I hope you get the cooler weather they are forecasting. Our lowest high in the 7-day forecast from the NWS is 90, and we generally run about 3 degrees higher than forecast, so I'm not expecting much of a break here, but any cooler temperatures at all will be an improvement (unless they come with high dewpoints and we end up with the same heat index values anyway).

We even have a slight chance of rain on a few days, and I think it is most likely to fall on Monday morning because Tim has scheduled a nice ceremonial groundbreaking activity for a public safety (law enforcement, firefighter and EMS) memorial site that is a project he's been working on for a couple of years now. Since he's got 10 local dignitaries from government and LEO, FF and EMS agencies scheduled to participate in the ceremony, you just know if it is going to rain at all, it will rain on Monday morning. Maybe we should round up a lot of umbrellas just in case. We spent all day running errands and getting together necessary supplies, which included going to Lowe's and buying 10 of the cheapest, most pathetic and cheap shovels available since they are largely ceremonial and won't have to actually do much digging. There wasn't any point in spending more money for better shovels though, since I'm sure they'll just sit in a storage room after Monday's big event is over.

I did go out to the garden and pick tomatoes and cucumbers after we got home. My plants are all over the place in terms of health, but some are rebounding nicely and looking better, so maybe the worst is over. I don't even care. I'm suffering tomato burnout big time. After I finished 8 batches of salsa yesterday and really knocked out a lot of the tomatoes and made the remaining pile seem less intimidating, then the ones I harvested today just turned the somewhat smaller pile back into a bigger pile all over again. I washed and bagged up 9 gallons of whole, fresh, ripe tomatoes and threw them into the freezer for cooking sometime down the road. I just finished that a few minutes ago---so much for taking off a whole day from the garden and kitchen. I did only spend maybe 2 or 3 hours on all the harvesting and freezing, so it wasn't like my typical long day. I didn't even pickle the cucumbers tonight that I had picked along with the tomatoes. I'll tackle them in the morning.

I've got my eye on about 2 dozen tomato plants I'm going to yank out sometime this week. With one of them, I'm just waiting for the last couple of full-sized fruit to ripen and then those plants are out of the garden, and I'll plant winter squash or something else in their space. Anything but tomatoes.

I used to think it was impossible to have too many tomatoes, but these big harvests the last few years have changed my mind about that. By the end of next week, I'll be through canning salsa, and then I can start canning other things like pasta sauce, pizza sauce and chili base. I'm looking forward to doing something different, and if I get to do it in cooler weather, then that's even better.

Dawn, with very little doubt, it will rain on Monday...lol. Your tomato harvest/workload has been quite large, so I understand that you are ready for something different. You know, I rarely eat the salsa that I can, because I mostly can it for others. However, this year, my little grandson and I are going through it like crazy! He even eats the jars that are made with all jalapenos, and two tsp. of red pepper! I ate almost a full jar today all by myself. Between that and refrigerator pickles, and BLTs, I'm living fat and sassy. ;) I'm looking forward to anything cooler than we've been experiencing. The heat traps me inside and makes me neglect my outdoor chores.

Mary, A couple of weekends ago when we were at Central Market (similar to Whole Foods but I like it a thousand times more), I bought a soup mix for Chicken Tortilla Soup. It was a dry mix to which you needed to add tomatoes, chicken broth or chicken stock and chicken meat. I was looking forward to using it on a day when I needed to throw together a quick dinner. So, when that day came, I grabbed the soup mix, boiled up some chicken to make my own broth, chopped the chicken into small pieces, and opened up the soup mix to add to the broth and chicken. Imagine my surprise when I actually read the label and it said to add 12-16 oz. of salsa instead of canned tomatoes. Woo hoo! Another terrific use for Annie's Salsa, and it made a great soup too. I have used salsa before when making chicken tortilla soup from scratch, but this was the first time I have had a soup mix specify using salsa.

I'm glad to hear y'all are living fat and sassy!!!!! That is the true reward for all the hard work you do in the garden (and kitchen) to get the harvest to this point. What could be better than living off your own food, raised on your own place, and raised in the most healthy and sustainable method possible? Life just doesn't get any better than that!

I am looking forward to cooler weather if it makes it to us. So far today, the mercury has hit 98 at our house, and our heat index has hit about 105 (I haven't checked it lately and don't want to know if it has gotten worse than that). We'll see if we get that rain tomorrow. If we do, I will have to suggest to Tim that he schedule more special community events in order to ensure that some rain falls. I believe our last actual rainfall was around June 2 or 3, so we have been far too dry for too long now. I use the hose to make a puddle in the gravel driveway daily for the wild birds to drink from, and our turkey tom goes and just stands in the water. I guess having cooler feet makes him feel better. Maybe we need to take a dishpan to the garden, fill it with water, and stand in it while working to see if it makes us feel cooler.

