Dawn nice to read your update. Sent you a pm. It has been hot here and no rain. Things are drying out. Glad you got to enjoy your grandkids.

Cattle feed tubs are going for $25 each on Facebook marketplace up here.

WTF?

I’m always looking for these, but not at that price.

I have had a good day, daughter and grand daughter can over and we went out to eat. When we came home I went out to harvest veggies for them to take home with them. When I came back into the house I notices two beautiful bouquets of zinnias that my grand daughter had picked from my wildlife garden to give to her mother and Madge.

I have too many insects in my garden, and it shows. I think I picked the last of my PEPH peas today, but the Texas Big Boys are about ready to start producing. The peppers are producing very well, and the okra is doing well also. My tomatoes are terrible, and all are very small.

I want to start getting the wildlife garden ready for a fall planting. I have 6 brush piles that I need to burn, but want to move some water tanks over there first. I hope to get things planted that will come back each year and get make the area easy to care for because I know my daughter wont have the time to invest in the area that I do. I hope to be able to run the brush hog for a lot longer, but I know I wont be able to care for the area like I have in the past.

Jay, It's good to see you post. I hope things are going well for you.

Rebecca around here you can get all you want for free. Maybe I should try selling them.

Yes things are going good. I retired in Dec and relocated to Leedey. Really enjoying it. Cleaned bind weed a d Johnson grass out of the garden area so late getting it in. Okra is producing now. Growing a large pod variety that has been grown by the same family over 100 years. It stays tender when large sized. Maybe the best I have grown.

So...I never did get caught up on last week's thread. I hate that because your lives (and gardens) are so important to me. At this point though, I'll start from scratch. Obviously, I've been very busy. I usually sit down around 9:30 or so. Then, I'm super tired and want to sleep. I did take an hour nap today though...so I'm more awake.

I'm so happy for those of you who got any amount of rain. That is wonderful!

We got zilch. We are desperate around here. I can fit my hand in the cracks on the ground of our property. It is brutal. This is the worse it has been since we've lived here. We moved here April 2014. Trees are stressed and losing their leaves. Some of my friend are bagging them for me to put in my compost. Luckily, we do not have a water bill because we're on a well. The people who have lived here for years said it's never run dry even in 2011. So...there's that. However, I've noticed a slightly different smell in our water.

I detest hot weather without rain. Some people get depressed in winter months or rainy times, but I've always said I get depressed when it's so hot and parched. I really hate it. I should live in another place because of it...but I'll always live in Oklahoma. I don't like what it does to my skin. I don't like what it does to the Earth. Yuck. It's the green time...not the rest time of winter.

Regardless, I have great beauty in the garden. Things are coming along..

I did plant bean seeds in a different area that has never had beans. Maybe the spider mites won't find them right away.

In the back garden--I can't figure it out. Overwater or underwater? I don't know. Maybe because there are soaker hoses back there...certain spots are overwatered, while the rest of the beds are parched and the soil is pulling away from the wood walls of the raised beds. I think this is a problem....but I won't explain right now. I did water the entire beds yesterday.

It's like the soaker hoses moisturized what was directly under them and those places were over saturated-- but everything else completely dry. Anyway, I planted pea seeds yesterday for a fall crop. I pulled some of the tomatoes and pruned the others. If the remaining tomatoes rebound in the fall, the peas can climb their cages, I guess.

Chickens are doing well. Their story is on my Chicken Friday fb post. At this point I'm anxious to know what are male and female. I want to keep them all, so hope for females but I'm afraid most are roos.

I'm just SO dreading the next couple of weeks. There's little to look forward to as far as nice weather is concerned--just crunchy grass and sweat.

Elkwc, I’d drive out there to get whatever is available.

$25 for a feed tub, Rebecca? That is crazy. As soon as I see my neighbor's gf, I'll ask how often she has them available. We are wanting to visit her "soon" and see her garden, animals, and greenhouse.

Jay, I received your PM and wrote you back.

Rebecca, That is crazy! Around here the ranchers tend to pile up the empty feed tubs endlessly in the barn until they get tired of dealing with them, and then they build a burn pile and burn them up. That's how I got mine from Fred---he said if Tim didn't come get them, he'd burn them, so Tim ran right over there and got them. It is too bad Fred gave up ranching (leased his land to someone else, and I don't see them using feed tubs like he did) because I lost my supply of new tubs. : ( I do think more ranchers use them in winter or in drought years than in nice, wet years like this one has been when forage is plentiful. I loaned 8 tubs to Chris this year as temporary containers for daylilies he intends to put in the ground next year after he gets beds built at his new home, but I bet I never get them back because he's already seen how well plants grow in large containers. I'm okay with that. When I loaned the tubs to him, I figured he'd like them and keep them. I need to find a new feed tub supplier one of these days---every year we lose more and more of the old ranchers around here, and I don't know any of the younger ranchers who have bought their places. A lot of them don't even seem to put cattle on the land now---they just hay it and sell the hay, or the land sells and is turned into lots for houses. I hate that this is happening as we are losing our rural flavor bit by bit.

Larry, It sounds like y'all had such a lovely visit. Everyone is complaining about tomatoes now. I feel like the plants everywhere really have struggled to perform well after all that excess moisture fell. We still are getting tomatoes but their skin is so tough now because of the heat that they almost aren't worth having. Still, they're better than no tomatoes I guess. Yesterday I told Tim that I feel like yanking out the tomato plants in the containers and tossing them on the compost pile so I can stop watering them twice daily just to get tough-skinned tomatoes. He didn't object, so I may do that soon. Or, maybe I'll cut them back to a foot or two tall just to see if they will rebound and regrow and produce in the autumn.

Are the deer still coming to visit your wildlife garden regularly? Our deer are very frustrated with how little I've been throwing out on the compost pile out back. They really are unhappy that I'm not canning and throwing tons of produce trimmings out there daily, and I don't know what to tell them. I'd think that with all the rain we had all winter and spring, there ought to be plenty of browse for them, but they act like they are starving. I've changed my bird-feeding habits to try to discourage them, but all it is doing is driving them up more into the yard and closer and closer to the front garden. They've started eating stuff that is growing on the garden fence and through the fence, so a lot of zinnias are losing their heads after foolishly sticking them out through the fence. I told them that if they'd stayed on their side of the fence, the deer wouldn't be gobbling them up now.

Jay, I finally have solved a lot of our bindweed problem, but it hasn't been easy and it has been a long time coming. About a decade ago, we started going no-till, one bed at a time, and now the whole front garden is no-till. That has made a huge difference. Then, 2 or 3 years ago, we switched from mulching with hay, straw and grass clippings to mulching with bark mulch chips. I didn't think it would have as large of an impact on some weeds as it has had. In the no-till areas mulched heavily with bark mulch, bind weed is probably only 5% as much of a problem as it used to be. We go through a period of time, probably late April through June, when it does sprout in places where I disturbed the soil to sow seeds or transplant plants, but I pull out those tiny bindweed seedlings, and don't really get many more after that. This has been a huge game changer. I think the no-till practices get most of the credit, but then the heavy bark mulch helps some too.

