Until then it is a cucumber world.

Bush Beans

Total weeks harvest = 3 pounds

The first planting of about a dozen plants is showing signs of old age, but still setting beans.  The second planting has been doing great, but even it is having a little trouble with the heat.  I don't recall just when they give up, but I don't think it will be that much longer that they can hold out.  I estimate that by July we will see the last of the beans.

Peppers

Total weeks harvest = 1/2 pound - which is deceptive since they don't weigh very much.  About a dozen peppers in all.

The pepper plants continue with a modest offering.  Many of the fruit now don't get very large before they start to show the red rosy signs of maturity.  Since I have several varieties, some might continue to set fruit in the heat, but others won't.  The plants will typically survive the summer and might produce again in the fall.

Okra

Total weeks harvest = 1.25 pounds

Finally!  The okra plants have now grown past the 'dog' stage and I am getting to harvest most of the pods.  I know I stated that whatever happened to the okra this year I was going to blame on 'dog', but truer words have never been spoken.  The canine duo are still circling the plants like sharks, hoping for a low hanging pod.  Now when I am out there harvesting they hunker at my feet as if begging from the kitchen table for scraps. I don't relent because this 'okra predation' is the type of behavior I would like to extinct in my hounds.

Tomatoes

Total weeks harvest = 25 pounds

Well.  This continues to be a pinnacle year for the tomato harvest.  I definitely did something right with these guys this year because all of our productivity has been taken from five plants.

The two Creole tomatoes definitely are winning on numbers with one of them having set over 70 fruit and the other over 30.  Many of these fruit are in the half pound range.

BN444 - "Bunny" is the winner in HUGE fruit.

Many of Bunny's fruit are in the one pound range and they are beautiful.  Too bad Bunny is determinate and after all this fruit is gone she will be done for the year.

Here are eight of Bunny's fruit together weighing in at 5 1/2 pounds.

Top Gun is awesome and has quietly produced mostly half pound fruit that are the prettiest unblemished fruit I have ever seen.  The plant itself looks awesome and may go on to produce another crop.  It did not say on the tag whether this was determinate or indeterminate, so we shall see.

Big Boy has had a come from behind recovery from whatever befell it earlier this spring.  It has produced some moderate to small sized fruit.  Quite a lot actually, but the fruit are sort of ugly looking with tops that won't turn red and look a little wrinkly.  I think this is from the ?whatever? sickness it suffered from since I have grown this type before without this kind of issue.  Now though it is definitely setting new fruit and its new growth is out of this world healthy.  It may finish with a big bang of a harvest and be the longest producer of them all this year.

The month of May totals

Cucumbers = 40.5 pounds
Beans = 9.25 pounds
Basil = 2 pounds
Okra = 1.75 pounds
Pepper = 3.5 pounds
Butternut squash = 8.75 pounds
Tomatoes = 53 pounds!

Some people when I tell them about my garden harvest ask me "How many acres?"  There is not even one acre.  The entire area of our garden takes up just a small part of our back yard.  We have ten 3x6 foot beds along the fence on one side of our yard, a 3x9 foot and 3x12 foot bed in another area and a 3x6 and a couple of 3x3 foot beds in another area.  You don't have to have 'land' in order to have an over-abundance of produce.  What you need is good dirt and that you make yourself through composting.  Coming up I will share our secret of making great soil.  Stay tuned.

Garden Harvest - the haul so far...

If you have been reading this blog you already know that I garden as I talked about in  The Garden Marches On  and in the update of Garden Check In.  Well, I thought I would take a break from harvesting all of our garden produce to run the numbers on what we have picked so far and to talk about the major contenders in the garden produce competition.  Yes, my plants are pitted in a knock down drag out fight with one another to win my love through relentless production.  The winner gets my eternal love, devotion and an extra shot of fish emulsion the loser gets my ridicule and maybe not as much water at the end of the season.  You definitely want to be on the winning team in my garden.

Here is what the garden has produced so far:

Basil

Lots of globe basil which has a very rich smell and taste and stays compact if you clip it frequently.  So far I have harvested a pound of it and it is still growing strong.  It is trying to bolt, but clipping off the outermost stems will set it back into leaf production and encourage its compact growth.


