Hi Jeanie,

It is hard to imagine that we could have weather so similar to 2011 again, isn't it? Especially early.

We've had a wonderful wildflower year here at our house, with tons of flowers in bloom since January. They don't look as happy now as they did 3 weeks ago, but they're still in bloom, though their flower size is decreasing as the heat wears on them and on some of them there is precious little foliage.

When you say you couldn't find tomatoes at Wal-Mart, do you mean tomato fruit to eat or tomato plants to grow in containers? I cannot imagine Wal-Mart wouldn't have both in May. The Wal-Marts in Gainesville and Ardmore both had plants and fruit last week, or even over the weekend.

It has already hit 96 degrees here several times this year, so you can bet we have our air conditioner on. I'm married to a former Yankee, so he thinks the AC has to come on when it hits 80 degrees and since he earns the money to pay for it, I don't object. : )

Today on the morning news on KXII, Tom Miller talked about how we're already experiencing a July weather pattern, and the anchors talked about how the serious grassfires and wildfires already have begun. It is terrible to be this brown and dry in spring.

Dawn

Hi, Dawn
I can't even imagine what July and August are going to be like. I was born and have lived in this state all my life and have NEVER seen such weather. I can see the price of hay and groceries hitting the ceiling come Summer, and, oh my, the wild fires! Found a dead ruby throat close to a feeder this AM. Made me so sad. Don't know what their life cycle is, but wonder if the wind slammed it into the side of the house.
Couldn't find eating tomatoes, but the produce dept. had no tomatoes that I could find and had very few apples, so wonder if there was a transportation problem. They probably have them today, but I don't run into Pauls Valley every day. Of course, we have a DC right here in Garvin county, but, who knows what the problem was a couple of days ago?!
Actually, the WM in Purcell is larger and better stocked, but it is 28 miles to Purcell from my location, and the prices at the local grocery store are absurd!
You know? I just had a thought. Wonder what the average temps. were during the "dust bowl" period. I know it was dry and windy, but what about the temps.? Those poor people! No crops, blocked windows and doors against the dust storms, no ACs, no AC grocery store to run to in an AC vehicle! Wow! Can't help but admire the strength of those who hung on!

Jeanie

Jeannie,

At the TSC in Gainesville (but I've also seem similar prices in Ardmore), a single bale of fresh coastal bermuda is going for $12.48 this week. Can you believe that? Just a couple of years ago, we were spending $6 for a bale of alfalfa and I thought that was sky-high. Feed prices of all sorts have soared, and many of our ranching neighbors have sold most or all of their livestock. It is a seller's market right now, so better to sell the livestock for a great price than to have to pay high feed prices all summer. I miss seeing all the cows and calves in the fields.

I wasn't born here in OK (but I got here as soon as I could). I grew up and lived my entire life just 80 miles south of here and I remember exactly one big wildfire in Texas prior to that, and it was just a couple of years before we moved here in 1999. It was west of Fort Worth and burned through thousands of acres in about 2 days, taking out homes, vehicles and everything in its path. When it happened, I thought it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime things and we'd never see anything like that ever again. How very wrong I was. Around here, in the last 7 or 8 years, widespread wildfires have become just another part of the annual cycle of challenges we face.

Poor little hummer. I don't know how strong wind has to be to hurt them and I am not sure how long they live. We find a dead one occasionally, but not often. Maybe once every 2 or 3 years.

That is so odd about the tomatoes. I don't know that I've ever been in a Wal-Mart the last 10 years and not seen any tomatoes. I'm inclined to think a truck en route to the DC with a load of tomatoes wrecked or something and that y'all had a temporary shortage that lasted until another truck could bring in a new load. That's my best guess.

During the Dust Bowl, the temperatures were similar to what we had last summer in much of the state. The much larger problem was the millions of acres they'd plowed up for wheat and the lack of rainfall. At one point in his book, "The Worst Hard Time", which I've been reading this week, author Timothy Egan makes the comment that the rain stopped and then didn't start falling for 8 years or something close to that. I am sure he doesn't mean there was no rain at all for 8 years, but just that there was precious little of it. I know they had years in the Dust Bowl states where some areas had almost no rain in any given year. In the chapters I read last night, temperatures in the 108-112 degree range were mentioned.