I feel like I'll be fighting Johnson grass forever as it is so common here, but I do have less and less trouble with it every year so at least there's that.

Jennifer, I understand exactly what you're going through---we were in exactly the same situation before the rain fell here. The 1"+ of rain that we got has done absolutely nothing for the big cracks in the ground, and I have to watch when stepping over them now because they're large enough that snakes can slip right down into them....but the plants sure did benefit from that inch of rain. I wish you'd gotten some too! We figured the rain would miss us and had a full weekend of outdoor activity planned with the girls. We only had to alter our plans a little bit to work around the rain--we spent Saturday afternoon at the movie theater instead of in the swimming pool, but later on after we got home it was warm enough to swim, so we just swam later, and a bit less, than originally planned.

I am concerned about that area where your soaker hoses only seem to water a small area and the water isn't spreading out over a larger area. If I had that problem in an area, I'd do the jar soil test to see what percentage of the soil is sand, silt and clay to try to figure out why this is happening. It could be that there is something about this soil that is interfering in its ability to properly disperse and use what water it does have. Maybe it has more silt than you think. I have had that issue in the back garden. I also have seen this sort of watering issue happen to people who have built square foot gardening beds using the Mel's Mix recipe---it drains too quickly for our climate and doesn't hold the moisture well enough/long enough in our heat. I blame it on the peat moss content in the case of Mel's Mix---peat moss is very unique in the way it is hydrophobic. Peat moss is very similar (oddly) to clay in the sense that when it is wet it stays very, very wet and takes forever to dry out. Then, when it dries out, peat moss is almost impossible to re-wet. You can water the bed or the containers that include very dry peat moss, and the water just drains away deeper into the soil or down into the pathways or runs out of the bottoms of the containers without even wetting the peat moss. I work around this when I used purchased soil-less mixes by adding lots of hugelkultur material (big chunks of partially rotted wood are the best!) to the bottom half of the containers, and mixing in extra pine bark fines and compost into the purchased soil-less mix.

So, in case you want to do the jar soil test with that problem area to try to figure out what is going on, here it is:

Jar Soil Test

I ended up not gardening today. We woke up with 99% humidity, fog and condensation all over everything. Our heat index values are high thanks to the recent moisture, so I decided to skip the gardening and stay inside and do laundry and clean house and recover from all the wonderful grandchild time we were able to enjoy from Wed-Sun.

Really, the last few weeks with the illnesses and deaths, gardening has been the thing I've been least focused on, except it does give me stress relief to go out to the garden, even if just for a little while now and then. It is a good thing I largely switched over to flowers as succession crops because they're so easy to maintain and there's no harvest to haul up to the kitchen and preserve on hot days. This isn't really the summer I wanted, but it has been about the summer I expected. At least we have tons of flowers, and the hummingbirds, butterflies, bees and other pollinators are able to enjoy them.

I noticed as I replaced veggies with flowers that the huge, massive numbers of stink bugs vanished even if the grasshoppers did not. That's been really nice. I was just sick of dealing with the stink bugs. We still have grasshoppers, but I'm doing my best to ignore them.

The new flowers blooming this week are the 100 gladiolus bulbs I planted in the old 4' round galvanized stock tank we moved from the back garden to the front garden in May. Its bottom has rotted out (I've had it for about 30 years now) and I filled the bottom 2/3s of it with hugelkultur material and the top 1/3 with soil-less mix enriched with extra pine bark and compost. The glads are red, white and blue and just starting to bloom so I expect we'll have several weeks of beauty from them. There's only 5 or 6 blooming today, but more should follow soon. The grasshoppers have been eating the glad foliage but they don't seem to be eating the flowers so far.

Mom continues hanging on in hospice care. She has lived quite a bit longer than they told us she would---which is a mixed blessing. Of course we are glad she still is with us, but her mind is pretty much gone and I regret that the last memories people will have of her are not really the memories we all were hoping for. It is what it is. I'm planning on going down to Texas to see her tomorrow.

The temperatures and heat indices for the rest of this week look pretty bad, unless you happen to be in an area that gets a brief reprieve with some rainfall and rain-cooled air. Let's all stay cool and hydrated!

Dawn

Jen, that would be great! Even if I could afford the $25, it’s absolutely ridiculous.

I sent a message to my sister in law asking her to save me some of their tubs. She thinks I'm weird, I should tell her there are people who would buy them.

Cosmos and verbena bonarenisis are going gangbusters. I had one each last year & have dozens this year. Got some of my houseplants split and repotted. And did some weeding. Other than that, I haven't been motivated to go outside much. We'll see how next week looks.

Our church has a one day vbs program for the kids this Sat, so I'm trying to finish up that. Somehow the girl who doesn't have a musical bone in her body is leading music. Oh well, it says "joyful noise", not "good noise", right?

I know Leon over in KINGSTON sells those tubs at his greenhouse business. I don't think he charges much for them. Plus he has the bulk potting mix also. I believe it is 25.00 for a 1/4 yard. I don't remember exactly. I got 12 tractor bucket loads of it in a 14 ft. dump trailer a couple months ago. I made the self wicking tubs like he uses in his greenhouses. I think I made about a hundred of them. Of course I had saved the tubs over the years of feeding my cows. They had a meet and great with some of the youtube channels and Leon kinda sponsored it and had some people come in ang give talks on growing tomatoes and how to make the self wicking containers etc. Daniel Arms from Arms Family Homestead was one of the youtubers that helped get it together. He is a State trooper out of Sulpher.

I will drive just about anywhere to get feed tubs. The squirrels don’t eat them.

I had the wrong town on my brain It is Kingston down close to Dawn

Dawn, I think you nailed it. Last night, I dug down into the soil in the back garden and it's very sandy. So strange. Perhaps the soil we purchased 4 years ago was sandy? I really haven't checked the soil because I do the "no dig" type of gardening. I added a lot of compost 4 years ago...AND the beds have been mulched, so I would think that would add organic matter. I just don't know. I'll load it up with compost this winter. Eventually those beds will need to be redone. Probably in two or three years. The beds are starting to break down. They are untreated wood. How long does cedar last? I know it's expensive, but if it lasts forever, it might be worth it to make that garden with cedar. I keep thinking that when I get old and unable to keep up with so much, it would be good to have a small garden like our back garden.

Jen, I'm impressed that you are doing a VBS at all. We no longer can get the volunteers needed to pull that off.

I really didn't do much gardening today. Just some watering and picked the okra. I did freeze some tomatoes and okra. Also, washed the small ornamental pumpkins with bleach water.

I wanted to spend more time outdoors, but really needed to clean house. The bedrooms and bathrooms are now clean. Tomorrow it will be living and kitchen.

