Wow, Dawn. I didn't realize that is what caused the fire season in 2006. I remember hearing even all the way in St Louis how bad it was and then my Grandpa died in April that year, so when I came for the funeral it seemed like I was in the state 5 minutes before I smelled smoke. It was dark as I crossed the state line and could see the glows of wildfires in various places across the horizon in addition to smelling the smoke. I was very alarmed driving alone on some pretty secluded highways with little real-time info on the road closures. Thankfully, my roads were clear, but a couple times I passed locations where the fires were still smoldering right next to the road. I remember my throat being scratchy from all the smoke. Like you, and I'm sure everyone here, I do NOT want that to ever happen again.

I saw 1 hummingbird, 1 time this year. That's typical every year, but I still put out a feeder when they're starting to show up in the spring hoping to have a more than a 1x flyby. I haven't so far. I saw my first Black Swallowtail butterfly flit over our fence into the yard and then right on over the fence into the neighbor's yard. I feel bad for those butterflies this year because I know a lot of us struggled with their host plants. I barely got a dill plant and reseeded a couple times. I have some parsley in a pot that's meant for me, but I'm sure with the growing season the butterflies are struggling so if it turns into a host plant I won't be sad. They'll also eat carrot greens, right? LO lost interest in carrots so I have some that have been in the ground too long, but I'll leave them if the swallowtails could use them.

We just got a brief hard shower. Lowered the temps a bit but no measurable rain. My okra is continuing to produce. Slow but a good start. I have a nice stand of green beans in the hay feeder raised beds my husband made this year - they were full of tomatoes earlier but pulled the plants out couple of weeks ago. The yellow bell peppers are loaded and sweet, have several new squash and zucchini about 3” tall. I planted radish seeds around them. I had read that if you plant radishes and let them go to seed it will deter bugs - don’t know if true or coincidence but I’m still picking zucchini and yellow squash off the first plants I planted last Spring. I planted more for Fall because the old plants are getting woody and I expect will crater before long. I have a question- my annual lantana (red & orange) is making berries. If I leave them will they seed back for next year? Last of all I totally agree with Dawn about game cameras- they are a worthwhile investment for the knowledge of what wildlife you have coming around but also for security. We have 2 and I move them around depending on what I see or suspect. Even put them in a window on my Mothers porch when she had noises during the night and frightened her. Turned out it was squirrels and a coon, but gave us peace of mind. Just reminding all of us to hang in there - Fall is not that far off and we probably all needed to take a break anyway.

Ok, who got what storms and are y’all ok? I lost power for a bit, but I don’t see anything big. I’ll go out once its all over and check the rain gauge.

Ok, right at an inch for a 30-ish minute storm.

Megan, Well you know, that August rain was what started it all, but then many succeeding months remained abnormally dry, so we just couldn't recover and get all nice and green again. Of course, in August when the rain was falling day after day and everything was greening up, we were clueless---we had no idea what was yet to come. That was probably the last time we were that innocent about how important the timing of rainfall is....as well as what heavy rain at the wrong time of the year can do to us.

I still am hoping and praying for rain this week! If we don't have it, then Heaven help us because we're far too dry now.

Rebecca, I do love the softness of the tithonias. I still don't get why yours isn't blooming, but it just has been such a strange year all the way around.

Megan, Yes, the swallowtails will eat the carrot plants. We have a ton of swallowtails here. We always have a lot, but have many more than usual right now. I hope I have enough parsley and dill for them. Some of the parsley and dill are underneath shadecloth and aren't as prone to bolting as the others that are in full sun, so that is a new lesson learned for me, and will give me a way to try to keep their favorite plants going in other summers.

farmgardener, Well, how dare it rain and not give you any measurable rainfall! That is not good (happens here all the time, though). Maybe the next round of storms will drop some meaningful, measurable rainfall.

Whether lantana will reseed or not might depend on the variety. Some hybrids don't produce viable seed. I know that trailing lantanas do not generally produce viable seed (though I think they could if they were cross-pollinated by one of the varieties that produce viable seed.) Some lantanas do produce viable seed, but it can take 6-8 weeks to sprout at 70-75 degrees, so if I wanted to grow some from seed, I'd collect the seeds and start them indoors.....and practice the art of patience. Lantana seed coats are very hard, so it wouldn't hurt to soak them in water for 12-24 hours before sowing the seeds in a sterile, soil-less seed-starting medium. The tough, hardy, native Texas lantana (Lantana horrida) reseeded for me in the sandy soil of the back garden one year, but not since then. Lantana is pretty easy to root from cuttings, so you could root some from cuttings in small pots now and overwinter them indoors in a sunny window.

I don't really have any new garden news. Today so many of my plants looked 1" away from death that I hooked up three water hoses and dragged the hose around the garden, standing at each horrible-looking-nearly-dead plant and administered emergency first aid by drenching the soil around the roots with water. I went from the worst-looking plant to the second worst-looking plant to the third worst-looking plant, etc., until I felt I'd given my best effort to save what I could. There was no reason to use the irrigation system to water all the plants....if that was working, some of them wouldn't have been in such bad shape while others right beside them weren't. Obviously some things can get by on really, really minimal watering in drought, and others cannot. So, I just did garden triage and tried to help the ones I could. There's just no moisture in the soil, and watering every 5th day in order to barely keep the flowers alive for the butterflies obviously is failing because that's just not enough for some of them. There's not necessarily any rhyme or reason to it. A bed could have 30 zinnia plants in it and maybe 25 of them looked reasonably good---and five looked like they were taking their last breath. It is so bizarre. So, there I stood, a gardening fool in a 101-degree garden with a heat index as high as 107 (not the whole time I was out there, I am sure), and I tried to save what I could. I was so hot that I was sure I was going to become ill. I was drinking, but when I realized I had stopped sweating (a sign of dehydration and impending heat exhaustion), I knew I had to stop and come in after a couple of hours. This whole save-the-plant thing happened because I walked down to the mailbox, thereby walking past the garden, and observed how awful it looked....lately I try to avoid even going past the garden in the afternoons for this very reason. So, the things I gave a deep watering mostly perked up, but a few probably are too far gone to save. We'll see how they look in the morning.

Because I came indoors feeling overheated and almost, but not quite, ill, I declined to respond when we had another All-Page fire in western Love County this afternoon. I decided they'd just have to handle this one without me because I didn't need to expose myself to that heat again, and I'm not sorry. Last week I was out there for 9 hours on one day (I think it was Friday) at one of those, and I wasn't up to repeating that experience today after I'd already gotten too hot outdoors. It had better rain tomorrow because the garden and I are at that point where we cannot keep on in this heat/drought. If we don't get a couple of inches of rain this week, I don't think I'll be able to keep the flowers going for the bees, other pollinators and butterflies. I've tried so hard to keep them going until the next rainfall comes....well, the next rainfall needs to be very, very soon. I'm sure that tomorrow I'll have more dead plants to pull up and throw on the compost pile---that's become the story of my life lately.

I do have a lot of watermelons to harvest tomorrow---maybe a dozen or so ripe icebox melons, and maybe a half dozen small ones with BER that won't get a chance to mature because I've cut back so much on watering. Choices. I'd rather have the flowers than more melons, but without rain, we'll have neither by this time next week.

Tim asked me yesterday, after I checked the creek to see if it is empty, if the beavers and beaver dam were still there. I saw no beavers, but I only observed from the bridge because I'm not walking deeply enough into the woods in snake season to look at the dam. We don't seem to have running water in the creek, so all that is left now is pools of water in the usual deep hole areas. When this happened in the past, fools that we were, we would go down into the creek with buckets and nets and scoop up the fish that still were alive and move them to the pond or lagoon, but neither of them has enough water to support any life form now (the lagoon could support crawdads in its mud, I guess) so that is out. Since the spring that fed the pond dried up years ago (I think in the drought of 2008), we have nowhere to put the fish nowadays, and I wouldn't venture through our snake-infested woodland to go to the creek anyway, being older and wiser and all that. We were foolish and lucky back them to avoid being snakebitten, venturing into the woods at midsummer in a drought year. The bullfrogs seem to have disappeared. Presumably they left us to go find a pond or creek that still has a lot of water, but tree frogs are moving into the garden in increasing numbers.

This evening I saw the most unusual armadillo I've ever seen. If Tim hadn't been outdoors with me, I would have thought I was seeing things. I saw it and began to follow it because I wanted to catch up with it and get a good look at it, and Tim did the same thing from a different location in the yard. He asked me if I thought it looked black instead of the usual dark gray, and I said yes I did. I tried to get close enough to it to rule out that it had rolled in mud or something, and did so. It was just a really, really, really dark-colored 9-banded armadillo--so dark that it looked black. I hope it comes back again so I can get a photo of it. Naturally neither of us had our phones on us when this little armadillo crossed our path.

