Northcentral CT ... woke up to the sound of a gentle rain, and been raining all day, including several absolute DELUGES this afternoon. Haven't checked the rain gauge (still raining!!) but it was enough to wash two monarch caterpillars off the milkweed that's currently in a pot on the patio awaiting relocation in a butterfly garden (one landed in the dog's water bowl -- fished it out and thought it was dead since it didn't MOVE for an hour... but then, a wiggle... whew!) I assume they can normally withstand rain?? They must SOMETIMES land in puddles? Does anyone know what's SUPPOSED to happen? I'm thinking I should put each one on a milkweed leaf, then take the leaves out to the meadow and put them on the ground under the big milkweed patch. Then at least they'll be part of a natural cycle (assuming it's not unusual for these guys to get washed off leaves and onto the ground .. just that ground should BE ground, not a bluestone patio or even worse, a dog's water bowl?)

FIRE: In looking at the NWS enhanced pages, I see that a Red Flag Fire Warning has been posted for many western counties--roughly those west of a line from Enid to Wichita Fall, Texas. Also, our "Fire Danger" for today has been upgraded from "very high to extreme" to merely "Extreme". Remember, if you are in the 13 counties in southern OK through east-central OK that have issued burn bans, your area is extra-dry (hence, the burn bans) and, in many of the southernmost counties, the KBDI numbers indicate that even LIVE fuels (plants) will burn if a wildfire starts. If wildfire is in your area, water your plants ASAP to help them resist the flames. With winds like we have today, wildfire can spread incredibly fast, burning through hundreds of acres per hour. ICE/SLEET/SNOW: The storm that is headed our way is already making trouble for the PNW, where wind gusts as high as 100 m.p.h. have been recorded. I'm dreading the arrival of the cold front and its' awful wind chill. In the attached link, there is a graphic that shows you what time the cold front is expecting to come across each section of Oklahoma. It is sunny, warm and gorgeous here today, and if it wasn't for wind gusting into the 40s, it'd be an almost perfect day. After almost a week without a significant fire, wildfire returned to our county yesterday, and today looks to be worse. I've been watering (today and yesterday), prompting DS to ask me "Are you trying to create a wetland?" Well, you know I am not, but the clay is so hard and dry that the water is ponding/puddling and only very, very slowly soaking into the ground. If wildfire hits our fire district today, almost all our firefighters are out of town for one reason or another and that worries me a lot. Whatcha gonna do, though? The weather will do whatever it will do. I'm tempted to sit on the chaise lounge and soak up some sunlight today and tomorrow before the cold front hits. I'm supposed to be planting daffs, but in this wind.....I just don't know. I bet I don't get much done, except for the watering, which is imperative at this point. I know OK is prone to wild weather swings but this is crazy. We're going to have highs in the 70s here in southern OK tomorrow, and in the upper 20s to lower 30s on Monday. Here's the link for the latest weather data--just click on any of the smaller graphics at the right to enlarge them. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Enhanced Weather Page

dbarron, It sounds like you can grow many interesting plants there. I'm still dreading this week's rain. I don't think the big huge rainstorms can miss us forever. Larry, I am sorry your area still is so wet. Ours is almost as bad. Wet clay is so unforgiving. If I didn't have raised beds, I've have no garden plants surviving at this point, unless I had planted rice. My tomato plants that are planted at grade level have yellowing leaves as well---I know they are drowning. The ones in raised beds are in better shape, but they won't be if the rain keeps coming. At least twice before, we have had a monthly rainfall total of 24+" and twice before, or maybe three times before, we have had a one-day total of 12+", and all that has occurred either in April or May. I think the most recent 24" May rainfall was in 2015, and it flooded the basement of our county courthouse, which was built in 1907-1910 and previously (but no longer, I think) had records storage in the basement---because I guess no one ever thought it would flood. Those were some pretty bad times for a gardener, but this nearly non-stop rain that now is in its 7th or 8th month is even worse. I'd like to be happy that our once-dry pond is full again, but that's hardly an achievement for it considering our entire property has been pond-like for months now. Crawdads are reappearing, likely chased out of the river bottoms by too much water flowing down the Red River. We have beavers on the creek again, a sporadic occurrence that happens only in the wettest years. The dogs can hear the beavers (I cannot) working down around the creek and bark at them. All. day. long. Our dogs are not barkers in general unless there is something around like coyotes, squirrels or, apparently, beavers around annoying them. Other than the drowning plants in the garden, it is extremely hard to keep up with all the mowing when it constantly is too wet to mow and everything is growing like weeds---especially the weeds. I'd love one warm, sunny week with absolutely no rain, but I bet that doesn't happen until at least June. As long as El Nino persists, we're likely to continue to see above-average rainfall. Dawn

