Why - going to plant swaps to acquire even more plants that need to go into the ground and be babied and watered ! What an insane thing to do ! Many plants are traded bare root or as cuttings so they cannot idly sit by until we get rain or I can get to it . Seeds are often traded and can keep ... but the rest ? We must be nuts ! If anything survives I will be very happy . Meanwhile , it's a plant ER with many victims in the ICU . We are being teased with weather reports of possible chances of rain this week . I will try not to cry if we get flooding later .

gaalan, I agree that a moratorium should have been placed on new construction early in the summer, when it became apparent that there was going to be a severe shortfall of moisture. That would have alleviated the necessity of establishing new lawns and landscape. Since 99% of the developers, cut all of the trees and scrape all of the vegetation off, while leveling the entire area, it requires vast amounts of water to reestablish plants in the area. On the other hand, just think of how many illegals would be out of work, if construction were halted! And all of those new tax dollars that would stop rolling in! They might actually have have to furlough some of the unqualified city/county employees. God forbid! Are you aware that it requires from 6 to 8 people, sometimes more, to install/change a water meter or install a cleanout Tee on a sewer line? A couple of people to do the work and the others to stand around and talk & tell jokes to keep the workers entertained! Not conjecture, from my actual observations over many years. A small water leak can require 4 or 5 vehicles, with professional drivers, that do not participate in the actual work, a supervisor, a backhoe operator, a dump truck to haul away the excess soil that was removed, since it expands tremendously, once removed and all of it will not fit back in the hole. :The following day, the water truck, with two employees, comes to wash the silt from the street, where the soil was deposited, and it is flushed down the storm drain to eventually wind up in a nearby creek. Very ecologically astute, our taxpaid employees are! Complaints to elected officials fall on deaf ears! Rb

I went out and ran errands most of the day after I did the harvesting early this morning, and then came home and canned. While canning, I logged on and looked at the QPF and saw the rain had shifted north, Scott, and I was happy for you. It was unlikely it would expand and catch both of us, so if it wasn't going to hit us here, then at least it seems likely to hit y'all there. Enjoy every drop that falls. Y'all don't have to worry about me. We'll be fine. We've had worse years than this one. For as dry as it has been overall, at least the majority of this year's rainfall here has fallen in June and July. That's actually better than if it had mostly fallen back in February and March and then very little since then. I just get tired of having to irrigate all the time when folks 100 miles north are flooding. It makes me want to stomp my foot like a 4-year-old and proclaim "It's not fair!" I also can think of more fun ways to spend money than sending it to the water company. (grin) I thought the grass in the yard looked a little greener this morning after I had watered it on Sunday, and then Tim mowed while I was canning pickles, and now the lawn is brown again. We did get rain here yesterday and a little this morning. It added up to 0.15". We'll try to make that bountiful amount of rain last as long as possible before we feel compelled to water the garden again. : ) Looking on the bright side of things, when only 0.15" of rain falls, you don't have to deal with muddy feet and muddy paws because there is no mud. Helen, Well, it all depends. Are they big drops or small drops? Kim, It is about time y'all have a good rainy summer. You haven't had one up there in so long. It probably is just as well that we aren't going to get heavy rainfall. I'm harvesting watermelons about every other day and if it rains too much once they are maturing, it can ruin their flavor. So, I suppose this week it is good not to have too much rain for the sake of the melon flavor. August melons usually have the most superb flavor because they ripen in the heat on low rainfall, so in that sense, we are right on schedule. As long as the cool weather lasts, we'll enjoy that whether we get a little rain, a lot of rain, or no rain at all. At least with the significantly cooler weather and lots of clouds, the soil moisture we have isn't evaporating as quickly as it was on the really hot days last week and over the weekend. Since it isn't likely to be raining much here tomorrow, I'd like to spend the whole day doing garden maintenance. It isn't every year you get a day in July so cool that you can happily spend the whole day weeding, deadheading, mulching, etc. I'm looking forward to that. Kim, I have a Mantis cultivator. It is the perfect size for me and I can do just about anything with it. I am amazed at how well it works on dense, compacted clay---as long as that clay has some moisture in it. The Mantis is no match for clay that is dry and has baked as hard as concrete, but it is great in clay with a little moisture. In the small areas of sandy soil that we have, it is awesome, and it works fine in the well-amended clay that we've been improving for 16 years now---cuts right through that amended clay like a knife cuts through butter. I don't know how it would handle caliche clay/rocks because I've never tried it on that. Sometimes my Mantis and I together can break up fairly hard clay better than Tim can do it with the big, heavy, rear-tine tiller, which is something I didn't expect. It seems like the Mantis digs in and bites into the soil with its smaller width while the bigger tiller is bouncing around on top of the clay and throwing Tim around with it. I love my Mantis and if it ever dies or breaks down to the point that it is beyond repair (in 5 years we've had no trouble at all with it), I'd buy another one in a heartbeat. Dawn

Funnelweb, I like your approach! We have a similar attitude. I remember a few years ago we had a snake in the backyard. I only saw it partially once in the old chook shed as it scuttled away very quickly. I thought "god what the heck is that" and then figured it must have been a blue tongue as we had quite a few of those. Then one day my son's school friend was here and they got a good look at it. The friend was all for killing it as he used to live on acreage down around Berry and reckoned that when it gets to breeding season they (snakes) get agressive.. but I reckoned it wasn't doing anyone any harm and indeed it had only even been seen the once, and frankly, I'm flattered it likes our place, so I issued a protection order for it. we have some frogs and some water and the old chook shed has a nice northerly facing concrete floor and stuff in it to hide under. Sounds like pretty good snake apartments really! There used to be an aviary and chooks in nearby yards, and these attracted the mice, but those are gone, so the food supply may not be what it once was, and I don't think snakey is till around. I have been doing a project re family photos recently and had a disappointment. We have an old family story about my grandfather walking along and stepping in a taipan which was curled up asleep minding its own business in the long grass. Snake jumped up into the air in fright. Granfather jumped up into the air in fright.. the family story went that snake went one way, grandfather the other.. but then going through my mothers photo album, there's a photo of my grandfather holding up a dead snake. Mum says, yeah, that IS the snake from the story. .... sniff... I liked that story better when I thought the snake lived to tell the tale. As far as I know the only fauna permanently living in the old chook shed at the moment is a rather large and impressive red back. When I found her she was a beautiful specimen. Red backs made excellent pets. They are quiet, timid and provide food for blue tongues. Sure you don't want to go sticking your finger in their gob, but I reckon that's about what you'd need to do to rile one up.. and im our experience the red backs aren't stupid, they do their best to choose places you don't interfere with too much and set up their web out of the way there. They are lovely little creatures.