Sheri, During the last week I have begun watering my garden heavily because at this point it is either water heavily or close the gate and walk away and let it all die. For the last 6 days, I have watered every other day for up to 2 to 4 hours each time. My soil remains bone dry. If you go into the garden an hour or two after I water, you can stick your finger into the soil and it is moist, though certainly not wet. Eight or ten hours later, it is bone dry. The next day is it dry and baked hard, even under mulch and you can't pull the weeds. This is in raised beds. Obviously the pathways and grade level beds are even worse. It is not uncommon for our clay soil to shrink/contract and crack in hot weather. However, this is the first year ever that I have had cracks in the ground IN THE GARDEN where I am watering every other day. So, if watering every other day and mulching can't prevent the ground from having 1" wide cracks in it, what will? I am rapidly giving up on my tomatoes because the spider mite population is exploding. I am about to the point where I can't see the point in watering the tomatoes any more because the spider mites are so heavy on the plants, the stink bugs are hurting the fruit and there is no rain relief in sight. Yesterday I was in the yard when the water company guys pulled up down alongside the road to read the water meter and I remember thinking "Uh oh, a heart-attack-inducing water bill is going to arrive next week." However, I did pick about 60 nice tomatoes last night, with about half of them being pretty large ones from varieties like JD's Special C-Tex, Indian Stripe, Dr. Wyche's Yellow and Gary O Sena and the other half being from Goliath, Early Goliath, Heidi and Cluster Goliath. Sixty tomatoes from 22 plants isn't bad and most of the plants have several green tomatoes still on them, and I need to check the other tomatoes this morning and pick fruit, including cherries. I already picked squash while outside turning on the water. When spider mite levels get this high (even some of our bermuda grass has the stippling typical of spider mites), if you leave heavily-infested plants in the ground, the mites begin to spread from the tomato plants to everything else. So, I think it likely I'll soon begin removing the most heavily-infested tomato plants in the hopes I can save the rest of the garden. So far, the mites are mostly on bush beans, which are winding down production anyway, and on the tomato plants. I don't want them to spread to my squash, peppers, melons, southern peas, okra etc. You just know it is going to 'hurt' to start yanking out tomato plants. Normally, my container plants are my fall-back plants if the ones in the garden are declining, but all my container grown plants had mites first, so I'm yanking them. So, I think it is possible your soil is staying far too dry, but I also think it may be impossible to water it "enough" unless you have a bottomless well and don't have to pay for municipal water. I have been watching the rapid increase in my county's Keetch Byram Drought Index, a fire index used to convey how much moisture is in the soil. For firefighters, it provides insight into how intensely fires will burn because at a certain point the soil is so dry that duff/humus layers burn and even roots burn underground. We had a lot of trouble with underground roots burning during the 2005-06 fire season. After watching the KBDI for years and comparing its numbers to what I see personally in our garden, I know that it isn't worth my while to try to keep tomatoes alive in our specific soil if the KBDI is at or above 500. The last time I checked it a day or two ago, it was at 467. I know that the "Decision Day" is coming soon and so I need to be making plans for what varieties of southern peas I'll use to replace the tomato plants. I don't think I'll take out all the plants at once, but rather will start by yanking those with no fruit, then those that are most heavily infested with mites or whatever, and eventually they'll all be gone. I might try to keep a row or two of bite-sized tomato plants going. It just depends on how hard they're being hit by the mites and stink bugs. Usually in a drought year, I stop watering the garden in early July, but have stopped in mid-June once or twice. In 2008, some lifelong gardeners who live near us stopped watering their garden about a week after I did, and they told me it was the first time they'd ever "given up" and stopped watering. It just got to the point that it didn't make sense economically and also wasn't making enough of an impact to justify spending the money on the water. I'd say that in our neck of the woods, most folks are about at that point now. I've already been watching some gardens wit soil that's not nearly as 'improved' as mine, and either they've already stopped watering or the watering doesn't appear to be helping at all. A few folks that often have gardens that are a half-acre or an acre or larger planted cool-season crops and then had such poor results that they didn't even plant warm-season crops. The weather is always a cruel taskmaster here, and this year it is so much worse than usual. I don't think my garden is about 'done' but I think my tomatoes are. Loretta, The news out of Medicine Park this morning isn't good, is it? The last report I saw says at least 5000 acres burned and about 15 homes destoyed. They have roughly 25 fire departments onscene and should get more help today from regional fire managers, Forest Service personnel, and maby air support from tanker choppers or planes that can drop water laced with fire retardent. I hope they can stop this fire before it destroys any more structures, and let's not even thing about all the wildlife displaced when their habitat burns. We have religiously removed all cedar trees within 100 yards of our house because when they are burning they can literally 'explode' and send burning sap flying through the air. Wherever that sap lands, it starts new fires. However, our next door neigbors have tons of cedars on their acreage, and some of those are only 10-15 feet from our southern property line. There's nothing we can do about those. I was looking at our unirrigated aceage yesterday and everything is dead or dormant out back of the house, which is west of the house. Down along the road east of the house, the only real green remaining is the Johnson grass and sumac in the bar ditch. How sad is that? I hadn't been watering the yard around the house, but because of the prospect of wildfires, I've started doing that, so we have a little bit of green around the house. Not a lot, but a little. You can easily tell what has been watered and what hasn't because of the sharp difference in color. The good thing about drought is you don't have to spend a lot of time mowing, because there isn't much to mow. Dawn

