Jeez, guys, DH's Type II team finally gets called out on a fire and you want to stop it immediately... But seriously, I hope everybody here stays safe and doesn't suffer from the smoke. Meanwhile, DH is driving around late at night like he often does on the big fires, only this time he's driving down Scottsdale Road instead of some dusty washboard in the middle of the desert. He'd missed lunch and dinner because they ran out before he could get there and was starving, and was looking for someplace to grab something to eat, then a Basha's appears, so he runs in and buys some sushi for the road. This probably conveys some meanness of spirit on my part, but if he's going to be gone two or three weeks at a time he should be having some hardships going on- I find it irksome that he's cruising Scottsdale Road and eating sushi for dinner without me! ;-)

terrene - doesn't surprise me one bit. Great minds DO think alike after all! (;-p) This morning a woman at work told me they had torrential downpours last night where she lives, which is about 25 miles' driving distance southwest of me. We got sprinkles and nothing more. Today it rained off and on...unfortunately, more off than on. The bottoms of the buckets I set out are barely damp. They posted more flash flood alerts but it has done no more than mist here. I pushed some mulch back that a critter had disturbed and it was bone dry a quarter inch underneath. The plant nannies are keeping my tomato plants in containers hydrated as well as a number of other planters I set annuals in each year. Guess my original gardening motto 40 years ago was the right one after all--only grow it if it thrives on neglect & abuse. ellenr - if it started raining here like it did where you are, I'd go out and stand in it too.

I would normally in the past have been rhapsodizing about the rain....but since then I've moved to Crescent City and am already taking the rain for granted..I've broken free of those horrendous water bills...Yay! I was just finally too sick of the Heat and the Dry and the Brown and Fires.....not to mention traffic.....

Jessaka, Good point that we need to be thankful for the rain we're receiving! OK, y'all, I'm not as much in the mood to dance today. Our ground is still very, very wet and I want to get some planting done after the Sunday-Monday cold spell passes. It rained lightly here last night, but I haven't looked at the rain gauge yet. I don't expect that we got much rain....but we really needed it at PRECISELY that point because we had 6 or 7 fire departments out fighting 2 wildfires at the time the rain started. Talk about rain falling just when it was needed! I tilled three raised beds yesterday, working last year's decomposed mulch (now pretty much just compost with a few chunks of bark) into the soil. It was still pretty damp, but wasn't wet until you got 6 to 8 inches below the soil surface. I was racing the rainclouds....could see them coming and knew if I didn't till those beds, I wouldn't be able to plant in them on Monday. Now, they may be wet from last night's rain, but they're "ready to go" as soon as they dry out a little. There's more rain in our forecast for today and for later in the week. After watching what has been going on with the flooding, especially in Missouri, I am grateful that we received only heavy rains here and no flooding. Dawn