My dad was born in 1919 and remembered the Dust Bowl days pretty well. His family was poor white sharecroppers in Spanish Fort, TX just across the river from the western edge of Love County, and the only food they had was what they raised or caught. They ate rabbit and other stuff like that a lot. In a good year, they would have pigs to slaughter, a cow for milk and chickens for eggs, and occasionally meat. He said there were some really lean years where about all they could raise dryland was pinto beans and cornbread and they ate those for three meals a day and were grateful to have it. Of air conditioning, he said that they never had it, didn't know what it was and, consequently, didn't miss it. For his family, it was a very rare luxury to be able to barter for or purchase a block of ice for the icebox. Even ice-cold water was a huge treat. Life was so hard back then and few of us today have any real understanding of all the suffering people and animals endured during the Dust Bowl days.

I reread "The Worst Hard Time" every summer to remind me how easy our lives are now by comparison, even when we think the challenges of a hot, droughty summer are almost more than we can bear. I was asking myself last night if it could happen again and, if it did, if perhaps there was 8 years with almost no rain, what would we do? It is hard to wrap my mind around it.

If you ever get the chance to read "The Worst Hard Time", I recommend it highly. Reading it has given me such an improved perspective on what a tough summer really is as well as a better understanding of an important part of our region's history.

I also believe there is a Dust Bowl movie or mini-series coming soon, though at this moment I cannot remember who is producing it.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: The Worst Hard Time

And it was the depression to boot, Jeanie. Although my grandfather--a subsistance farmer with no money in the bank to lose--said, "It wasn't the depression that hurt us, it was the drought." And that was over here in Adair Co where it didn't get as bad as further west. If they hadn't had a cow and chickens they couldn't have survived--and when the pond dried up they had to walk the cow a mile roundtrip morn and night to get a drink from a spring.

Well, I went out and cut back my Abelia hedge down to stubs, as last Summer did not kill, but damaged them severely. If they don't recover, I am replacing them with something more heat-tolerant. I lost a Willow tree, a sky pencil Holley, a spreading Juniper and some of my perennials did not come back this Spring. It is 88 degrees, very dry and very windy. Wouldn't it be something, if we experience Dust Bowl type drought, again. I'm not sure we have the backbones of our ancestors to survive it. They, obviously, were tough!
I want to go to the library and check out McCoy's "Oklahoma Wildflowers", again, and I will look for "The Worst Hard Time". It sounds like a good read. Also, want to run by WM and look for "rare" tomatoes. HA. There is the slightest possibility that I overlooked them the other day, but I don't think so, as I was "on a mission"!
I have a painted Bunting pair showing up at my BB. They are SO beautiful! That was the first Hummer I have ever lost. Poor little guy. Also have a lot of Housefinches right now and a Cardinal couple.
I am debating whether to water this evening. The ground is cracking. I'm with you, Dawn, I really, really, really hate this weather!
As for walking a cow to a spring twice a day, WOW, that must have taken up a good part of the day, cause I don't remember cattle as being too light on their feet! Mercy! Come on rain............

Jeanie

Last year I went to a party at the lake on a very windy day and it was the same day they announced that we had blue-green algae in excess in the water and they closed that beach. I didn't get in the water, but there were white caps from the wind, and it was constant, and I was probably a hundred yards from the lake and the wind was blowing in my face all day. I don't know what I inhaled that day, but I started getting a sore throat on the way home and it just wouldn't go away. Eventually I went to the doctor and got steroids and the whole bit and he said my asthma was terrible.

Well that sure put a dent in my summer because everything I did made me cough. I had plenty of time to read, so what did I choose? Of course, "The Worst Hard Time". LOL I had never read it before. I would read a little, and cough a little. They choked, then I choked. I wondered how much was psychological and if I was really losing it. HaHa Maybe I'm mentally OK because the doctor sure did start me on a lot of meds and doubled my inhaler dosage. So I must admit, it was the most miserable book I ever read...but I'm glad I read it.

Had I lived in Oklahoma during the dust bowl, and had any means of leaving, I would have been gone. I guess when they put everything they had into it, and had no money to run away on, they just thought they had to stay.

Dorothy, I cannot imagine walking a cow a mile and back daily for water, but what other choice did they have?

