Dawn I am doing the happy dance with you
All the rain had been going around us so to see it now is wonderful

Oh, I can be happy today, but I need to get into the garden. This is my spring break, and I have so much to do. So now we have had rain, and it must then stop until next week.

Can you believe that I weeded and put in Mills Magic on 16 roses yesterday, then watered them in. I sure got help last night in the watering. LOL

Have you noticed the blooming Bradford Pear trees? It is so sad here in Tulsa. Usually you look down the road, and there are rows of beautiful white blossoms lining the road. Now there are "spiggets", "twigglets" sticking out and hardly connecting to anything. You will see these large trunks that are cut off, then one trunk with a branch and these poor white blooms. They alone are pretty, but we are really suffering here because of our December ice storm.

Sammy

I noticed how sad the trees were when I was in Tulsa last Sunday too. On the ice storm upside, we can get mulch for free! My county commissioner is even delivering it.

I too have a ton of work to be done, but it'll have to wait a little longer. Yesterday just must have been a gardening day, I planted 3 trees, 1 shrub and did some leveling to uneven areas in the lawn. I know the moisture is a blessing, I just hope it dries back out soon so we all can get busy outside.

The white trees/bushes blooming wild right now, I've assumed those were wild plum? I was just curious, there are a ton on the ranch hillside next to my place. Some look like bushes and some like trees and I didn't know if they were the same. They just started blooming in the last week and I haven't ventured over to check them very closely. I thought I might try to make jam this summer if I knew when they should be getting ripe.

Jill

After heavy rains this morning, we've had only intermittent light rain throughout the rest of the day, but that's OK. If the heavy rains had continued, flooding would have been even more of a problem that it was, so I'm glad the rain slacked off.

FYI--heavy rains in the Dallas-Fort Worth area are resulting in a lot of flooding, high-water rescues and such. Well, maybe they got a little too much rain....and it is STILL falling there, one band of storms following another. After the rains leave Dallas, though, they are going into far southeastern Oklahoma, so are now east of us at this point, as are the Tornado Watches.

We are expecting intermittent rain showers through the night and into tomorrow.

Sheepie,

I'm glad y'all are getting rain today. I know that you really needed it there too!

Sammy,

I'm glad you got help with watering in all that Mills Magic. I cannot even begin to imagine what it looks like there with all the trees that were totally or partially destroyed. I guess that a lot of people who formerly had shady lawns and landscapes now may have to relandscape if they lost all or most their trees and no longer have that shade. Can you imagine?

For your sake, I hope the rain stops there so you can get outside and enjoy the rest of your spring break.

Jill,

Hopefully it will dry out quickly, but it is nice to have some rain.

How wonderful that your county commissioner (or his staff?)is delivering the mulch! Such a deal!

The white trees and bushes that are blooming right now in your area probably are different kinds of plums. The shorter ones that are more like bushes are probably native hog plums, sand plums, Chickasaw plums or thicket plums. We have both the thicket plums and sand plums here. The larger ones that are tree-like may be Mexican plums. Ours here have only recently finished blooming. On our property, depending on their age, the Mexican plum trees range from about 10' tall to about 20' tall. There is one very old Mexican Plum tree on a farm in Thackerville south of us that is about 30' tall and is so beautiful when it blooms that it takes your breath away.

All the native plums usually ripen here in June, so yours should ripen in approximately the same timeframe, but maybe a week or so later. They do make great jelly or jam.

Dawn

Thanks for the info; I'll mark my calender to start checking in June.

We have had some flash flooding in our area earlier but we're not under a watch of any kind now although it is raining pretty good at the moment. I've made myself a huge sticky note to pick up a new raingauge tomorrow.

I do hope this is not an ongoing issue like it was last year. We had moss growing on all over the place, the mosquitos were horrible and everything I tried to plant in the garden rotted. I remember it looking like rice fields out there at times.

Jill, I know about roses, and not much else. But do you have some expertise about that free mulch? When I ordered it a few years ago, as they were empying it in my driveway, the pro said that I should not use it for a year. He said that I shouldn't even use it in the garden paths until a year had passed. Sadly during that year, ants began to live in it, and it took me ages to get rid of them. I had piled the mulch too close to the back of the house.

Sammy

I hadn't heard that before, but then I've never gotten mulch this way before. I always bought it by the bag, which gets costly quick. I haven't scheduled to have any brought out yet. I wanted to wait until it dries out so I could have them dump it on the other side of my garden far away from my house and not so visible from the road. Right now they would get stuck :) If any of you forum readers know more on this please tell.

Thanks,
Jill

We've got 2 inches so far today.

Our plums we planted when we moved here are about finished blooming. The Mexican plums along the fence line are just starting as well as the apricots in the pasture.

I found two smaller apricots trees close to the one I discovered last spring.

randy

Here is a link that might be useful: Old post about apricot

About 6 inches here. 100 of our 200 acres is under water again.

I think the rainfall totals from May 1 of last year until now must be a record of some kind for us.

Please stop doing the happy dance if you are anywhere near Grove. According to the 6PM news Grove had 4.4 inches. It is still raining and is supposed to rain all night. This was my yard mid-afternoon today.

Here is a link that might be useful:

I hope someone can be more helpful than I about the fresh mulch business. If nobody else here knows, you might go to the trees forum or call your master gardener or county extension agent. Those that I spoke with seemed to consider it common knowledge, and they all stressed that it couldn't even be used in paths.

Sammy

Hey, Carol, I promise I will not do the happy dance anywhere near Grove! (An easy promise to make since I'm near Marietta.)

Our first three inches fell quickly, but it has been slow, light, intermittent rain since then. Still, we've had right at 4.5", and the skies are partially clear and I can see the moon, so our rain may have ended.

My yard looks a lot like yours....underwater.

Dawn

Sammy,

I'll check into it further before I schedule it to be delivered and post what I find out for the rest of you too. Thanks for the heads up.

Yes, Dawn no more happy dance please. It's finally tapering off but a nearby neighbor says we've gotten over 6"

If this keeps up, maybe I should take up fishing instead of gardening. I do like to fish :)

Jill

Dawn, It is exciting to me too. Finally after little rain all winter I am happy, and my plants are happy. I am doing a happy rain dance with you. Or maybe I should be thanking the Great Spirit in the sky.

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