That's my day. Tomorrow I want for my day to be cool, wet and muddy. Boring, even. I could handle a boring day when I'm stuck inside while it is raining. Do I really think it will happen? Probably not.

Rebecca, No rain here, nothing happened here, all is well....or as well as it can be when one is this deeply in drought.

Congrats on receiving an inch of rain!

Dawn

Jacob, sorry about your friend issue. Hope it works out well.

We got a half inch...but it seemed like much more. Maybe because it came down so fast and hard.

farmgardener, I'll have to try the radish trick! That's amazing that you're still picking squash.

Sounds like your garden is doing so well.

Our heat index was 105 this afternoon. It was so miserable walking around "crunch crunch" on the grass. It's muddy now and while I don't like mud, I'll take it over crunchy grass in during the summer months.

Dawn, hoping and praying you get rain tonight/tomorrow!

Well our forecast had shown to be very, very promising. It still is in terms of temperature, but rain? No. We got a quick downpour today, and other than some slight drizzles various times in the afternoon we got nothing. Now my 10 day forecast is showing almost no rain, and the chances tomorrow have been really knocked down. I have a feeling severe drought will start creeping in pretty quickly. Just miles north of us at the moment, if we can't just catch one, good day of rain, or even a few days. We really have not had that at all this year. They've all been quick, snappy downpours! Complete contrast to last year, which was rainy almost every day. I've been preparing a bed for fall lettuces, and I notice that I'm having such a hard time getting water to soak in because of how dry it is. It just pools up and runs off. Watering anything is like that right now! It's like watering peat moss fresh from the bag. Of course, the rain today helped some, but I notice it sure didn't soak in much.

I was eating weeds (weed eater teehee) at the time of when the rain came. I finished, and got pretty wet.

RE fall weather, our weather as a whole this year has been quite wonky. Late cold, wayyy early heat, then a really WEIRD cool spell in the second half of July, then super hot for a few days one August, then back to cool....and the wind this year! It's been horrible at times. And our weather forecasts are just all over the place. Honestly, I think megan is right on with a real early freeze, then lengthy fall. I just feel like we'll have a September freeze, first time in 5 years if so.

Farmgardener, it sounds as if your garden is doing really well! It wouldn't hurt to post some pictures, you know. ;-)

Jennifer, our heat index was not near as bad, but it was quite humid this afternoon. Rains like this don't do a whole lot of good....just make it humid.

Jennifer, We're getting something from the skies now. At this point, anything is better than nothing!

Hopefully that half-inch of rain you got is just the beginning and there will be more.

Larry, I love your attitude and always have. You have been through so much with your family, and you just keep on keeping on----taking care of everyone around you as you always have. I have so much respect for you.

For those of you who do not know because perhaps you haven't been members here for quite as long as some of us, for as long as I can remember, Larry was always building gardens for relatives who were not as healthy and active as him---taking care of the gardens for them if they had health or aging issues that prevented them from tending their own gardens, etc. I could barely manage to build, plant and maintain one garden, and Larry was out there building gardens everywhere and tending all of them too. Larry gardened harder and in more locations than anyone I know.

Y'all, Guess what we have here......Fire and Rain.....in that order, only by "here" I don't actually mean our house. **Well, now it is raining at our house so I came back to add that news.

After we were told that our chances of Severe Weather had diminished and it would be a quiet night, a big storm rolled in. Unfortunately it has a ton of thunder and lightning with rain (apparently) lagging far behind, and it set grass on fire near the local nursing home and hospital.....with no rain falling to put out the fire. So, we got paged out to a grass fire in just about the worst possible location as far as vulnerable folks who were sitting ducks in buildings being threatened by fire.....and then, while volunteer firefighters were headed towards their stations, the rain started to fall and put that one out. Now we have another grass fire, started by lightning, and this one threatening a home. (sigh) So, Tim is headed out the door for the second time in the last half-hour. And now there is a third fire---this one apparently inside a house, involving a gas-powered water heater. (sigh) Can we blame the last one on the storm? There's more stuff going on.....power out, cows out in road, cow hit by a hit-and-run driver (why run off?), etc. The radios are going bonkers. When it rains, it pours.....

The good news is that heavy rain is falling at our house. Of course, it might not last log, but then again it might. You have to laugh....just as soon as the NWS said our chances of getting a significant storm were diminishing, all hell broke lose mere minutes later from the skies---first fire, and then rain. Our Asst Emergency Mgmt Director has noticed that whenever the NWS says that our chances of rain/severe weather are dropping and he spreads the word to all of us, then it rains like crazy. lol lol lol Now we know what it takes for us to get rain---they have to say we are unlikely to get it.

The heavy rain may not last long, and we may not get much rain from this round, but we've gotten at least three fires from it....and tons and tons of very loud thunder, a little wind and far too much lightning.

I hope we get enough rain tonight that the garden perks up and is able to live another day since heavier rain is in the forecast for tomorrow night. I guess I also should be hoping that lightning doesn't set all my garden's beautiful cypress mulch on fire because it seems like that kind of night. We need less thunder and lightning here (the thunder terrifies old, old dog Jet and he barks back at it) and more rain.

Fire and rain. When I chose the song title I wasn't really figuring the sky would bring us both. I guess I should have known better. This is not our first rodeo (drought rodeo, that is).

I think I will sleep in tomorrow morning because I am betting that more fires are a good possibility and there won't be much sleeping here for the next few hours. I wish we could catch all the thunder and lightning in paper cups and somehow convert it to rain.

Dawn

Now we have a structure on fire, and I doubt the rain will put it out. I think it is well east of town, so the folks east of town will be rushing to that one. I am worried (by the address) that the structure belongs to friends of ours. This night is a total nightmare so far. I hope it is their barn, and not their house (although for ranchers, it it a total nightmare if it is the barn too).

I must have missed Larry's post last night. Great post. Wow.

Dawn, you guys have a heck of a time down there with fires. I hope nobody was hurt in any of the rounds last night.

During our Fire and Rain last night, we got a measly 0.08" of rain---and that is a generous guess, based on looking at our rain gauge. It could be 0.06" or 0.07". So, that heavy rain that sounded so good when it was falling last night must have lasted only a couple of minutes....like a quick little downburst. Heavier rain fell in some parts of our county---at least an inch fell in 2 or 3 pretty small areas, but the price they paid for that was some strong wind and power poles/power lines down, resulting in power outages. Some parts of our county didn't get any rain at all, so at least we got something.

The fire east of town was our friends' house. Lightning struck an electricity pole outside their house, and started something---probably an electrical fire---that was causing the house to fill with smoke.

So, the rain was a mixed bag here last night---some rain, some fire. It was worse next door in Jefferson County where lightning ignited multiple grass fires, mainly in the western half of the county. Unlike our area, no rain fell to help put out the first started by lightning. Firefighters from at least three additional counties, including one Texas county, were out there in Jefferson County last night helping fight those fires---they've been very dry and have had some horrible wildfires, including a 1200-acre one on Monday which reignited during last night's storm. Jefferson County got almost no rain last night, but plenty of lightning and fires. I'm hoping all of us Red River counties get some rain today and tonight, but we don't need more fires. Dry storms with lots of lightning are a huge hazard when an area is in drought and dry vegetation ignites so easily.

I see that some parts of the OKC metro are experiencing flash flooding this morning. Well, at least that means some good rain fell in some places. I hope all of you up there are getting the rain and not the flooding.

I was planning to go out to the garden and harvest all those icebox melons first thing this morning, but there is thunder and lightning out there right now (no rain), so I guess that's not going to happen.

Jacob, Do they have any sort of rainfall still in your forecast? We still have a 60% chance today and a 70% chance tonight, with 0.50-1.00" possible today. After that, there's a 20-50% chance almost every day and night for the next week, so I'm hopeful we'll get something. The QPF still seems to indicate we'll get a lot of rain here, but our NWS point forecast doesn't seem as optimistic. They also raised our forecast high for today from 88 to 95, and I don't know why. I fear it is because they think most of the rain will miss us, so we won't have a lot of rain-cooled air and clouds to cool us down.

Like your area, we are looking at having the drought advance more if we don't get good rainfall this week. We are in Severe Drought now and are hoping that the rain will fall so we do not advance to Extreme Drought over the next few weeks.

When you cannot get the soil to absorb the water, there is not a lot you can do to change that in the short term. Your soil has become so dry and dehydrated that it has become hydrophobic. I can relate because sometimes that is a problem here, although it is not as much of a problem in the raised beds, which have lots of organic matter in them, as it is in grade-level soil that has not been amended nearly as much over the years. The cause of the hydrophobic soil can vary and can include issues beyond just the lack of rainfall or watering techniques. Sometimes it is a soil chemistry issue, and sometimes that is something you can fix, though rarely is there a quick fix available. Some people have had luck 'breaking' the hydrophobic soil tendency by adding a gentle, organic (castille soap, for example) liquid soap (not detergent!) to the water when watering. The soap acts as a surfactant that helps change the surface tension and allows water to penetrate the hydrophobic soil. Sometimes when fighting wildfires we add soap or firefighting foam to our brush truck's water tanks for the same reason---it makes the water wetter, so to speak.

