I'm truly sorry for your turn of events. One thing I can promise you is that you're not alone in your trails and pain.

Just about anyone that loves tilling the the soil or growing plants are in your shoes right now with you or are have wore them in the past. Although things seem a little dark right now, there is ALWAYS a light at the end of the tunnel.

As a young boy I overheard my grandfather say about a drought year when there was no return on the many hours of plowing and sowing in the spring "There's always next year." Next year didn't feed the family or pay the bills right then, but what else can you say?

I have a little time and money invested in a tropical plant that loves unbearable heat and brutal sun. That's one thing you find in Oklahoma during the growing season. I'm still looking to find it this year. :-) Until I do, there won't be much income for me off the property this year. I'm having to do other things I don't care to do to help pay the bills until the worm turns my way again. :-) But the worm will turn.

randy

Cityboy--I too am so sorry for your sadness and total frustration. This is a very ususual spring for sure...but when you really listen there is strange weather patterns all over the whole world right now.
It is very hard to see so much hard work and hopes seeming to go right down the drain with all this rain. Surely your entire crops will not be lost? And surely the sun will shine again.
Randy is so right in saying that any and all of us who post on this forum are lovers of growing things...and we are all suffering to some degree or another. So yes we all do share in the frustration you are feeling and hope to help you to not feel it is utterly lost.
You are my son's age if you are 35...and you have a whole lifetime to look forward to seeing the fruits of your labors. With gardening there are always going to be good years and bad ones. But with planting variety comes the surety of having something thrive and grow and yield you some return on your labors.
If it isn't the weather many times it is various types of insects which will get to parts of your crops.
Our forefathers who settled here in Oklahoma certainly endured all kinds of horrid adversities. But the land is still here and as long as you have the land and are in decent health you have hope of realizing your dreams. You have done so much in such a short amount of time. For that I congratulate you. It will pay off in time.
Hang onto your dreams...and pray. Pray for God to bless all your efforts.
G.M.

Dear Cityboygonecountry,

I hear your words and I feel your pain. I hope you know that every one of us faces the same challenges that are causing you such despair today. It is difficult to persevere at times, but we do, and so will you. I truly believe that.

When we moved to our home in Love County in 1999, I was the happiest woman on earth. We had our cozy little new Victorian house. We had 14.5 acres of land very similar to yours. I tried to look beyond the red clay soil, the overgrown woodlands so dense with greenbriar and poison ivy that you couldn't walk through them, etc. In my mind I saw the potential that the land held.....someday we would have a huge vegetable garden, rose beds, perennial beds, fruit trees and berries. In my mind I pictured a beautiful paradise. In reality I had terrible soil, drought conditions, unrelenting heat and a plague of grasshoppers that ate everything in sight, including the bark off the trees and the fiberglass window screens on the house.

So, obviously there was a huge disconnect between my dream and vision for this place, and the reality of what we had and what we were facing. Then, after living here for about 6 months, I was diagnosed with cancer. I was 39 years old and I was scared to death of what I faced. I wondered if all the work we had done on this place for nothing. In addition to wondering if I would survive, I wondered if my DH and DS would stay here and carry on the dream if I died. You see, the whole living in the country thing was more my dream than theirs in the beginning, but they embraced it too.

So, here we are eight years later. I am healthy and cancer-free. Still alive and kicking. I STILL have horrible red clay soil, although I have improved small areas of it that now have trees, shrubs, flowers, groundcovers, vines, etc. I have that big veggie garden, although some years have been better than others. I still have overgrown woodlands although every winter I spend a lot of time clearing underbrush. I am confident that someday we will be able to walk through the woods without having the plants 'grab' us.

In the years that we have been here, we have lost many, many of the plants we planted to drought and to deer, rabbits and other wildlife. We have lost plants to flooding rains. We have seen our springs, our spring-fed pond and our spring-fed swamp dry up completely. We have seen our 300 foot long gravel driveway washed down into the bar ditch numerous times because we are on a slope, and rain water is going to do what it is going to do.