It is storming west of me. Somebody is getting rain.

So it it practically here? I hope so. I am so ready for a good rain. Our poor cracked, dry ground needs it. Some of the VFDs are out on a grass fire right now, and at the other end of the county they had a big barn fire today. It is too early for this kind of fire activity. Too, too early, but if rain doesn't fall, it won't stop. If we could get a good strong shower soon, I wouldn't have to water the garden this week.

It rained here before I could get outside and mow this evening. Of course it did, because I watered the garden this morning. lol

I gave up on the rain and watered a few things that seemed very dry. Tonight I ate a bowl of cucumbers, tomatoes, and onion, all from the garden with a little lemon and olive oil added. I ate it while sitting on the couch listening to the rain. I almost never water, but when I do it always seems to rain.

We had BLTs for lunch and I have a big bowl of cherry tomatoes on the cabinet and a few slicers still left to use. I had a lot of fruit set early, but it seems to have tapered off during those hot days, except for the cherries. I think I have picked 6 or 7 slicers and that's not bad for as far north as I am.

At least you know how to make it rain. The hot days have made a lot of things taper off, but on the bright side I think the heat speeded up the squash and southern peas.

It rained here yesterday and last night. The Lightning was terrible, it went on and on. Boom boom boom. We ended up with about 1" it was nice. Today you cannot breathe out side it is horrible, very soupy. Where is all that cool weather they have been talking about????

It isn't here and we haven't had any rain either. I am not liking this weather. I'm glad you got rain as your part of the state is slipping back into abormally dry conditions.

Here's the Max Heat Index map:

Today's Maximum Heat Index Values

I was out picking blackberries at 6:30 AM this morning, and by 10:30, I had had enough. I checked the weather, and it does not look like Durant will be having a cool down any time soon. We got 1" of rain tonight, which was nice, but between the voles, vine borers and the heat, my garden looks like it should in August.

The cooldown missed us too, and so did the rain. We got slightly cooler temperatures last night when Cooke County to our south got 2" of rain and has some light flooding, but the cooldown was so late in the day that all it meant was that we were slightly cooler after sunset than normal. My garden hasn't had any rain since around June 2nd or 3rd. It looks bad. I've watered some, but I'm not going to water it real heavily and run up a huge water bill in June. I'm starting to dread July and August because it seems the rain has quit finding us, and no matter what they forecast for our high temperature, we go 3-5 degrees higher than forecast. They had forecast a lot of highs around 90 for this week and I laughed. Sure enough, now the forecast for us is showing 93, 94, 96....which was what I was expecting all along when they were saying 90 or 91 or, for one day, even 89.

Damn, our high out where I am in Durant is also always 3-5 degrees warmer than what they expect. For some reason, we still have an 80% chance of rain this morning, but I doubt that will happen. And yes, my garden is taking a serious hit here. I ran out of rain water reserves about 2 weeks ago, and have had to water with city water, which my plants do not like nearly as much as rain water. I am not looking forward to July. I have managed to put up a decent amount of beans, but cucumbers were slow to get started and I am not sure how long they will survive. The winter squash looks good at night, but just tired and pained from SVBs during the day. I am not sure they will survive through the next 2 months either, but they are so big right now that I cannot plant anything else around them!

My garden is very small compared to those of many gardeners here, so I don't mind giving some water...up to a point. My personal usage is generally very low, mainly because I have water-saving appliances, I try to not waste any water, and I live alone (one of the few benefits..lol). In fact, I generally pay the minimum charge that the city allows. I would love to have a rain-barrel system, not only for water conservation, but also because I believe plants prefer rain water to chlorinated city water. I have guttering, so I need to look into diverting into a rain-barrel or something. So much for the predicted cool-down. The weather predictions are still calling for some relief this weekend, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Where is this flipping cool down? I put off doing things because they promised me cooler weather. Sigh.

It's a good thing that our weather-forecasting crew aren't odds-makers out in Vegas!

Our rain chance keeps going down and temps keep going up. So, I don't see any rain or cooler temps in the near future. So much for our weather forecasters.

Y'all noticed the lack of cooling, did you? I didn't believe it when they forecasted a cool spell, and it didn't happen for us, and they took those cooler temperatures out of our forecast and replaced them with hotter forecasts, and we still are exceeding those. For today, they said our max heat index would be around 97. Right now it is 104. Ha ha ha. Their weather models are failing miserably---they aren't even close.

So, let's just go ahead and say it---it doesn't matter what they forecast. We are going to have (and already are having) our usual hot and miserable summer weather. Why do we really think it will change? It just doesn't. They always forecast cool temperatures somewhere out there in the future....next week, next month.....and it doesn't happen. I'm not blaming our NWS-Norman folks or our local TV forecasters---the blame lies with the forecast models and their poor accuracy rates.