Here's a very old Garden Web discussion about hydrophobic soil from the Soil, Compost & Mulch forum. If you have time to read it, you'll find some suggestions that might be helpful to you. You'll also see that many people offer many varying opinions about the possible cause of the hydrophobic soil. My personal experience here in our area is that drought and lack of rainfall are the main reason for the hydrophobic soil---so don't blame yourself. There's only so much you can do with the weather conditions that you're given. It is easy to tell when our soil here has become hydrophobic because the top soil layer literally turns to dust, and it is that dust layer that seems to repel water and keep it from being absorbed into the ground. Once we get that dust layer here, nothing seems to really fix the problem except good heavy rainfall and lots of it over a period of weeks.

[Hydrophobic Soil[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/hydrophobic-soil-dsvw-vd~1678105)

I agree with you that the rain that is supposedly in the forecast and doesn't fall just drives up the heat index. Ours made it up to 107 yesterday thanks to higher dewpoints and higher humidity values well in advance of the measly rainfall that finally came after dark. I expect today to be the same way if the rain skirts us and doesn't fall here.

I wouldn't even mind an early freeze if it means that some drought-busting rain would fall. I'm not going to have any plants left to freeze if we don't get rain because they'll die before a freeze or a frost even is a possibility.

Our first year here, we had our first freeze on Sept. 29 or 30th (compared to an average first freeze in mid- to late-November). I was shellshocked when the freeze popped up in the forecast, and spent that September day building a mini-greenhouse around one bed that had tomatoes and peppers in it. I used hay bales for the walls (it wasn't a big bed I tried to save---I think it was 12' long by 4' wide) and covered it all with 6 mm plastic. Most of the plants survived. Only the parts of the plants that touched the plastic died from the cold (since plastic conducts cold). Had I used hoops to suspend the plastic above the plants where it didn't touch them, I wouldn't have lost anything, but this was before I started using hoops and row covers. After that first early freeze, we had a lot of nice weather for a long time, so I was able to continue harvesting from those plants for ages.

We've never had an early freeze like that again as far as I can remember, but we've had some in October.

Dawn

Dawn, I popped over here to see if you were getting any rain. My house missed it completely yesterday, although we had a little bit at work. Probably like your .08" :) I kept checking the mesonet and radar all night, it looked like it was completely missing my house again, even though it was clearly thundering and lightening most of the early morning. But it must have started raining pretty good about the time I woke up. When I left for work my street was doing it's river dance. That usually means about an inch. Damon Lane said the southern half of the state was slated for 3 inches over the next few days. I hope you get it all!

Eileen and hubby Larry went fishing with us yesterday. I was disappointed the fish weren't biting better for Larry. We still did okay; Larry's not used to boat fishing and figured out quickly it's a lot different than fishing from shore. AND, it was supposed to be cloudy all day until showers late in the afternoon. But instead it lightly rained off and on. So we retreated to the Marina a couple times. (And one can't just go into the bar and not order anything.) I swear the owner of that place has nothing but 90-proof alcohol. And doesn't know how to make a weak drink. I hope Eileen and Larry will come back when they can for a second try! LOL

AND then about 5 or so, we four were in Lopez in Wagoner having WAY too much food when we heard from Amy that a big storm was moving down to west Wagoner Cty. I said, "No prob. West Wagoner County has nothing to do with us." Famous last words, eh. We walked out to chaos in the sky. What a downpour. It was slowly moving east (toward OUR house, not north toward E and L's, so they actually got home before WE did, even though they had three times more miles to go. We got drenched just running from the carport to the house. We were a wet fishy mess. From 7 pm until 7 am this morning, the only thing I did besides sleep was to take a bath. We were smart, GDW and I, and sent all our fish home with E and L, so we didn't have to mess with those.

What an absolute riot the day was. GDW and I had SO much fun. E and L, GOOD company! Neighbor Scott out here said tornado warnings were going off. We missed them cuz we were trying to work our way home with near-zero visibility.

Gauge showed 1". My morning glory tower is now a morning glory mound. MAYBE GDW can help me stand it back up, maybe not. The Mexican sunflowers are all down. They're coming out. I wasn't thrilled with them this year anyway. lol

Then I got home and read about Dawn's day, and Larry's story. That was a sobering story, Larry, and SUCH a good message(s) in there. Thank you so very much. I have a feeling if we all were neighbors, there would be many other sobering stories to hear. Life sometimes is not for the faint of heart, right? And so yes, each little good thing that happens for us isn't little. Each little good thing is a BIG good thing. I can't tell you how something like that puts things into perspective.

And your fires and chaos last night, too, Dawn! What's a morning glory tower knocked over, what are 6' tithonia plants down? Absolutely nothing. Absolutely nothing. Easy come, easy go.

Great line about eating weeds, Jacob. Made me feel a little less awkward about referring to it as whipping weeds. Hahahahaha!!

I was thinking about your difficulties surrounding a friend and thinking what a strange last few days it has been, with so many of my friends having these sad hiccups suddenly (myself included with wonky back); our two friends here were also at the ER, for BOTH of them! We all three seem to be back on track now, and then I'm reading about all YOUR situations. Wow. Wow.

Love and blessings to you all. We're on our way to doc appt in a few minutes. So we'll likely be doing clean-up work in the yard when we get back.

Dawn, I have a map from NOAA, that states that our earliest first 32 degree freeze was mid Sept. Of course, it gives no dates, but the map is from data recorded in 1980-81 to 2009-10, so it was sometime in the last 36 years. That is compared to our average first frost of mid Oct., according to the same map. Crazy, crazy!

Those maps are fascinating actually. The latest first 32 degree freeze on their records (same dates) was mid Nov. I'll link the maps below.

https://www.weather.gov/iwx/fallfrostinfo#32FreezeMaps

I've been really trying to moisten this soil- turning watered topsoil over to penetrate below, etc., and this morning it is starting to shape up. I think I'll try and plant some lettuce today...

Thanks to all for the kind words. Dawn, you may be tooting my horn louder than it should be, but thinks anyway.

We got very little rain last night, but it helped. I had puller a 9 thanked pasture cultivator through an area a week or so ago to burst up the top soil for water pentatration. I went back over that area a few minutes ago and pulled up no dry soil. I also plowed up an area next to the road to plant a cover crop of cow peas. I figure I am going to need a decoy crop because I brushhogged my neighbors peas and sweet potatoes.

My neighbor has a produce farm and small store. I have never seen a garden eaten like his, the garden soil was torn up like a rodeo areina from deer hooves. Neighbor said he watched 9 deer come out of my thicket, pass my peas, and cross the road to eat his peas. I told him that proves he is a better gardener than I am. I think the truth is he waters too much and his pea vines are green and fresh, while mine were dry and maybe a little yellow. But I just let him keep paying a water bill and fattening up the deer while I was picking peas and putting them in the freezer. Gardening can be a lot like life, you can bring a lot of your problems upon yourself.

We are still sharing a lot of produce. This has been a very bad gardening year but we are still getting much more than we can use.

Larry, thank you so much for your story. It's a good reminder to be thankful for every day we have and to do all the good that we can. I too am grateful to have my mom out of a bad situation and look forward to her continuing progress. I'm lucky that so far everyone who really knows the situation has been supportive. And your message was really well timed, too. I got a curveball of a phone call from the doctor just prior to leaving work and spent the evening in tears - not because it was bad news but the toll of the emotional rollercoaster I've been on. I take care of a lot of people and put a lot of pressure on myself to control my body because the pain wears me out and then I can't take care of them which makes me feel like I'm letting them down. But your words reminded me to relish what I have while I have it. Adding to my own stress isn't serving me well.

Dawn, was smoke the only damage to your friend's home? If there was damage, please let me know if there is a Go Fund Me or another way to assist them.

My husband and I both had rain at work yesterday in the late afternoon but it missed our house. We could see lightning far in the distance from the storm that missed us wreaking havoc further east while sitting on the patio last night. To make up for it, the clouds opened in the wee hours this morning and were continuing to dump rain until just before we left for work. There was a break around the time the dog usually goes out thankfully, but a loud clap of thunder stopped him in the middle of his business. I could just imagine him at the door saying, "No really. I was done. The carpet is safe." LOL As for rain amount... I heard it start and thought about running to put out a rain gauge but there was so much thunder and lightning that I decided it wouldn't be prudent. Checking the weather underground stations around us, we got around 1.5". It sounded like more, but when I looked at the yard after sunrise, what I saw was consistent with that amount.