May Harvest:  1 pound
Over-all Garden grade: A+ so far

Cilantro

A constant supply of bolting cilantro.  Just what is up with this cilantro?  I just get it to a size that in a couple of weeks it might have enough leaf stalks to use for a recipe and then I turn my back and WHAM!- look at all the pretty flowers.  This is not the first year I have had this problem, in fact it is the umpteenth year this same scenario has played itself out.  I do not have the cilantro gift. 

April Harvest: zero
May Harvest:  zero
Over-all Garden grade: F!  final grade  (okay, its bolting flowering self looks pretty cute, so at least it has that going for it)

Squash

The butternut squash we tried this last fall for the first time has made a wonderful addition to our lives again this spring.  The plants are looking a little bedraggled from the heat, but there are several squash on the vine and several already harvested.  Plus, not a sign of the dreaded squash vine borer yet!


May Harvest:  6.25 pounds - all in the last week
Over-all Garden grade: A+ so far

Okra

The plants are doing wonderful and have been producing fruit.  Unfortunately the plants are still suffering from 'dog'.  My two canine gardeners are enjoying almost every single pod these plants produce.  It is hilarious to watch them sniff out the pods and reach up to snap them off with their sharp middle teeth.  The plants are getting tall now and almost out of Westie range, but this morning I saw him trying to climb a plant to get to that sweet, sweet, okra ambrosia.  Raw okra as a dog delicacy.  Who knew?


May Harvest:  1/2 pound
Over-all Garden grade: A+ so far for the plants - Grow little plants.  Grow big and tall and out of doggie range soon so I can enjoy your bounty.

Onions

The onions were pitiful this year. In my second ceder bed the few that survived produced a half dozen less than golf ball sized bulbs.  My other onion bed did a little better, but this is nothing like the wonderful crop I got last year.  I have managed to make about three onion braids in all, but there is far less fruit and they are very small. 

April Harvest:   1 pound
May Harvest:   1.5  pounds
Over-all Garden grade: C-  (final grade - all have been harvested) 

Leeks

The leeks are going strong, but not at a harvest size yet except for a couple I pulled just to see how they were doing.  I am unfamiliar with leek habit, so I presume they will continue to grow, but who knows.  Perhaps they are pulling a fast one and just sitting there taking up water and fish emulsion, plotting to die before I get to harvest them.  


May Harvest:  1 pound
Over-all Garden grade: B+ so far

Peppers

The pepper plants have been producing a great crop of well formed fruit.  Both the banana pepper and the gypsy are going strong and are the best producers.  It looks as if they will continue to set fruit if the temperatures stay under 90.  The Corno de Torro produced quite a nice crop but is slow to set new fruit.  It may be more sensitive to the hotter temperatures.  The mild Tam jalapeno was slow to get started but it is setting a lot of fruit now.  So far so good.  

April Harvest:  1.5 pounds
May Harvest:  3 pounds (1.5 pounds this last week)
Over-all Garden grade:  A+ so far.

Cabbage

The cabbages did alright in all the beds they were in.  They suffered from predation of voracious worms but I was happy to find that hand picking these critters solved the problem and the cabbage heads formed with only a couple of holes in the outer leaves.  A couple of the plants had no holes and I was able to harvest perfect heads.  This being my first year with cabbage made this an exciting discovery for me.  I can grow cabbage!  Now I just have to come up with a whole bunch of cabbage recipes.  

April Harvest: 4 pounds
May Harvest:  3 pounds
Over-all Garden grade: A (final grade - all has been harvested)

 Beans

The bush bean plants have really been churning out their pods.  I have to pick nearly every day.  The plants are lush and not only did the original bed do well, the secondary bed I planted has started to produce as well.  Finally I got something right in the plant a second crop category.

 
April Harvest: 2.25 pounds
May Harvest:  6.25 pounds (3 pounds just this week)
Over-all Garden grade: A+

Cucumbers

The burpless hybrids are doing it again and producing copious amounts of fruit on disease impervious plants.  They are truly garden champions and if they weren't annuals I would be leaving them something in my will.  The pickle cucumbers have also produced but at a more demure pace.  They are also afflicted with the typical cucumber mildew plague which is already taking its toll.  Their fruit however is crisp and tasty so they have that going for them.  Together these plants are way over producing what we can personally eat and I have been giving away many, many pounds of these things to friends and family.