Thankfully Kane does not have heartworms. I was worried about that because I had neglected giving him the monthly treatments. The vet gave him a shot that is good for heartworm prevention for 6 months. And some medicine if he leg bothers him. Several hundred dollars later....

Alright. Off to bath and bed. Stay cool, y'all. Be careful out there in this heat.

I'm working my way backwards because it is late and I am tired.

Jennifer, Some of the so-called soil that some suppliers sell is just junk---often way too heavy in sand or way too heavy in clay. I bet your soil in that area was sandier than you thought. It is very hard for sandy soil to hold onto moisture. I wish I could take half the clay out of my front garden and mix it with the sandy soil in the back garden, and vice versa. I think we'd end up with pretty perfect soil if only we could do that. Cedar will last a long time, but I'm not sure how long as it depends on how much moisture it is exposed to over time, etc.

I'm glad Kane doesn't have heartworm.

We can't get anyone to volunteer any more for any thing. People don't want to put down their phones and get off FB and social media. VFDs have trouble drawing in the younger crowd, and the old ones won't live forever.

I wanted to clean house all afternoon, but decided to go see mom, so gathered up everyone available, and Tim, Chris, Jana, Lillie and I all went down down there this afternoon and stayed until almost 10 pm. When we left, my sis was planning to stay and sit with her all night, then my niece will take over tomorrow morning, and Tim and I will go down there about noon to relieve her and stay all afternoon and evening. The grandkids have been keeping vigil pretty well, but we need to relieve them more often as they've all got to get their own kids ready for back-to-school now.

Mom is so heavily medicated on morphine for comfort care that she's pretty out of it, a big change from this weekend. She smiled every now and then but didn't really speak, and we aren't sure if she was smiling because of all the conversation in the room (we had 10 kids/grandkids/great grandkids in there at one point) or if she was having pleasant dreams....or hallucinations. At this point, who knows.

Robert, I've never been over to Leon's, though I've known about it for ages and ages. Too much to do, and never enough time, I guess, because it is only one county away from me. Maybe one of these days, but probably not soon.

Jen, A one-day VBS sounds interesting. Make a joyful noise and enjoy it!

The forecast for this week looks very concerning. Just the high temperatures alone would be enough, but then there will be heat index values above and beyond that. All this heat will be hard on plants too, but those of us who had rain over the weekend are in better shape now for the heat than we were a week ago.

I don't know why this heat surprises me---it is the same way every August. I guess it is human to hope that maybe this year it won't be so bad, but then it always is.

Dawn

Dawn, Yes, the deer are still hitting my wildlife garden, but not as hard as they seem to be hitting my neighbor's produce patch. He waters and I think his veggies taste better. He tells me he has seen as high as 9 at a time in his garden. He told me a few minutes ago that he has a guy coming out tomorrow to quote on an 8 foot fence. I told his he should at least try a hot wire first because it would be a lot cheaper. I will loan him the charger, wire, post and insulators just to see if it works as well for him as it does for me. I know that there is more pressure on the deer because of the weather, and I think it will get worse. I bought a 50# bad of Red Ripper peas and planted about 75% of them for the deer in my wildlife garden. I have a very nice crop of pea stems, but few leaves, also my millet is missing a lot of heads. The birds take the seeds, the deer will take the complete head.

My zinnias are standing tall and proud, they have not started eating them yet.

Hey Larry, The deer didn't touch my peas but they will walk a country mile to eat my okra. I've got some iron and clay peas and had some red ripper that they would walk by to get to the okra. I mowed the red rippers down and tilled them under, they didn't produce much and the iron and clay haven't sent one bloom out yet. I bet they were 4 ft. tall but have fell over with the wind and scarce rain.

Dawn, our prayers are with you all as your Mom transitions. I'm glad she apparently is not in pain--and love that she was smiling off and on. It's wonderful you have so many there to keep vigil.

Jennifer--at least you're cleaning house! I'm too lazy to keep up the yard OR the house. GDW and I are on a lazy streak, with both of us watching some TV in the afternoons. We've never done that before. I guess it's okay as long as it doesn't get to be a habit. (Binge-watching Blue Bloods--which we've done before. Nice thing about getting older is that we don't remember most of the episodes! LOL)

Wagoner is Vacation Bible School 24/7, feels like. Just one church after another. Our church's lasted four days--most of them are 3 days long. There are actually kids who follow the VBSs around the entire summer! And volunteers--since I've been volunteering myself, at BFF, I have run into an extraordinary community of volunteers. What a blessed thing!

I'm going to have to stake up the yard beans. Any good recommendations for how to do that?

Currently spending the rest of my time with deadheading, watering a bit, reading a couple good books and studying up on butterflies. Today, however, I'll be freezing pears and finish cleaning up the garlic heads. I have way too much garlic. I guess I'll have to find out who uses a lot of garlic and re-gift some. I should have had twice as many onions and half as much garlic!

Have a great week, everyone!

Robert, I tried to buy the clay iron peas earlier in the year at the co-op, but was told they would not be able to get any for at least a month. I was told that the red rippers were the closest they could get to the clay iron pea. I have never planted either one before, they were cheaper than purple hulls and I figured the deer would like them just as well. They will never get big enough to produce because the deer keep them eaten back.

My house garden, where I have my okra, Purple hulls, and Texas big boys has a hot wire on 3 sides of it. I have not turned it on in about a month and the peas are growing all over the wire, but once the deer got in the hot wire they decided to eat in their garden. I plan on turning in the peas in the wildlife garden and planting Austrian winter peas and some type of grain. I like Elbon rye, but is cost more than wheat, and some times harder for me to find. There has been a lot of flooding of farm land and I have no idea what kind of seed I will be able to buy.

My planting flowers in the wildlife garden was a big hit, my wife told me to plant flowers along the hwy. and plant the deer food behind them. My wife does not understand that flower seed cost about 20 times what the deer seed cost.

I will come back later and finish reading right now I have to get to bed have been running from nursing home to work and working a little bit on my tiny house mother has great days and horrible days and I never know what to expect but I'm the only one that sits with her so it's been pretty stressful occasionally one of the sisters will sit with her for an hour and sometimes a grandchild goes to visit I actually have been busy these last few days and have not been over there so I am sure she is fit to be tied with me but I made her some of her mother's recipe banana bread and we'll take it to her tomorrow morning life is so busy I can't even begin to tell you everything that has happened but I I'm here lurking and apologize this has no periods or commas if I try to do that it erases everything so you get one giant sentence

Larry, Nine is a lot of deer at one time. About the most we ever see together is 7 or 8, although we have had 10 or 12 together in a snowstorm.

I wish I had planted stuff in the back garden for them, but I didn't, and it probably is too late now.

We have a new problem now. When we drove up the driveway about a half-hour ago, there were six baby (not tiny, certainly big enough to be away from their moms) coons in the yard and driveway. I was not happy to see them. On the other hand, maybe they are looking for ripe sweet corn to steal, and the joke is on them because I didn't plant corn this year.