Jacob - I have some elderberries that Bruce gave me and I don't know how, but they developed something that sounds very much like the hydrophobic soil Dawn describes. They were getting regular water like everything else then all the sudden they were droopy. The plants are still in small pots so I was able to take them in the house but still struggling to get them to hold water. I don't think they're going to make it. Bruce, if you're reading this, I need new plants. With the bradfords gone, I had a perfect spot for them - so Murphy's Law they went rogue.

Nancy - My cousin posted something about Mars being in retrograde causing drama in people's lives. I don't know about Mars or retrograde, but I know about full moons and all the weird calls I would get on a full moon when working as a telephone operator. Are we more quick to attribute things out of the ordinary to these phenomena or are they actually having an impact? I don't know but I still find it curious.

No time to check the rain gauge this morning, but I'm sure we got at least 2 inches. I couldn't sleep once it started because of the hen/chick in the makeshift coop. Finally, got up at 5 am to check and drain the tarp (which I did last night after the 1/2 inch). The tarp had already came loose from the weight of the rain. However, Rosa and Jules were fine in their little dog crate bed. The straw was wet, but they were fine. I moved them back to the storage area of the big coop in a dog play pen. Put everyone's food inside coop.

The area where the SUV floated off the road just east of I35 on Indian Hills was nearly flooded. I watched 3 small cars go through it, so I did too. There was a guy out putting up a sign "flood area". Honestly, I was afraid to drive to work today--ya know how the news channels always make it all so dramatic. It wasn't nearly as bad as they were making it. It's hard to tell from our house--we don't have all the drainage stuff that the city has...so it does look like a lake at our house and neighborhood.

Anyway...just checking in. Back to work now.

I found about 4 lbs of daikon radish seeds lift over from last year and sowed them. I found no cow peas, so called wife in Mean Arkansas to bring me 2 pounds of pea seed. I have 50 pounds of Austrian winter peas but I don't want to plant them this early.

I keep seeing the radar showing Love County's thumb in yellow or red today. I'm hoping Dawn is getting a good rain.

I grew Black Krim once, it was a spitter. I don't know if it was crossed seeds, the horrible weather (spring 2015) or if I wasn't picking at the right time. Maybe someday I'll try it again.

I love black cherry fruit. But it has been a disease magnet for me as well. I wonder if it requires something in the soil that other tomatoes are not sensitive to? It grew great last year, but it's ugly now in a different bed. Maybe it likes more shade.

At my house the black swallowtails LOVED parsnips. I might plant a couple in the flower beds next year. They also have dill like flowers the 2nd year that attract little pollinators. The parsley grown for roots (like Hamburg parsley) doesn't bloom the first year, so it's a good host plant, too.

I got an inch out of that storm last night. What went through Owasso did not have the wind and lightning that the storm that went through Tulsa had. I had a hard time convincing Nancy and Eileen it was a BIG storm, LOL. Doesn't look like we will get any today.

{{Hugs}} to all of you suffering through trials and pain.

Megan, RE the Mars thing, I'm obviously not to talk about this to anybody, and so I haven't mentioned it on the forums here, but I will say that there has been a LOT of drama, family-related issues in our family recently. I won't mention what I'm not allowed to, but I can say some of it has been attributed to my grandparents' health. We think my grandmother had a stroke earlier in the year, and her health is rapidly declining. She's diabetic, and her memory is NOT what it was just months ago. She's so forgetful anymore. Her dad had similar issues before he passed.

On top of that, she has a condition (forgive me for not knowing the name) that causes her to get brain bleeds under any stress. Not good! She needs to be de-stressing herself, but it's hard when my grandpa is in and out of the hospital every few weeks. His health is also declining. He's had kidney stones almost every month this year, and just a couple weeks ago he had to be rushed to the ER having seizures. He's well now, but doesn't act like he was before the seizures.

She has episodes where she literally goes nuts. A few weeks ago, for example, she called everybody saying my grandpa had fallen in the pond and was drowning (because she definitely does not have the strength to get him out in that situation)....My aunts said it was horrible because she was just out in the middle of the field next to the pond, pacing back and forth, freaking out, crying, etc. My grandpa was nowhere near that pond, and was, in fact, the entire time at a house up the road talking to a friend. Where she got the idea he fell in? She was literally going nuts.

As said earlier, there are many other family related issues going on at the moment that I'm not to talk about. It seems as if a lot of this stuff is hitting all at once. It's hard. It seems it's not just like this for us. It's nice to have a forum with other people of similar interests, that face similar challenges to what we are facing. Really nice. Larry's post really hits home.

Overcast and really humid today. Oh, it just started raining!!

I have typed a long answer twice and lost it, so for now y'all get the short answer.

Only about a half-inch of rain from today and last night combined, but some parts of our county got over 3".

I'm happy for all of you who got good rainfall, and still hoping for more here. I am sorry for all the health issues----we all have them, you know!

I'll write more later.

Jacob, I'm so so sorry your grandparents aren't doing well, and for other troubles. (Having said that, Grandpa and Grandma need to let each other know where they're going! ) Ouch, it's coming in waves for some right now, it seems. And yes, I agree, it is nice to have a forum of friends with similar interests--it appears friendship, among them. Thankful for all of you.

Eileen and I agreed that one of these days, she and Amy and I are going to have to come over and visit you and your family!! LOLOLOLOL.

And GDW's check today revealed that, indeed, his UTI is gone. Now THAT makes me happy. BUT, if any of you in the area need a urologist, there is one I would caution you about. Had I not insisted they check his urine first, he would have gotten a cystoscopy and been set up for a CT. CRAZY. They had his medical facts wrong, their right hand had no idea what their left was doing. And several other malfunctions. Like many of the rest of you, this isn't our first rodeo and we do our homework.

I was feeling so happy, that when we got home, and it was overcast and only about 80 degrees, I suggested we go fishing again today for late afternoon fishing. So we did, but no luck. Caught 3, but let them go. And when I let GDW off at the pier and waited for him to pull the truck onto the loading ramp, I was in the little bay and the boat died. Deader than a door nail. There I was out in the middle, with one oar. And GDW doesn't swim well, so that was out of the question. We have a trolling motor, but GDW hadn't shown me how to set it up or start it. So just the boat and the oar and me. I got us to the nearest shore, opposite the loading ramp; GDW drove around to there, and meanwhile, two helpful strangers about our age showed up to help. So GDW got in the boat with me and set up the trolling motor; and one of the helpful strangers drove our truck back to the loading ramp. GDW and I were laughing so hard. Titan was in the truck. Garry's WALLET was in the truck. And the guy was in our truck and had Garry's keys. G said, "Hope he doesn't just drive into the sunset." And I said, "And what kind of guard dog do we HAVE, that he'll let just anyone into the truck!" The helpful stranger backed the truck down; GDW and I jumped out and guided pulled the boat onto the trailer with a bit of effort.

The reason for the dead boat? Ran out of gas. Not smart. But funny, after the fact.

Another funny thing. Titan gave up on going fishing with us last year and hasn't gone since. Way too darned hot for him, he decided. Well today, when we were getting ready, Titan was prancing around. I said, "You wanna go fishing?" He ran to the truck. I said, "Really? You want to go FISHING?" I opened the back door and he leaped in. And when we got there, he practically leaped into the boat. He was very happy to be out with us. And it dawned on us that it wasn't too hot for him, so yeah, he was good to go. So cute. Smart dog.

And so another funny chapter to our fishing trips. Sure glad my back was 100% today. Hope it is tomorrow! LOL

And Larry, you don't sound like a slowpoke. Sounds like you're not letting any grass grow under your feet. And I thought Madge was in CA! No? In AK? Both?

So we didn't get the yard cleaned up, we didn't set up the morning glory tower, and didn't pull out tithonia. And hopefully by this weekend, I'll be able to attend to gardening more closely for the next week.

Dawn, I know you speak the truth, there are health issues circling around all of us. Hugs to all of us, all the way around!

Mars retrograde. I've paid attention to Mercury retrograde, but not Mars. Something new to research in my spare time.

First. I just love y'all. Thanks for sharing your ups and downs and life situations. Life is such a ride, isn't it? Beautiful and ugly and amazing and hard. Like a garden.

Speaking of life. I need to get mine together.

Our neighbor said we got over 3 inches of rain. Hoping those who still need more, get it tonight. I'm okay that they've taken it out of our forecast for tonight. At least for now.

Jacob, my thoughts are with you on your grandparents and memory issues. I have an uncle that will not remember me by Christmas, and who barely did last Christmas (knew he knew me but didn’t know how or know my name), and an aunt who is still her sweet, cheerful self but can’t remember what she did yesterday, or a few weeks ago. It’s sad and scary for everyone. Dementia and mini strokes certainly change who people are.

