Hi Carol,

It's been raining hard here for almost 2 hours : (. I just keep sitting here hoping they're wrong and we won't get as much as they're saying (I had to laugh because I heard the same "more rain than we want" as you did). I planted okra but it didn't all come up. I'm not sure if I'm going to replant or just try to make do with what's there (sigh). I have almost the same situation with my corn, but I don't know if enough of it has survived to pollinate well. I've decided to wait a couple of weeks and go from there. I hadn't planned on doing as much for a fall garden, but since the spring has been such a flop or should I say splash at the moment, I'm starting to think I might have better luck focusing on the fall. I know it's never going to be perfect and there's always next year, but it's hard not to be disappointed. I hope the rain ends soon for our part of the state and maybe the places that need it will get some.

I know what you mean about the trees. I keep thinking mother nature knows what she's doing, but she sure goes about it in extremes sometimes.

Jill

And even though I know you didn't need or want more rain, I am so envious!

The rain is FINALLY supposed to reach us this afternoon or this evening (they have it as a 70% chance), and rainfall is desperately needed here. Officially, we've had about 12.86" of rainfall this year, although at our house we've have maybe 1" or 2" more than that. We had a really good rain month in March, but April and May were below average and June so far has officially recorded 0.01" of rain, although at our house we have had double that amount so we've had two/one-hundredths of an inch of rain. (sigh)

I guess we're all in trouble okra-wise. I planted 20 plants and the deer got all but 5 of them last week. Still, I may get a bit of okra from those 5 plants. I AM going to replant as soon as DH and I finish a project we started yesterday.....making the garden fence taller in an effort to keep the deer out.

It seems like y'all are having typical La Nina weather with tons of rain. And, we are having typical La Nina weather for us, which means hotter and drier than usual. I used to get excited when they said a La Nina had begun and it meant more rain. It took me almost a decade of living in southern OK to realize that La Nina patterns generally do the opposite for us here in extreme southern Oklahoma.

Carol, I remember a couple of rainy years in Fort Worth where huge trees came crashing down in Trinity Park, a major ciy park alongside the Trinity River, and the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens. In the 1980s, both the park and the garden lost dozens and dozens of huge oak trees, many estimated to be well over 100 years old, and some up to 150 years old. It wasn't that the wind brought them down, but rather that the ground become so wet from excess rainfall that it couldn't support the weight of the trees and they just fell over. It was sad. It also was dangerous because, for weeks and weeks, trees toppled over suddenly with no warning which is not a good thing to have happening in public parks.

Jill,

It has been a rough garden year all across the state this spring. The late cool weather and late freezes slowed down everything, and then we went from cold to hot overnight, and it seems everyone has had either way too much rain or way too little. Isn't it odd? I wonder if anyone anywhere in this state is having an "average" or "typical" year?

Fall gardens are wonderful as long as you have enough moisture to get plants started in June and July, which is the hard part. I usually have to water the young plants more than I do in the spring, but you might not have to do that at all, especially this year! Another advantage is that insects are conditioned to expect spring gardens and their population cycles are timed accordingly. So, I usually have less insect problems in most cases, and less fungal and bacterial disease problems as well since it is drier.

Even though I am a lifelong gardener, it took me a while to catch on to how wonderful a fall vegetable garden can be. My dad was mostly a spring gardener, although my grandad and one of my dad's brothers always had a full garden from spring through fall. Many years, my fall garden does better than the spring garden, especially with cool season crops.

I hope your yards and gardens survived the rain that fell yesterday and today, and I am hoping I get to the the happy dance today or tonight after rain falls here.

In the meantime, I am on my way outside right now to feed my plants. I have a lot of wilting, yellowing of leaves, and leaf curl on many different veggies and flowers because my plants are dry and unhappy. Hoping a nice foliar feeding (and watering the roots as well) will help them perk up. I actually try to water as little as possible because there is no point in watering a lot and creating lush green growth that demands huge amounts of water to keep them happy. It becomes an endless cycle of the plants demanding more an more water. Instead, I try to get them to do as well as they can on natural rainfall, but there isn't enough of it this year, and I'm at the point where I have to water or start losing plants. Considering the deer have been getting a lot of plants, I can't afford to lose any more.

Dawn

I didn't know it was supposed to rain, until AFTER I had already topped off the pond last night. Ugh! I hope I don't have 3 wayward fish when I get home tonight!

