They must know that you love them......

My poor maples were drying up in the garden center of the Santa Ana Orchard Supply Hardware when the store was closing. 5 dollars each and still no one wanted them. I bought every one and now I'm looking after them. I won't be able to keep them all but until they get too big for the area I'm having fun with them here. I love going to the garden show and seeing the potted maples. Now I have my own little maple community. Each one is a little different and they are sweet young trees. I love watching them grow, it feels very much like raising Camellia trees.

Sounds like we here have another 'atmospheric river' coming in this weekend with at least 5" of rain along the coast....sigh...

Yeah I heard SLO got 8" of rain

wow...8" down there? We've been up here 3 years now, worst Winter we've had so far....told myself I would never whine about rain if I could just get some....but....

Too much of a good thing?

Here's an update of rain totals for my house, northern Glendale.

December: 8.71

today: 2.40

yesterday: 3.23

day before yesterday: .78

3 days ago: 1.20

month of January so far: 9.80

It looks like things are clearing up until a new storm arrives mid next week.

That's fantastic ! No rain here yesterday or today, we will always get more, but I'd almost rather have the rain because it's otherwise quite cold...this is what we see from 'town' today when the clouds are gone.....

wow! Two both posts. Almost 10" in Glendale? Here up north,I must be in some rain shadow with only 8.6 in the bay area,2.70 for the month. Still plenty and its feels soaking wet here.

More heavy rains on Wednesday they say. It wont end now.

Supposed to start here on Tuesday...looks like we'll get a week's worth.....

5 storms in 14 days are lined up. Already they say the start-Wednesday- is going to be heavy rains. All the hoopla TV does when the rainy year starts? And all they have is flooded parking lots?..Well,now they have serious weather news. Its alarming. I've seen more mudslides in my area since the 1997 El Nino year.

And......it's raining...surprise. We are apparently to get about 2 1/2 inches today, gale force winds...maybe 7 inches over all for the week. The good news is that it's only about 54 degrees right now at past midnight, much better than the 30's we've been having.

As called- its raining AGAIN. This is supposed to have winds with it later. I'm glad for the first time,I'm in a rainshadow somewhat,with half the rain of SF so far.

Irony- you plant for summer drought...and get non stop cold and wet for 2 months...more?

We do have wet Winters...and yes, Summer is dry...I really should have built large areas of berms here....

I didnt mean you as in YOU-lol,nothing personal WC,It was for everybody nowadays that trys to keep in mind in summer save water,water,water.

Try.

It stiil applies here, Stan....In fact, where I thought it to be a waste of time to save roof water in buckets down south, here it realy does make sense because you can save a pond's worth, a summer's worth.....I would like to have room to bury a cistern or room for a pond, we'll see......money and all that....

The rain my part of the inland bay area has been lovely! Drizzle, mist, sunshine. Big downpour, sunshine. Then back to drizzle, mist, sunshine. Rainbows galore! All my seeds have germinated and all the plants are very happy. Me too!!!

The local Kaiser hospital is new and always has had impeccable landscaping. I noticed today,the variegated Liriope in swaths of groundcover...all had black edge and glassy tipped leaves. Water was standing. A very large planting of Aloe striatula hybrid that is the star of the grounds?..I could see some leafs were spotted. Under them the soil looked like wet potting clay.

I know that all will grow out of this in summer..but for the first time in 4 winters the landscaping looks like its in winter.

HUGE BOOM! of lightning hit Hayward. Knocked out Comcast and telephone -internet for 2 hours. I would say loudest boom I've heard in 50 years and why my windows didn't break is a surprise. Scared the bejeesus out of the cats who just went from sound asleep to running for their lives.

For a while the Rio Stan ran down my street.

I don't recall any warning about thunderstorms by local tv...until the power came back. Great and a bit too late.

We have transformers blowout around here quite often...and everyone always seems baffled by what happened? They never seem to get used to it....It's like when we lived in Washington state years ago and the newscaster / weather people always seemed so surprised that it was raining, made such a big deal of it...we always wondered what staion where they had just transferred in from....LOL...

My epidendrums are blooming and now they just look terrible from the rains. I should have moved them under the patio.

LOL...we're never happy..."Too dry" "Too wet" "Too cold" "Too hot". We should all live in very large, weather controlled greenhouses...perhaps I shouldn't say that, it may someday come to that....

I'm working on it. I have a bunch of terraces that are just begging for some polygal roofs.

I've been planting wild flowers on barren spaces and the bike path. Hope the big storm coming won't wash away my Lupines and CA poppy seeds.

