Jay, Our rain started sometime after 4 p.m. and it isn't falling at a very hard rate, but that's OK with me. We're still on rain overload from 2009. I hope you get a lot of rain the next few days/weeks. I do think it is the El Nino effect and, you know, they forecast a moderate El Nino but we ended up with a strong one.....although Wunderground's Dr. Masters says the water temps have dropped just enough now that it is considered a moderate El Nino at the present time. Our weather here in Marietta was goofy in January, but it all averaged out to 'normal'. LOL Our very cold temps the first 10 days or so of January were offset by highs up to 20 degrees above average during the latter part of the month. Today we had oodles and oodles of birds at the feeders after not having many the last couple of days. I refuse to think too hard about what that means! Dawn

Mother Nature may know what she is doing, but she keeps me confused some weeks. I have had daffodils just absolutely buried in snow and come through it looking fine. Sometimes, though, and I think this ocurs most often when we drop from very warm to very cold very suddenly......they will droop a little and look bad for a day or so, but they then perk right back up. Still, since your MIL is completely disabled from MS (and I am so sorry to hear that), it would be so sweet of you to take her a bouquet of daffodils and Flowering Quince. I am sure she'd enjoy having a bit of spring brought inside. (Maybe tomorrow you could bring her a snowball?) Thanks for the tip on wunderground.com....I'll check it out. I hate that your hubby's days off are going to be ruined. But, hey, this is March in Oklahoma, and if it wasn't snow, sleet or rain ruining his days off, then it probably would be tornadoes, hail or flooding, right? And, yes, sometimes we get them all in the same week, don't we?

Reed, I am sorry the weather is being so hard on your plantings. Some years the weather is like this and some years it isn't. You learn to read the signs around you and plant/not plant accordingly. To me, one of the big clues for this year's planting season actually was last year's planting season. We were very warm very early last year. I put tomatoes in the ground about 2.5 weeks before my average last frost date and got away with it. That only happens once or twice a decade at our house, and never in 2 consecutive years---so I knew there was no way I'd get to plant them early this year. I waited and planted my seeds at the proper time instead of starting them early like I did last year. That helped a little bit but what helped the plants even more was that I moved the tiny plants out to the unheated greenhouse when they had only two true leaves so they would grow on at much cooler nighttime lows than they would have in the house. This helped keep the plants smaller and more manageable for a bit longer. It would seem counter-intuitive to do something to slow them down and keep them small but I have learned to do that in colder springs so that the plants and I aren't totally insane in mid-April when the cold weather refuses to go away and stay away. I also watch my trees and observe how quickly or slowly they are leafing out. The best tree, in terms of signaling that it finally is warm enough to plant, is a native pecan tree that sits to the immediate west of our veggie garden. It is not foolproof---even this tree occasionally gets frosted after it leafs out, but only about once every 5 years. If I put plants in the ground after it leafs out, they usually are OK. This year? That pecan tree still looks like it is mid-winter and I haven't put a tomato plant in the ground yet. I also have a couple of burr oaks near the house that are almost as reliable as the pecan tree. They are just now starting to flower. If you will watch trees in your yard and neighborhood over the years, they'll help you decide when to plant (or not to plant) the way my trees help me. To help your plants get through the late cold spell, you can use Wall-O-Water devices, floating row cover (the newest ones can give plants 10 degrees of plant protection), low tunnels made of PVC pipe or electrical conduit, etc. and you can put a heat source in the low tunnels. My favorite heat source is cat litter buckets or jugs filled with water to serve as solar collectors. I have saved every one of those we've bought since moving here and have quite a collection of them. I keep them stacked in the garage when not in use and they last for many years before they get old and brittle and crack. With buckets of water acting as solar collectors combined with floating row covers or low tunnels of 4 or 6 mm plastic suspended over hoops, I have gotten warm-season plants through temperatures as low as 19 degrees and have gotten cool-season plants, most of which will tolerate light frosts but not hard freezes, through nights with low temperatures as low as 9 degrees. All these techniques are things I learned to do after moving here because in Texas we generally did not have so many late cold spells. Even with everything I have done to slow down the tomato plants, they are now at the point where I need to either plant them or pot them up to larger containers. I likely will plant them sometime in the next 3 or 4 days and then will use buckets of water next to them as solar collectors and row covers over them if next week's cold spell arrives as expected. I never consider my plants "safe" from a late frost or freeze until after May 4th because we have had a late freeze or frost on May 3 or 4 at our house for 4 of the last 6 years, or maybe it is for 5 of the last 7 years. The key to success here with our spring cold fronts is to not let yourself get tricked by 70, 80 or even 90-degree weather in Jan-April. Early warm spells rarely last and very rarely mean the cold is truly over for the season. Spring weather in OK is usually a wild roller coaster ride until at least early May. That does not mean we cannot plant until then but it does mean we have to cover up plants every now and then. Watch the behavior of southern OK gardeners like Busy1 and like me . If we are not putting tomato plants in the ground down here, that is a sign that people further north of us shouldn't be putting their plants in the ground early either unless they plan to go to extraordinary lengths to protect them. I know that market growers have to take those risks because there is a big advantage to having the first ripe tomatoes at the market. For home gardeners it is not so necessary to put plants in the ground early. It is a sad truth that you can put tomato plants in the ground in late March and in late April in the same year and by late May or early June, the plants put into the ground in late April will have caught up to the plants put into the ground in late March about 9 years out of 10. Dawn

Dawn, I had maybe an half inch on the ground the first time I looked out this morning around six. Now maybe close to an inch. By looking at the radar and satellite images I think it is about over. I don't expect over another inch if that. And that is what most say. The NWS out of Dodge was saying 2-4 and Amarillo was saying a lot more just a few miles south of the state line. Like I've said before I don't pay much attention to the NWS forecasts. Usually Accuweather and Intellicast are the best online and then the independent forecaster our of Lamar, CO is the best. So when I saw you post yesterday was surprised as most everything I was hearing was 1-2 inches. The NWS has always been on the extreme high side every since they missed the blizzard so bad 3-4 years ago. Said 3-4 inches and we got 25. None predicted 25 but a few were predicting 10-15 starting a few days before. It was like 24 hours before it hit before the NWS ever raised their predictions much. Since then their predictions when it comes to snow fall has been on the extreme high side. They will hit it again someday I'm sure. Supposed to be 60 Monday. What a roller coaster. Should have some good days to get my outside work caught up some. Will try to wrap up my garlic, shallot and potato onion planting. But for the next couple of days will stay inside the reefer trailer and go do some shopping. Ben thinks Santa is coming so better go see what I can find. Jay