Dawn, the forecast I saw said 39 degrees for OKC. I, too, am getting tired of these nighttime 40s! I just planted my moonflowers (ipomeae alba), and one is already peeping thru the soil (those distinctive cotyledons). I'm afraid these colder temps might have an effect on them cuz they really are heat lovers.

Susan,

I'd be worried too. Are you going to cover them up with something? Sometimes in the fall, mine survive a light frost.....but they are "old" and large at that point. I'm not sure young ones can take the cold.

Dawn

Geeeeez !!

My tomato plants are just about starting to get over the shock of being transplanted out in temps rising to the high seventies, which was followed by really strong winds.
Now they are gonna freeze to death?

Hope the floating row covers give them a bit of comfort and protection from all this. :-(

Mick.

I hope that Ilene has everything well covered tonight,as she has already had enough damage this year. It looks like this storm is going very near her.

Looks like there have been several tornados but mostly in open areas. News said one roof blown off in Osage County and some golf ball size hail in some areas. This storm is headed for Kansas, but the cold front on it's way could bring more storms. Just what we need, huh!

geepers, I am all for cooler weather, but at least 50s at night please for May.

My tomatoes are just starting to grow, I also have flower seeds up...

Carol,

I hope Ilene's plants are OK too. It seems like everything bad weatherwise that can happen already has, and I wonder how much more CAN happen.

Kirts,

Seems we can't catch a break this spring. I am trying to remember the last "good" spring. Maybe 2006 or 2005? At this point, it is getting hard to remember a nice "average" spring with normal rainfall and normal temps. It seems the "norm" any more is to have bizarre weather.

I hope the cold weather spares your plants.

Right now, severe thunderstorms are about to roll into Love County (and I have the weather radio going off every so often to "warn" us). It's always something here in Oklahoma, and May weather seems to have a bit of everything.

Dawn

Today on the news they are saying 40s for a couple of nights now instead of 30s, but stay tuned.......you never know from day to day, what the weather will do.

I hope my newly planted babies will do okay. I've planted out my milkweeds, Bidens, Diascia, Scabiosa, Arabis, etc. My little lemon tree is putting on new foliage, too. It is a lemon that is hardy to 0 degrees, but that's not to say that the foliage is not vulnerable to colder temps.

Something to say for Mexican Tarragon. Not supposed to be hardy here, but got lots of it coming up from the roots.

I have tons of Senna bicapsularis seedlings just up, too. This plant and my Senna hebecarpa (Wild Senna) are host plants for many of the Sulphur butterflies.

Susan

Susan,

I hope your babies will be OK.

I've had Tagetes lucida, a plant called Texas Tarragon in Texas (LOL) and also known widely there as Mexican Mint Marigold, come back for several years in a row, although eventually a real cold spell (like down to 8 or 10 degrees) will usually take it out. One thing I like about it is the way it handles the heat. The first one I planted here was in the worst clay soil we have, and it held its' own even though the high temperatures in August hit 108 to 113 for most of a week that year. I think that plant came back for 3 years. The three I have now are in better soil.

I see you have senna for the Sulphurs. Here, a native plant they seem to love is the partridge pea.

I hope your plants will be OK, especially the lemon tree. I adore the smell of lemon blossoms.

The weather service has already issued a frost warning for several counties for Friday night/Saturday morning.

Dawn

On the 23rd we had yet another light frost, here in Tahlequah. One thing I'm learning for sure, is that the temps can drop A LOT from bedtime until dawn. This last time it was about 50 F. when I went to bed. But the wind felt cold. Anyway, by morning the wind had stopped and it was something like 37 F!

George

Not a drop of rain here with that line last night : (

temps are cooler, and the wind is a lot less then yesterday...

I do need just a little bit of rain here.. but not a lot. : )

After turning the weather radio off about 7 times last night, and then hearing that the storm was going through Jay (no mention of Grove), I tried to go back to sleep. In minutes the storm hit with gusto. It was so loud and we got very heavy rain but it only lasted a short while and moved on. Mesonet said we had .57 and we didn't have standing water like usual. I was surprised because it was raining so hard. I had moved some things inside and covered others so mine look OK today......but tonight it is to be colder. When will it ever be ending?

