I haven't turned mine on at all yet! We did get a bit more up here in Northern CA than you did, but I'm loving it too!

I have sprinkled some fertilizer around, mulched a couple of beds, lots of weeding of course. Bring it on! I'm ready.

Anyone remember the dry winter when it rained a lot in March, years ago? They called it the "March Miracle."

I am looking forward to some more rain for the rainbarel. My navel orange and key lime have has flowered in the past couple weeks and are enjoying all the recent rain. It was nice not to have to water that much.

I took an unused garbage bin, placed it under the roof drip line and let one of the storms fill it up. Its not in the most convenient spot, but it's full of free water. Should have thought of this sooner!

I also have only needed to irrigate once or twice since December and am also loving it... but question for everyone... what are you doing to combat the compaction in the soil? If you have that problem .

Luckily I have a pretty good drainage system and pretty good grading here, so no drainage problems. But the pounding rain and the weight of the water in the soil is really compacting the clay even more than it already is naturally. I have been working on the soil in my yard for the past few years since we moved in. I mulch, mulch, mulch and am doing my best not to walk on it, not to work it while it's wet, yadda yadda yadda... but its a bummer to see all the fluffy soil I have been cultivating with mulch over the past few years compressed back down into compacted clay from all the heavy water.

Is there anything else I can do besides continuing to mulch and breaking it up by pitchforking once it's dry enough to work? I can't think of anything else that will really work besides that. And time. What's everyone else doing?

Cori Ann, oddly, I have found my all clay soil to be less compacted this year, because of a large number of earthworms! I have been out digging and getting some plants in, thinking the rain will help them settle in better, and found the soil easier to dig! Probably compacted it by walking around admiring the green so much though!

Well you are right about the earthworms kcandmillo. There are quite a few more than usual. Good point. The heavy rain really has compacted my soil in certain areas though. I will just keep up the pitchforking and allowing the mulch from the top to work it's way down. Thanks!

Cori, funny story from when my kid was in kindergarten! She found that "vandals" had made holes in the school playground and left cylinders of soil all over. So she organized a posse of earnest kinders who went around the playground stuffing the cylinders back into the holes! I hate to think what the school had spent on aerating the turf earlier that week :D

Cori, I think that Kcandmilo hit it on the head, aerating the soil will help. I need to have my gardner guy do it, he hasn't aerated in a couple of years and the soil is hard. I do have a hand aerator that I use, but it's slooooow and painful to use. I do use it around my trees, but I have to be really motivated to use it on the grassy areas.

I've seen those, unfortunately after I bought my aerator, basically a 3 pronged pick that has a place for you to step on a drive the points into the ground. Stomping around sounds like it would be easier. Mine is probably easier to get into areas with low branches.

This last storm was a miss. Barely anything here in Del Mar!

.85 inches on Tuesday and .75 inches on Wednesday at my house in northern Glendale, LA county. Just about a perfect rainstorm, slow and steady so it can soak into the ground.

Our rainwater tank is going in this weekend. It is probably too late to really get it going this year but one can hope we'll have one more storm to fill it up. Can't believe how many buckets of water we've trucked around our yard this winter. Really into all the green everywhere.

Locally,KCBS radio said "Our last rains of the season are this weekend". Thats a big call considering how wet its been.

On the news,TV, a local in Concord said "I just moved from Soucal where we don't have seasons..this is great,let it rain!"

I'm not so excited about the rains right now. Still,I have some yard plants that are not drought type plants and I haven't had to water them since November.

Last..Santa Cruz mountains were at 90" of rain. Most since 111" in 1981.

Crescent City, California....81.25 inches of rain YTD...yes, and it's raining today. Yesterday was beautiful and I got some weeding, etc done, but after several months of seemingly endless rain, I'm way behind and REALLy looking forward to Summer.

Aghhhh! I feel for you Gypsy. From dry winter soucal to rainforest northcoast. We finished at 17.70 inches..compared to our average of 17.99. But,I'm not sure how that can be since it felt like Hayward's 1998's 38" of rain we had. Maybe,we had the same number of rainy days,but the rain itself was gentler. I don't know.

Weather whiplash! It got so much warmer so fast, everything in the garden was wilting! Turned on the irrigation today!

We will live through it, but we're eating a lot of Cheesecake and Oatmeal Cookies. I, myself, have not put on any weight (snort), but the Hubs is looking pretty chunky...

I KNOW ! A week ago I thought our Winter was gone for sure...WRONG !

It hit 80 degrees down here. Our winter is done...the last two 'storms' were a bust and my irrigation is back on.

Hopefully we get a more rain in SD. I am not ready for summer yet.

Well, you do still have April, May and June...sometimes a rain comes through in April down there...when we were in SoCal (Fallbrook), I would start getting really annoyed by the end of June, hating the coming of Summer. After this Winter up here, I may come to dread the coming of another Winter...LOL.