Robert, Y'all must be really dry. We are really dry too, but got rain this weekend which probably saved my front garden plants because I've been gone to Fort Worth to be with my mom too much lately and haven't kept up on watering.

Sometimes I forget to close the garden gate, and I'd better not make that mistake this year because two of the main three crops left in the front garden right now are okra and roselle, which of course, is related to okra. The deer would devour all those plants if I were to mess up and leave the gate open at night. I'm pretty sure they'd take out the cleomes and zinnias too.

Nancy, As many of us were there today as possibly could be. In mid-afternoon, my nephew and his wife left and took their 4 kids, their nephew, and their grandson and then it quieted down for a while. At that point it was just Tim and I as my sister had left at the same time as her kids to go home and take a nap as we were expecting a long night. All the grandkids and great-grandkids kissed her good-bye and told her they loved her, and I think they all knew it was for the last time. Later on, my sister came back after a too-brief nap, Chris abruptly took off from work and came to join us, and my brother and his wife joined us as quickly as they could get there after work. A few hours later, Mom left us, quietly and peacefully....in the same way she always had lived. We all were sitting there, laughing though somewhat quietly, and telling stories, and my brother was showing us video of his 63rd birthday celebration where his granddaughter helped blow out the candles. Suddenly, just like that....mama left. I think it was the perfect way for her to go....quietly slipping away surrounded by her children talking and sharing stories. Chris was the one who noticed she was leaving us at that moment (can't fool a firefighter-paramedic). When the hospice nurse saw Chris checking mom's pulse, she flew to her bedside to take over, and got a faint pulse for only a second....and, then, nothing. It was so hard, and yet it was so right. She was ready to go and had repeatedly said so over the last few months. We had accepted, as much as you can, that it was time for her to go. Walking out of her room and then the facility later on, knowing it was the very last time, was really unsettling. Life, however, goes on and so we all shall, coming together in a few days to celebrate her life.

Is it odd that I am here to talk about gardening? I don't think so. I can't sleep and I need to do something that feels normal. It is too dark to be out there in the garden pulling weeds......so, here I am.

I don't think you and GDW are lazy---you have worked hard and have been very busy for months. I think y'all are getting some well-deserved rest. It is too hot to do any work, indoors or out. The temperatures and heat indices both were insane today.

If you have any trees that need pruning, you can stake up beans with freshly pruned branches. I've done that before, using cedar branches off a dead cedar tree. (Dead because we had cut it down, lol.) Otherwise I have used anything I could get my hands on....PVC pipe, electrical conduit, etc. I'm not sure how high you need the stakes to go, but bamboo, if you can find any, also works. (So does wild river cane.)

I used to be really bad about planting too much garlic, and oh yeah, too many onions as well. I've learned my lesson and cut back sharply on both.

I'd plant flowers everywhere too if only the seed didn't make them into very expensive deer fodder.

Kim, Having just been through it all with my mom, I totally understand the great days and the horrible days. We had 2 & 1/2 weeks of pretty great days in hospice care, and then 5 progressively worse days. The great days are sort of deceptive....they can trick you into thinking the horrible days will stay away. They don't. Please take care of yourself and get some rest, and for Heaven's sake, please don't work on the tiny house for the rest of this week while it is so insanely hot!

My mother's journey on this earth has ended and she is at peace now. I know your family still is traveling down this road and my hope for you all is some joy and peaceful times together before she leaves you.

Y'all, please be careful in this ridiculous heat. Who knows how many days we'll continue having Heat Advisories and such. August is the hardest month!

Dawn

Dawn, I bet I counted 30 deer in my pasture early this spring. They split up after it starts greening up but it just takes a couple to ruin a lot of the garden. The young bucks rubbed on just about all of my fruit trees last winter doing a lot of damage to the lower limbs and trunks. They are a real pest here.

Yep, we have a family of app. 26-35 deer who travel through here, too, when the bucks join the does and yearlings. Our place is a bit less than 2 acres--4 good sized lots. There are 2 back lots that are just oak forest, and then a road behind the road/street we live on. That's the deers' normal pathway in the mornings and evenings. They used to come across closer to or even IN our back yard, nibbling as they came. With Titan's help, we've pretty much convinced them to stick to the road at the back. Still, I have multiple deer-stop measures at hand. Mostly deer resistant plants; veggies in a fenced area that has large raised beds of cinder blocks; fishing line fences around the six large flower/herb beds, and cages around some plants. Now a motion-activated sprinkler that guards 3 beds. We have cages around the 2 pear and 2 apple trees in back-- a big cage around Rose of Sharon in back. Sometimes it's me in my nightgown, running out and screaming like a crazy woman! True. GDW has gotten some good laughs.

Dawn, I cried a bit, hearing you tell of your Mom leaving. I know it was expected, I know it had to be a good thing for her, and a thankful answer for many of you. This was much like my Mom's passing last year, except I was 1100 miles away. Nonetheless, several of us have gone down this road in the past year. . . Amy, Larry, you and me, and probably others I'm not remembering at the moment.

I was revisiting the past just in the past few days, thinking of all our mothers who have passed. I've been having kind of a hard time for the past several months, having no idea why. I'm so happy here with Garry, and gardening and all of you and with my wonderful Christian works and children. I know I am so blessed. And yet. My Dad was the anchor of our family; he died in 2002. I've missed him terribly since. When I reconnected (after 50 years) with GDW in August of 2014, married him on 11/24/2014, and we moved me down here on Feb. 13, 2015, it was moving me down here with no acquaintances, and away from my surviving child and my DIL and grandchildren. I had four siblings. So--Dad died.

No sooner had Garry and I got me moved down here than I got an emergency call from my number 2 brother's daughter crying for help. So 1 month after I got here, Garry and I went to Denver to stay with my brother Jim for 10 days. It was such a gift to have felt like I'd been called to be there. He died a month later. One year later, my other brother died, unexpectedly. It is crushing me to this day. He was my best friend. A year later, Mom died. Just in the past week, i've been realizing the number of my loved ones lost. My kids in Mpls, brother Jim, brother David, Mom. All since 2015. Kind of tunes me in to what is going on with me . . . my uncharacteristic display of emotions.

As often happens, I got sidetracked. I trust you will all understand. XOXO

And yet I did NOT understand.

Dawn, you & your family are in my thoughts.

Nancy, at my old church we had kids like that, too. They would attend all of the VBS programs around town. One year we had a pair of siblings who had been to 14 programs so far, 5 of which had used the same curri ulum as we were using. The boy informed us that we "weren't doing it right" any time we did something different. He should know.

Dawn, still keeping your family in my thoughts. I, like Nancy, teared up a little when I read your post about your Mom dying surrounded by family.