Seedmama, Your kind words are appreciated. Knowing how close you came to losing your home to a wildfire earlier this year, you know I'm always watching the fire weather and fire maps so I can text or phone you if needed. It is harder to track fire danger in summer because the winds are lower so the NWS doesn't issue Fire Weather Watches every other day and Red Flag Fire Warnings often like they do when we have windier weather in wind and spring. However, I know from being out at fires these last few weeks, including one pretty close to our place, that the fires are moving almost as quickly now due to all the cured vegetation as they move in winter/spring when being pushed by high winds. That is not wildfire behavior we have observed here often. Usually summer wildfires are sort of slow and lazy compared to winter and early spring wildfires. These year the summer wildfires are raging maniacs. Too many homes are burning across Oklahoma because of wildfires, and I especially hope that doesn't happen to anyone here. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I'd be equally devastated if our house and garden burned in a wildfire, but at least the house is insured and rebuilding would be fairly easily accomplished. The thought of having a wildfire wipe out the garden and take out all the fencing, the wooden boards that edge all the raised beds, the arbors, gates, and trellises, and all the mulch is quite distressing. With the KBDI number being so high, even the humus and compost in the soil would burn and that is distressing too. After 13 years of soil-building, it would be so hard to start over from scratch. I'm also going to be really mad if the greenhouse burns down before I get a chance to use it! Wantonamara, I'm glad y'all are cooler this year. No one deserves two of these years back to back. I was really hoping that Tropical Storm Don would bring y'all relief, and then he didn't. Now Emily seems destined to head elsewhere, so I guess we can pin our hopes on the future 'Franklin' whenever and wherever he develops. What do you mean we aren't cooling off? lol We went all the way down to 83 degrees early this a.m. Isn't that cool? Well, maybe not, but it sure felt cool after the afternoon's 111. We've already hit 112 today, tying my city's all-time record, which was set in August 1956. We are supposed to go to 113 but I won't mind if we don't go any higher than 112. It is interesting how many fires start along the roadside. While all of the wildfires we've been to this summer have not necessarily started at the side of the road, I'd say 80% of them have. There's so many things that cause it---mechanical malfunctions, carelessness, etc. One of the scariest things we've had lately have been those big old flatbed semi tractor-trailer trucks hauling hay down to Texas. There have been several reports lately of those hay trucks rolling down the highway with flames or smoke coming from the wheels or tires. Our local law enforcement officers rush to find them and stop them before their load of hay ignites. (That has happened before, but not this year as far as I know.) Heaven help anyone whose property has a highway or other heavily-traveled road adjacent to their land. Pat, Sometimes at fires I (or someone else standing there with me) can smell the grass starting to burn underneath a vehicle (including fire brushtrucks) and have to warn someone to move out of the tall grass. Some fire depts. have lost brush trucks this year while fighting fires because the grass under the trucks has caught fire and then the fire devoured the truck. It is a constant risk. We see it a lot here with tractors and balers too. FYI: The Governor extended the Governor's Burn Ban to all 77 counties today. I do think our county has had fewer fires since the county burn ban was implemented, and even fewer since the first governor's burn ban was issued, but we'll still have plenty of them. I was looking at my poor, hot, wilty okra plants today and think they could burst into flames any moment just from all the hot rays of the sunlight they're absorbing. When I walked across the yard to mist the setting hens that are inside the coop, hummingbirds were flying around playing in the mist from the miste, as were cardinals and, a bit more discretly, the doves. I'm glad we have enough flowers in bloom to keep the hummers happy, but think they may find the southern migratation pretty tough this year. We have planted so many plants specifically for the wild things, but so many of those plants are struggling now and I am woried they won't provide as much food for the wild things as they usually do. The native possumhaws are looking really bad. Dawn

We just had a dryer fire, which the firemen said was caused by a dryer sheet. Somehow it got sucked into the lint filter, don't ask me how, and the heat built up until the fire started. Thank goodness we were awake and heard the clunk when the plastic fins in the drum melted and fell. We managed to put the fire out with our handy fire extinguisher and hose (power turned off first, of course) but we lost a load of clothes, and both washer and dryer (they were stacked, and all that water did the washer electronics no good at all). There was lint on the filter itself (daughter #2 didn't clean the filter after daughter #3 did her laundry) but none in the vent hose, so it should have been fine, except for the dryer sheet blocking the filter. We'd used the sheets for several years without trouble (though our lint filter definitely needed to be washed every so often, or it did clog up), but we won't be using them any more. Ever. If the kids think they need them for static problems, they can rub the sheets directly on their clothes.

Nap: Yeah, I agree with that. I always have told my girls "you teach people how they can treat you." I'm glad I nipped it. I think I'm just regretting not nipping it after the 3 wk wait. I'm getting too old for crap that irritates me. Especially when I'm PAYING for it. Dilly: That stinks. I'd never handle it as graciously as you seem to be. I'd be doing the Medusa thing by now. Marcolo: I believe you are right. Engineer: Yup. I knew that and forgot. I've actually only personally known one incident of friends doing well in a business venture together for the long haul. Fori and Marti: exactly the scenario I want no part of. That not showing up crap makes me crazy and I don't get it. WTH does someone want to run their own business for if they aren't going to benefit from happy customers and excellent word of mouth? It's so stupid.