Jennifer, I was supposed to be growing okra, southern peas, melons, cucumbers, winter squash, summer squash and gourds in the back garden but the constant Spring rain ruined that plan after the front garden was mostly filled with other plantings, leaving me little to no space to squeeze them in. Well, really the tomatoes were to be in the back garden too, but the muddy quagmire made that impossible too, so the tomatoes ended up in the front garden, leaving even less space for anything else. When I moved them there, I just figured the back garden would dry out eventually, and it is beginning to, but it is such a weedy mess, since weeds will grow in heavy mud, that I really don't even want to tackle planting back there this late. My fear is that our rain will suddenly stop and I'll have a huge back garden filled with young plants that will need a lot of water. The rain has largely dried up here, though the lower end of the front garden still is very wet. The upper portions of the front garden have dried out enough that the soil is fairly workable but not so dry that I have to water anything, except for newly transplanted seedlings. So, I have half the garden I planned, and the heat has arrived here. We've been in the upper 80s all week and are expected to hit 88-90 degrees today. So far, I have squeezed okra into the front garden, taking out the sugar snap peas (they are burning up in our near-90s high temperatures) just yesterday and replacing them with Jambalaya okra plants that I had growing in red Solo cups. I have a couple of summer squash plants, and cannot figure out how to squeeze in winter squash plants unless something dies unexpectedly and opens up a space for them. After I dig the potatoes, that will open up a 4' x 10' raised bed, so I guess I will put southern peas there. I still don't really have a place to plant any melons or cucumbers. In some years I have grown both of them on the garden fence, using it as a trellis, but with the way herbicide drift keeps hitting the front garden, anything on the fence is first in the line of fire so I sort of hate to plant anything there at all. At least if I have random flowers along the fence line, they seem, for the most part, to be more resilient and to bounce back from getting herbicide drift damage. I could plant melons and cucumbers along the northern fence line, but that's the lower end of our strongly sloping garden (sitting several feet lower than the upper end) and it still is very wet down there. The plants I have there now (Heidi tomato plants and some herbs) are producing but the plants are too waterlogged and look horrible and I am sort of amazed they still are alive. I don't think melons or cukes would fare well down there this year unless we dry out a lot. With potentially heavy rain in the Sunday forecast, drying out might not happen. I have grown cucumbers on the north garden fence before, but not in recent years---the woodland has moved across the 10 feet of open space that used to serve as a buffer between the woodland and the garden and now trees and vines are trying to grow right up to and through that fence line, making that fence line a bit shady. We lost control of that open buffer space in 2010 when we got almost 80" of rain and all the woodland plants went crazy and exploded into growth. We need to spend time this winter clearing it out. We can't do it now because of the risk of dropping a tree on the garden fence. We'll have to wait for the off-season when it wouldn't matter so much if the fence was destroyed. Well, it would matter, because we'd have to rebuild the fence, but there wouldn't be garden plants exposed to deer in winter if the fence was damaged like there would be right now. I do have about a 20' row of bush beans in the same bed as the okra. Those are just now starting to bloom, so they'll likely be producing throughout June, depending on how soon we hit the mid-90s, which tends to shut down bean production. I might be able to replace the bush beans with southern peas if we don't keep getting too much rain. I think late June would be pretty late to plant melons or winter squash though and it only would be possible anyway if we dry out some. When I transplanted the okra after taking out the sad-looking sugar snap pea plants, I found the soil there was still really, really wet. Thus, it seems like melons those probably will come from the Farmer's Market this summer. We can get really good locally-grown melons here, if anyone was able to get them planted this year. A lot of the good melon-growing areas here are on lower-lying ground near the river. I don't think they've been flooded, but they may have been too wet at planting time. It just isn't an ideal situation at all this year. I probably should have planted only half as many tomato plants as I had planned, reserving one of the two large raised beds currently filled with tomato plants for non-tomatoes, but I didn't. I have contemplated taking all the tomato plants out of one raised bed fairly early, as soon as I finish harvesting their first big round of fruit, just to have space for something else. I kinda hate to do that, but then, we're getting a lot more tomatoes than we can eat anyway, so I need to start canning now or the fruit sitting on the counter is going to get overly ripe. I'm not used to having to start canning quite this early. I could take out those two dozen tomato plants