April Harvest: 1.5 pounds
May Harvest:  20.5 pounds (16.5 of that in the last week - eeek!)
Over-all Garden grade: A+ for the burpless hybrid, A- for the pickle type

Tomatoes

Okay, if I say this I run the risk of somehow jinxing everything, but this is quite possibly the best tomato situation I have ever had.  I read what I consider the Bible of gardening info - the original Rodale's Organic Gardening book.  I consult that old green book every year and live by its principles.  No pesticides or inorganic substances - lots and lots of compost, etc.  Well, the section on tomatoes features an article about this guy who planted his tomatoes in pure compost and got "50 tomatoes to the plant" yields.  That has always been the gold standard to me regarding tomato production.  Now, I am not talking about cherry or grape tomatoes, because I have already maxed out on productivity with those types.  What I was longing for was the ultimate large type tomato productivity.  The type of tomatoes that have 1/2 to 1 pound size fruits. 


So, this year I planted all 5 of my tomato plants in pure compost.  The plants did wonderfully in leaf and vine health, which is nothing unusual as far as I was concerned.  They always seem to look great, but the big tomatoes seldom produce much fruit.  I decided to do a fruit count to see how things were going before the fruit began to ripen.  I also wanted to see which of the different types of tomatoes I had planted were the most productive.  Here is what I found:


Top gun  - this tomato is new to me and I don't even know if it is determinate (sets all fruit at once) or indeterminate (sets fruit throughout the season) but it was touted as being good for hot humid conditions.  I counted its green fruit and was delighted to find 31 growing tomatoes.


BN444 "Bunny" - this hybrid was also touted for hot and humid conditions and was a determinate type which I have not used before.  Now Bunny had a major limb disaster after a hail storm, so I wasn't holding out much hope for her productivity, but low and behold she had 27 fruit which considering the 6 fruit she lost in the storm put her totals to 33.


Big Boy - this indeterminate type was causing me all sorts of worry due to loss of leaves which reminded me of late blight issues I had suffered with last year.  I am not sure what exactly is the trouble, but this plant has some sort of problem.  This has probably reduced its fruiting capacity, but I was amazed to find there were 41 fruit on it!


Creole 1: Leeky Creole -  This plant had some seriously huge fruit on it which was causing me anticipatory stress.  What was going to befall the luscious fruit before I could get it to harvest?  The fruit count on Leeky was a promising 32 huge tomatoes.


Creole 2: Corny Creole - This plant had the most lush growth which it turns out was hiding a treasure trove.  The first count I made I figured that I must have made a mistake and recounted several fruit.  So I counted again.  Then I counted a third time.  Something has gone very, very right for this plant because it had set 78 tomatoes.  78!  And the plant is healthy as can be!  And the fruit is very large!  I can't believe I have finally not just met but seriously surpassed my Rodale's Gardening dream.




But of course, set fruit does not equal ripe fruit and there are a whole host of problems getting from point A to point "on the table".  Not every one of those fruit on any of the plants made it to the eating stage.  Top gun has lost 3 due to some hole making creature.  Bunny lost her first fruit to who knows what and also four more to some hole making insect.  Big Boy was visited by some sort of nocturnal 'eat half a tomato' creature that gnawed into a couple of fruit and some of the fruit just up and died.  Both the creoles have lost about six fruit between them for various reasons.   In all there have probably been a dozen to two dozen lost fruit from all the tomatoes so far.  This is hardly a drop in the bucket to what is waiting on the vines.  Here are the totals from all plants so far:


April Harvest: 2 pounds
May Harvest: 28 pounds (21 pounds of that in the last week - eeek! eek! eeeeeek!  - I estimate we have triple that at least on the vines and ripening in the next two weeks)
Over-all Garden grade: A++++++



What does one do with 28 pounds of tomatoes?  Well, we eat as much as we can and give away a whole bunch to friends and family.  Too bad this kind of crop can't go on all year.  Come July there will likely be no tomatoes at all, sniff.