But we are still here. We still struggle to turn the reality into the dream. Is it worth it? Oh, you had better believe it!

We have met the kindest, warmest, most loving people in the world here. When I was sick, they took care of me and my family with prayers, meals, friendship and so much more. We have each other. We have beautiful sunsets and beautiful sunrises. We have weather that is amazing in so many ways, both good and bad. We have wildflowers that rival anything 'fancy' you find in a nursery. We have 100 year old trees that show us the meaning of strentgh and perseverance. We have abudant wildlife that gives us great pleasure AND causes us great pain. We still have the dream, though, and I am here to tell you that in spite of everything we have endured, the dream is still alive.

Despite the tortune of gardening in a state whose four seasons are Drought, Drought, Drought and Floods, we live in a beautiful place where we are surrounding by God's majestic beauty. Sometimes it seems that it is two steps forward, one step back, for every project we do here at our place. Yet, we keep taking those two steps forward.

This morning's storms have brought down trees. They have flattened my corn and many other plants are once again drowing in water. My lovely peach tree is now a weeping and probably broken tree. I'm sure that whatever gravel we still had in the muddy lane we call a driveway is probably now in the bar ditch. Again.

I am determined to overcome all these challenges. I may have been a Texas for the first 39 years of my life, but I am an Okie now and I am damn proud of it! Okies are the strongest, toughest, most resilient people on the face of the earth. We have to be. We persevere against all kinds of wacky weather. We survive wildfires, icestorms. tornadoes, severe windstorms and thunderstorms, mind-bending droughts and unimaginable heat. We survive biblical-like plagues of grasshoppers, crickets and locusts. WE ARE SURVIVORS!

You are one of us now. You may have been a cityboy when you arrived here, but you are a country man now. You will survive these setbacks and you will continue to 'live the dream'. I could never, ever go back to living a city life in a suburban neighborhood, and I don't believe you could either. Keep your chin up. Keep plugging away. Keep believing in the dream and you will make it happen!

Dawn

I know nothing about you folk except for what I read here each day and I've got to say you are all inspirational. This was the boost I needed to face today.

Thanks

Hi Hank!

Whenever I am feeling depressed by all the weather, insect and wildlife challenges, I think about the pioneers who settled in this territory a little over a hundred years ago.

It is awe-inspiring to imagine what they did and how they did it. Imagine moving somewhere and all you could take with you was what you could carry in a wagon. Imagine that all the food you had for your family was what you raised yourself, and whatever game or fish you caught or killed, cleaned and prepared yourself. Imagine facing illness with no doctor around.

When I moved here, I had a neighbor who moved here in a covered wagon with his family when he was 2 years old in about 1910. He remembers his uncle building and living in a sod house near the Red River. The stories this man told me were unbelievable! When I think we have it hard now, I try to remind myself of what the people endured back then!

And, do you know what? Whenever I am feeling tired or bummed out about the latest yard or garden disaster, all I have to do is come to this website for encouragement and support. Maybe a lot of us will never meet face to face. But we are all friends and neighbors on this website and we all help and encourage one another. That, I believe, is such a beautiful thing.

Dawn

Dear Cityboygonecountry,

We too have struggles with new land and older home that we had dreamed of. This morning I'm hoping the river we hadn't seen in first 2 years is not running through our back acre, but since it appeared in last months, new grasses and wildflowers have begun to grow. Blessing in disguise. I cried when I read Dawn's entry to you. Tomorrow is another new day. Guess you know where to come for encouragement. Guess I do too! And as Randy said, "the worm will turn". You're in my thoughts today.