It's been raining here since 3am.

It's 9am Monday morning and still raining here in Dewey. We had lots of thunder and lightning and hard rain through the night. DH said the weather report predicts 3" or more before we're through. Most of my small plants on ground level are under water. At least it will wash out that spoiled smell in the soil from the last rains, but we will pay the price for that soon. So glad I have raised beds, but even in those, my tomato plants are turning yellow from the bottom up. Boo hoo..

Dawn, what do you use for foliar feeding?

So far, my garden is doing okay, altho there are some things that dislike tons of rain, like my Pearly Everlastings. I lost them last year due to all the rain, and I've been keeping them on the dry side this year, by planting them in pots instead of in the ground.

I am, however, getting my very first blooms on my Monarda 'Thundercloud', which are a raspberry red. They are gorgeous. They will love this rain!

Peppers are not going to like this, nor are a lot of other dry soil plants like Tithonia, helichrysum 'Icicles', Dusty Miller (which overwintered; didn't know it was a hardy plant, thought it was an annual), Verbesina enceliodes (Golden Crownbeard; lost it last year, too, due to too much rain).

The thing is, I will still probably have to water the fenceline plants in the back. They are so well protected by surrounding trees, that rains do not penetrate that area.

This also means that I will probably have to apply another dose of chicken manure to my potted plants and some of the in-ground plants as well.

My lemon tree has doubled in growth this year from applications of chicken manure. And they are supposed to be very slow in growth. I am a really happy camper about that.

I have been removing blooms from my florence fennel. The wasps love those blooms and the caterpillars that love to feed on them, too. So, I just don't allow them to bloom.

My goldenrod is blooming! I think I might have mentioned that already.

My Butterfly Blue scabiosa is looking bedraggled. Just planted it this year, and it is not doing well at all. Don't know why - very sparse growth. Puts up a few blooms, but not many. This is either a waning plant, or doesn't like where I planted it (lots of sun).

Oh, BTW, my coneflower (echinacea) 'Sunrise' reverted to purple blooms. It must have come up from seed, so obviously it is not true from seed. It's okay, because it will still attract butterflies.

Another question - does moonflower like to be on the dry side, or given regular or more waterings? Guess I can look it up on the net.

I'm squishing milkweed bugs regularly---ewwwwww! Hate those suckers. Don't see anything beneficial about them, unless it is to consume milkweed to inhibit growth where it is not wanted or needed. Same with milkweed beetles. They eat the seedpods. So, I can understand a little better their purpose. To prevent a lot of seeding.

Dawn, question. Since my mum is going to bloom early, can I just shear off the blooms when they fade, and possibly get more blooms in fall (when it is SUPPOSED to bloom)?

Hope nobody floats away in this rain. I'm happy we have it; it could be the last really good rain we get before fall, so I'm just going with the flow and appreciating it. I know you folks in NE Oklahoma are sick of it. We haven't had as much as you. My sis said it has done nothing but rain in SE Kansas and she is definitely sick of it. Also worried it will flood again. However, she has since acquired flood insurance again. She says she'll move, though, if it happens again. I hope it doesn't. She's about my age (late 50s) and just doesn't want to go thru temporary relocation and rebuilding again.

Susan

Still a steady rain here at 9:30. My husband never sleeps late but this morning he got up and looked out the window and said, "Wake me when it's time to get on the ark," and crawled back into bed. Mesonet has us recorded at just over two and a half inches and from radar images it appears it will rain most of the day. We have standing water everwhere.

I pulled a few containers under cover last night just to "save" a few in case we got hail. I think I am going to go out in the rain in a minute and pull them out into the rain.

I didn't have any seeds in the ground and my smallest plants are some pole bens that are about four inches high, so I think I will be OK. I think they are tall enough to keep their heads above water. I have one tomato planted in a very low place that has been replaced once and has still not grown well, but I can stand to lose a tomato plant since I have so many.

No gardening here today, just practicing our treading water skills.

Yes, my lake was back this morning. I'm glad that I at least got the grass mown down by the creek before it flooded again. Driving to work I saw standing water where I've never seen it before. Someones fishing dock had come loose and was drifting freely around Grand Lake.

Checked out the veg plot this evening and everything seems OK, if fact some stuff looks to have thrived. Pulled lettuce and green onions for this evenings salad. The green onions looked more like leeks!

