KarinL: That's a fair question, and I actually did more or less know what I was getting into with 5 acres, but poor planning on my part made it about the WHOLE 5 acres. The usual Montana Homestead way, whether 5 or 500 acres is you concentrate around the house as your main "canvas." The mistake here is we have made the canvas too large. In all reality, using the whole thing wouldn't be inherently bad, but requires some additional planning. Example are the Olive Trees we have beyond the lawn. The grass out there is kind of nasty brohm grass, which isn't irrigated. Most of our moisture is from snow, so by mid July, anything not watered is brown. So, I have a nice little 10' radius green patch in the middle of high brown. I mow the field to offset this. My preference would be to simply let the prairie grass grow without the little "landscape islands" I have now. I'm not sure what farmland looks like up there, but out here, you'll often see a 20-100acre plot with a house in the middle of it. A lot of times, the only way to tell there's a house is that it's surrounded by trees, which are the only trees on the property. I'm not big on blocking the views, but that same basic concept would be okay. I really don't want smaller, I just want more efficient, if that makes sense, and more deliberate. I'm meeting with a designer next week out here, so I'm hopeful he can help me get things under control. Point well taken though. One thing I've been saying is the bank should require you add $10-15k for a tractor into the mortgage on any lot bigger than 2 acres. ;->

Good news for you Brenda! So glad to hear you did get some rain. At this point, we will take anything we can get. We went to our 5 year old grand-daughter's softball game (those little girls are so much fun to watch) and wouldn't you know it, we got rainned out! There were actually two lines of storms that went through the area today and we got some rain from both of them. I'm pleased and so grateful. I'm also looking forward to a few days of cooler weather too. My plants are looking better already. Not only from the rain, but also because the relentless sun was in the clouds quite a bit of the day. stevation, we are also sad to read and hear on the news about your dry, hot weather and the fires you are having to endure. Hopefully, rain will soon come your way and things will improve. Linda

No doubt Mindy that leaf mulch is invaluable to the gardens. I started using them about 5 years ago and have never looked back. I bring home shredded leaves which have been left at the curb by homeowners who have not yet realized their value. Although we are surrounded by deciduous trees, there is not nearly enough to feed our gardens and compost. I also gather whole leaves and pile them to make leaf mold, leaving them to rot for at least a year. By the time I get to them they are black gold. I've done the mower and the shredder and the shredder beats the process hands down. One thing I've discovered through my experience and discussions in the Soil and Compost Forum is that we all underestimate the carbon value of leaves in our perennials beds. Given the choice today to feed perennials with a nitrogen source or a carbon source, my choice would be leaves for their carbon. :O)