I hope my yard guy can get into the yard to mow tomorrow. It’s looking shaggy. And I need to clean up and plant stuff.

Haha Jennifer, love that second paragraph of your post. It's amazing how relatable our lives are to a garden, isn't it? No wonder gardening is a comfort in times of hardship. After all, it is living life too!

So, more rain did not fall here. Most of our county ended up with at least an inch, but several scattered locations along the Red River got less, and that included us and our Mesonet station at Burneyville. So, I don't think our slightly more than a half inch of rain will be much help to a garden that has been struggling so much with the drought conditions. Every drop helps, of course, but there just weren't enough rain drops. Since we didn't get much rain, we aren't going to be as cool as originally forecast either, but I'm hopeful that we'll at least only be in the 90s and not in the 100s.

Those of you who got a lot of rain....please be especially watchful for snakes. They will be out and moving around and enjoying the cooler, wetter weather too. We always see them a lot more with the first big autumn cool-down and this early cool spell certainly will please them.

Rebecca, I could handle shaggy if that meant the grass was growing. I think we aren't going to have to mow again for a long time. As it is, Tim has only been mowing the side yard where we come and go from the house, driveway and detached garage. Nothing else has to be mowed because it is brown, crispy, crunchy and not growing. This side yard area benefits from water every week or two when we drain the girls' wading pool, which is 7' x 12' and holds water about 15" deep. It isn't a lot of water, but it greens up the area where it drains pretty quickly. So, if a person doesn't like to mow, I guess drought is beneficial in that way.

Jacob, Memory issues, cognitive decline and dementia are hard to deal with. Alzheimer's Disease and other types of cognitive decline ran through my dad's family of 9 siblings like a buzz saw....we saw one after another of them develop it in their 80s. Really, I think I saw the decline with most of them in their early 70s, but it did not necessarily progress to the point where it was a huge issue until they hit their 80s. Dementia and cognitive decline can be different in each person, but the most important thing we learned is that somebody has to take away that person's car keys before they drive off, get lost and cannot be found.

My dad and all his siblings are long gone now but I'll never forget how hard it was to deal with each of them as their cognitive function declined. For most, their personality changed and at some point we realized that they couldn't tell reality from fantasy any longer. Some were much worse than others. My dad's personality didn't really change very much in a negative way---he just sort of quietly faded away into the background.

Gardening is great therapy for dealing with issues like this---it gives us a way to focus on life and living and gives us a sense of normalcy that can be hard to find when the health issues of family members are turning our lives upside down.

Jennifer, Getting over 3" of rain is awesome. Your garden probably is going to explode with new growth.

Nancy, Titan is smart and has decided where he draws the line with the heat. Our dogs are the same way. Once the heat reaches a certain level, they only want to go outside for a little while early in the morning and then again in the evening hours just before sunset. I think they are smarter than us.

Amy, I was watching that radar too, and going out into the yard and standing there and staring up at the clouds and wondering where the rain was. From looking at the radar, we should have been getting a downpour, but we didn't. We had some light misty, almost fog-like, rain at times throughout the day, so I think it mostly was evaporating before it reached the ground. It was so frustrating. This is not uncommon in drought when rain in the upper levels just evaporates as it falls through drier surface air.

Megan, As far as I know, it was only a little smoke damage. The firefighters tried to find the source of the smoke without tearing big holes in walls and ceilings. When I fell asleep around 2 a.m., the firefighters were back out there for a second time as smoke filled the house again. I don't even know if they found the source. It is likely the lightning strike caused a power surge that caused the wiring to burn and smolder somewhere inside a wall or up in the attic, and those problems can be hard to locate. The thermal imager was not picking up a hot spot that would have indicated an active fire within the wall or attic, but the smoke had to be coming from somewhere. I'm sure they had an electrician out yesterday checking everything for them---this couple happens to be life-long second-generation volunteer firefighters and they know the danger of ignoring an electrical wiring issue.

Soil hydrophobia is more common than most people realize, even in container plantings. I imagine that big July heat wave alone was enough to cause it in the upper levels of soil, whether the plants are in the ground or in containers.

Larry, Honestly, I don't think I said enough about what a kind, loving helpful and nurturing person you are. When I think of you, I think of all those gardens you built and tended for folks who no longer were in good enough health to do it themselves. It takes a special person to do that and you are humble and won't toot your own horn. You are special.

Before all this rain that we were supposed to get ever arrived (and most of it never arrived), our soil moisture level at 4" was down to 0.07, which is just dismal. This morning it is up to 0.40, which is a huge improvement, but you're supposed to be irrigating if it is below 0.50 so the rain wasn't even enough to make irrigation unnecessary. No wonder I could not water enough to keep plants happy in recent weeks---there is just too little residual soil moisture. One thing about drip irrigation is that it puts out low amounts of water over a longer time, and I wonder if my water is evaporating before it gets deeply enough into the soil to help the plants enough in these drought conditions. So, I've started watering more by hand-held hose, which takes a ton of time, but allows me to direct a lot of water, rapidly, to individual plants that look parched. I can't run irrigation all day like the garden needs unless we win the lottery or something, so the garden is just going to fade away, I suppose. There's a chance of rain every day and every night for pretty much the foreseeable future, but based on the poor rainfall we received (relative to the amount the QPF was predicting) the last couple of days, I'm not counting on much more falling. The pattern of having the heavier rainfall miss us has been going on since last fall, other than that one rainy spell in February, and it doesn't seem likely to change for a while yet. Once a drought pattern sets up here, it is hard to break it.

On this morning's Drought Monitor Map, Extreme Drought has popped up along our county's north/northwest border, in the Jefferson County area....I was expecting it for Jefferson County, but not necessarily expecting it would be right at our county line, so I am a little freaked out by that. I really wasn't expecting Extreme Drought to come anywhere near us until later in the month if rain didn't fall. Jefferson County is a lot drier than us, so I did expect it for them---I actually thought they'd move into it last week (but I'm no drought expert ). Extreme Drought is creeping our way from all four directions, but that corner of the county near Jefferson County obviously will have it first, unless they got a whole lot more rain than our end of the county did. I think that if Extreme Drought does reach us, it will do so by traveling northward from Cooke County. Right now I think it remains at Cooke County's southern border, though I admit I rally wasn't paying attention to the Texas portion of the Drought Monitor Map when I checked it briefly a few minutes ago. Really, since we are in a temperate climate, it is rare for us to go into Extreme Drought at this time of the year and in the rare years when it happens, it does shock me. Severe Drought is bad enough....Extreme Drought is just a monster you cannot fight.

Dawn

I finally gave up on catching up on reading everything!

We can back from vacation on Aug 1st and I feel like I'll never get caught up. As usual the garden looks horrible after being gone for 2+ weeks. I expected it, but I had hoped my son would keep things watered a little better. Can't really blame him, since he's not truly interested in the garden. It takes a certain amount of interest sometimes gut instinct when it comes to knowing what needs done. Other than a few of the potted plants in the ICU area, I didn't lose much.

Gophers took out a few cucumber vines, but I'm still getting enough to have way more than I need. Not canning a lot of pickles this year, so it should force us to use up some of the excess we have on hand.

Megan, I'll be taking more elderberry cuttings over the next couple of weeks, so sharing a few more won't be a problem. Instead of water rooting, I may just try prepping some of my sandy soil and just try to start them in the ground. Well mulched of course, in case Dawn's fall weather sensors prove to be true. I'm in denial on that one, but I've been having the same feeling for a while now. I hope we are wrong!

Nearly every tomato variety I planted this year has produced very well. Black Sea Man and Mortgage Lifter VFN have been a little disappointing. Two each planted and one out of two has not set a single fruit! The notable black/purple tomatoes have been Spudatula, Carbon and Black from Tula have been beasts when it comes to production and flavor. Black Cherry has gained a place on the 'grow them again' list! The plants are huge and were heavily loaded up until the raccoons found them. More about the coons in a bit.

The raccoons also picked the Spudakee Purple tomatoes I was going to save seed from!

The other varieties, sungold, heidi, early girl, jetstar, juliet and principe borghese have been crazy! Most are still producing. I've kinda let the sungolds and principe borghese go, simply because I can't find time to keep them picked. I've dehydrated, frozen, canned and given away a bunch along with what we've eaten fresh.

Okra is producing big time, but I still have so much frozen, I doubt I put up too much of it. The Stewart's Zeebest isn't proving to be the best for pickling, but it's great for frying or using in other dishes. I'll save a lot of seed from it this year and then probably plant it and clemson spineless next year. I won't worry about cross pollination at that point. Although, I may have an issue this year, since it appears there was another variety mixed in with the SZ seed. I may try to get some pics and see if anyone has any idea what the other variety is? The plants don't branch as much as the SZ and the okra is somewhat rounded toward the bottom with pronounced ribbing in the upper area. It's also more red/purple toward the bottom and lighter colored overall.

