Lisa, I've been out mowing my yard....and our fields....and even the bar ditch. I had to use a string trimmer to cut the bar ditch because it is too full of gravel from the driveway to use the lawn mower. I'm about tired of mowing and weed-eating but still have an acre or so to go. Ilene, I saw your storm on the radar early this morning and thought to myself "There goes a perfectly lovely morning right down the tubes...." Oh, well, in July an early morning rain shower would be a blessing, so let's just pretend it is July. I hope the apple tree is going to be OK. It sounds like it has had a hard time rooting in firmly. In the late 1980s or early 1990s, we had a tremendously rainy year in Fort Worth and the ground became super-saturated. Huge pecan and oak trees came crashing down to the ground in the city-owned Trinity Park (along the banks of the Trinity River) and at the Fort Worth Botanical Garden. These were huge trees, often over 80 to 100 feet tall and 100 years old or older. The soil was so wet it couldn't support the trees and they just fell over. Until that happened, I didn't even know rainfall could cause something like that to happen. We had ants coming into the house so I just mixed about a tablespoon of orange oil (I use Medina brand) and a teaspoon of Dr. Bronner's Liquid Peppermint Soap into a quart of water, put it in a spray bottle and sprayed it around the window where they were somehow coming in. That was probably a day or so after the foot of rain fell, and I haven't had any ants in the house since then. Usually the orange oil kills them (it dissolves their exoskeleton) and the peppermint diverts them to a new path, and I used both so that if they survived the orange oil, they wouldn't cross the peppermint-scented area. They started falling down and dying while I was still spraying. I also use the orange oil for flea control in the dog yard. I'm starting to worry about everything in the ground. Diane, Isn't it a shame that rain falls heavily during planting season? I wish we could get it all planted and then get gentle rainfall, not monsoon rains. My first rounds of cukes, zukes and squash died, presumably from the foot of rain that fell in one day. I assume it suffocated their roots. They are not in raised beds. So, I am going to have to replant, but can't even think about that until the soil dries out some more. I haven't even given serious consideration to planting beans and won't until more drying occurs. The cabbage, broccoli and onions seem very happy though. My tomatoes are just starting to show signs of stress nine days after the flood. Their color is starting to look a little "off" and some of the lower leaves are yellowing. Hopefully they can survive, but I don't know if the ground will dry out quickly enough. (sigh) If more rain continues to fall before the ground can dry out some, then I don't think all the tomatoes will make it. Today, too, I noticed the corn is starting to look bad and I am preparing myself for the possibility of losing it. It just has that off color, sort of pale greenish-yellow instead of its usual deep green. If the corn dies, I won't replant because any corn I planted now wouldn't have much chance of pollinating and forming ears before the temps start going over 90 on a daily basis (which can inhibit the formation of kernels). I guess if I lose this corn to the wet ground, I might try again in the fall, although it can be hard to get the timing of fall corn just right. I was telling my husband that I didn't think the tomatoes were going to survive all the rain and he joked with me that I was "gardening hydroponically". LOL This is our second day of sun too, but the humidity is high so the heat index is pretty brutal. Dawn