I sowed some more Rainbow Swiss Chard and Cherry Belle Radish seeds Sunday afternoon. Hope they'll survive.
All my beds are well raised so the drainage is good, I'm glad to say.

Hi Y'all,

Compared the rest of you, our rainfall total is not impressive--only one inch, and a mild 68 degrees, but we'll take it!

Susan,

I use whatever I'm in the mood to feed 'em, or whatever I have handy.....lately it has been fish emulsion, but sometimes Garrett Juice (compost tea plus a few extra things) or alfalfa tea or liquid seaweed.

Once in a blue moon, I'll use Miracle Grow like I did during the heavy rainfall last year? Why? Because waterlogged roots are often so clogged with water that they literally cannot take up ANY nutrition from the soil and the plants respond by showing various symptoms of nutrient deficiency. Even when waterlogged roots cannot take up nutrition, the plants do absorb some through a foliar feeding. It is not a total cure--the leaves absorb the nutrients directly into the leaves, but it does not travel down to the roots--but it does help waterlogged plants as long as the roots aren't so wet that they die.

This week I was going to foliar feed just to help the dry foliage recover from the days and days of endless hot wind. AND, despite my plans to do so, I didn't foliar feed today after all because I could see from the clouds that the rain would arrive sooner rather than later. Guess I'll save the foliar feeding for another time, because the plants probably won't need it since we got 1" of rain. The temperatures dropped from 85 to 68 when the rain arrived and it felt so nice!

My Dusty Miller overwintered too, and now it is blooming. Some years it overwinters and some year it doesn't. I just consider them "bonus plants" if they overwinter!

I've had scabiosa (but not specifically Butterfly Blue) in full sun on the south side of the house and it did fine. I do think it needs great drainage. Mine had a long, cool spring to grow to a pretty good size (I raised them from seed) before the heat hit. Yours just might not like that it got so hot so early????

I guess maybe the excess rain got your "Sunset" echinacea but it left behind some seeds? At least you have some sort of echinacea--I lost all mine in last year's flooding rains and haven't replanted any yet.

My moonflowers grow in both dry areas and moister ones and seem happiest with more flowers as opposed to less. If they get more water, they just make enormously large vines and leaves. In less water, they have less foliage, but seem to flower just as well.

I absolutely would shear back the mums after they bloom and they should rebloom just fine in late summer to mid-fall.

I hope your sister doesn't flood again....imagine going through that again! (We do have some neighbors up the street a bit who have lost their home to fire once, to flooding once and to a tornado once....and had minor damage by fire again last year....a different house each time! Some people have no luck.)

Carol,

I hope y'all have been building that ark because it is looking like you may need it. I wonder if you could take 2 of each container plant, instead of 2 of each animal?

Hope the plants hang in there. Rain is such a blessing, except when it rains nonstop.

I hope y'all aren't worn out from treading water.

Mick,

Ever wonder what you'd do without raised beds? Ah, there's a reason we go to all the trouble to build them! Glad everything is looking good. We mowed the grass yesterday AND filled up the lily pond, which was down about 6", so I should have know it would rain!

Dawn

Thanks for the info, Dawn. My Scabiosa gets really good drainage, so maybe I just got a weak plant. Also, maybe it will pick up next year, after it's had some time to put forth root growth.

I had never had a Dusty Miller before last year, and bought it thinking it was a butterfly host plant (wrong Dusty Miller; should have gotten the artemisia that's also referred to as Dusty Miller, instead of the senecio).

I am hoping that the Verbesinas (Golden Crownbeard) that came back from seed last year after the mother plant died, don't dislike this rain too much. They really like it dry as well.

.....and then there's the poor little peppers....woe are they.......

Tomatoes are looking good!

Joe Pye Weed is all bent over and don't know if it will straighten out or not. If not, I'll just trim it back and let it bloom next year instead.

Susan

I have Golden Crownbeard all over the place in pastures that have heavy, thick, clay soil and somehow they survive periods of heavy rain or reseed, because there's always plenty of them. They also handle drought really well. (One of the things I love about native plants is their resilience.)

Dawn

I'm glad to hear everyone's okay. Dawn, I wish you had gotten a little more of what we did, my rain gauge showed 3.5" this afternoon. As far as I know I haven't lost anything yet, except maybe some catmint. I guess I'm going to have to move that to even higher ground.

