Welcome back!! Kim, I know you're a busy person. Take time to get enough rest. Take time off for just you. I hope you're feeling better, now.

I don't know if we can call it El Nino yet. I probably wouldn't. El Nino conditions on our continent usually do not manifest themselves until around Christmas.....El Nino is a reference to the Christ Child. However, let's just call it rain and be happy that it falls! I still think we are going to get the Super El Nino they're forecasting, but we never really know until it actually happens. I'd just consider this rain our "usual" fall drought relief, which in my county generally means about 4" of rain in September and 3" more in October. We didn't get anywhere close to 4" in September and so far we have had a pitifully small amount in October, so I feel like Mother Natures owes my county 6-7" of rainfall just to make autumn average. I doubt we'll get that 6- 7", but any rain will be good and greatly appreciated.

I am sorry you had such a tough summer, health-wise, and hope the rest of the year is better. Being ill is no fun.

I do not think that swearing off of new beds works. I think it has a boomerang effect for some reason and makes a person create more beds, or at least it does for me.

My garden looks pitiful but still is producing watermelons, tomatoes, peppers and southern peas even though I stopped watering it many weeks ago. Dryland watermelons taste so good, and so do dryland tomatoes even if they are smaller than they would be if I was irrigating or if rain was falling. A lot of the flowers are fading away thanks to the lack of moisture, but the marigolds and some of the zinnias still look half-decent. We had two days in a row last week where our daytime high hit 97 and our relative humidity bottomed out at 10%, and we had fires on those days. It was so discouraging because normally, by now, autumn rains have returned and helped the ground recover from the usual summer drought conditions. All I can say is that I hope last week's highs in the upper 90s were the last 90s we'll see this year. I'm pretty tired of them, and this week we've onyly gone into the 80s. Snakes continue to be a big issue here, with many people in our neighborhood having lots of copperhead encounters lately. I'll be glad when it finally gets cold enough for the snakes to go into hibernation because I am not willing to poke around in the garden cleaning it up until I"m sure I won't find any snakes.

Bring on the rain, and please let us all be spared from flash flooding.