in the smaller of the two tomato beds and hardly miss them. I don't know if I will. It is hard to take out plants that are producing. It isn't quite as hard though when you're already overloaded with ripe fruit, so that might help make it easier. Those tomato plants are interplanted with basil, borage, marigolds and other plants that would make planting cucumbers or melons there a real challenge, so I wouldn't gain much by taking them out except I could plant more flowers and herbs there. Really, I am trying to be content with what I do have planted because there's plenty of people in OK and AR with flooded gardens, yards, homes, etc. that really are suffering and losing everything, so having to skip planting a few favorite veggies this year is so very minor by comparison. JetStar and Supersonic can be a little late to set fruit, but usually not extremely late. This has been such a weird year weather-wise that nothing would surprise me. With tomatoes, when we have high moisture and high humidity, tomato plants can go downhill overnight. Diseases like bacterial speck, bacterial spot, Septoria Leaf Spot and Early Blight are much worse in years with weather like this. While I usually don't have trouble with the more serious wilt diseases like southern blight or fusarium wilt, they also seem a lot worse in wet, humid years----not in my garden, but just in a lot of people's gardens in general. I would expect we'd see more of those across the state this year than usual. I even have wondered if this might be one of the very rare years we have late blight in OK. Normally we are too warm and mostly too dry for it, but with all the moisture and all the cool weather in May, we may have had a period of time when it could have developed. Hopefully not, though, since it is a totally devastating disease that can completely destroy a tomato planting in just a few days....and there is no cure, nor can you salvage any fruit---they all are infected and rot. The weird white stuff on your strawberry plants does look like some form of slime mold, though not necessarily the right color and texture to be dog vomit slime mold, which is a real thing. It is peculiar because slime molds usually grow on the ground, and then they quickly die away as soon as the soil dries out a little. They feed on decaying plant matter in the soil. Slime molds are just unicellular beings that thrive on decaying matter and tend to be short-lived when they do appear, often disappearing within a few days. While it is rare here, you can get slime mold on strawberry plants, on the leaves and even on the fruit. Normally we do not have high-enough moisture or humidity levels to support this sort of slime mold on strawberries, but it looks like your plants do have it growing on them right now. Don't worry, the slime mold is a growth but it is not an infection, so your plants aren't ill or anything---they just have an unwelcome guest temporarily growing on them. If it is dry enough, you might be able to scrape it off the plants. If the plants are mulched, the slime mold likely started growing there since, obviously, your strawberry plants are not decaying plant matter. It would help if the next round of rain would miss your garden so more drying out can occur and the slime mold will just go away on its own. I have been finding and killing a lot of armyworms on plants in my garden. Mostly I am finding them while they are very small--maybe a half-inch long at most, so have been able to kill them before they can do too much damage. I have seen other unidentified caterpillars and have left them alone if I don't know what kind they are. I don't want to spray with Bt because I have swallowtails caterpillars all over the place, anywhere that I'm growing parsley, cilantro, dill or fennel for them. I think I have those plants in 4 or 5 different locations and it is a deliberate choice to spread them around so that the songbirds won't be able to find and eat the swallowtail cats as easily. Larry, Your deer are smart---checking to see if some of their favorites have sprouted yet. We are seeing the deer a lot more often too. Sometimes they walk right by the garden fence while I'm in the garden. I have a feeling that if I were not in the garden, they might walk right in through the gate (they've done it before) and help themselves to whatever they are craving. I have no really good explanation why the deer are checking out the yard and garden as much as they are lately, and I've been wondering why I am seeing them so much. I suppose I could blame it a little bit on the river being so high--it is running only about 3 feet below flood stage--but the river bottom lands frequented by the deer aren't even under water, so why more of them are up here on higher ground this last month or two is something I really don't understand. There's plentiful native food for them as we certainly are not in drought. I'm having the same issue with the wild turkeys. The dogs will start barking like mad and I'll know there's wild turkeys in the front yard. They stroll right down the driveway from out west behind the barn, which is the area they always come from and return to, walk down the middle of the driveway a couple hundred feet to the front garden and then either slip off into the woodland adjacent to the garden or turn around and walk back up the driveway like they own the place. I put out cracked corn and a little hen scratch for them west of the barn each morning and they have become quite spoiled. Often, when