I am not sure how many times the radio "warned" last night because I get both OK and MO so I kind of got it coming and going. LOL I need to figure out how to take the Springfield warnings off of mine, I guess, since our storms never come from that direction.

I misspoke earlier when I said some counties have a frost warning, they have a freeze watch (which I think is worse, at least from the viewpoint of a gardener) and I've linked it below. I'd rather cope with a frost than a freeze any day of the week, but we don't get to choose the weather, do we?

George,

We went to 32 the other night (I think it was Sunday night), even though almost no one else did....thanks to our low elevation near the Red River. It was a record low for Marietta for that date. Enough already. I'm tired of it! For me, when the cold hangs on this long, it seems like it goes from too cold to too hot almost overnight and that is so hard on the plants.

I always check the temperature at 9 or 10 p.m. and then expect our overnight low to be approximately 20 degrees lower than that (at this time of year) and ....it usually works out just about the way I expect it to.

Kirts,

The storm blew through here so fast (after HOURS of lightning to our west and northwest) that the rain barely had time to hit the ground. We got 1/2" of rain in about 10 minutes. Perfect. Not too much, but enough to please the plants.

Less wind here today, although it has picked up a bit during the last hour.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Freeze Watch for NW Oklahoma

Yes, Thursday night was one of "those nights"

Early to bed to read/relax/sleep in preparation for early doctors appointment and blood work........

First awoken at 1-00am by storm radio warning which was followed by many more throughout the night, up out of bed calling cats to come in, checking weather radar on internet, cats arrive after mucho calling and demand food/fussing, wonder what all the fuss is about, 2-00am cats bored, agitated and wanna go back out, let cats out, 2-30am winds sounds so strong we thought the roof was about to come off, sit in safe room for a while, 3-00am back to bed, 3-10am electricity goes off, stagger around in the dark searching for lantern and battery operated alarm clock, storm hits 3-30am, pretty big one too with mighty thunder and lightening around, cats now huddling on patio for shelter, wondering why we've made them go out on a night like this and want to come back in, let them in, they demand food/fussing from "cruel" mum and dad, back to bed around 4-30am, alarm goes off at 5-30am, get up and get ready for an early doctors appointment............

Phew, I've had better starts to the day.

I checked the tomato plants when I got home from work this evening and all but one seemed to have got through the whole escapade intact. The rest of the garden seems OK.

Tonight we need it easier so it's pizza for dinner, a bottle of wine and an early night.
I'll probably be asleep on the sofa by 8-30pm.

The cats can stay out !!

Mick

I see this morning they have changed the low here for tonight. Now saying 38 instead of low 43. Guess I have the day to ponder what happens.

I have enough to do as it is without having to do the back porch shuffle again. :-)

randy

Our forecast has changed too....and for the worst as well. If I wasn't seeing it with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe it. :(

Chilly here this morning. Forecast was for 47 to 49. It WAS 45 on our front porch at 6 a.m., but our Mesonet station is showing 41. I'm just glad we're warmer than the Mesonet station, which is at a slightly lower elevation than we are.

For early tomorrow a.m., they WERE saying 45 to 47. Now the NWS is saying 41 and wunderground.com is saying 43. There will be no wind and no cloud cover. (sigh) In light of last week's lower-than-forecast record low temperature and heavy frost, I am more worried today than I was yesterday. IF we happen to go 10 degrees lower than the forecast low like we did last weekend.....then I can expect heavy damage tomorrow morning.

I'm not liking this one little bit since I planted peppers this week. So, I guess I'll throw all the spare sheets and blankets over the tops of the tomato cages, put buckets over the peppers and "waste" an hour tonight covering up stuff and at least an hour tomorrow uncovering it all. I'll carry all the flats back into the garage. I'd say "for the last time this spring", but at this point, who knows?

I'll be away from the house most of today, though, so I just hope to get home in time to cover up everything while I can still see what I am doing. After last week's hard, hard frost, I can't afford to take chances.

I have full-sized tomatoes that are turning red and will be fully ripe in 3 or 4 days and we STILL have cool nights and a threat of another frost just one week after the last one. This is absolutely crazy!