I'm wondering whether I'm going to have any milkweed this year. It didn't come back from last year's stand and the seedlings from this year don't seem to be growing too much.

Thursday I spent the evening in gale force winds cutting down one of my rose of sharon's that rotted out in all the rain last year. Saturday I spent cutting down all the trees that were growing up through it :) What a mess. I think I spend more money on Greenlight Vine and Stump Killer than I do on seeds and plants!!

Lisa

According to Mesonet we got 3.60 inches, but the weather report said a lot of our area got 5 inches. We are supposed to have a few dry days then it will start again on Friday.

I had a big bed of daylillies that appear to have died although they have green starks with blooms on them. Talk about weird looking since the leaf part looks dead. They look almost like naked ladies do when they bloom. The ones planted near the road, in a bed that is almost gravel, still look fine.

Veggies seem to be liking the water at this point, but it may be too much for them as the days go by. The container plants are fine because they drain quickly. I worry about the trees falling more than anything else since I have seen it happen to two recently. We have so many big trees in our neighborhood (and several in my yard very near my house).

This is one year that I am really glad that that a major part of my garden is in containers. Maybe by fall I can plant a real in-ground garden.

Dawn - I am glad you got an inch of rain. I watched the radar yesterday and today and thought for awhile that you weren't going to get any, but it finally swung over there a little. My family in Carter County alway worry so much about fire during those dry years that you have down there. I am not wild about getting 3.6 inches of rain at one time, but I do better healthwise when it is wet than when it is dry and dusty.

Lisa,

I wish we'd gotten some of your rain too! I have my catmint in a raised bed, but only about 4" above grade, which apparently is enough here. That catmint didn't even seem to suffer in last year's record (for us) rainfall and flooding.

I did lose some catmint one rainy year (8 plants) that was planted in an 8" tall raised bed of roses. (The roses survived.)

My milkweed (new from seed this year) isn't doing well either, but the wild orange-flowered ones alongside the fencelines on our road are blooming their heads off. It just figures.

It sounds like one of those years (OK, for most of you, two of those years). Every now and then I lose a plant to excessive rainfall, but probably not as often as many of y'all have the last two years.

Carol,

I lost an entire bed of daylilies and an entire bed of blackberries in 2005-2006. They were in heavy clay that had been somewhat improved, but I had to make choices about what to water and what not to water when the water bill started approaching $300 a month, and they were the first to go because they were farthest away from the house. Eventually, that year (2006) I even quit watering the veggie garden (the second week of June), although some eggplants, tomatoes, peppers and flowers continued to grow until frost. (It was just about the worst drought our county'd ever had, followed by the horrendous wildfires.) It was all I could do to keep the area around the house and garage/barn watered and green as fire protection, and to protect the foundations of the buildings. I tend to lose more plants to prolonged drought than to rain. I hope to replant daylilies and cultivated blackberries in better soil closer to the house next year. I am getting a great crop of native blackberries this year though.

For a while I thought the rain would miss us. We went to Denton to buy DS some clothes as a birthday present (he turned 24 yesterday) and we were watching the skies (eagerly) all the way home. About the time we got in betweeen Sanger and Gainesville, the skies got really dark and we were hoping to get home before the rain hit. As it was, a light rain was falling when we arrived home, but we got into the house before the heavy rain hit. It was a nice rain shower, but it didn't last long enough! I was hoping for a lot of rain and flash flooding....yes I was!! I figured if it rained hard enough to flash flood, then the garden would be really happy. Best of all, though, was that the temperature dropped from 85 to 68 when the rain arrived. I don't even remember the last time it was 68 degrees in the middle of the afternoon.

After the rain ended, we went outside and put up the rest of the deer fence. We have only an hour or so of fencing left to do today, and I am so excited to think that perhaps Bambi and friends will no longer be able to eat my vegetables.

Sill cool and cloudy here, and in fact, quite foggy this morning, which is a really pleasant change from the wind and heat we've been having. It was like waking up in a whole different country this morning! The cool weather won't last long, but we're going to enjoy it while it does.

Dawn

Here in Ardmore I feel sure my garden beds are happy with the nice long rain we got yesterday. However, We had run the soaker hoses on it during the weekend just trying to get water all the way down to the plant roots....so hope we didn't over do it.