We have or have had several springs on our property. Since 2005, a couple of them have stopped running, including one that used to feed the big pond and one that used to feed the swamp. At first, they'd dry up in drought and then come back. After a while, when they dried up, they stayed dried up. We still have 1 or 2 running springs, but I cannot imagine either one would even produce enough water for a cow to drink. They are down to just the merest trickle of water daily.

Jeannie, We've lost scattered shrubs and trees, but not nearly as much as some folks around us who never watered. They lost most of their landscaping and still have the poor dead shrubs and trees just sitting there. I wouldn't have a row of dead shrubs running right across the front of my house because of the fire risk, but I see a lot of that around here.

Oddly, though, since autumn through early spring was wet, we had a stupendously wonderful wildflower year, at least with the cool-season wildflowers. The warm-season varieties may dry up pretty quickly this year.

I have Doyle McCoy's two other books, which I purchased at a book store in Norman in the late 1990s or early 2000s, but never have seen the wildflower book. I just use a Texas wildflower book that I had before we moved here because, at least here at our place, the same wildflowers are found in southern OK as in north-central Texas.

When we first moved here, a really old farmer who'd lived here forever (no, it was not my friend, Fred, it was a much older guy) gave me tons of grief because I mixed wildflowers and herbs into my veggie beds. He always said, without fail, "Why are you growing those weeds in your vegetable beds? You can't eat those." He said it in a tone of voice that implied I was the biggest idiot on the face of the earth. However, I understood where he was coming from because he was a kid in the Dust Bowl days, having come to Oklahoma as a sooner in a covered wagon before statehood when he was barely more than a toddler. Based on his experiences, he didn't believe in wasting space and effort growing something you couldn't/wouldn't eat.

Carol, I remember when you got sick after that day at the lake. I cannot believe you were reading that book at the exact time you were ill. My throat always feels dry and scratchy when I'm reading about the dust pneumonia and all the sickness and deaths related to it. I have allergies, and I blame them for the dry, scratchy throat, but I bet some of it is the power of suggestion from reading the book.

I think I would have wanted to leave, especially if I had loved ones who were getting sick from breathing the dust. However, like many of the others who were "stuck" here, I might have found myself trapped by the circumstances. Also, don't you know that every year they surely thought "this year the drought will break, the dust storms will end, we'll make a good crop and claw ourselves out of debt" and they thought they could wait it out. When the dusters started, if anyone could have known they'd last for years, I bet they would have found a way to leave before they used up all their resources just trying to survive.

My dad and his siblings all were Dust Bowl/Depression babies and every single one of them, as adults, grew veggies and fruit, even the ones who had so much shade that it was hard to grow anything in that shade. I think being able to raise some of their own food gave them a sense of security. Plus, they just liked growing stuff. My dad and uncle always said that World War II saved their lives. Every year they farmed, it got harder and harder and they got skinnier and skinnier. The Navy or other military branches they went into for the war fattened them up, and when they came home, none of them wanted to be farmers any more. They all settled in big cities where good jobs were plentiful at the time. Dad said they'd all gotten used to "eating regular meals" and didn't want to go back to the farm to starve. He took us to the old farm when I was a teenager, and I looked at that crappy old red soil filled with Johnson grass, weeds and grasshoppers, and marveled that his family could squeeze a living out of that red dirt.

Dawn

SoonerGM,
My Sis had severe asthma. I have laid in bed many a night, when we were girls, and listened to her struggling to breathe. She is with the Lord, now, but asthma did not cause her passing. She had pancreatic cancer. We are convinced that the terribly strong drugs she had to take were a part of the problem. She did't let asthma slow her down much, as she belonged to a hiking club, volunteered with the Humane Society, worked full time and raised a family. She loved to read, too. I am certain that The Worst Hard Time is a book she would have read...............

Jeanie

Jeanie, I go for months without any kind of meds for my asthma so I guess you could call mine infection induced, because if I get a cold, or really bad allergies then it kicks in. Otherwise I don't treat it. Some say that you shouldn't do that, but if I can skip 8-9 months of meds every year and not be sick, then I am going to do so. I am not any worse doing it this way than I was when I used meds full time. I have one son who has it much worse than I do, and then two granddaughters who have it. One is extremely fit and athletic, but hers behaves more like mine does.