Carol, Yes it is! For most of this year, as so many of you have posted reports of "rain gauges overflowing", I have felt like I was living in the Twilight Zone down here in southcentral Oklahoma. Well, either that or the Bermuda Triangle. LOL When I posted the rainfall map linked in the first post of this thread last week, I was astounded that so many counties had racked up rainfall in excess of 40", with quite a few over 50" and some over 60" and three months remaining in the calendar year. Of course, the lack of rainfall in the panhandle counties (less an 12" in some areas) and parts of southwestern Oklahoma are pretty astonishing too. Even though our state is not real large geographically, we sure do have diverse terrain,from western Oklahoma's dry, desert-like conditions to eastern Oklahoma's lush greenness, and everything in between. The diversity shows in our climate too. Love County has never had 60" of rain in one year since records have been kept, and I cannot even imagine what that would be like! And, there are probably people in the Panhandle counties who'd be thrilled to have Love County's 21" of rainfall, even though it is far less than we're used to receiving. You know, Carol, it wouldn't surprise me to see some of y'all who are already in the 60 inch range in rainfall to possibly reach 70" before the year ends. And, oddly enough, I am not sure even that much rainfall would give many of you the "most rain ever" in your counties. I've linked a different Mesonet map which shows this year's rainfall as a percentage of "average" rainfall. Those lucky few who are in the "blue" area of the map have had such a glorious rainfall year, and those of us in the "gold" blotches on the map have had a less than steller one. I'm wondering if heavy fall rainfall would cause the mesonet folks to add a new color to the map if some of you in the bright blue (180%+) get to 200%+? It will be interesting to look at this map at the end of the year and see if the typical autumn rains bring the dry areas significantly closer to average. And, I just want to make it clear that as lovely as it is to get a LOT of moisture, that kind of rainfall does bring many challenges with it, including problems with root rot, fungal and bacteria diseases in plants, etc. So, it might seem like getting a lot of rainfall is marvelous, but there still are certain challenges that accompany all the moisture. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful:

Cochise, Yay! Tomatoes in the ground! That always says 'Spring' to me more than anything else. Is twine fencing just horizontal lines of twine strung from pole to pole? I'm trying to picture it. It is good to hear your birds are back. I think listening to the birds singing, chirping and (in the case of blue jays, squabbling) is one of the best parts about working outdoors. Kim, All that rain is so exciting because we know what it is like when the rain doesn't come. We should be just slightly cooler than you if our forecast is correct. It shows a lot of forecast highs from 77-79 with just one 80, but it wouldn't shock me if we got hotter than forecast. The best thing, though, is our humidity is not going to be real high so we are supposed to have a few really pleasant, sunny, warm, comfortable days with no rain. I've already been out there this morning and it is awfully wet so for today I'm mostly just hoping the standing puddles either soak in or dry up. My garden is the best it has looked in late April in several years, and I also have standing water in several paths, but it will have to dry up on its own as the water always drains downhill from the property next door (both above-ground and under-ground) so I just have to wade through the water in the pathways and wait for it to dry up or soak in. This is going to be a good day for weeding the raised beds if they need it (I weed weekly so there shouldn't be an awful lot of new weeding to do today). I'd like to mow and get out the string-trimmer and clean up the fence lines, but I might have to wait another day or two for the grass to dry out. I will finish thinning the fruit on the fruit trees today. I've been doing it a little at a time over the last couple of weeks, but didn't thin it all in one day. Prior experience has taught me that when hail is in the forecast, I should thin in stages instead of all at once because there's nothing worse than thinning your fruit so that is has exactly the right spacing and then having hail come along and thin out 85% of the fruit you have left. Since all those days with big hail in the forecast didn't drop any hail here, I need to go ahead and finish thinning the fruit myself.' I'll be treating the big areas of standing water with Bt dunks and bits as well today, and probably treating the fire ant mounds with the small amount of organic fire ant bait that I have left. The fire ant bait I ordered shipped yesterday so it will be here in a couple of days. Depending on how many grasshoppers I observe today, I might do the first grasshopper treatment with Semaspore today. I've been waiting for the rain to stop so I could finally do this. It seems late if you look at the calendar, but I haven't seen nearly as many lately as I was seeing a month ago, so maybe the rain and the chilly weather and the wild birds have been thinning out the hoppers for me. I usually treat for them more in April than in May, but there was no point in putting out Semaspore when it was raining every day as it likely would have washed away before they ate much of it. I'm looking forward to getting a lot done outdoors this week after the ground and grass dry up a little bit more. Right now it is still a lake out there. Dawn

We got RAIN! It looks like more than 2 inches in my gauge. The airport did not get that much! We had some sparse tiny hail. About 2 am a storm came through across north Tulsa county. I looked at the radar, it was a small red blob. I haven't been to the garden yet. It came down really hard, probably washed direct seeded seeds to the edges of the beds, carrots were covered though. My mood is much improved.