I have to confess I have not yet been out to look at the gardens or even the rain guage. The news reported 1.58 inches but I would be surprised if it were not more. Our street was running like a river along the curbs and lots of dirt was being washed down the street from all the construction. We even had some hedge trimmings wash to the end of our drive and stop there which we had to take to the trash so it was pretty heavy rain.
We had been doing our shopping and just got home before it hit.

We needed the rain badly here so we are all thankful.
I am so sorry for all of you who are getting too much rain....we were like that last year and it was just awful.
It is just so sad to see your plants drowning and can't do a thing about it. I groan for all of you who are dealing with much too fast.

G.M.

Dawn, what kind of milkweed did you plant? That sounds so unusual for Asclepias tuberosa (the one with orange flowers) because they really hate a lot of moisture. With its tuberous roots, it stores a lot of water, and I've lost many of them by watering them too much. They like it very, very dry, like the verbesinas.

I lost a lot of my catmint last year, too. I loved it, and so did the bees and butterflies. I have one little sprig that showed up this year and am hoping it will continue to grow on.

The news reported we got 3.05" of rain. I don't know about that, I think it was closer to Lisa's gauge of 3.5". She doesn't live too far from me. My yard, of course was flooded completely. But it never seems to bother anything back there. Since it is mostly shade, and the general population of shade plants love more water than sun plants, they don't seem to mind so much. My newly planted lobelias (red flowering species) seemed to really love it, as well as the hostas, pipevine serpentaria, pipevine clematitis, Meadow Rues, you name it! My alocasias (upright elephant ears) may not have liked it so much. They prefer drier conditions that the colocasias (regular elaphant ears). Colocasias can virtually grow in ponds.

My lavendars didn't do very well last year, but came back just gorgeous this year - probably because we had a lot of dry spells in between rains this year, unlike last year.

It is just gorgeous out there today! With all this rain, though, I have to fertilize with my chicken manure again, but am going to wait until things have dried out a bit.

Susan

Our rain gauge showed 4+ inches. I spent this morning pulling out weeds. There are tons of young Johnson grass coming up. This is the thanks I get from the birds, I guess, for putting up birdhouses for them to live in. But I enjoy watching them so I guess it's the price I pay. Johnson grass is not so hard to pull up if it's young and if the soil is wet. I'm out there pulling like mad and the ground is going *poh!" everytime I pull something out. I need to fill in that herb garden space with something. I thought I would have plenty of things to grow this year. Ha! But, all in all, not doing too bad for the first year of serious gardening and the conditions. Oklahoma is so fickle, you can't really plant moisture-loving plants because about early July it forgets how to rain and then you're locked into watering. I hate to do that. If you put in plants that like to be dry, the spring rain rots them. Maybe the plants that endured will come back up from seed they scatter themselves, or, in the case of perennials, from the root, and I can add a few more things each year. I lost all my Cherry-red dianthus that I had wintersown and babied along all spring, and then planted in the mud from the previous rain along the sidewalk edge of the new iris bed. They would've made it if we hadn't gotten yet more rain. A little voice told me not to plant them yet, but I was lazy and didn't want to have to start potting them up.

My Datura has been struggling. DGH broke one, two of them died by drowning. The remaining five are blooming with their feet in the mud. Someone sent me some purple Datura seed that I wintersowed, and I have two little plants trying to survive. As I dig up my iris bed, I often reach into the mud only to get a handful of brown goo that once was an iris tuber/corm/whatever they're called. I hope I'm not sounding whiney, if I do I don't mean to. In my heart I know how blessed I am. My home has not been flooded or blown away, we have not been physically harmed by the weather, and have never had to be evacuated, and there are lots of growing things in my yard that have survived against all odds. It's not like this is the only chance I will ever have to grow certain things, there's always next year. I am still having fun and delighting in the things I have, and the nice friends I have made here on the forum. You all rock! LOL

Yes...definitely remember the blessings of having a home and garden (to whine about, lol)!!
My afternoon...shall be spent weed-pulling! Dallis grass and whatnot out of the front yard - perfect conditions (especially with a little OFF to keep the mosquitos at bay)

Ilene - daturas like really good drainage, too. I have mine planted in a corner of the yard that is wood trim on one side and sidewalk on the other. The water drains off really well. I have had daturas planted in other areas of my yard and they have always died off. This one, however, keeps on plugging, and I'm almost positive it is because it gets good drainage.

