That's crazy. We actually had a quarter inch in the rain gauge this morning. My friend and co-worker who lives in the Newcastle area, had an inch. I didn't even know it was supposed to rain last night.

Has been some heavy rains around us, some bad hail in places. Last evening the heavy rain went 5 miles north of us. We did get some wind up to 80 mph off of it. The wind damaged a lot of things. Has been some licalized flooding. Some still running over the road this morning.

Jennifer, I think y'all have a good chance of seeing some really good drought relief over the next few days. It is about time!

Jay, That is crazy wind. I hope your tomato plants are okay, and I hope the horses didn't go flying away. Be careful out on the roads today. It is hard to be unhappy about any rain, but I wish y'all could get nice normal rain without the hail, flooding, strong winds, etc. I heard that Colorado had some wild weather so I was worried it might make its way down south and find your little corner of KS. It seems like wild weather is the norm there.....wildly dry, wildly windy, etc. Whatever happened to plain old normal rain?

No rain here yet, but we are benefitting from cloudy skies and rain-cooled air by the tail end of the overnight storms that pretty much brushed by just north of us but didn't cause any significant weather here. I feel like the rain is getting closer and closer, although today we still are supposed to be roasting hot in late afternoon. I can tolerate that, just knowing that tomorrow should be cooler and possibly rainy.

Dawn

Dawn the plants in the raised bed south of the garage were ok. Didn't go look at the others. Afraid there will several cages blew over. 4-5 of them had started blooming again after the spray drift. The plants in the main garden are in the open and have caught it this year.

It is frustrating to have the wind blowing them over. I stake mine like crazy and sometimes the thunderstorms still send them tilting at crazy angles even if they don't really get blown all the way down.

Last Sunday's storm did topple a lot of bell pepper plants. They're laying all over one another. I was going to straighten them up today, but decided to wait until the weekend rain is over. I only had about half of them caged or staked because I ran out of those little 3-ring cages before I ran out of bell pepper plants. The jalapenos, habaneros, and other types of peppers stayed upright better than the bells did.

I weeded and harvested today, and then I canned. It is rare for me to spend time weeding in August, but the morning was mild until the sun came out from behind the clouds. I did watch very carefully for snakes. I haven't seen any since it rained, but I'm sure they're still around. Mostly I was weeding out crab grass and morning glories that have sprouted since it rained. I already have morning glories blooming on the garden fence, and don't need more of them because these sprouts were coming up in the flower border and would climb all over the flowers.

I'm hoping for the rain to arrive tomorrow before we can get too, too hot, but it really isn't expected until late in the day or maybe not until the overnight hours.

We got another .5 while I was gone. Think it came Sunday morning. So around 5.2 since it started but many have got way more. My step dad in Liberal got 6+ Thursday evening in a few hours. A lot of flooding and vehicles stranded. People aren't used to water across the streets here. The LE was using boats in some areas.

My garden looked good when I got back. The JD's C-Tex that has the wilt recovered from that and got laid over and was all wilted when I left Friday. It looked good last night but wilting some during the day. A lot of blooming going on now. So hopefully some good fruit set over the next week. I had a BPT tonight. The first of the year. My first pink of the year a JD's Special Pink and a homegrown Big Kim chile. Nothing has the flavor of a homegrown NM type chile pepper and the tomato was good also. I should start having a lot more in the next 2-3 weeks. Then I may get covered up. My CP is still the leader but unless something happens my Goliath is going to overtake it. It is outperforming everything at this point. Literally loaded. They used to do very well here and then during the drought they just didn't perform at all. I had some seeds left so planted a few but only put one in the garden. Wish I had put a half dozen. All but one variety has fruit set and imagine it will soon. Going out to doctor grasshoppers. Will spray the boundaries and put Eco bran around the plant. Don't have enough bran to doctor everything yet but hopefully what I have ordered will be here soon.

Had another 1.5-1.6 down there. So it is wet both places. Rained most of the day Saturday so I didn't get as much done. They are saying a good chance down there Wed eve but have lowered our chances here. What a year is all I can say. Hope everyone got wet this weekend. I'm going to have to replace my roofs and repair some wind damage from Thursday eve but the rain makes it all ok.

Jay, It is an amazing rainfall year for y'all both at home and in Leedey. Simply incredible. I cannot even picture flooding and LE out doing rescue in boats because in my mind y'all are always hot and dry, so the concept of your area being flooded just doesn't compute. (grin) Enjoy this year. It seems like we almost always pay for a wet year by having a dry year follow it. I hope that doesn't happen to us in 2018.

I'm glad you're having such a great tomato year. There's nothing like a wonderful home-grown tomato.

I love, love, love EcoBran. At first, it shocked me when Planet Natural started carrying it because normally they only have organic stuff. I really wasn't happy to see them add a product that contained Sevin, but I carefully considered it, read their reasoning (i.e. people, even organic people, need something that actually kills grasshoppers without harming everything else, and this stuff does) and tried to make peace with their decision to carry it. Eventually I bought a container of it and then, when we had a truly awful grasshopper year, it saved my garden without seeming to harm non-target insects, so I developed a deep appreciation for it. We have a grasshopper population explosion here now. It has been going on since early July. We are not having huge hordes of them move in from the fields like we usually do in July and August. What we're having is tons and tons of new ones hatching constantly---like, every week. It is like it is late Spring instead of late Summer. I don't know what to make of it. Somehow the rain must be responsible for this sudden population explosion. Mostly they still are out in the fields now and haven't moved into the garden too much. I have no idea if/when that will change since the timing of the big hatches is so late.

Dawn

Dawn I have had some grasshopper damage. They got a few tomatoes also including my first Cody's Paste. So decided I had better address the issue as they are getting bigger and also seeing another hatch now. It is humid here and that is something we aren't used too. The heat I can take but not so much the humidity. I have at least one Randy's Brandy turning. Imagine I will have a few more next week and then it should ramp up every week for a while. My KB's are setting fruit well. Another I truly love. They do well and taste great here in the deep sand. The ones I've tasted grown in tighter ground don't seem to have the same flavor. I feel it is the fact my soil drains extremely well.

I hope you can stop those grasshoppers, Jay. I'd hate to see them get more of your tomatoes. I agree with you on KB. It just doesn't have good flavor when grown in my clay, but I know it always does well for you there.