LOL, Gamebird, loved your Grandpa's squirrel question. I'm gonna have to remember that one! I'm glad no one had any disastrous weather. We saw that same sky as your picture, Moni, it went right over us and didn't produce any rain. I was really bummed out because we didn't get anything out of the last couple of "promises", either. But then later on, as I was busy in the house, DH came in to tell me it was raining. It started raining hard then and I've been too busy to check rainfall reports, but our mushroom-shaped water storage tank is now almost full. I'm so grateful for this, as I had beets just beginning to come up and some new bean plants struggling. I knew if we didn't get a good soaking rain those beet plants would never make it. I had planted turnips also but I soaked the seed overnight (which really helped the beets as they sprouted in only five days), but the turnip seeds were sprouted before I even got them planted. So guess I won't soak turnip seeds any more. As it was I put more water in the container and threw as few seeds on the ground in a spoon of water as I could get, so as not to injure them or to plant them all in one big clump, then covered lightly with fine soil and a scattering of loose hay. I don't know if it's working or not, I think I see some stuff coming up there but hard to tell at this stage whether it's the turnips. I haven't been out today to look. We had a cool night and now, at noon, it's starting to heat up. We're supposed to have a cool night for several nights now. I'm sure hoping the true heat of summer is over for us. In the past several years, we've had our worst heat the last two weeks of July and first two weeks of August, and once we get past that, things start getting tolerable again. Of course I know this is Oklahoma. Oklahoma's like a boxa choklits....

Carol, During the Red River flooding of 2007, parts of our Mesonet station were disabled for days and days. I think the issue lasted until the worst of the flooding subsided. At some point they went back and manually corrected what records they could, but much data for the Burneyville station for that month is incomplete and considered somewhat unreliable. It drove me nuts. I had to rely only on my own observations! LOL I need a rain gauge that measures 10 or 12" of rain. I don't need it often (hee hee) but once every 2 or 3 years we get 25-35% of our annual rainfall in one day. When that happens, depending on how fast the rain is falling, I have to put on my muck boots, grab an umbrella and run outside and empty the rain gauge when it gets close to the 6" mark so it won't overflow and give an incorrect measurement. In April 2006, we had 9.25" in one day and most of that fell in about 4 hours. I went out and emptied out the gauge when it hit 5", and then I went out and emptied it out again when it hit 4". Shortly after that, the rain pretty much stopped. This year, the 12.4" fell over a longer period of time--maybe 8 hours or so--and I dumped the rain gauge 2 or 3 times so it wouldn't overflow. Based on statistics, we shouldn't have a massive rainfall for another 2 or 3 years, but sometimes statistics lie. "Christmas Day maybe?" LOL LOL LOL Here is what I am thinking. I am about to catch up and I will have one of those days really, really soon. I have two large bowls of tomatoes on my counter to process, so I think I'll roast them and a few other veggies at the same time and maybe make roasted tomato-garlic soup. That takes care of them. Then, I'll pick tiny tomatoes this evening (too hot already this a.m.) and dehydrate them. Then, I shouldn't have to process tomatoes again for 2 to 4 days, although I pick daily. I'll pick okra at the same time I pick little tomatoes, add it to what I picked yesterday, and blanch and freeze that. That's another veggie I shouldn't have to harvest again until tomorrow evening then, and I usually wait until I have two days' worth before I blanch/freeze. I also should have enough purple hull pinkeyes tonight to either cook a batch or freeze one, and then I should be able to skip picking for a day or two because they are slowing down. So, if I can get black-eyed pes, okra and tomatoes all done today/this evening, I shouldn't have to process them again for about three days. LOL It isn't much, but it is the best I can do. That only leaves hot peppers and sweet peppers. OK, so I have a lot of sweet peppers coloring up and I can pick them and freeze them for future use any time. I might do that tomorrow. If I do, it will take me just a couple of hours to pick 'em, wash 'em, slice 'em or chop 'em and get them into the freezer. That, then would leave only hot peppers. I've done a very heavy picking of hot peppers at least every other week since mid-July. At the present time, it has been about 10 days since I did a heavy picking, although I run out to the garden and pick as needed for cooking or canning recipes. So, I might be able to go 5-7 days before I pick hots again since rainfall is low and growth is relatively slow. So, where this is leading to is here: if I pick and process okra, peas and tomatoes tonight (Thurs.) and sweet peppers on Friday, and postpone hots until Mon. or Tues., then I should have Saturday off! Well, I'll have to pick okra, but I can stick it in the fridge and blanch/freeze it on Sunday. So, you see, I might get a day off. Unfortunately, Saturday is our best chance of rain here (about a 70% chance of rain and they are saying it may be heavy) so it probably would be a good day to be inside canning. It is hard to make the 'day off' fall where you want it to fall. I might do all I can on Saturday if it is raining, and try to make Sunday the day off because I love to cook a big family lunch and spend the afternoon watching NFL football. We still need and want rain here, and I think that by the end of the weekend, maybe I'll be able to say we finally got some. And, all my food processing predictions assume the plants will ripen produce as I expect it to. Every now and then, you walk out in to the garden and discover that blackeyed peas are suddenly purple earlier than expected, or the okra grew especially fast overnight or whatever. At this point, I'm just grateful the fall beans, corn, cukes and peas aren't producing finished products yet. As long as I keep up with the still-producing summer plants, I will be putting up a little food regularly, but not huge amounts on any given day. I will have a big green bean and big corn day or two in October if all goes well. I really think the heavy food processing load is lessening though. I'm still doing frequent batches, but smaller ones. When the fall broccoli is ready, that will be a big day or two, but that's some time off. Dawn