If you have good drainage for plants that don't like a lot of moisture, they will do better if you have them in the best draining locations or pots. My lavendars are the same way - they are planted in an area that slopes down so that the water just runs off of them. They cannot tolerate a lot of wet soil either. I tried them in several other spots around the yard - they all died. These have done fine - one is new from last year and the other has been there for about 5 years now.

I lost the Pearly Everlasting I had last year - too much rain. So, I planted it in a pot this year. They are very hardy, and it is doing much, much better potted up than it did in the ground. I do this with plants that are very hardy, like to zone 5 at least, because they can winter over successfully in pots.

Susan

Susan,

It was the common orange-flowered one called buttefly weed (Asclepias tuberosa). I have grown it several times and it doesn't like ANY of my soil. My sandy soil drains too quickly, my clay drains too slowly. It did incredibly well (raised from seed) in a raised bed in the veggie garden a couple of years ago. There it got huge, bloomed all summer long and seemed perfectly happy, but it didn't come back the following year. (It was a dry winter, and I don't water the veg garden in the winter, so maybe it got too dry?) Ironically, it grow wild along the roadside on a country road about 1/3 mile south of us, growing up and down the fenceline. Turn onto our road, though, and you'll see one or two of them a short distance from that other road, and then no more. I think the clay just gets thicker and more dense once you turn onto our road, and the farther north you go in our direction, the worse the clay gets. Sometimes, if I break new ground, I'll get volunteers of the pink-flowered milkweed that has big, tropical-looking leaves, but I haven't broken any new ground lately and haven't had it the last few years. And in the pasture we have the Antelope Horns Milkweed everywhere.

Ilene,

We always have tons of Johnson grass too, and I pull it out of the beds all the time, but most especially when it has just rained. I hate the stuff and it is EVERYWHERE here...in every yard, every pasture, every bar ditch, and along every fenceline. Ironically, our land that we bought and built our home on was part of the Johnson Farm for many years AND, of course, it is on Johnson Road. (I need to ask the Johnson family if they got their family name from the Johnson grass that is so abundant here.)

My common white datura reseeds in both clay soil and sandy soil, but the various hybrid ones with different colored flowers and double flowers are pickier and only reseed in sandier soil. The ones in sandier soil or in clay soil improved with compost grow larger, though, than the ones in unimproved clay. Here, the common white datura is known as jimson weed and often grows wild in pastures.

I think you are having a pretty good garden year considering the rainfall you have experienced. You are very resilient and are quickly finding ways to work around the weather "challenges". Imagine how much fun it will be in an "average" year with normal rainfall!

I do not think you are whiney at all. This forum is a great place to talk through ALL the challenges and successes, all the good times and bad, all the ups and the downs of gardening in Oklahoma. I honestly think that Oklahoma is one of the toughest places to garden because our weather changes non-stop. Where else in the USA can you go from ice to snow to rain to sleet to hail to tornadoes to drought to wildfire, etc......and all in one year or even in one month (sometimes it seems like it is all in one week!). I have seen rains so heavy that the roads flooded, and then the dry, dormant grasses went up in a blaze of wildfire a day or two later, and firefighters trying to fight the wildfires found their trucks stuck in the muds from the heavy rains. Living here is a challenge, and gardening is even more so. NO ONE understands it better than those of us who live here and garden here. I agree that the people on this forum rock! I have never seen a more agreeable, considerate, kind, giving and helpful group of people. On many forums you see a lot of "discussions" that turn into heated debates, and you see a lot of out-of-control egos that clash. We don't have that here, and I am so proud of our entire group of individuals on this forum. I think we can and do disagree with one another, but we are not disagreeable in the manner in which we do so.

Sharon, I agree with you that we all are blessed to have our homes and gardens, even when they are giving us fits. I think we're blessed to have each other too.

Susan, I had a lot of butterflies earlier in the season, but they have been fairly sparse lately. Maybe it is the wind....or lots of predators/diseases because we had a huge upsurge in population last year and that is always followed by predators/diseases and then a smaller population. (Just like the corresponding up and down population cycles of rabbits/coyotes.) This week I am beginning to see more, especially black swallowtails.

Y'all our lovely day lasted until noon, and then the heat and humidity combined to make it miserable, along with the wicked mosquitoes. I've been inside for a couple of hours but hope to get back out in the yard after dinner.