I'll probably set a trail camera and verify it's raccoons stealing tomatoes, then I'll set traps to take care of them. I have live traps and my son has a dog proof trap. May go with the dog proof because of the neighbors cats and dogs.

The live trap wouldn't hurt the neighbor's cats, but I'd rather not catch them and have to deal with the possibility of the neighbors seeing their kitty in a wire trap.

Oh, on the topic of fishing! I haven't weighed everything, but we put between 40 and 50 lbs of fillets in the freezer while of vacation. Some striped bass, but mostly catfish. Lot's of fish fry ammunition there!

I’ve typed 3 long posts and tried to post pictures. Lost everything. So no pictures this time - don’t know what I’m doing wrong. We only got enough rain to make all the aphids on the peas and okra happy. Have lots of ladybugs so will give them a chance. If they can’t control the aphids I’ll just pull the peas up and feed them to the cows. My strawberries are going crazy - I should have enough for 3 beds next Spring instead of 1. Planted a few more bush beans where I pulled out the crowder peas. I do love fresh green beans. Hopefully we will all get beneficial rain over the next week.

We have had very little rain, and it looks like there is very little we will get before fall.

I went down to my neighbor's vegetables market a few days ago and asked him if I could have a few of his weeds to put in my garden cause I can't get mine to grow.

When I was planting tomatoes in my wildlife garden I plowed a furrow and planted in the edge of the furrow ( I have no water over there and knew I would have to haul water for the plants ). I mulched heavily. He saw me out working and came up to see what I was doing. Upon seeing the mulch he told me it would kill my plants. I replied, ( I sure won't have to haul water to dead plants).

When he was planting his 300 tomato plants I ask him why he choose to run his rows east to west rather than north to south. He told me that he wanted the water to run right down the row and water his plants. I told him that water really does run down hill, taking topsoil with it, and that he did not have a large enough tractor to fill in the Gulley that he was going to have at the end of his rows. I told him that because he set his cattle right down on the ground and could not hoe under them, his only hope was to have enough weeds to hold his tomato plants in place.

He came over yesterday and asked me to come over and see his newly installed greenhouse. He told me that he would like for me to come over this winter and sit in his greenhouse and I could tell him all my secrets, he wants to expand and redo all his growing area.

I am not really mean to this guy, we smart mouth and pick at each other all the time. This is the type of guy that base to learn on his own.

Bruce, Well, at least your garden still is mostly alive. Those gophers sure make things harder than they ought to be.

It sounds like the vacation was enormously fun and that the fishing was very successful.

Coons are enormously destructive. We used to have a lot of them, but ever since the big distemper outbreak killed a bunch of them (technically it was centered in the DFW area, but we lost a lot here on this side of the river too), which I think was in 2012-13, we probably have only about about 1/10th of the coons we used to have, and I am not complaining about that. I am sure the population will continue rebuilding, but I'm mostly just enjoying not seeing so many of them.

farmgardener, I have four packets of green bean seeds and desperately want to plant them for fall beans, but with the ongoing drought here, it would be a stupid move on my part, so I look at those seed packets every day and wish for enough rain to fall that I'd feel like I could plant them, and of course, that rain isn't happening. It probably wouldn't matter. When I walked down to the mailbox today, I noticed that the Johnson grass in the bar ditch was waving in the wind, only there wasn't even any wind blowing. It was the hundreds of grasshoppers clinging to the grass that was making it move. Seeing that many grasshoppers together made my skin crawl. They're pretty bad in the garden, and have been all summer, but they aren't heavy in the garden at all compared to what they looked like in the bar ditch this afternoon. I'd gladly trade my grasshoppers for your aphids.

Larry, Our rain situation is about the same as yours. Even when they put rain in the forecast, it doesn't happen, or we don't get enough to matter.

I had weeds earlier in the year when rain was falling more regularly, but there's not many now and I'm not complaining. The heavier mulch this year has helped a lot, and the fact that there's not enough rain falling to make weeds sprout and grow helps a lot too. I'd gladly put up with more weeds if it meant more rain was falling.

I'm always so careful with how I plant because my whole garden slopes. You're right that if the plants run the wrong way, the top soil washes downhill every time it rains. I hope your neighbor listens to you and learns from what you're telling him!

There's not much new to report from my garden. I harvested a lot of icebox watermelons today. They are producing well and are producing tasty melons since there's not enough rain or irrigation to water down the flavor and ruin them. So far I've harvested more orange-meated ones than yellow or red, but there's tons of fruit left on the trellised plants. I should have weeded when I was out there because I see morning glories sprouting where I don't want them, but fear it is too snakey to weed at this point.

Tomorrow I'm going to deadhead the zinnia plants that have survived the drought so far, and pull out the plants that have died the last two days. Even with irrigation and the half-inch of rain we received, more continue to die. I just cannot get enough moisture into the soil. It is like the moisture dries up as soon as it hits the soil. The zinnias in full sun are suffering the most from the drought. The ones that get part shade are the happiest, but also aren't blooming as heavily as the ones in full sun, so it is a trade-off. I'm thinking seriously about putting up an arbor type structure over the flower border along the south garden fence before next Spring and putting permanent shade cloth over that border. I just think full sun in the heat and drought is too hard on everything I grow in that bed, even though it is full of heat-lovers that usually are pretty heat-tolerant and drought-tolerant.

I also need to harvest southern peas tomorrow, and then will shell them so we can have them (and fried okra) with the smoked meat loaf we're having for dinner tomorrow night.

We just had a fun little visit with our son, his girlfriend and her two girls. While we were sitting here chatting, the little one (almost 4 years old) said "Mama, you can go ahead and leave now". It cracked us up. Mama wasn't dropping her off to stay with us, but apparently that was the 4 year old's plan even if the rest of us didn't know about it. We laughed so hard over that.

I've been watching all the rain forecasts, and it seems the heavier rain is trending further south and west over the next few days, which is good news for SW OK and western and central Texas. It is hard to begrudge them the rain---they need it worse than we do, so I surely hope they get a lot. They still say we 'should' get heavy rain here on Sunday and Monday, but I noticed tonight that our local TV met was using some phrases like 'based on the forecast at this time' that showed me he is starting to hedge a little bit. This makes me think he's not as certain about that heavy rain falling here Sunday and Monday as he was a couple of days ago. To be fair, he did say earlier this week that the cut-off low would meander around without strong steering and it was hard to know exactly where the heavier rainfall would occur for that reason.

The garden still is full of bees and we still have quite a lot of blooms for them, if not as many as we had 2-4 weeks ago, but this afternoon I noticed bees are visiting the cracked corn that I put out for the doves. They always visit it in the winter---George and I figured out years ago they were feeding on the corn dust created when whole corn is cracked---but they normally don't visit the cracked corn in the summer. I assume the fact they are feeding on it now must be related to how many fewer flowers there are in bloom all over (not just in the garden).

It seems to me that we have significantly fewer hummingbirds than we had two weeks ago. I had wondered then if the reason we were seeing so many was because they were migrating early---now I think that probably is true. For whatever reason, their numbers were huge a couple of weeks ago and not nearly so large now. I am not sure if it relates to native vegetation either being in bloom or not, but they appear to be migrating now. We still have some, but not nearly the large numbers we had a short while back.

Dawn

Dawn, I think neighbor is more willing to listen to suggestions now. He has done a lot more farming that I have but I think it has all been flat land. You have to work 2000 acres of flat land much differently than you do 10 acres of rocky hill side. I will go over and help him some tomorrow. He is a very hard worker, he just has to learn that these Ole rocky hillside of western Arkansas are not like the bottom land of eastern Arkansas.

Neighbor makes fun of my old junky equipment, and he should, most was given to me. Many friends and neighbors know that I am crazy enough to take any piece of junk try to squeeze another mile out of it. The biggest problem with that, is that you are repairing something every time you turn around.

I am so confused now. Well not now. I was thinking you were on the west side of OK, Larry! Well. I do not understand why it is so dry at your place! (Neither do you, huh!) Your neighbor. He just learns differently than some, huh. As does each of us. But obviously he is listening to you or he wouldn't have made the giant invite for you to come see the greenhouse and tell him all your secrets. And obviously he is earnest about learning new ways, as evidenced by his putting up the greenhouse. Hope he's younger than I am! I don't have time to learn what I need to know!

"Mama, you can go ahead and leave now." Cracked me up, Dawn, and didn't you LOVE it! We have a couple grandkids who do that. It's so endearing.

I loved the idea of the arbor! How big an area would that have to be?