I know in other areas it has been really stormy... but in the inland valley of the east bay it has been just wonderful. It's like the sky turned on some misters for us. Sunshine and light mist... then a few showers and rain storms... but mostly sunshine and mist. I would imagine the wine from Livermore from this year is going to be quite exquisite. It's just the perfect weather for wonderful, healthy plants of all types.

This is like a throwback winter of the 1960's. Wet,cold and always in the 50's. Nothing like the last 15 years or so of 60's and even 70's in the bay area popping up in December and January. Heck in 2014 we averaged 66f in January!

Only,this time around I'm not riding my Stingray bicycle. Its a Toyota...

Update for my house:

Friday 3.6"

Today by 7pm 3.4"

January so far 19.1"

I do take full responsibility for all the flooding you guys are getting down there...I put in a special request for you guys to get more and said that you could have all the extra that we up here don't need......or want....

My total no where near Kent's. Just 3.5 in past 3 storms and just 5.1 for January.

We will dry out for rest of January, so gypsy if you could make the request again for areas where no flooded or slides...much appreciated.

Looking forward to dry commutes!

LOL...workin' on it....still got more than we need...love to share....

I love rain, but am praying for a couple of days off. There's a leak in my family room which I suspect is around the fireplace so need to wrap a tarp around the chimney :-( I hate flat roofs because you can't track down exactly where the rain in coming in through when there's no attic space.

Okay...one order for more rain, one order for no rain.....

Do NOT want any roof leaks !

Right on time the heaviest was between 2 and 5 pm yesterday. I had potting soil 'sandbags' and tarps in place in case the roof gutters overflowed which they did. The water level in the street gutter came up to the parkway planting and carried off some mulch but that was all. Now to clean up all the debris from the trees and wind. I've got bareroots to plant so I hope the soil dries out in the next few days.

Tarp's in place, and hope that was the problem. It was raining lightly a while ago, but not enough to leak through. We'll see if the chimney was the problem when there's more rain. I've also had to drain out some water from the pool three times because it was ready to overflow! Also, small ants keep finding refuge in my bathtub, but I spray hot water to get rid of them -- wish they would stay out!

I have potted plants that should have been planted out a while ago. These were plants close to the house that I dug up before the house got painted end of November. Guess they will get planted end of winter.

You might try Vinegar on the ants. I read that in one of those "Vinegar cures every household problem"..lol.

We got about 5.2" in that last series. We could use a bit of a dry out.

Okay, Crescent City has had over 57" of rain since Oct 1st..told y'all we have plenty to spare...please come...and bring buckets...take as much as you like home with you....

You know, when it is raining hard everywhere, that is going to be a harder sell wcgypsy... ;) But wow @ 57".

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Sorry about your roof leak eloise. Hope you can get the problem location sorted out. Do you know what type of ants you are dealing with? At this house, I've been seeing those super tiny pharaoh ants, but managed to get rid of them fairly easily. They haven't come back.

San Diego got a bit of hail today for a change from the liquid stuff.

It's not even close to 57" but with about .5" later Sunday night and about .4" yesterday our January total is now 20.07"

That's fantastic, isn't it? After the last couple of years, who'd a thunk it? We never know what to count on anymore, no 'norm'...

WooHoo !!!! That's what I'M talkin about ! Sunshine in the morning...as seen through my kitchen window...you have no idea how welcome that sunshine is...LOL...the nice thing here is that we do get sunny days interspersed with all the rainy ones..

stanofh, thanks will try vinegar. In the past, I would sprinkle baby powder wherever the ants would come in and that stopped them. Not sure if it's something in the baby powder that poisoned them or they suffocate.

gyr_falcon, not sure which ants. They are small, dark and always can be found outside here. We haven't had any rain so can't say yet if tarping the chimney did the trick. Late afternoon, we suddenly got hail for a few seconds! It was loud; I looked out the back and could see white, but soon after it rained and the hail disappeared. All I thought about was, hope the hail didn't make holes on the tarp, lol!

Ants, spiders, mice, rats don't like peppermint oil either....

Season total today here is 16.5". Wheee!!!!!!!

That's just astonishing ! Up here, the thrill is gone....LOL..

Trust me when I tell you that I am NOT bragging..our total so far says 61"...and I KNOW it's more than that...last time it was posted on our local forum, it had been 57"....and it has rained A LOT since then........listening to the downpour and gale force wind in Crescent City......

We had more rain Tuesday. I love the fact that we have had lots of steady, slow rain that had the opportunity to get into the ground as opposed to rushing down the drains. My lawn looks green as do my flower beds; unfortunately, lots of the green is due to weeds!

We expect 3-6" coming in...I don't know if that was to start last night when it was pouring when I went to bed, or this a..m. when it was pouring when I awoke...rivers will flood, winds will blow, yada, yada, yada....