This past week has been a season of death. I'm sure every week is...it's just more people I know (or know of) have passed, including a 42 year old friend and a 19 year old boy who graduated Westmoore last year. His mom was one of my great food crew helpers.

I didn't do much in the garden yesterday. Just a little watering. Meant to pick the okra, but forgot and forgetting for even one day means there will be pods that are too big.

Not looking forward to the extra hot days ahead. Keeping the chickens cool is such a task. My neighbors had chickens die last year during that one really hot week. I have shade clothes, tarps, misters, and fans.

I get such a weird depression in weather like this.

Jen, are you on the I Love Kidmin fb group? They were laughing about how so many churches in their cities/towns were doing the same VBS theme/kit. I prefer to write my own VBS...thankfully, I haven't had to do that in awhile, although would be happy to, if we could get enough volunteers for such a large event. It's common for daycares to take their kids to different VBS. And many parents look for different ones each week.

Speaking of work. I am here and should get busy at it.

HJ, since we only do a one day program, we can't justify the insane cost for the canned programs. Ive compiled a couple of them, & we used sunday school lessons for some of the others. For this one, the lady in charge found the curriculum for free. Before we moved here, I directed at my former church & we always used Group. So switching to doing our own has been an interesting change.

Dawn I’m sorry for your loss but I’m glad you accept that she is no longer suffering and that your family came together for her. Kim my thoughts are with you and Nancy I can’t imagine losing so many so close together. We have lost our parents and grandparents and uncles and aunts but I am the oldest of five siblings and so far we are all still here. As the oldest I have and still feel I have a responsibility for the younger ones. Silly now I guess because they are all grown with children and grands. Last time I said “hello little brother“to my oldest younger brother he laughed and said “have you looked up at me lately?” I’m rather short

i appreciate that this group shares our love of gardening but also has time to show feelings for each other.

Ive been confined to the house for a couple of days - my husband has been cleaning out fencerows and every night I have washed his filthy wet jeans, shirt, and even underwear in HOT water with an extra soak and extra rinse. Well one night I had on an old pair of shorts that were just as filthy and added them to his wash. Next morning he got up with poison ivy all over his stomach and chest. By 5:00 that day I was covered front & back from waistline to where those shorts hit - yes I had put them on that morning. I never get poison ivy, in fact I’m the one who cuts it out or kills it to keep him safe Never had that happen before and I can assure you it will not again! I put clothes on and went out about 6:15 this morning to water and pick then came in about 10:00. Hopefully this will clear up in another day or so.

Dawn, my condolences. It's never easy and it's terrible trying to get everything done that has to be done immediately after they pass.

Dawn, I am so sorry to hear about your mothers passing. I will keep the family in my prayers, and I hope you have the peace and comfort that I have after my mothers passing.

Thank all of you for your kind words. I love how all of us support and encourage one another here. Life is about so much more than gardening!

Robert, We will get multiple big herds in winter, and we had them in the summer of 2011, but in the summer they usually stay down in the river bottoms a lot more than they stay up here on higher ground. I have been enjoying seeing the young fawns, but those same fawns (especially if they are males) will be yard and garden pests later on. They are very hard on young fruit trees.

The upside is that one of our friends who hunts on his grandparents' property (just west of our western fence line) always gets a big buck coming off our place onto theirs every fall. I used to tease his grandfather (our friend that we buried a week ago yesterday) that those big bucks get so big by stealing our hen scratch, cracked corn and sunflower seeds every chance they get, as well as every decent bit of produce waste parts that I throw on the compost pile. Before we built the taller garden fence, they feasted on our garden plants too.

Nancy, The only time the deer really freak me out is when they peek into a window to see what we are doing indoors, or when one of the bucks goes right at me, waggling his head and dipping and swaying a little, trying to engage me in warfare. I yell at it, pound on the car to make noise, tell it to go away, etc. In 2011 we had tons of desperately thin, starving deer and I knocked myself out feeding them daily from the garden produce I was getting from the front and back gardens (for as long as the gardens lasted). Whenever I wasn't at fires, I was slicing up winter squash, summer squash, watermelons and tons of Armenian cukes for them. We had a very old doe who had been here as long as we'd been here. She always left her tiny fawns just outside the garden fence while I was in the garden working, and we joked that she wanted me to babysit them. Anyhow, she always came back for them, and I always spoke to her and she was very used to me. So, she was getting old and thin, and probably was dying, in the summer of 2011 or 2012 and I fed her at a separate time from the other deer. She'd come and wait for me and I'd take her melons, cucumbers and other yummy things from inside the house, which she'd gratefully eat. She'd stand and watch me and I always spoke to her, calling her "Grandmother". For two summers Grandmother came alone, without the herd, and I fed her, and then one day she just didn't return. I always felt like I was her hospice care in that last year of her life. We really do have a close relationship with our wildlife here, but I never forget that they are wild and untouchable....or, maybe except, for Grandmother. I never touched her, but she kept coming increasingly closer, which scared me, and I had to work to maintain a safe, physical distance. If I failed to feed her, she'd stand in the driveway about 15-20' from the house and stare at the back door until I came out. She was the last of a local strain of deer that lived in our little part of our neighborhood, and which our next door neighbor (our land is part of the farm he grew up on) called mule-necked deer because their necks were visibly longer than those of most white-tailed deer. Now, I'm feeling all nostalgic for grandmother.....and wonder if any of our current herds are her descendants.

Yes, I remember that you, Larry, Amy, Sharon and I all have lost our moms in the last year or so....it is uncanny how many of us it has happened to in such a relatively brief period of time. Life already feels different with no older family members (immediate family, anyway, we still have one maternal aunt left) standing between us and mortality. I have thought of all of you the last few days as my mom neared the end, thinking of how each of you had been through this same sort of thing so recently. I also have thought of Kim and her mom every single day since their hospice experience began on the same exact day that ours did a few weeks ago.

Nancy, You've lost so many since 2015. We went through that in the 2005-06 time frame. More recently, we've lost two aunts, one uncle, several dear friends and Mom within a 17-month period. We just have one aunt left now, and no uncles. We've lost several cousins, but no siblings. Yesterday we were trying to count up how many aunts and uncles we've lost....it was a bunch! My dad was from a family of 17, but only 9 of them made it to adulthood. My mom was the last of all those uncles, aunts and their spouses. Hard times, diseases and poverty were hard on babies and young children in the early 1900s through the 1930s and the Dust Bowl. Then, all the ones who survived all that nearly starved during the Great Depression. It is a wonder we had any aunts and uncles at all.

My grandmother would tell us we should stop thinking of everyone we've lost 'over here' and start thinking about everyone who is waiting for us 'over there'. That was her mantra for the last decade or so of her life.

Jennifer, I am so sorry for the losses you have suffered in recent days. I know from experience how hard it is to lose people with whom you have shared so much of life and so many experiences. Forty-two is so young (!) and 19....oh, I have no words for the loss of one so young. It just seems so unbearably hard to lose someone whose life has hardly just begun. I pray God comforts all who loved these folks.