Dawn

Hey everyone, here's my report from Washington County.

I'm just worn out. Spent most of the evening covering things, I have little flower transplants set out and a couple of currant bushes I moved and on and on. Not to mention the last of my tomato plants have been planted, and Lo and Behold, one of my Black Krims that had been reduced to just a bare stem actually had started making new leaves at the bottom. New grapevines just beginning to leaf out...iris in full bloom....tiny peaches, apples and plums on my trees...even some flowers on my blueberry bushes.

Dang it! I'm so sick of these cold nights!!!! I have pepper plants with their "feet" hanging out of their newspaper pots, so I have to keep everything well watered so as not to dry out those roots. They've started to bloom and two even have a tiny pepper set on. They need planting BADLY. Every weekend I say, after Monday, I'm getting them in their permanent homes... and then Monday's weather forecast includes low night temps 4 or 5 days away.... GRRRRRR I can't do the happy dance about my fruit trees because I'm afraid if I do, old Mother Nature's going to blast the fruit off the trees just to keep me humble!!!

I didn't sleep well last night because of that, and, well, it was prom night for DGS. Oh, gosh, he looked so handsome in his tux. He is such a good-looking boy. It's hard to believe my sweet first grandson is just about all grown up. We had all kinds of trouble with his tux, it was rented (oh, gosh, how expensive. I think we would've been as well off to just buy one). We got there to pick it up and just the jacket was there. So the shop owner had to improvise. It turned out the jacket had been discontinued and she had had to buy it, so she just gave us the jacket because of all the mix-up. But still it was nerve-wracking because I had to wait till Saturday for her to round up everything and the prom was that night... But anyhow, he got home at 3a.m. (after prom party) and all was well.

I went out and checked the thermometer at 2am and it was 40. This morning at 6am it was still 40. So once again we dodged the bullet here. But I am so tired today I can hardly do anything.

My yard is so overgrown and out of shape from so many years of doing the bare minimum. DH mows and DS comes over and weed-eats. He is flat-out an expert with that weed-eater. He edges with it and even cleans out the stuff that grows between the bricks in the walk with it. But I'm the only one who digs and pulls. They till the raised beds for me every spring. Last year I had the nicest raised beds I'd ever had cause I mulched with grass clippings. Working full time and taking care of a yard the way it should be done has been more than I have been able to manage in the past. So anyway I've been working at it daily for this whole month. I just about have the flower/herb garden cleaned out. There are so few flowers/herbs left. The Bermuda got in it and choked out a lot of things so I've been planting things I wintersowed as I get part of the bed prepared. Oh, what a job! Today I had to go around and uncover everything, and planted Munstead Dwarf Lavender along the herb garden walk, put a layer of manure into the compost bin (it's too full of weed seeds to put directly in the garden), and put in some stakes to keep the hose out of things, then made sure everything was watered well enough. I have a lot of things still in newspaper pots and they dry out really fast. And I have to protect things from the dog, he likes to tear across my herb garden to bark at the neighbor's dogs when they are turned out into their yard.

For this moment everything's fine here. We have another cold night scheduled for tonight, though it's not supposed to get as cold as last night -- but who knows? I just don't know if I have the steam left to do the dance again tonight, (not the happy dance, the covering-up dance) so I'm trying to relax the rest of this day. Maybe I will get my "second wind".

Dawn I left Thursday morning, riding my bicycle to Birch Lake, to camp out. Was very stormy Thursday night, but only rain right by the lake. Got cold in the night. Friday night was REALLY cold, with a strong north wind, and Saturday night was just as cold, but didn't feel as cold, no wind.

Back home now.

Great camping weekend and bike riding overall.

Back home, we had 1 1/2 inches of rain in the gauge.

Moni

Ilene,

Whew! Just reading what you wrote completely wore me out!

I think we all have been in the same "holding pattern" for weeks now....waiting for that "last" cold front to depart and let us get on with spring.

It sounds like prom was hectic. Where did all the years go? It makes you wonder, doesn't it?

It does sound like you are getting a lot done....and think of all the calories you are burning with all that activity!

I hope you're blessed with warmer than expected temperatures tonight.

Dawn