Dawn

Dawn, I totally agree about what a nice congenial forum this is. I have visited others where, if you get off topic (and I so often do) people actually respond to you saying only that your post belongs somewhere else. It's like going up to a person in a public place and asking them to leave. I was visiting a weight-loss forum a few years ago and man, those people get cranky! There was one woman on the forum that was reading between the lines of what everyone posted and was challenging things that were said or examining the motives of the poster. Someone needed a cookie, I think. I once made the mistake of telling someone I would pray for them and I got flamed by a woman who said she was an atheist and didn't appreciate me cramming God down her throat. Then during the same week she actually posted about how she'd hydroplaned on the highway and narrowly missed death. I did not post a reply.... ;) I think mutual respect goes a long way in a forum, and so does taking things said with a grain of salt. Sometimes when you can't see expressions or hear the tone of voice, it's easy to take things the wrong way.

It was a beauty of a day here, not too warm, not too windy, and NOT RAINING!! My petunias are starting to bloom in the pots with the bell peppers and they are looking so cheerful and cute. Pearl's taken to staying outside all day, sleeping on the back porch.

NOT RAINING? I can't believe it. I hope the shock wasn't too much to bear. : )

This afternoon I was working in the garden and couldn't understand what was wrong with me and why I felt so miserable and had no get-up-and-go. Then I came inside and checked the weather and found out the heat index was 101 degress, so I stayed inside. I intended to go back outside after dinner, but didn't.

Fluffy is reverting to his seemingly wilder nature and staying outside 2 or 3 days at a time. I truly believe he is half-wild. I'm not sure he is much of a hunter though, because he is always starving when he finally comes inside.

Dawn

Dawn, butterflies are scarce this year compared to last. And you are right about your reasoning for the down turn. On the Butterfly Forum, we were discussing this. One of our members is and entomoligist. He said that it is natural for an abundant year to be followed by a severe decline. Next year will be a bit better, and eventually we'll get up to another year where they are abundant again.

Of course, I always expect a few at a time because I am very urban, small yard, and the conservation areas see lots more butterflies than I do.

On any given day this summer, I am lucky to witness 6 or 7 species. But, my fruit hanger draws a lot of them and few nectarers. I have seen more Red Admirals this year than in the last several. But, they love the rotting bananas, as well as the Tawnies. This is the first year I have seen several Tawnies because they are much rarer in Oklahoma than the Hackberry Emperors. Of course, I always see the Cabbage Whites and I've learned to love their lolloping flight pattern.

I usually see many more butterflies beginning mid-August, too, when they are either migrating (Monarchs), or flying back to warmer areas of the Gulf of Texas and Mexico where they continue flying until next year. Question Marks, Mourning Cloaks, and Orange Sulphurs overwinter in Oklahoma, by hibernating in wood piles, tall grasses, etc., flying on the warmer days of winter (at least 60 degrees).

So, I am just enjoying what I have, and looking forward to what I might have in the fall.

Susan

Susan,

The same up-and-down cycle holds true for so much in nature, but I see it most in the boom-and-bust cycles of bunnies and coyotes in our yard. When we have a lot of rabbits, like we do this spring, I know it soon will be followed by a population boom in the coyote families, and then we'll have a year of significantly fewer bunnies.

Our butterfly years always vary, but I have never seen as few as I've seen the last month or so. I miss them. I guess I am spoiled--we had simply gazillions last year.

I see more in August too. I try to time some of my flowers like zinnias, cosmos and tithonias so I'll have lots of blooms for them when they come through, and I put fruit out for them as well. (When I was a kid, we always put watermelon rinds out in the backyard for the butterflies and moths (and possums) after we'd eaten most of the watermelon.)

It is such a "bad butterfly year" that I actually have full, complete sunflowers in my cottage border because they're not being devoured and that may be a first in our 10 years here! I had the little black cats appear on the foliage of some dwarf sunflowers several days ago and then it rained and they disappeared. They hadn't eaten enough to be finished, so I think the heavy rain and wind may have washed them off and away?

I have had a few more Black Swallowtails the last couple of days, but nothing like our usual huge population. I have had a couple of white-lined sphinx moths and clearwings too, but nothing like previous years. I HAVE seen some hornworms, so assume we'll have more of the moths later in the season.

For what it is worth (and I doubt I'll be so lucky), I hope the Squash Vine Borer moths are having a down year too!!!!

Dawn