Yeah. Yesterday was toasty. I wonder if we're headed into fall with green lawns. Is it my lack of attention or would that be unusual?

I am trying to be positive, but we are among the small portion of OK that now has gone 49 days without receiving 0.25" of rain in one single day (I think we've had about 0.14" in that 49 days), so I am in a very negative I-hate-summer frame of mind. What I hate more than summer is the dry spell. Summer itself hasn't been all that awful. We haven't had our temperature break 100 degrees in at least a week, and it was "only" 97 degrees here yesterday so it could be worse.....and probably will be. (grin)

Most people's gardens are long ago dead and gone here, but I've watered ours deeply about twice a week (I have to, as I have perennial flowers and herbs in there) so it still is moderately green, but not lushly green.

The nights have been cooler and so have the early mornings, and that's been nice. We had been having a lot of humidity which kept driving up our heat index, but yesterday we finally had dry air arrive and it felt so much better outdoors as a result. Because it is so dry here, we're actually better off with higher relative humidity and dewpoints because drier air makes it easier for fires to ignite, but as a human being, I still prefer the comfort of drier air to moister air.

Today I found cracks in the ground near the house, so I have the soaker hoses running around the foundation. Prior to that, I'd only seen cracks in the ground farther from the house...out in the fields and pastures. One advantage of no rainfall is that the grass doesn't grow much at all, so we only have mowed one time (last week) in the last 4 weeks. I have watered the grass 3 or 4 times during this dry spell, but only enough to keep it more or less green around the house. The lawn doesn't look good, but it isn't totally brown and crunchy like some of the pastures already are.

Bon, Down here, we often go into fall with a moderate amount of green lawns. In an average year, we get almost 3" of rainfall in August so even an unhappy, dry lawn will revive and go into fall with some green. This year, with so little rainfall, the lawns are not green unless the homeowners have been watering them. The fields and roadsides are patchy. Some are very brown, some are very green, some are a mix of the two. It varies a great deal, depending on the soil type and how recently the area has been mowed. Drought is creeping our way and we're all just hoping rain arrives soon enough to keep things from getting too bad here.

Dawn

Well, crud. I see ya'll are abnormally dry on the drought monitor and the map is no longer color-free. :( Let us hold out for that wet fall and winter (but not ice or anything hazardous. We had enough hazards in May.) I'm grateful there hasn't been severe fire hazards. I don't miss that part and I'm certain you and Tim don't. Let us keep it that way. I realize it can extend into fall. **sigh**

Your message just alerted me to the reality of our lawn being green because I mow regularly unlike Bill who would let it grow and kill it later (LOL). It really looks nice.

I've enjoyed the summer. Thanks for the reminder of our blessings. It was overcast tonight so I was able to get some weeds and grass pulled. On nights like this I REALLY do not miss my big, pretty house in town. Well, most nights (and days) I don't miss it--just sometimes. I dropped my son off at a friend's house in the newer part of Rivendell (south OKC) and thought to myself 'I would not trade my little fixer upper for one of these enormous houses'. They are serious mansions setting 10 feet from the next house. Beautiful, but not for me.

My garden looks like it "should" in the spring. My pole beans are producing, potatoes are sprouted. I did have to water tonight. The 9 day forecast looks dry and boring. But...again thanks for the "good thoughts". :)

(My dogs chasing toads stress me out.)

Bon, Drought has been creeping our way from both the east, and now sits just east of our county line in Marshall County, and from the south, where Cooke County, TX, is worse off than us in terms of drought, but their drought area is getting really close to where I live. Since it took us over a year of heavy rainfall (roughly 70" from late June 2014 thru early July 2015) to get back into the white area on the Drought Monitor, I was hoping to stay there a bit longer than we did. It is mind-boggling that we already are so dry again.

We had a grass fire yesterday about a quarter-mile from our house, just down the road a bit. That's the closest one so far this summer. With most of the others, we've had large ranches between the fires and us, and I knew the firefighters would stop the fires before they could run across those ranches (and they did). We need rain so desperately, and it seems unlikely we'll get any sort of worthwhile amount in the next 7-10 days, if we get any at all.

Hazel, I agree with you about the big mansions. They're not for me either. When we moved here, we built a country-style house that looks like it could have been here for 100 years. I wanted the house to fit in with the countryside and rural lifestyle we live.

Fall is our second spring here in OK, and we're lucky to have it. While folks in more northern and northeastern parts of the country are watching their gardening season draw to a close, we have months of good gardening weather left yet. My garden usually has some things producing until at least December, and later than that if I plant winter greens in the fall. (Which I will do if it ever rains here again.) My fall tomato plants are blooming, but we're still hitting the upper 90s here (98 yesterday), so the blossoms are still falling off the plants without setting fruit.