Laura

I have to say the best thing that has happened to me in a long time was finding this site

They people here are wonderful and caring always willing to cry or laugh with you and to give you advice when needed

Randy I am new at all this gardening stuff only been doing it for about 5 years and I have seen things grow great one year and die off the next
last year I had fabric hung over my plants to try and keep them alive because of the heat and sun this year the sun just seems not to want to show it's self but it will and boy when it does we will be in for it

Oklahoma can be a hard place to live in when it comes to growing things but I am sure that it is that way every where but just hang in there as they say if you don't like the weather stick around it will change LOL

I have enjoyed reading the messages this morning and watch as those who are "up" reach out to those who are "down". I have a friend in Ardmore who always says, "It isn't a serious problem if you can fix it with money". I have laughed at that many times, but find a great deal of truth in his words. When we don't have the money to fix something it seems like there is no way out, but there are a lot of issues that money doesn't fix. When we are dealing with those problems we just have to put our trust in God and keep plugging on.

I have had serious health issues in my life but I would rather have had my problems than anyone elses. I would not deal well with a child or husband that had a drug problem, a mental illness, an achohol addiction, a criminal record, an unwanted pregnancy, and many more issues too numerous to mention.

I suffered from age 21 to 43 with unbearable headaches that no one could fix. I would sit at my desk and work and sometimes not be aware of how much I hurt until I had to wipe the tears from the papers on my desk. At 43 I was in a one car automobile accident on the back roads near Norman and suffered an unstable back fracture. No laceration, no other broken bones, no blood, etc. I told the ambulance personnel that I had a broken back so they treated me that way, but no one believed me. The emergency staff treated me the same way. When the xray came back EVERYTHING changed. Suddenly the lady who wasn't crying, wasn't yelling and wasn't complaining got all of their attention. I had learned to control pain so well that I frequently didn't get good medical treatment because no one believed me when I said I hurt.

The solution to my back problem was to fuse several disk together and then place 9 and one half inch steel rods down both sides of my spine. The rods were to be removed after a couple of years of healing but by this time I had moved, had new insurance, and two doctors that thought they should stay. They stayed, so from the accident forward, my back would never bend again. Guess what? No more headaches. Except for water skiing and riding horses, I still do almost everything I did before. When I garden, I plant everything I can that will climb and for all other things, I use a kneeling stool and work directly in front of my body. If I have to reach out, I can only do it with one hand because the other has to hold on to the stool or I would fall on my face. I very quickly learned not to reach too far to pick up anything since my only bending is from my hips. Very early on I reached for something across a card table and landed on top of the table. Of course, this means that I also can't bend from side to side. Medical personnel told my husband that I would never walk again. I missed 16 days of work and begged the doc until he let me go back to work.

A few years ago I was diagnosed with diabetes and that is a true battle to fight. I have had problems with my ears all of my life and every illness seems to go to my ears. I have allergies and also asthma so vertigo was a normal part of my life. A few weeks ago my ear got infected. My shoulder and neck got so sore that I couldn't stand to move but my ear didn't hurt very much. I could feel the swelling around my ear so I knew what was causing it. I not only had infection but a perforated eardrum as well. After injections, drops, and oral meds I began to feel better and went on vacation. I had a great time but somehow hurt my foot. Now the ear thing is happening again and I am waiting for the doctor to call. The nurse practioner laughed at herself and said she didn't recall that she had ever begged anyone else to take pain medication. I never tell anyone ALL of these things, but I guess I just want to make a point today. When times are bad just look around and see who else you would want to trade places with. If you find someone, and you think they have no problems.......you probably just don't know them well enough.

As far as gardens go, you can work lots of hours and get little return but it is still great exercise and more fun and cheaper than a gym membership. I love what I pick from my garden but I realize that Heavenly Father is really the gardener and I am just the assistant. He is very much in control. I try not to use chemicals and add problems to His beautiful world. I am so picky that I normally don't plant hybrids because I keep thinking of the following verses.

Gen. 1: 11-12

11 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
12 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

I occasionally plant a hybrid, but mostly I take this literally and plant those things that "make seed after their own kind".

This winter we had a terrible ice storm. Day one I prayed that my trees would be protected. Day two, I thanked Him that my trees were still standing and ask him again to protect them. At night I would hear trees falling all through my neighborhood be since we had no electricity I couldn't see which ones were falling. Day three, I said, "I thank thee for protecting YOUR trees that are in my yard". I lost only a few limbs, but before I could garden this year, we had to remove my neighbors large tree from my garden, and another neighbors large limbs.