It is too hot to do any outdoor work except watering, so please be careful if you try to work outside in the evening. Tim and I realized a few minutes ago that we hadn't brought in the mail today, so we walked down to the mailbox and got it. As we were walking, I was checking the Mesonet on my phone, and our heat index had dropped to only 100 degrees. That was just before 8 pm and we celebrated: woo hoo! below 100! Isn't that pitiful?

I had to work really hard last year to keep the chickens cool during the worst of the summer heat. This year has been easier so far. If I just keep some of the soil in the shade moist or wet, that's where they will stay. They'll spread out on the cool, moist ground in a similar way to how they dust bathe. Or, I'll turn on the sprinkler for a few minutes a few times a day and they'll cool off in its cooling mist. I do add ice cubes to their poultry waterer on hot days (I freeze giant ice cubes in 32 oz plastic freezer containers), and try to feed them melons, cukes, lettuce or something else chilled to cool them from the inside out. Good luck with yours during this heat wave. I wish y'all would get some rain. I'm seriously concerned about how dry your soil is.....it looks scary on the OK Mesonet maps.

Farmgardener, As we all sat in her room and chatted the last few days, we were exceedingly grateful to all be together, and exceedingly grateful that her pain and suffering soon would end. She'd been a Type 2 diabetic for at least the last 50 years, in renal failure and on dialysis since 2006, and had many recurring infections they never really could clear up completely for the past 2 or 3 years. As hard as it was (and you know, you aren't really hoping for death per se, as much as you're just hoping for an end to the debilitating suffering), we truly were ready. Maybe we weren't really ready at that moment that Chris went to her to check her pulse (he found a faint one and the hospice nurse did too for just a second, but that was the last one....and then it was over). Maybe we were guilty of thinking/hoping she had another hour or two, but we all knew. We'd seen the changes in her skin tone and breathing and, having been through it with Daddy, we knew what was coming soon.

I know my brother feels the weight on his shoulders of being the oldest and, thus, the one who had mom's power of attorney, handled her finances, looked after her medical bills, the house and such, etc. over the last 15 years or so since Daddy died. It can be a burden to be the oldest because it generally carries extra responsibility.

I am so sorry about the poison ivy. It is so frustrating to get it when you're being careful to avoid it. I usually don't get it, perhaps because I grew up in the city and wasn't exposed to it much until we moved here, but Tim grew up around it and is much more sensitive to it and has to be careful when working around it.

dbarron, That's the hardest thing about being so far away geographically, but my siblings all are there and have a pretty good handle on things.

Larry, You know what, I do feel that same peace and comfort. She was released from a body that wasn't doing her any favors any more. On her last day, all morning long as she dozed (undoubtedly aided by the morphine) we all sat and talked about our childhood and our aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, memories, etc. and we felt like she was hearing us as she'd smile every now and then. That was comforting to us---feeling like she knew we were there and could hear us. They say the sense of hearing is the last thing a person has leave them before they die, so we tried to keep the chatter happy and light-hearted for her sake. I don't think we saw her smile any in the afternoon, but by then it was clear she was slipping away.

Now, back to gardening: do y'all know what is in my yard? Do you want to guess? Here's a clue. When I went into the front yard the last few days (ever since it rained last week), the ground felt soft and squishy. Squishy! Not wet squishy. Nope. Despite being wicked clay soil, the ground is mole tunnel squishy! How? Why? Where? Did they come from next door where the neighbors' property sits higher than ours and they have sandy soil on top of clay subsoil? That's what we think must have happened. Vole holes are in the same general area, but at least we don't see any gopher mounds....yet. I guess when it rained, they all went traveling and came here to visit us. There was one very distinct mole tunnel this morning, and I could see an extension off of it this evening. We will deal with them next week after we get mom's funeral and burial on Monday behind us. Monday seems a long way off, but we have some of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren traveling here from a distant state, so needed to make sure they had time to make arrangements and to get here.

It was SO HOT today. Here's the Maximum Heat Index Map. These numbers are ridiculous!

Today's Maximum Heat Index Values

The next few days will be more of the same. Except when going down to Fort Worth for various things, I am hoping to be able to hibernate indoors to avoid the heat. Lillie and I had thoughts that we'd do some school clothes shopping this week, but I honestly think it is too hot to even get out and do that. I feel sorry for anyone who has to work outdoors in this extreme heat.

Dawn

Thinking about you, Dawn.

All I did outside tonight was water. At least you can keep yourself cooler by spraying yourself down occasionally.

Had and to share this pic of a huge, floppy morning glory from this morning. Was in a pack of mixed morning glories from BI.

Thanks, Rebecca! That is a gorgeous morning glory.

I agree that one upside to watering by hand is that a gardener can water themself. Whatever it takes in this water....that's my motto.

Y'all stay cool today. Much of the state has a Heat Advisory today and heat indices of up to 110 are expected. The parts of the state not under the Heat Advisory have a chance of rain (you lucky dogs! you know who you are) today. I just looked at the radar and it looks like rain is falling in some areas.

I cannot complain. We had rain last week. I hope those parts of central OK, like Jennifer's, that haven't had rain in ages get some rain today.

Here's the rainfall map for the last 30 days. It really shows the haves and the have-nots in terms of rainfall.

3-Day Rainfall Accumulation Map

A different way to look at it is to view the soil moisture map:

1-Day 4" Plant Available Water

Remember that the way to use the above map as a guide for irrigating is that, if your number is less than 0.50, you should be watering and, obviously, the further below 0.50 you are, the more you should be watering. Anyone below 0.50 should be watering deeply with sprinklers, soaker hoses or drip irrigation lines. Standing and hand-watering soil that is this dry with a hand-held hose (unless you are watering containers) isn't going to put enough water down into the root zone where it is needed unless you stand out there for hours.

My mesonet station's soil moisture number is right at 0.50 but I'm going to give my entire garden 1.5-2.0" of irrigation today or tomorrow since I won't be available to water on Sunday and Monday when it likely will have a higher need for moisture in the higher air temperatures.

Don't forget to hydrate yourselves, everyone!

We have had an uncharacteristically mild and overcast day, not even breaking 80, though the "heat" index is 85. WOW. And yes, we're having to water a bit, Dawn. . . but I'm not terribly unhappy about it; we've gotten off pretty easily thus far into the summer. It was so "cool" that the butterflies mostly stayed hunkered down. I took the opportunity to get 4 large milkweed plants, a big St. Johnswort, a clump of dwarf sunflowers into the ground. I had put it off because of the blistering heat.

I LOVE your grandmother's mantra! I'm going to adopt it! And what a lovely way to usher your mom into the other side.

Yes, some days I still cannot believe that both my brothers are gone, and that there are just two sisters left. Mom, yes, because she lived to be 97 and was tired. But the bros? Crazy.