I was thinking that many of us, if not most, have conditions so very different one from another (in life and in gardening, to continue your metaphor, HJ.) And that's true of friends who live just down the street/road. Our friend Scott only lives a half mile away, and things that do well for him, blotto here, and vice versa. Different bad insects, different challenges. He said he cannot grow a hydrangea (and he is a GOOD gardener), and they love it at MY house, for example. He grows elephant ears all along the north side of his house. I can't fathom it. (Maybe if he'd move some of those, he could grow hydrangeas. LOL)

Farmgardener. AGGGHHHH. I could feel your exasperation, losing the posts AND pictures! Try one more time? Sheesh. I HATE that. But. . . at least you have tons of strawberries! :) That's another thing I only have planted in my dreams. No good place for them unless we put up a separate fenced area, and then it'd have to be on top of solid rock. And since we spend a lot of time feeding birds, kind of contraindicated, anyway.

And, Bruce, I cannot imagine leaving the place for two weeks. I left for one week, with GDW still here, and the gardens were still a mess, even though he did a good job with watering and some weed pulling. It must have looked like a different place when you two got back. AND, that's a lot of fish. What area were you in?

The hummingbirds here haven't slacked off yet, in number or appetite. Garry is filling our four feeders every other day or every day. Those little buggers can get downright noisy in the evenings!

HJ, I was thinking of you yesterday after I'd pulled a bunch of peppers. I was considering freezing a bunch of different kinds together so was tasting them as I went. First, I have to comment on the Gamba "sweet peppers." I was harvesting several in the green stage, as a bell substitute; but then let many go to red. I tasted one of the red ones yesterday, and oh MY. SUH-WEET! And delicious. I am a huge fan now. And that one is very prolific, too. I won't touch another pepper on that plant until it is red.

Then the jalapenos. I remember you saying your jalapenos weren't that hot. Well, these have been just sitting on the vine for a couple weeks. Hadn't changed color, but were just sitting there. Took a tiny piece to test yesterday and it took 10 minutes, a bit of buttermilk, and a little Activia yogurt cup in my mouth to calm the heat. OH MY GOSH they were HOT! I laughed--certainly do not need a hotter pepper than these were. So no, they were frozen separately.

Rebecca, speaking of shaggy, gotta go mow. I tackled a bit of it yesterday after shade had covered must of the yard and it had dried out enough. Looks like that's how I may do it today, too, now that I looked. Pretty dewy out there. And I'm still chuckling about my morning glory tower turned large mound. My morning glory big mound.

Larry, I too was under the impression you were in western OK. Haha. Well it appears there's another fellow from Arkansas among us!! Where are you located? We're up closer to Pea Ridge (northwestern Arkansas) by the Rogers/Bentonville metro area. Eastern Arkansas natives are spoiled. I've read the soil is so great just across the state....It SUCKS here!! I've pulled wheelbarrow full after wheelbarrow full of rock out of my smallish garden this year. Just yesterday I pulled a 5 gallon bucket full of rock out of my 20x3' lettuce bed. There's a lot more in there I missed!!! The only explanation is they breed down there.

So what are the odds that mini pumpkin seeds that sprouted Mon will actually grow pumpkins? I planted them about a month ago, and they decided to wait until now to germinate.

What are you doing with YOUR rocks, Jacob? I must say, though I hate putting a shovel into the dirt, I AM fond of the rocks that we've dug out. And by the way, Jacob, the way it is here, I think a 5-gallon bucket full of rocks out of a 20x3 foot area would be a GOOD thing! Just sayin'. Course, as you now, now I only build UP, not down. Sounds like our properties are very much alike, cept yours is what, a few hundred feet higher in altitude. I've kind of come to peace about the rocks. We don't have much dirt, but the dirt's good dirt. And then, you know. . . . Matthew 7: 24-28. LOLOLOL

HA that makes me look at that verse a lot differently!! Every time I read that from now on I'll probably be laughing a bit LOL

That 5 gallon bucket followed probably another half a one last week. Earlier this year I dug at least 3 wheelbarrow full of rocks from the, in total, 30x4' bed.

Nancy, I stack them around our chicken run, pile them in the woods, and I'm considering using some to build some stone fences around my garden. We'll see!

DW and I just finished the entire yard. Usually we only do the NE back part of the "yard" every 2-3 weeks, as it's on the other side of the shop in back, and can't be seen clearly by us or by folks on the road. So today we did it. It is REALLY rocky! While I was mowing today, I was thinking about YOUR property, Jacob, and all the work you've done already. And thanking Garry in my mind for all the rocks he'd already dug out. And remembering digging a few out myself, and then making the rock borders around the beds, and marveling at the difference between my first year here and this year.

Four years has made an enormous difference. First year, we used all the mulched leaves and grass for the veggie beds, so none for the flower beds.

Went to stores for cardboard. GDW DID have stacks of newspapers. Didn't have money for mulch, so limped by. Second year. Most went into the veggie beds again, but I spent money on straw and some topsoil, compost and peat. Third year, had plenty of mulch for everything, and our own compost.

This year we have so much mulch (including ourof wood chips), we have an embarrassment of riches with mulch.

Big "center bed," nonexistent, first year. But I'm starting. . . .

Center bed this year:

It was right after the next two pics (2016) that I decided to build up, not down. And THIS was for one butterfly bush. (And I don't like the bush, so took it out this year.

One would never guess we're "abnormally dry" here today. The "lawn" was so thick I clogged the mower up twice. I had bag after bag of clippings.

The end of the tomatoes unless I buy a couple plants; the peppers are going strong. SO many herbs everywhere. No beautiful gardens, but they are all full of plants; some finished or destroyed by bugs, but some coming back to life with highs of 90 instead of 100. There are some happy plants out there. The zinnias here, both in the fuller sun and in the partial shade, are okay this year. I cut them back yesterday, but am not sure I'll plant more. The malabar spinach is looking great, which makes me happy. I took the Mexican sunflowers out. The echinacea are done, but the zebrinas are coming back, and some of the nicotiana. So although it's far far far from perfect out there, all is good. I'm happily throwing mulch into the veggie beds; and still undecided about cover crops.

Nancy, you almost look like my mom a bit in the first picture.

We are headed to the Benton County fair tonight with my aunt (same one who's been coming every weekend haha). Should be fun.

Larry, Well heck, the guys I know here who have new or newish tractors and equipment have to work on them all the time too. I'm not sure the age of the equipment matters. We have a friend who was a certified John Deere repairman for 25 or 30 years and he worked all the time....I mean 12-16 hour days, often 7 days a week, and he was in such demand that he could have worked 24 hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year if he were crazy enough to want to live that way. He now works for a large agricultural foundation, maintaining the equipment they use to maintain their many research and conservation ranches, and he stills works an awful lot but not like he did when he worked for John Deere.

Tim always complains that I break every piece of lawn and garden equipment I touch, but I maintain that they break down just as much when he is using them. It seems like all he has done this summer is mow, have the mower break down, order a part, wait for the part, replace the part, mow again, break down again, order a different new part, etc. I kinda think it is getting to be time to buy a new riding mower so he doesn't have to spend as much time repairing the mower as he spends mowing. He thinks he almost has a new mower now because he has replaced pretty much every part of it this summer.

I hope your friend listens to you. He really needs to learn about erosion issues and how to work to avoid them so he doesn't ruin his place!

Nancy, You know, it just made us all burst out into laughter---except for the 3-year-old. When she realized they were visiting but not here to drop her off, she was so disappointed. She gets her wish tonight though, because Chris and his girlfriend both work very long shifts tomorrow---his is 24 hours and hers is 16, so Chris is going to drop off the 3 year old tonight and she gets to stay with us until sometime Sunday. We'd be happy to have the 9 year old as well, but this is her weekend to spend with her dad.

I have no idea how big the arbor would have to be because I'm not a good judge of distance, but I think it would have to be about 8' wide and 40' long. Maybe a little longer. I'm picturing something made of lumber with a more or less open top---just wooden crossbeams, and then some sort of a way to attach shade cloth to the top when needed, but in a way that we could easily remove the shade cloth when it is not needed.

This morning I removed the shade cloth from the raised bed where it has been shading peppers, melons, flowers and herbs ever since the start of the big July heat wave. I think the temperatures are low enough now and the sunlight less intense so that the peppers can tolerate direct sun again with no shading. Some plants may sun scald slightly after going from 50% shading to 100% sun, but it cannot be avoided unless I wanted to spend part of each day putting shade cloth over the plants and then taking it off again, with a hardening-off type schedule. Nope. Not gonna happen.

I didn't have any hummingbirds out in the garden with me this morning, which concerned me, but this afternoon they've been at the feeders hanging by the porch, so they aren't all gone yet. There's definitely fewer though than just a week ago. Maybe it is just the milder weather. With the cooler weather, maybe they can slow down and feed more on insects and on nectar from flowers and not be spending so much time at the feeders. This afternoon they were fighting over the feeder nearest the front door, so there's still enough of them around to engage in Hummingbird Wars. I do love all the little noises they make---it is a reminder that they are still here. The yard gets too quiet after they migrate south. All the trumpet creeper vines, whether in people's yards or wild ones growing along fence lines, are in bloom right now, so perhaps they are finally able to find more food than what was blooming earlier in the summer.