Jay, Sometimes green plants are deceptively dry. I am seeing more and more of a sort of delayed-onset of drought damage every day. Some plants that initially greened up and looked fine as recently as 2 or 3 weeks ago now are totally brown. That includes all the willows on the banks of the big pond, but since they're trash trees, I don't care if they all turn brown and fall down...which is exactly what they're doing. Carol, We've always watered with a combination of hand-held hoses, drip irrigation lines and soaker hoses. Sometimes I use a sprinkler for the grass. Next week I am going to pull all the soaker hoses out of the garden and replace them with dripline so that everything in the big garden and the Three Sisters Garden will be watered with driplines. Then, I'll use the former garden soaker hoses for the grass. Actually, I am not especially inclined to water the grass, but the trees growing in the yard will need to be watered, so that means the grass gets some water as well. Since I plant in grid patterns and not straight rows, replacing the soaker hoses with dripline will be a nuisance since the plants already are so big, but in future years it won't be too bad since I'll put the lines down before I plant the warm-season stuff. I'd rather stand and water with a hand-held hose because that makes me slow down, stand still and pay attention to what is happening in the garden, but as you noted, this is not going to be one of those years where hand-watering is adequate, or even practical. Congrats on the first tomato. Give yourself credit for producing it. All I did was start the plant. You're the one who planted it and kept it going and brought it into production. Our tomato harvest has exploded in the last couple of weeks, so your tomato explosion shouldn't be too far away. Sometimes I have to remind myself it is only May because, harvest-wise, it feels like mid-June. For dinner tonight, I'm going to make spaghetti sauce using tomatoes and other veggies from our garden. While we often have fresh-eating tomatoes in May, we don't normally have enough fruit ripe all at once for me to make a big pot of pasta sauce this early in the year, so I'm excited that I'll be making sauce tonight. MJ, We are not going to blame you for the weather, but thanks for stepping up and offering to take the blame. lol It was a drought year when we found a bought this land, and a drought year a couple of years later when the house was built and we moved here. So, you know, we knew exactly what we were getting into. Then we had several good rainy years...about every other year....and I started thinking at least every other year would be nice and rainy. Unfortunately, that has not necessarily been true. One drought year is bad enough, but if you run a couple of them consecutively, the second or third consecutive one really hurts. We have soaker hoses all the way around our foundation and we usually water the soil around the foundation a couple of times a week in drought periods so the ground won't crack, shift and crack the foundation. I guess I'll turn on the soaker hoses today and start that process. I don't think I had to do that last year until July, but I am seeing cracks in the soil nearer the house than I like, so will start early this year. I'm sorry to hear about the pecan trees. I've always thought of pecan trees as indestructible, but last year's drought proved me wrong. So far, most of ours seem fine, but most of them are near the mostly-empty creek and are used to a lot more available moisture than what they have now or what they had last year. It is starting to seem like it will be a really long summer. George's pumpkins tolerate a whole lot of heat. I have them growing in the Three Sisters Garden along with Seminole pumpkin, Texas Honey June corn, and various odds and ends of different kinds of veggies that tolerate drought well. It is good yours are off to a great early start. Maybe that will help them have a huge and deep root system before the heat and drought worsen. Sonya, The U. S. Drought Monitor map can be confusing when it is new to you. If looking at the statistics makes you crazy, just look at the colors on the map and the legend that tells you what each color stands for. The first map I linked was for the map released on Thursday of this week, which reflects data received through Tuesday morning of this week. The one for last week that I linked later on was released last Thursday. So, the map is always a little behind real-time, but not much. It can help to read the statistics from right to left. Look at D4 and the number listed under it shows what % of the state was in D-4 (Exceptional Drought). Then, look in the D-3 column (Extreme Drought) and that shows you the percentage of the state in D-3 and D-4, and so on down the line. Mostly all I look at is the colors. White is good, and any other color is bad. Generally, the darker and deeper the color, the worse the drought is in that area. Once you're seeing red areas on the map, conditions are dismal. Once my area is in the red, I am only watering what I must water--like the soil around the foundation of the house, young fruit trees that would perish without water, etc. Usually I keep watering container grown plantings if they're still productive. By the time my area is in the red, we are more concerned about a wildfire coming through and destroying everything than with watering enough to keep the garden alive. Prior to 2005, wildfires were not a constant issue in most of the state, so we're all adjusting and adapting as it becomes more of a regular occurrence, along with more regular sustained drought periods. These maps and charts help us evaluate and understand what is happening across the state and how it relates to what is happening in our counties and in our own yards and gardens. I've looked at the Drought Monitor for enough years that I know which parts of our property suffer and how much they suffer at each stage of drought. We have acreage and 90-95% of it gets by on rainfall alone, so knowing if we are in D-1 drought versus D-3 or D-4 kinda tells me what to expect. The first time that my area went into D-4 drought, which I believe was in 2003 after the relatively wet, good years of 2001-2002, I was horrified. I feared that everything would die. A lot of my perennials did die, but the trees and shrubs didn't. So, as bad as Exceptional Drought can be, most plants (not including veggies or annual flowers and herbs, of course) will survive it as long as the duration of the Exceptional Drought is not too long. What is more worrisome than any specific drought stage is how much recovery occurs in between droughts. I am concerned that the developing/deeping drought of 2012 follows so closely on the heels of the drought of 2011. There was not enough recovery time in between, especially for much of eastern OK. Since eastern OK usually has huge amounts of rainfall, their plants may suffer more than plants in areas that have a lot less rainfall even in a good year. Dawn