Ha, Rebecca. I do that--I stand next to the water sprinkler many times when it is very hot!

Well, I've been studying butterflies as some of you know. Trying to ID them takes enormous amounts of time, that is, IF one gets a decent photo. LOL. Fun stuff.

But we had the most bizarre day yesterday. A nearby neighbor, whose wife has been away for four days this week, has anxiety and depression--come to find out. He knocked on our door at 7 am yesterday, wanting to know if Garry could take him to the hospital. (Oh--and he was hit by a vehicle two nights earlier, but refused to go to the hospital. He was walking in the parking lot. I think there's more to the story, but don't know what.) So Garry did--they were back by 10. Well, her car had been towed and was at the towing place 30 miles from here, and that was part of his anxiety. He obviously couldn't drive his truck down to get it--plus he was in no shape to. So GDW and I drove him down to get it, and I drove it back here. Then about 90 minutes later, he was back knocking at our door, telling us he had to go back to the hospital. Garry took him. They got back 2 hrs later. Then at 8, he was back at our door, knocking. Said he had to go to the hospital. He felt he had to be admitted. (I tried to get at what was wrong, and he told me extreme psychological pain. I asked him if he was having any thoughts about suicide, and he said yes.) So GDW and I took him back to the ER. Now come to find out, he hadn't told the ER people the other two times what his exact problems were. He told them the second trip that he couldn't sleep. So this time when the doctor comforted him and told him he could take TWO of the sleeping pills, I intervened and told the doctor that he had told me he thought he needed to be in a mental hospital. NOW we got places, finally. The doc picked right up on that and began asking the right questions. YES! The neighbor was admitted to the hospital and will stay there until his wife gets home tomorrow. There is more to the story, of course, but that was it in general terms. You know, I get upset if I have to go to town more than a couple times a week! LOL I must say, GDW was a good sport; and the neighbor DEFINITELY was not in his right mind! We could barely make heads or tails understanding him the first half of the day. And of course we didn't get anything else done yesterday. And I was on the phone with his wife the rest of most of the day, keeping her posted. We are just glad he had at least the wherewithal to realize he needed help, even though it took him all day to admit what was wrong!

And so I thrilled to be able to just work hard in the yard today! Yay. Nice boring day in the gardens that were just the temperature! And mowed. And got quite a lot of weeding done. GDW ended up having to go to the hospital this morning to get the house key from the neighbor since their dog was in the house! Just shaking our heads! AGGHH. LOL The yard beans really have taken off just in the past couple days, as have the tomatoes, cucumbers, and Seminole squash. You're gone from the garden for ONE entire day and that's what happens. I don't know whether the tomatoes will make it or not--might be iffy. They're all about 2 feet tall. We'll see.

Have a happy Friday, all!

Wow, Nancy! I'm so glad you were able to help your neighbor! And glad you enjoyed the cooler temps. I was stuck indoors all day so was surprised that it was 81 degrees when I came home at 7:45.

We didn't get any rain (big surprise) but I think north of the metro did. Happy for them.

I had to grocery shop for my Mom's BD party tomorrow night, so went to the grocery store after briefly checking in at home. By the time I got home, it was getting dark. I took a flashlight and tried to look at stuff in the garden...but couldn't really. Luckily all chickens made it while I was away all day. I'm annoyed that I'm not using my garden to make the BD dinner tomorrow night. I have to work tomorrow, so frying up a big batch of okra doesn't sound fun. I will make some fresh pico de gallo, though.

It was so ridiculously hot today that I 'captured' the semi-feral cat, Big Boy (of course he is not named after a tomato, but it could seem that way) and brought him into the mudroom when the heat index hit 112, gave him food and cool water, and kept him in (definitely against his will) for 2 hours until the heat index was back down to 106. I would have kept him longer, but he was tired of sleeping on the cool, tile floor and itching to go back out into the heat. I am not sure if he didn't like being confined or if he missed the heat.

Here's today's Maximum Heat Index Map:

Maximum Heat Index Map for Thursday

Nancy, My grandmother's mantra stays on my mind a lot these days, as we lose more and more of the old ones. We have one aunt left alive from my parents' generation, and that is it. So many have gone on before us. In our neighborhood, I suppose that Fred is the last of the really old ones left here in Da Hood---the ones in their 90s. We have several left who are in their 80s and a couple that I think are in their 70s. Honestly, those ones I think are in their 70s don't even seem that old to me.....I think of them as being about our age, and I just turned 60. My sister-in-law told me that one of my dad's best gardening buddies still is alive (95 years old) and planning to be a mom's funeral. She said he has serious mobility issues and I replied 'well, he is 95!" lol.

Wow. Your neighbor is so lucky that y'all realized he was having a mental health crisis and intervened to be sure the medical personnel understood that too. I hope he gets the help he needs. I am sure that both he and his wife appreciate everything you and GDW did for him today.

It is nice that you had the cool weather and could work in the yard. The only thing I did was walk down to the mailbox and back, about 300' each way, and I thought I was going to die in the heat before I got back to the house. Granted, our heat index maxed out at 113, but I think it was back down around 108 when I went to get the mail. Next time I'll just leave the mail for Tim to pick up when he gets home.

Butterflies don't mind the heat as much as we do. I make puddles in the driveway for them, and often see them out flying all day long, especially in and near the garden. They tend to prefer the sun, but I've noticed that as shade comes across the garden in the afternoon when the sun gets west of the pecan tree, the butterflies are in and out of the dappled shade too.

I ran a soaker hose to make cool moist soil for the chickens, and the butterflies visited that area too. I cannot imagine what shape our garden and yard would be in if we hadn't had that rain last week. The soil is going to dry up quickly in this heat, and so will the grasses, which just greened up again after it rained, but we'd be much worse off if we hadn't had the rain. All the fires we were having just stopped when the rain fell, and we are so grateful for that.

Tomorrow is supposed to be about as bad as today down here, and then the next three days get worse. I know this is typical August weather, but I'm so tired of it already and August has barely begun.

Dawn

Just have to say that I think we got rain. IF it's raining at home like it is at work...then, YAY! Glad I brought the dogs in. I know the garden is drinking it up.

The next three days look like scorchers, though.

Haha, Jennifer. We ended up with 1.75 by the time all was said and done--from the time I got up this morning until 3 pm. And a high of 83??? That's to give us a day off just before we finally go past 100, I guess.

I've had my nose buried in butterfly information all afternoon, reading reading. I could have been cleaning house................ nah! LOL We're off to dinner now.

We were blessed with a bit over 2” rain between yesterday and today. Things look so fresh and clean! Of course the heat and humidity tomorrow will boil everything, but today and yesterday have been a welcome respite

Unfortunately we didn't get as much rain as the other metro areas. However, we did get at least a half inch. My rain gauge is weird. And it's under a giant sunflower. Dumb. I should have moved it. Ethan said it was pleasant here until around 2...then it got uncomfortably humid. The heat index was like 100 at one point this afternoon. I'm grateful for what we got. Wish is had been a bit more,, though.