Laugh if you want, but I plant what I want, eat what I get, and don't worry a lot about what I don't get this year. That doesn't mean I can't try again next year. Well, since I have been writing this book, Heavenly Father just decided to water His garden again and it is raining hard.

Keep planting and keep your chin up. It may get worse....but then it will get better and Heavenly Father never gives us more that we can stand. I love my life.

There's time to replant. One good thing about Oklahoma, we have a long growing season! Everyone is so right, each year brings its own issues. When I was growing up on ten acres in Colorado my parents always had a huge garden (they had slave labor to weed it ;) ) Every year mom would plant peas and every year, just about, a hail storm would come through and wipe them out. I rejoiced each time, but I assure you my mother didn't!

One year, I think I was already in college, my dad planted 100 hills of Blue Hubbard winter squash. If you've never seen winter squash, try thinking of a HUGE pumpkin. This was the year our well chose to quit working efficiently. Water pressure was about nil. My mom was so mad at my dad. She had to hand water each hill of squash. I shook my head, there were two of them to feed and they had enough squash for 1,000, and mom was still hand watering squash hills.

It's good to hear from you. I've thought about you and wondered how your move went. I'm glad you made it and have started working your soil.

It will get better....

Lisa

when you were sharing Dawn the old Hank Williams Jr song about country folks can survive went thru my head. I laughed out loud at "We survive biblical-like plagues of grasshoppers, crickets and locusts".

It's true though - we're tough

Gypsichic,

As soon as I read your post, I got that Hank Williams song stuck in my mind...."and a country boy can survive". Oh, yes!
Unfortunately, cityboygonecountry still doesn't like country music, as far as I know, so we probably shouldn't recommend that song to him. lol

Yes, we are tough here in Oklahoma. Gotta be!

Cheers!

Dawn

Cityboygonecountry, has your faith campanion worker pig remained with you? If so the pig must be happy with all the rain, mud, and muck. Could we say, one man's trash is a pig's treasure?

Yes weeks and weeks of rain and clouds can do a pretty good job to muck up and gloom up one's heart, also.

Spend as much time as you can whenever any the day brightens some or even in the short moments when the sun manages to peek through. Then you will see the hopeless discouraged feelings lift away ever more each successive time a sun event happens.

You have accomplished much so far, and your pig should help you keep the rain from making the garden return to "jungle." Think of this year's wet season as a time to test the soil, for ph and nutrient content. To research and the details on the plants needs of the seeds which you plant on planting. Not all is lost. Consider time since clearing as a time to let the soil rest. You might have the opporunity this year to plant a garden of winter wheat and be able to till it into the ground once it grows tall enough for that, and you could find a local horse ranch which will give you truckloads of horse manure for $10 a tuck load. You could work that stuff into your garden soil and let enrich the soil. In the midst of growing the winter wheat tilling it under, and working the horse manure into you garden soil, you will be so intimately familiar with its quirks to know how each area performs and thereby know better what to plant and where to plant what in your garden next spring.

working the soil and building it up like I suggested can provide oneself great satisfaction.

Also, in this time you can locate and plant border shrubs around the garden which will keep deer and many other unwanted creatures out. 'Ferox Argentea' are great holly shrubs for such a purpose. They grow slowly with to a size of 6-8 feet tall and about 5 feet wide. Their leaves have spines on the edges and on top of the leaves. Simply plant them no more than 2-3 feet wide. Until they have time to grow together you may need to get some 5 foot tall "T" stakes and sting some bunny cage, or at the least some chicken wire fencing around the garden and about 3 feet outside of and away from the holly shrubs. That should allow you also install stable and wide enough gate which will allow you move even the largest equipment you need into the garden for working the ground.

If you plan to continue letting the pig keep rooting in the garden area, then you should first plant the holly shrubs far enough out that you can install the "T" stakes and fencing about 3 feet inside of the holly border you planted around your garden.

These Holly grow slowly and can also be sheared easily to keep them at the level you need for sun exposure to reach your garden.