Weather is the one thing that we really can't change. I felt sad thinking about you having a dry summer and not being able to keep things watered properly. I guess gardeners and farmers have to learn to roll with the punches. For me this is very difficult. We are fortinate to have our own water here, springs and a big pond. One year the pond got too low and I thought we weren't going to be able to water with it. I drove myself crazy for a week putting water in buckets, lifting them into the wheel barrow and carrying them to the garden. I just couldn't let it go.

One time I was off surfing the web when I stumbled upon a website. It was an exchange between people studying the climate in Afghanistan and Montana. So they said, climatic change effects mountainous places first.
In 1987 we got hit with a drought for three years which they said was as bad as the Depression years. 100,000 people left the state. Our population was reduced to 900,000 and we lost one of our two congressional representatives. It has taken 20 years to rebuild that population though lots of people move here. They just don't stick it out. Most of these people come to the western third of the state.(green)
Meanwhile, the eastern half of the state(brown) is emptying out due to pressure from drought and Canadian beef and wheat. There is one county which only has 600 people.
In '87-89, we saw temperatures in the 70's in February, and began to get grasshopper storms. They ate everything in the yard and then began to eat the pine needles off the trees last.
I remember in '88, opening the newspaper and reading there was a 30 acre fire in Yellowstone Park. It was late June.
According to the new age philosphy, they said they were just gonna let it burn.
By September the skies were completely black. Streetlights came on in the middle of the day and they closed the schools. We were all completely sick from smoke inhalation, and it took a couple of months to get well.
It took another 12 years to get them to abandon the LIB policy, thought up by people back east with a comfortable 30 inches of precipitation per year. However, they still don't have the manpower or resources to do a good job of fire-fighting
All we need are helicopters to stop most fires.
After '88 the climate got progressively drier for 20 years, and I kept thinking about what my college history professor said. K. Ross Toole said the west got hit with a cyclical drought every 50 years which lasted 20 years.
Really, though it seemed like climate change here began like a thin red line in 1980, the year Mount St. Helens erupted. Every winter got a little more drier.
This year, though, the snowpack is at 7 feet in the mountains, the first normal snowpack in a long, long time.
And it has been 20 years since the Yellowstone fires. If you think about it, why should global warming affect precipitation? After all, jungles are hot, and get all kinds of rain.
When I was a kid, they said sunspots were causing abnormally cold winters. Awhile back, I read that sunspots occurring on the side of the sun which faces us causes the opposite. So sunspots need to be on the side which faces away from us to punch up Old Man winter. I haven't read whether that is occurring, though, and have no idea if that theory even holds water.
It's snowing right now, just what the doctor ordered. and like most garden nuts, I JUST WANT IT TO GO AWAY.

You are in a tough situation. We are currently experiencing a drought in the Southeast, and even as dry as we are, I doubt we ever get as dry as someone in a truly dry climate. How much rainfall do you get in an average year?

I believe that climate is the most difficult factor for a gardener to deal with. The soil can be amended, drainage can be changed, but the weather -- it's just going to do what it's going to do. A dry year may be followed by a wet year that kills xeric plants.

We are in exceptional drought, a record for Alabama. Even with the storms of last week, not much rain.

We took a drive through our neighborhood today, the first time since last Sunday, people could just drive through and see the ravages of the tornado. There were 20-30 houses on the street behind us that were totally flattened, cars looked like they had been compressed for recycle. The houses destroyed in our neighborhood exceeded 200. We were certainly in God's sight, as the tornado came directly over our house, paused and went to the next street where it sounded like an explosion and everything stood still after what looked like debris from a bomb. My neighborhood looks like a war zone and a few inches of rain would not heal those wounds or bring back the homes, but it could have helped in the long haul in the months ahead.
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/bmx/hydro/drought.php

I'm glad to hear you were spared, Patricia. You bring up the other side of the weather, the scary, destructive side. Tornadoes are the worst because they just come up so fast -- and with winds of over 200 miles per hour, nothing can stand up to them. I had just moved back to NC and was staying with a relative when Fran hit -- rainfall was 10" above normal, and with 75mph sustained winds and gusts up to 100 mph, trees just toppled like dominos.

Thank you, Alicia. It was just amazing that it hit when most of our community was in church and our church only had 2 shingles out of place and houses all around within 2 blocks were down to the slab. Those who were not out shopping seemed to be at church. Our warning had been called off long before it hit and the warning was not even in our direct path, just within miles of us, but it took a turn, came down the river and boom!