Haven't been on for a while but wanted to see how everyone was doing after the big deluge. Anyone heard from I think Gloria? I seem to recall she lives in Longmont. I hadn't realized how bad it was until I was coming home from work last Thursday evening from Denver and saw the St. Vrain looking like a mini Niagara falls! running barely under I-25. Fortunately for us, we're on higher ground and they evacuated folks in low lying areas to the Mead HS and a church on Rt.66. The St. Vrain is still running high and heaps of streets East of us are still closed. I hope everyone is safe and not severely impacted and hope to see some of you at the swap which i see hasn't yet happened so I am hoping this time to make it since I always seem to miss the Fall swap and I am certain I have some plants to share. Here's a bit of a laugh and smile in all the gloom, the fella and I found this large toad that must have gotten disoriented during the deluge and fell into our window well we think....we haven't a clue how long it's been there but from the looks of it, he's doing pretty good feasting on all the crickets down there. We took him over about a half mile to a "swampy" area and hopefully he'd be happier there!

kfrinkle, The latest rainfall projections for your area sure haven' gotten any better, and my part of Love County is straddling the line that divides the projected rainfall into the 3-6" category and the 6-9" category. Looks like the frogs are gonna be really happy and the gardeners much less so. Lisa, I imagine he is right. This year it seems like Norman floods at the drop of a hat. I imagine there will be lots of flash flooding and a lot of good old river flooding over the next few days. We had flash flooding overnight in part of our county (but not our part as most of that rain missed us too). Paula, It needs to be a big boat so it will carry a lot of potted tomatoes and peppers. All this rain has severely watered down the flavor of both tomatoes and plums. I suppose the tomatoes still taste better than grocery store tomatoes, but only just barely. Now that the peaches are breaking color and approaching the ripening stage, this big rainfall is going to come along and water down their flavor too. The rain hasn't hurt the quantity of produce we're harvesting but it sure has hurt the quality. As soon as they do the weather here on the noon news, it is back to the kitchen for me because I'm making plum jelly today. I probably should be outside building a plant ark and loading it up with 2 plants of each kind.... This morning, I heard on my county radio that a small amount of water (at that point, 1" deep) had just begun flowing across the Lake Murray spillway at Scenic Hwy 77. Hopefully that runoff from last night's very heavy rains north of us won't cause enough water to flow over the spillway that they have to close down the road. There's also a possibility that Lake Texoma may rise enough again to flow over the spillway again. The spillway is at 640 and the lake level currently is 637.70. It has taken it a couple of weeks to drop from the former high of 645.something and now it may go over the spillway for only the 5th time in its history. We weren't expecting the fifth time to occur so soon after the fourth time. We're expecting 3-6" in much of the area, with some areas getting 6-9". That much rain over a few days will fill up the lake quite a bit. It is funny. I thought it was mid-June and we were in the process of recovering from all the May rainfall. Suddenly, we're almost right back where we started, as if the two weeks of drying out never even happened. I feel sorry for anyone near the lake or river and especially folks downstream as they are about to have water damage and destruction all over again. On the bright side, all the rain made really nice-sized potatoes and lots of them which is wonderful since drought often causes smaller yields and smaller sized potatoes. Dawn