SoonerGM,
Good for you! Some of those drugs are very, very potent. Her daughter also has asthma, but I think she does pretty well. I think they both have relied on the breath-o-lizer machines to get through tough moments.
I, personally, think there are too many "feel good" drugs available now. Sis even had to take Steroids when she was critical. Hope you don't have to do that.......bad side effects with years of use.

Jeanie

Dawn,
I am soooo jealous that you own Doyle McCoy's books. Oklahoma Wildflowers is out of print, and when I found it on the Internet, I couldn't afford it, so I just use the trusty old library. Of all his books, that is the one I want most. Great field guide. He passed away about 10 yrs ago, but supposedly his widow and daughter live in Lindsay, OK. My plan is to go to the Lindsay library and ask if they can get in touch with them and ask if they have extra copies they would be willing to sell at a REASONABLE price. By the way, have you ever seen the Rayless Gaillardia? Found it in his book and fell in love because it is so contemporary and different. It is a red ball with no petals, not blue, like the Eryngium, but red. I have seen them around the Ringling area. Gotta go seed gathering this Fall. Wanting those seeds and Echinacea Pallida seeds and whatever else I can find that appeals to me.

Jeanie

Jeannie,

I used his books (Roadside Fruits of Oklahoma and Roadside Trees and Shrubs of Oklahoma) to help me figure out what a lot of our understory plants were in the woodlands. It took me ages and ages and lots of other books too to get a good understanding of the diverse group of plants found in different places on our property.

Every now and then I see a Rayless Gaillardia on our property, but it isn't terribly common. It usually is in a pasture that also has lots of clasping coneflower, which tends to be more aggressive and crowd it out. With wildflowers, you never know what you'll have in any given year because they ebb and flow naturally depending on what the weather was like in the previous year and depending on how well they survived or reseeded or the seed germinated or whatever. This has been a good year for regular gaillardia but I don't think I've seen any rayless ones yet. I usually see them later in the year, but with early heat this year, who knows when they'll appear?

Because rainfall was so heavy in the autumn through spring, we had huge amounts of cool-season grasses and forbs. However, that presents a problem in and of itself because when the cool-season plants are that abundant and tall and thick, they can shade out the warm-season ones and keep them from growing much and getting established. Then you have a poorer stand of warm-season plants as long as the cool-season vegetation is still standing.

This morning I was outside early with the string trimmer cutting back a large area we have not mowed at all this year because it had gotten too tall to cut with the riding mower. We left that field standing with no mowing so the cool-season flowers could disperse their seeds. Now that the seeds have been dispersed naturally, I cut back all the dormant, standing vegetation and am hoping that we'll get a good stand of warm-season stuff. Sometimes we do. Sometimes we don't. It kinda depends on whether enough rain falls soon to help the young warm-season plants establish. In an area where I haven't cut yet, the warm-season plants are only about 2" tall. I'll just cut the cool-season vegetation a tiny bit taller than the warm-season stuff so I'm not chopping off the tops of the warm-season plants. I only cut back about a quarter-acre. There's a couple more acres to cut, but I think they still are short enough that we can cut them with the riding mower. I hate to cut the tall grasses in May because it leaves the bunnies much more exposed. They put their nests closer to our yard full of dogs and cats than they should for their own sake. With the current dryness and having already had a big grassfire across the road from us, I want to cut everything possible down as short as we reasonably can without cutting it so short that the plants won't come back.

It seems like a really good wildflower year so far, but only time will tell if that continues to be true under the current drought conditions. Last May, with abundant rainfall, many wildflowers germinated in May and into June, and then promptly dried up/burnt up in July before they even bloomed. I don't know that's there's been enough May rainfall to get much of anything growing if it already wasn't up when what little rain we have had was falling.

Another grass fire here today....and it is much, much too early for that. Our area seems about as dry right now as it was around the first of July last year and that makes me incredibly uneasy.

Dawn

Dawn, Agree. What a great wildflower year, so far! I would so love to allow my little acreage to mature into a prairie, but there is a wild grass that covers it that is about a foot tall and, quite frankly, I'm afraid of fires and snakes, so what I do is allow the wildfloweres to grow around the perimeter and mow all around the house and surrounding yard. I have a neighbor, bless him, who offers to "knock down" the rest of it for me, and I just have to beg off to allow the wildflowers some growing space. As far as I can tell, his wife is not a gardener (she teaches school in Ardmore), and of course, he keeps his pastures mowed slick and clean. I love my WFs.