Dawn

Had to drag out the water sprinklers today. I hate that. I dread the water bill.

other than that not much going on. I was out this afternoon looking for good buys at the big box stores. It seems they have decided not to put the perennials on sale just pot them up in expensive ceramic pots. I do not want your pots!!!!

its just a slow time of year for the garden. Biggest job is keeping everything alive. Ha

I don't want to think about the water bill either. It is going to be ridiculously high, but the one in July wasn't too terribly awful so at least it will be ridiculously high only for August. (I hope rain returns in September!) I have watered like a crazy woman, and it isn't enough to keep most things productive, but I've kept most things alive. The southern peas are loving the heat and moisture though. Within the last 4 or 5 days, we have had some much cooler nights finally, but still have had high temps of 101 and 99. I am so ready for the cooldown that should be arriving soon. The other day I dragged Tim out into a field to show him cracks in the clay that now are 1-1.5" wide and said "when you see the water bill, remember this". lol. He was shocked at how big the cracks are in some areas, but I think seeing those made him realize what the yard and garden would look like if I wasn't watering.

I agree, stockergal, that the biggest job right now is just keeping things alive. My fruit trees look terrible, and even our post oaks and red oaks are dropping a few leaves. Not a lot of leaves like in 2011, but enough that it looks like we need to rake the front yard.

We are back in moderate drought here, though it did not show up on the U. S. Drought Monitor when I looked at it last Thursday. Gary McManus addressed that issue when discussing the flash drought in southern OK on the Mesonet ticker a few days ago, mentioned a glitch that had occurred in the drought monitor report somehow, and then the next day after that, the correct drought monitor map for the NWS-Norman weather office forecast area popped up on their webpage. I knew it was going to show us in Moderate Drought even before I clicked on it, but it was shocking to see that so soon after we went through separate rounds of extreme flooding.

While we are having occasional grass fires, none of ours (in our fire district) have really gotten out of control and become wildfires yet, and I'm thankful for that. At one point yesterday, I heard firefghters out in several other districts on grassfires/wildfires or structure fires, all at the same time. I wasn't watching the RH, but I assume we had hit the point in the afternoon when the relative humidity was at its lowest, and we were hot and windy, so that's just a bad combination. Our KBDI this morning is 626, which is typically what we'd see in a very dry winter....maybe in the January or February time frame after everything is frozen and very dry. Some years we get enough rainfall regularly that we never hit the 600s at all before spring rainfall returns. It is discouraging to see it that high in what has been a very wet year overall. Even in a typical summer, it only would be in the 400s by now. I believe our county now has gone longer without rainfall (not counting the 0.01" that has fallen occasionally) than it did in the summer of 2011.

I'm hoping September brings us some good rainfall, but some years we really don't get good rain until November. I hope this is not that kind of a year. There's been tons of butterflies all month, and I've tried to keep all the garden flowers watered well for them. I do have to make them puddles of water in the gravel driveway so they can do their puddling.

The parts of my front garden I've watered regularly look okay. Not great, but okay. The back garden area, not watered at all, is pretty much dead/dormant (depending on the type of plant) and everything back there, except the trumpet creeper vine and persimmon trees, has dried out and turned the color of wheat. I just ignore it. Maybe it will be better next year.

Stores here are getting in veggie transplants for fall, but I cannot tell that anyone is buying them. The shelves seem to have the same number of plants every time I walk by them.

It amazes me how much water out of the hose it takes just to keep things alive. On the other hand it takes about half as much rain to make everything green and growing.

i don't think anything will sell at the nursery till we cool off and get a little rain. Then look out!!!!

we are replanting all of the alfalfa hay that was drowned out in May. The wheat will be planted after Labor Day, probably dusted in unless we get water soon. This is nothing new to us but in May I would never have believed how dry we are today.

I agree. Our July water bill was around $100 and I didn't water all that much compared to how much I watered in August, so I am a little worried we'l have "sticker shock" when the water bill comes. At least it will be a ridiculously high bill for only one month (I hope). Surely rain will return in September, and if it doesn't, I'll likely get too busy with grass fires to worry about whether the garden is being watered. I got the perennials through the awful July-August heat wave and, while we have cooled down only slightly in recent days, at least we're not having highs in the 100s any more. The plants can tolerate 95 degrees on low moisture a lot better than they can tolerate 105 with the same low moisture.

A lot of the farmers and ranchers here plowed their fields in early August so they'd be ready to sow seed for winter wheat or whatever else they intend to grow this fall, but no rain has fallen and no one has sown their seeds yet. Everyone's waiting for the rain that has sporadically been in the forecast but failed to materialize. One bonus of being so dry is that not very many weeds have sprouted in the plowed fields.

Stockergal, have ya considered swales? Now, of course, I've no idea what kinda setup ya have. I guess the plowing would ruin that, come to think.

I hope to get swales and berms in on this sloped land. Along with some shrubs and some more trees. I really hate watering. Of course, I will, but the poor plants...

Yes I have drainage Swales and terraces. But I still have lots of very high hills with clay soil. So I water in small amounts and let it sink in and not run off. My plan for next winter is to spread well aged cow manure all,over this yard. The few areas I have done look great and hold water and slowly release nitrogen and will in time make my soil better. It will take time but it will get the job done.