I walk out the back door, the wild turkeys are waiting for me at their feeding spot. They take off into the back pasture as soon as they see me, but they don't go far. They just stand in the tall grass watching me, and come back to eat as soon as I had back towards the house. We've never had as many wild turkeys before as we've had this year. I see them in flocks of as many as 7 or 8 at one time. Some come from our woodland, and undoubtedly are living in it or the nearby pasture or both, and others come from our neighbors' pasture and woodland area. I hear them all day long, so I know they are around even when I'm not seeing them. Our neighbor who used to hunt them passed away a couple of months ago and I didn't hear his kids or grandkids back there hunting during the spring turkey season---undoubtedly they were occupied with other things. So, maybe we're just seeing more because they feel like they're in a safer spot with that property behind us currently unoccupied. Patti, I just cut them any old time. Like you, I hate cutting them down while the bees are visiting them so much, so I usually wait until they get so big that they are flopping over on the ground, which is happening now. I haven't cut mine yet, but will do so soon. You can cut them back pretty much any time you want, and you can cut them back as hard as you want. I have cut them back almost to the ground some years. They regrow like crazy and are big again in the blink of an eye. Often, I cut back half of them, leaving the other half for the bees. Then, when the ones I cut are about ready to bloom again, I'll cut back the other half. It doesn't matter though. You can cut them all at one time. When I've done that, the bees just switch to other flowering plants until the comfrey comes back into bloom. I worked in the garden longer on Friday than I have in a long time...from around 7:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. I weeded, weeded, weeded seemingly all day long, but also was able to get quite a lot of herbs and flowers tucked into little places here and there in the beds. I finally feel like I made a lot of progress with the weeds---not nearly enough, but enough that it gives me hope that I'll have weed-free beds in another week or two. Not that they will stay weed-free, but they do look a lot better now with all those sprouting weeds pulled out. It takes me so long to weed such a large garden though that if I start at the highest raised bed at the south end of the garden, then by the time I work my way down through the rest of the garden, from south to north, and eventually get back to the first bed, it has new weeds sprouting and the whole weeding cycle starts over again. I need to do some more mulching in the trouble spots. With all this rain, the whole garden seems to be a weedy trouble spot and I don't have enough mulch for the whole thing. With potentially heavy rain in the forecast for Sunday, I'm going to skip grocery shopping and running errands today if I can and spend as much time as possible in the garden again today, or at least until it gets too hot to stay out there. I probably stayed out in the heat too long yesterday and I know I didn't drink enough fluids, but I really tried to stay hydrated. I can grocery shop and run errands on a rainy day. I need to spend the sunny day in the garden. I was amazed at how many small armyworms I found and killed. I've been killing them for weeks, and more just keep coming. Their name suits them. I wasn't even looking for them....just killing them as I came across them. Often they were on small weeds that I was pulling, or on plants near the weeds....a reminder that we try to keep our gardens weed-free for just this reason....to give the pests fewer places to hide. I don't mind looking at weeds in the garden that much, but I don't like knowing the weeds are providing a home for pests that I don't want in the garden in the first place. Speaking of pests, I've been finding and killing a lot of green stink bugs lately, and I'm finding them in about the 4th instar stage. I don't know why I don't find them younger than that. Perhaps they're hatching and growing outside the garden and don't move into it until they're at the 4th instar. I never see their eggs either, or the newly hatched nymphs. Regardless, so far I'm seeing a lot more green stink bugs than brown stink bugs. I've hardly seen any squash bugs at all and when I do see them, they are sitting on non-squash plants looking confused, perhaps because the squash plants are under micromesh netting and they cannot get to them. So far I think I have been successful at killing every squash bug I've found. One advantage to not having many cucurbit crops this Spring is that the squash bugs cannot find anything to eat. Yay! I found a leaf-footed bug inside my garden shed and killed it. I haven't seen many of them yet, and I am glad, as they are quick to fly away when you spot them. I mostly just watch for them on the tomato plants. Right now it is likely they're feeding more on tree fruit. Speaking of tree fruit, the first sand plums are beginning to ripen now and I need to start picking them so I can make some jelly. I'm really sort of surprised we have any at all because we had multiple late freezes after they bloomed that I figured would have killed all the fruit. The freezes killed a lot of the fruit, but apparently not all of it. Have a great day everyone, and Happy June! The heat is arriving right on schedule, unfortunately. Dawn