I live a little ways south of you on top of the caprock and it is crazy weather. We've missed the hail, but also the rain-very dry. Spinach is long gone; asparagus is over. Enjoying green onions (especially since the onions in the stores, even in Lubbock & Plainview, are hot and foul tasting), cilantro, dill, green garlic and lettuce. Chard, radishes and orach are ready for harvest. Got the tomatoes in the ground last week and yesterday's beautifully calm and cool weather allowed me to put up the cages and row cover. I'll be watering the beds for the pickling cucumbers, summer squash, and beans, so I can plant this week.

Kelly

The tomato beds:

Hmmm, so crazy weather isn't just restricted to Oklahoma? (grin) I'm kidding! I'm a native Texs so have had nothing but crazy weather my entire life and, y'all know, that makes crazy seem normal if it is the only weather you've ever known. It is a crazy weather year. Let's blame El Nino for that.

Kim, I think I have seen more strange clouds the last 2 years than ever before. Maybe El Nino is responsible for that too. I love all the bizarre clouds we get here, but the only ones that really scare me are mammatus clouds because of their association with often tornadic supercells, and then I don't like any clouds that turn greenish gray (along with the entire sky) because that generally means it is about to hail. Oh, and then if you are lucky enough to see a big, sort of round, rotating supercell in its entirely, it looks like the Mother Ship is going to land and carry you away, but they still are awesome to see.

Photo: Supercell That Looks Like Mother Ship Coming In To Land

Kelly, I have loved this year's peculiar combination of very hot weather in February and March followed by cooler weather for much of April. It made all the cool-season crops grow like crazy, and allowed for early planting of warm season crops which then had the advantage of growing on in April's somewhat milder weather. Most of my cool-season crops, except for root crops, are either completely done already or getting close to it. Lettuce is another exception, but only because I succession plant new plants every few weeks. The earliest plants are bolting, but newer lettuce plants are coming along just fine in various sizes. My bluebonnets have had a extra-long season of bloom. They sprouted and grew great in the early hot weather and bloomed early, but then the blooms have held on for ages because it cooled back down. I've never had such a good bluebonnet year here in southern OK. Often we stay cold at night kinda late for them, and then we warm up too quickly, so having a backwards year this spring has been perfect here in southcentral OK.

You know that the weather is crazy when watermelon seeds (from a melon I apparently failed to pick in last year's flooding rains) are popping up out of the ground 4-6 weeks before we normally even think of sowing the seeds here.

Dawn