In my county our water supply is from local reservoirs on a local mountain, which are still OK because of the enormous amount of rain we got last year. However, most of the surrounding areas get water from the Sierra snow pack, and that has been so awful this year that they could hardly find it! This series of storms is predicted to drop many many feet of snow also, so that is great. The first day of Spring is next weekend - and we are getting our first real series of WInter storms! - go figure. Jackie

Paula, Thanks for the link! There were other good articles on that page as well. Our lilacs are just about ready to flower. Maybe a little early this year, but they do traditionally bloom in April here. I'm happy as in the last year or two I've bought several young plants that were supposed to be particular colors--no name, just the color showing on the tag--and I haven't seen them flower before. Along with the scent of lilacs, what really distinguishes them is that amazing spring combination of freshness and opulence. Old roses of the once-blooming types can be opulent too, while Hybrid Teas, for example, can't; but roses come later than lilacs do, at the start of summer. Lilacs come into flower here while the grass is at its greenest and lushest, while the air is sweet and the trees are leafing out. I'm passing blissfully through the various stages of spring. Early spring, daphne, sarcococca, hellebores, violets and crocuses, is on the way out; now we have daffodils and hyacinths, the cherries, plums, and pears are in full bloom, and the wisteria and the lilacs are about to begin flowering. The roses are leafing out magnificently; 'Mme. Antoine Mari' outside the front door is preparing her usual glorious spring display--it's amazing what that rose does in exchange for an annual armful of mulch (this year she got some more dirt as well). Rainfall continues extremely meager as we get closer to the end of our rainy season, and water supplies are low. I hope, not very hopefully, that we won't get an extra couple months of summer like we did last year. But at least right now the garden is green and growing. Melissa

lol, Paula. That is just what I was thinking when this thread was resurrected! I was wondering if everyone else had missed the frogs as much as I had after far too many quiet years. Long ago, probably in the summer of 2006, after southern OK had suffered through the drought years of the early 2000s (except for 2004) and especially the drought of 2005-06, we had a summer rainstorm. We sat out under the covered patio and watched the frogs come out of the lily pond and hop all over from puddle to puddle while it was still raining. I think we got almost 4" that day in just a couple of hours. After the rain, still sitting under the patio cover (and listening on our fire radios to firefighters at the north end of the county fighting a haybarn fire starting, unfortunately, by lightning) we watched a rainbow appear and we watched the frogs for an hour or two. A few days later, everyone in our neighborhood was out frantically trying to catch up on mowing and trimming, and we often stopped for conversations with passers-by while mowing down by the road. At such times, our road is more like a sidewalk..... The funny thing was that when we compared notes on the rainy day, we found that other neighbors also were sitting on porches and covered patios, watching the frogs. It was too funny. We poked fun at ourselves for watching the frogs..."you might be a redneck if....you sit in the rain and watch the frogs play", etc., but the truth was that the frogs that day were a symbol of so many things---how horrible the droughts had been and how we finally had hope the drought would break being just two of those things. As it turned out, true drought relief was a few more months away, but the heavy rainfall and frogs that came out to play that day still served as a sign that good times would return. Sometimes in the midst of awful drought, frogs are such a good, positive sign that some sort of normalcy has returned. That's how I feel this year---things are so much more normal, weatherwise, than they have been in ages. Dawn

Overcast and drizzling for 2 days here, to. So hopefully whatever (armadillo?) that keeps nudging a certain mini azalea bush up and out of its damp hole will not need to come that far.