The morning glory mound still will be beautiful and the hummingbirds, butterflies, bees and other pollinators will love the flowers no matter what.

Jen, The odds are pretty good. They are fast to bloom and fast to produce and mature. It is easy to squeeze in a late planting of mini pumpkins. Of course, everything depends on when the first freeze hits.

Nancy, That's a lot of rocks. Rocks are one thing we don't have many of, unless we venture down into the creek, which we generally don't.

I worked in the garden until 11 a.m. and got a lot done---some weeding, some harvesting and a lot of deadheading. Despite the rain, the zinnias twist and curl and die lately. That's life. I'm through watering them heavily to keep them going, so they'd better be praying for that rain in the Sunday-Monday forecast to fall in a sufficient quantity to keep them alive a bit longer. It is raining in Texas today, on and off all day in very scattered storms. For some areas that are in extreme or exceptional drought, this will be their first real rain in a very long time. Good for them.

Well, I just got a text that our 3 year old will be arriving in about a half hour, so I need to get a few things put away and tidied up before she gets here. I try to have the coffee table clear before she arrives because that's the spot where she likes to play with play dough, or color her coloring books, or whatever.

Dawn

Another ID, please? Someone brought these peppers to SF, there were 2 varieties & I forgot the name.

It looks like Ashe County Pimento, to me, or maybe the Gamba I mentioned earlier. Go to SESE and see which you think. I know I brought a few Gamba to SF and a couple Ashe County. Pretty sure it's one or the other. :)

Jen, it looks like my pimentos. The plant Nancy brought to SF.

Nancy, Jacob, I live about 16 miles south of Ft. Smith.

My soil is too poor to grow rocks, so I have been borrowing rocks for a rock garden. This is the rock that was over the rock lined dug well when I was a kid.

If you notice a sunk in spot in the upper left corner, that was my doctor' office. I had an uncle that died with polio when I was small, so the word " Iron Lung" was big in my mind. I would catch a wasp and clip its stinger and one wing off. I would fill that sunk in spot with water and weight the wasp down with a piece of bailing wire and leave it there till it was nearly dead and then place it in my Iron lung, which was a pop bottle lid bent up sorts in a U.

All my patients died of polio about supper time.

Madge has had me collecting rocks to build a rock garden which will contain this rock.

I have been trying about 8 times to get this to post, so I won't risk going any farther with this post. Its a good thing I never became a Doctor.

t to Oh my gosh. You must have run your parents in circles when you were a kid. That is an amazing story! So curious that all the patients were dead by supper time. Probably IS a good thing you never became a doctor. Dr. Death, maybe. That is a singular rock! I'm a little jealous.

We'd be happy to unload a few rocks on you and Madge.

Thanks for the great laugh tonight!!

Happy lucky 3-yr old, Dawn. You'll be exhausted by Sunday, I expect. LOL

An arbor that size would be a masterpiece to behold--not to mention functional!

I got a lot done, too. I was SO happy to get a lot of weeding done. And I LOVE weeding in all that mulch. Easy peasy!

Nancy, I was told years ago that my lifting days were over, and not to lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk. Thank god for a small tractor and a Tommy lift on the back of my pickup I was able to move this rock 1/2 mile with ease. I would like to suggest that anyone whos body has worn out and still wants to keep working as before,to buy a small tractor with a front end loader.

We having been giving away a lot of produce. Mom's nursinghome roommate heard us talking about giving produce away and ask if we would bring her some. I had picked a lot of tomatoes and squash, but no bell peppers. Madge went to the north garden and got several bells. I noticed that one was 5 lobed, we have picked two 5 lobed, and one six lobed ( and many 4 lobed ) off our 4 bell plants this year. When I noticed the pepper I ask her if she remembered where she got that pepper she said ,yes, I got them all from the second plastic.

Guess who's going to be watching that plant for. Seed pepped.

Should have been second plant, I hate this tablet, too small to read.

Larry, Someone else got 5-lobed bells this year too, maybe it was someone on one of our OK gardening Facebook pages. I'll get an occasional five-lobed bell but not often. It sounds like you were very busy, even as a child. I think you would have made a great doctor because you would have been trying to save your patients, not trying to kill them by supper time (I hope).

My best friend contracted polio from the vaccine when we were young children. He survived it and appeared to have mostly recovered, but had a limp forever after. The polio came back when he was in his 40s or early 50s and it killed him. I never knew that could happen---like he wasn't really cured. It stayed hidden in his body for decades and then came back strong.

Nancy, I'm already exhausted and we have almost 24 hours more to go. She is more exhausted though. We were running around all day and when we got home about 2 pm, she grabbed her pajamas and told me she was going to go take her bath and get ready for bed---and she was serious. I told her it was not bed time, but swimming pool time, and she woke right up. Now she's fighting to stay awake until after dinner time. Unless she gets a second wind, I think it will be a really early night for her tonight.

This week the kids are fascinated with icebox melons. I harvested 13 of them yesterday, ranging in size from about the size of an orange to the size of a cantaloupe and they are in love with the little ones, which I think are the variety Mini Love, and also in love with the fact that there are three colors of flesh---red, yellow and orange. We have tons of icebox melons to eat, and even are sharing them with the fawns and the mothers every evening. We slice and eat melons daily. The nice thing about the icebox sized ones is that they have a pretty long shelf life, so you can cut one or two every day and there's less (if any) left over to put away in the fridge. I don't even put all the melons in the icebox----I just leave them sitting on a counter until we use them. Usually if we cut one or two, we eat all of them that day, or throw out the leftover pieces for the deer. It is so much more convenient than having to cut up a huge one and deal with pieces of it in the fridge for days and days.

I didn't do anything in the garden today. I'm just hoping and praying the heavy rain they're saying we will get on Sunday and Monday actually happens. There's been a ton of rain to our south in Texas, particularly in the areas that are in Extreme Drought, so I know that those folks are relieved. The amount of rain they got won't remove the drought, but might knock it back a good deal.

The cooler temperatures are very, very nice, so at least we have that, whether the rain comes or not. The garden still looks pretty bad, but when I consider that we're in Severe Drought, I realize it looks about as good as it possibly can considering the weather we are having.

Dawn

I'm pretty sure I'm caught up and didn't miss anything. The latest polio type of posts are disturbing, so I'll just leave it there.

Saw that Bruce checked in.

The cooler temps are nice. It was hot here today until this evening.

So much going on...probably not interesting. Something is wrong with my foot and it's seriously making me angry. I'm pretty sure it's just a stress fracture--a metatarsal fracture. The treatment? Rest for 6 to 12 weeks. That's up to 3 months! I don't have time for that. I'm so upset because I'm not sure how I'm supposed to get everything done. Feeding all the animals take twice as long as I limp around. We FREAKING have marching season starting now. We walk a LOT during this time. We're on our feet constantly. How is this going to work?!

My garden is weird. It has signs of health, but is really unhealthy in other ways. Tomatoes and peppers still setting fruit. Aphids are on one of the pepper plants and on the southern peas. Everything is mostly ignored right now.

The animals are getting the attention right now. Who thought it was a good idea for me to have 2 dogs, 2 cats, a turtle and 15 chickens (divided into 3 "flocks")???!

Sadly, Dolly has started being mean to her baby. Stormy is so confused by her mother being mean to her. It honestly made me cry a little this afternoon. When I looked in at them tonight, Stormy had tucked her 6 week old self under Dolly's wing. Dolly allowed it for awhile. Dolly needs to go back to the flock. I have started the process. She began laying eggs again last weekend. She's ready. Only the other hens are doing their mean girl stuff to her.

Rosa isn't quite ready to let go of Jules. BUT, next weekend both hens will return to the flock together and the babies will be put together until they are near the size of a full grown chicken.

Poor Kane. He is healing slowly.

The retrograde talk...We are actually in MERCURY retrograde right now ( Not sure how I missed that) until the 18th.

Jennifer, we had a similar issue with our dog that you are having with yours a few years ago (we don't have a dog now). We had noticed that he started having issues going to the bathroom one day, and as the day went on, no matter how hard he'd seemed to try, he just couldn't go. He'd been acting awful weird that day as well, like a completely different dog, so skittish. When we took him to the vet, they said it looked as if someone had kicked him really hard in the nether regions....I'll spare the details.

Why someone would kick him like that? I don't know, and it could be that something else happened I guess, but we all have a feeling somebody kicked him (and also who).

The polio conversations are very interesting, to say the least. Dawn, that is horrible about your friend! I too did not know that could happen.

I've finally got a good stand of beetroot. Finally!! I put it in the raised beds this time with lighter soil- I will always do this from now on.

It seems it's cooling off early around here.