I will tell you one dry he!! hole and that is west of I-75 and south of downtown St. Pete to about central Sarasota County. I live in southern ST. Pete near the skyway. It has been dry and then drier for years, not just 2008 or 2007 but years. We can see the storms north towards Gandy in NE ST. Pete in the summer but they don't hit the southeastern pinellas point area. You can see the storms before they hit the bay over in Ruskin and Parrish but they fade before they cross the Tampa Bay. This drought is nothing new but is getting worse. Year after year the central gulf coast proper is drying up. Last year, the east coast which always gets more rainy anyway was flooded out by tropical storm Faye, in fact I think almost all of the state got rain from this soggy storm. Not southern Pinellas or western Manatee, not a drop. Friend and family would say we see all the flooding going on from Faye in Florida. In August Tampa can get 2" of storm rains a few times a week and if my rain guage is lucky maybe a quarter inch for the entire week...... Not here not a drop. It rains in south Florida, east Florida and north towards Pasco and inland. All of the state is in a drought but I can tell you that all are far more wet then southern Pinellas and western Manatee have been any year. If a big cold front with a squall is moving towards the coast from the Gulf you can watch the radar as the echo's all dry up before southern Pinellas gets anything. Just a drizzle or clouds. My rain guage hasn't registered 1" of rain so far for all of 2009, and I have a couple set up in case one malfunctions. This is a desert however many succulents can't tolerate the high humidity or we would but Phoenix to shame.

Game bird, This is the first year any of us have tried Candy Apple Red since it is the first year Dixondale has offered them, so I am curious to see how they do. Mine are about the same size as yours, but I haven't harvested yet, so they might get a bit larger. Of course, nothing in my garden is a good indicator this year because the 12" of rain that fell in one day at the end of April absolutely halted all apparent growth for 4 weeks or longer, so my entire garden is stunted compared to last year. Still, as long they they taste good, that's what matters. I intend to try them again next year and will hope for a more typical spring growing season so I'll know how they perform under "average" conditions. When Ruth Stout was trying to interest people in mulch gardening, she was sort of out there on her own. I sort of thought of her as "a lone voice crying in the wilderness". Now, of course, she looks positively phophetic During her time, the gardening fad was all the chemicals developed after WWII---chemical pesticides, chemical fertilizers, etc. She persevered and stuck to her guns about soil improvement and mulching, and she was right. I think Jay must have fantastic soil too, plus he works very, very hard. I cannot imagine trying to grow everything he grows in his semi-desert conditions. We are in our 11th year here and the areas that I've been improving and mulching for that time frame do not even look like the soil I started with, and that is despite repeated droughts that have baked the ground to a concrete-hard consistency over and over and over again. Except for the first 2 or 3 years when I amended heavily, all I've done is mulch, mulch, mulch. The difference in the soil is amazing. The formerly red clay that was so hard and sticky that you couldn't even break it up with a fork or mattock is now a milk chocolate brown colored sandy loam and has improved beyond my wildest dreams. Even in the pathways where I routinely mulch, the soil is so different from what we started with. Nowadays, I only improve soil by adding amendments the first year that I break up new ground. After that, it is all just stuff that's layered on top of the ground as mulch and time, Mother Nature and the earthworms do the rest. When we moved here, we had a tremendous issue with Cotton Root Rot, a soil-borne disease that affects thousands of different plants and folks who live here told me I'd never be able to overcome it and grow what I wanted to grow. After the first three years of soil amending, though, the CRR has never reared its ugly head again and I plant what I want in that soil, including many plants that you "cannot" grow if you have CRR. So, I think well-amended and well-enriched soil can overcome almost anything. Like you with the wood chips, I find that no matter how much mulch I put out, pile up and spread around, it is never enough and I always want more. We have to remember that "heat eats compost" and here in OK, it gobbles it up and breaks it down almost more quickly than we can add it. So, mulching is just a great way to keep replenishing what is being used up, and it keeps the soil so much cooler underneath the mulch which helps the plants too. Wheelbarrow time will build muscles and help give you a tan! Of course, the front end loaded was a mulch more efficient way to do it. Jay, I can relate! When the drought of 2005-2006 finally broke and we had a simply luscious summertime late afternoon thunderstorm, Tim and I sat out on the covered patio for 2 or 3 hours and watching it rain and listened to the thunder and watching the lightning. We also watched the frogs come out of "hiding" and play all over the yard and in the puddles. Later on, we spoke to several different neighbors and discovered they all were doing pretty much the same thing....watching the rain and the frogs. We all joked that it doesn't take much to entertain us here in Love County, but I'm telling you, we were so starved for rain at that point that nothing was more important than seeing that rain fall. I hope you get to enjoy every minute of the rain and hope it is falling at your mom's place too. I'm looking forward to hearing about your onion results. Except for being too dry, you've probably had the most "typical" or "average" weather of all of us. I don't know what the rain has done to everyone else's onions, but it almost killed mine. I was just looking at the garden earlier this week and marveling at how good it looks, considering that I thought the flooding rains might kill everything in it. I hope you're out playing or working in the rain, or at least spent some time sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee enjoying that strange phenomenon of liquid falling from the sky! Dawn

I'm so happy for you! Your sink and granite look wonderful. My silgranit has been in for about 6 weeks and I've seriously used the dishwasher twice. I've never kept on the dishes so well. It helps to love your sink, I guess! P.S. Love your menu sign...

So happy for you, Ingrid! Yea! Rain! And a substantial amount! I think your garden is just gorgeous as are the flowers you posted. When I first saw the post, I thought you posted S. du President Carrot! Had to look twice at that one. It is very early in the morning here and I am not sleeping well. House flooded again for the third time in three years. The machines to dry out the place make my house sound like I live on a tarmac. It is hard to get sleep. We got some rain as well from Dolores. Not as much as you unfortunately. Some downpours and a bit of flooding in some areas, but mostly thunder and lightening. Lots of thunder and lightening! Again, your garden is just lovely!