I'm trying to not get in that weird depression knowing the extreme heat is coming again. I was in the BEST mood this morning.

I picked okra and tomatoes but that is all I did in the garden today. We had Mom's BD party tonight. (I made sure I fully enjoyed it. She's 73 and I hope to have as many years with her as many of y'all have had with your moms.) She is a good mom and a great grandma. Love her so much. Tom's mom died 3 years ago and I miss her so much. She was older--born the same year as my grandma.

Anyway...

My task for tomorrow is to start some lettuce, spinach and broccoli seed for a fall crop. It's weird to NOT have anything planned or tomorrow. Normally we would be getting ready for a band event. *sob* I'm happy to have a free day, though.

Rebecca, Well, the best we could do to beat the heat was 11:30 a.m. Fort Worth is so big and there's so many deaths and the funeral homes stay super busy, so you get the time slots that are available, if you know what I mean. I am not complaining.....at least it isn't an afternoon funeral. It is supposed to be the hottest day of the year so far, but no one here on this earth can control the weather.

I think the recent high heat index numbers (ours have been in the 112-114 range on recent days) have fried my brain. We were out at the pool this evening and the temperature was 90-something and the heat index was 106 and I told Tim and Lillie "you know, this really doesn't feel bad at all". lol. I've lost my mind.

I've always been impressed with how well tomatoes can bounce back some years. I have abandoned the garden in some hot dry years....stopped watering, closed the gate and walked away, leaving it all to the spider mites and grasshoppers. Then, a month or two later, I look and the tomatoes have tons of new growth and look great. You just never know what they'll do. I'm glad yours are showing resilience. Your flowers do look great.

Jennifer, I know how badly y'all need rain and was hoping you'd get more, but any amount of rain is a blessing at this time of the year. I'm happy for all of you who got rain. We didn't get any, but we had some last week, so we aren't in terrible shape again yet. The dewpoints and heat index numbers are horrible though---as if the plain old high temperatures wouldn't be bad enough as they are. I believe Sun-Mon will be out hottest days of the year so far.

Don't let the heat get to you! September is just around the corner and will bring cooler weather. Really, the NWS is showing cooler weather mid-week, so that's something to hope for and to look forward to, unless the forecast changes and that take that bit of coolness away from us.

I hope you have many more years with your mom. Our mom never took care of herself (don't even get me started on that!) and we never thought she'd live as long as she did. When our dad passed away in 2004, we all thought mom wouldn't live more than a year or two longer. See how wrong we were?

I know it will take a while to get used to not being so busy with the band, but y'all did your job so well for so long, and now it is somebody else's turn, and you and Tom get to have more free time for yourselves. That can only be a good thing, right?

Today the weather felt quite a bit nicer here than on previous days. I think it was because our dewpoint was falling late in the day instead of going up, so our heat index peaked earlier in the day than usual, and it peaked lower---at only 111. How sad is it that this is what I consider a better heat index?

How many days until autumn? Winter? Can we start counting?

Need heat relief? Skip going to the nurseries and garden centers. Go to Hobby Lobby and walk around admiring all the fake autumn flowers, pumpkins, gourds, etc. and all the other fall decor, and then mosey over to the Christmas area and pretend it is winter time. See there---don't you feel better already?

Drought is spreading rapidly on the U. S. Drought Monitor Map and our fire conditions are worsening. All we need is for southwestern and southcentral OK (and much of central OK and western OK) to get some rain like NE OK had this week and then things will get better quickly. If, and only if, that rain actually falls though. I looked at the 6-10 and 8-14 day outlooks and they don't look especially promising. I say this every August---where is a good old tropical storm or hurricane off the Gulf Coast when we need one? I'm not asking for a big damaging thing...just some sort of storm that will send a plume of moisture up over Texas straight to us. Unfortunately nothing like that is in sight either.

Dawn

Okay, I must be getting much older. Last year I didn't cry uncle until a heat index of 114. This year, 104. Garry, about 95 or so. I've had a rough 2-3 days, but tonight am feeling better, once again fine, and thankful.

The pole yard beans are exploding, as are the cucumbers and tomatoes and Seminole. The flowers are suffering and not happy. But my goal is to keep them going for butterflies. Yesterday when it was uncharacteristically cooler, I put in some large clumps of St. Johnswort, lots more milkweed, and asters. They look mighty fine today. BUT because we had so much rain yesterday and because it was so much cooler, the butterflies ran for cover. They still didn't show up much today, except for large numbers of skippers. I will be successively planting dill now, and will begin cilantro at the end of September.

Dewpoint was 77 this afternoon.

Nancy, I was able to cry uncle a few weeks ago when our heat index hit 116. While the 113s and 114s have felt bad, I keep telling myself that at least they are not as bad as that day was. That is small comfort, though. I feel like all of us need to be smart and hide indoors when the heat index numbers go pretty much anywhere above 103 to 105. As far as I know, our 116 this year is the highest heat index we've ever had here. Our local TV met who has been here 10 years said he knew it was the highest heat index he has seen in the whole Texoma area, both sides of the river included, since he came to this local station. Usually when our temperatures are pretty high, our dewpoints are not and vice versa. This year we've had both.

I know you're in your butterfly discovery and learning phase, and August is always just about our peak butterfly season down here so I'm sure you're seeing tons of them, as are we. It is one of the things I love above August. We have so many butterflies in the garden than you can see them flitting around the flowers as you drive down the road....and the road is probably 100' or so from the garden. I like that anyone driving by can see all the butterflies fluttering around the flowers.

Rebecca, I saw some 79s and 80s at Mesonet stations up there pretty close to you yesterday, and we hit 80 one afternoon (maybe Wed or Thurs) ourselves, which I'm not sure I've ever seen down here until this summer. Usually 77 or 78 is as high as we go but this summer has been sort of off the charts for us in terms of high dewpoints. These high dewpoints sure make me long for a good old drought with low humidity and low dewpoints. One summer (I think it 2006, but it could have been 2008) our dewpoints were so low that there was a ton of static electricity and you shocked yourself every time you touched other people or metal or whatever. One day it was so bad that I looked up the dewpoint, which I really didn't tend to watch in dry weather, and it was -4. That may have been the only time in my life I've seen us with a negative dewpoint and I was so confused. I believe that was in July or August and we probably were in Extreme or Exceptional Drought at the time. While air that dry brings its own problem, it also means that we felt a lot cooler than the air temperature itself. Drought periods bring their own sorts of misery, but I always appreciate the dry air....even if I am complaining that it makes my skin feel like it is cracking. (Ha---cracking skin is not a problem in the dewpoints we have been having this summer!)

I've noticed tons and tons more cicadas out the last couple of days, and we already had lots of them. I wonder if this is their peak of the season?

Dawn