So, that's all for the harvest so far, but stay tuned.  Fig season is about to start, the tomatoes are all going to ripen in the next couple of weeks and the okra will finally outgrow the dogs.  

What to Plant?

There is usually a lull in my gardening about this time of year where I have done my early spring planting and I am starting to consider what to plant for late spring and early summer.  Each year is a little different because around here, the spring to summer transition can be an overnight thing.  We are already consistently in the 80s and although we have had a great year rain-wise so far, last years drought is still lingering on my mind.  Do I skip the late spring and move into summer mode now?

In December I made myself a set of gardening flash cards which list what plants I can plant for the particular month.  I gathered this information from gardening guides specifically for my zone 9a.  Here are the choices for April :

Beans, cantaloupe, collard greens, cucumber, eggplant, mustard, okra, peppers, sweet potato, squash, tomato, turnips and watermelon.

I already have the number of cucumber, peppers and tomatoes that seem reasonable for my garden.  Mind you this hasn't stopped me before in acquiring more.  Some years there are just the incredible plants looking at me from the nursery or feed store and it is exactly like looking at puppies in a pet store.  "Look how cute they are! Oh, I have to take them home with me."

Luckily this kind of conversation happens only in my head - so far.  Suffice it to say that sometimes the plant space requirement needs are not taken into consideration at this time of year.  It isn't entirely my fault.  After all, the baby and juvenile plants look nothing like the gargantuan adult plants they will become.   It just looks like everyone will get along just fine until they are at each others vegetable throats with massive amounts of growth.

It won't be long before I start to find the volunteers.  These are typically cherry tomato plants and they will start to crop up all over the place from now through June.  My plan for these little rascals is to strategically position them around the edges of the garden beds and let them sprawl out so that Farmer Westie can satisfy his gardening urges.

As far as open gardening space I have one six foot by three foot bed and one three foot by three foot bed completely empty.  I also have one bed partly empty that is currently housing my mustard greens, collards and turnips.  There is also a space that could conceivably become three more six foot by three foot beds if I somehow develop super human strength and the weather throws us something other than hot, humid and rainy. 

Here is my basic plan for this weekend:

Okra

There are a half dozen of Green Velvet okra seedlings waiting to be put into the garden bed.  These guys will supplement the dozen Clemson Spineless already growing in the center garden bed.

Beans

Although there are already a dozen bush bean plants already blooming, I want to plant some more seeds in order to extend the harvest.

Sweet Potato

I don't actually have the sweet potato slips to plant yet, but I am going to suspend a sweet potato in a glass of water and when it sprouts I will use the slips to plant my sweet potato bed.  Either that or I will give up in frustration and purchase some slips like I did last year.

Watermelon

Now we planted cantaloupe last year and had some success, so this year we are thinking of trying watermelon.  This would necessitate finishing out the as of yet unformed garden beds which makes this more of a pipe dream right now.

Eggplant

To eggplant or not eggplant... that is usually the question that plagues me about now.  The first year I tried growing eggplant I had phenomenal success.  Dozens of perfect eggplant on lush and attractive pants. That was both a good thing and a bad thing since every year since then has been less than stellar results with wimpy plants and few fruits.  I kind of resent the eggplant for leading me on like that.

Squash

It would be absolutely wonderful to try out more squash varieties in my garden except for one thing...

... this gal.  She may look cool with her red torso and dashing black wings, but  her offspring create this:

These poor squash plants are wilting because a squash vine borer larvae is eating a cavern into the vine.  These pests can turn a vibrant and prolific squash plant into a wilted mess in just a couple of days time.  Supposedly you can open up the vine and dig the larvae out which I tried last year and indeed the plants stopped wilting.  However, they also were so traumatized they stopped producing fruit as well.  I try to deal with it by planting squash as early as possible and giving up when the borers start doing their thing.  Better living through surrender in this case.

We will just have to see how much of my plan I can get accomplished or if the forces of nature such as rain, mosquitoes, heat and humidity will chase me out of the garden.  Or it could be a nap.  Never underestimate the power of a nap.  Those things can pull you out of a garden plan faster than just about anything.