Jeanie

Jeannie, I was outside this morning with the string trimmer, mowing down all that dry standing vegetation behind the garage and along the south property line. Like you, I fear that letting the prairie stand untouched will leave us too vulnerable to wildfires. Also, snakes and grasshoppers love that tall grass, and I don't like to encourage them. Finally, if I leave the grass tall we have more bobcat issues. They love creeping through the taller grass but aren't overly fond of showing themselves in short grass. Every morning I am trimming back as much of the dry standing vegetation as I can without touching the young warm-season plants that are now growing down low to the ground. It's the best compromise I can find between letting cool-season plants mature and re-seed and letting warm-season ones start growing.

If the drought continues to worsen, though, I'll cut back even the warm-season plants as they dry out and turn brown.

Our biggest fire worries are from the east or south because of those areas being grassland both on our property and on the neighboring properties. To our west and north it is all woodland, and most of the time, the fires slow down in the woodland which gives the firefighters a chance to win that war.

Last week when the neighbor's land caught fire along the roadside and the fire advanced into his cow pasture, it was a wake-up call for me that I needed to get busy cutting back the spring wildflowers. While cutting them with the string trimmer, I could cut down the ones that have dropped their seed but if they still had intact seedpods that had not split open or seedheads that hadn't begun to scatter their seed, I cut around them. It would be a lot easier to mow with the mower, but then I'd be cutting down some that haven't fully matured their seed yet.

Tim is itching to mow one specific area, but it is a place where I sowed a new batch of purchased wildflower seed last autumn or winter, and I am determined that it will not be cut as long as those young wildflowers have any green in them and are blooming. The wildflowers in that area germinated well, grew and are blooming but are very short. I wish it would rain so they'd have a chance to at least reseed themselves.

Dawn

Dawn,
Why do men have no respect for wild flowers? HA. My neighbor means well, and only wants to help me. I guess my borders of WF look messy to him, but around the house, I am clean mowed, and I can enjoy watching the WF bloom on my north border and south border. You would laugh watching me mow around the WF on my plot. I try to salvage as many as I can, within reason. Of course, like you, if the drought continues and everything dries out like it did last year, I will be forced to mow to the ground. ((*~*)). "sigh!". I had one scary grassfire about 1/2 mile from me last year, fire trucks everywhere, but Praise God!, they were able to control it. I am NOT looking forward to a repeat of 2011!

Jeanie

Jeannie, I don't know why. My DH tries to mow around the wildflowers. He always starts out doing it, and then at some point he must get deeply into the zen of mowing and he forgets wildflowers exist. This week, I've been cutting places with the string trimmer where I'm trying to let seed finish maturing. I'm doing it in advance of him mowing this weekend so he cannot/will not accidentally mow down flowers I want to reseed.

We always have wildfires on ranches near us. As dry as it gets in summer and as rare as rainfall can be, it just seems inevitable some years. Last year was awful and I cannot bear the thought of this summer being a repeat of it. You somehow make it through a summer like that, and you're so relieved, and you convince yourself it will never be that bad again. In my heart, though, I know this year could be just as bad.

When we moved here, I landscaped for the purpose of shading our house from the sun, and that included lots of trees and tall shrubs (it is a two-story house) on all 4 sides of the house. Had I known how our climate would change and how widespread wildfires would become within a few short years, I would have landscaped completely differently. Ever since then, I've worked to do things in a more FireWise manner and if I ever have to redo a large portion of our landscape, I'll follow all the principles of firescaping. I feel like we lived at one place from 1999-2004 and in an entirely different place since 2005, but we're in the same place we've always been. It is the weather and the climate that is changing on us, and I do not like it one bit.

I used to plant oodles and oodles of ornamentals every year. Ever since the droughts became almost a yearly thing, and the wildfires with them, I plant fewer and fewer ornamentals. There is no point in planting something I cannot afford to water throughout a drought. Last year our prickley pear cacti shriveled up and seemed dead. That is when you know that not planting any new ornamentals was a good idea for a given year. Some of the cacti came back this year, but others didn't. I never thought it would get hot enough and dry enough to kill native cacti. When that happens, what chances do normal ornamental annuals or perennials have?

Dawn

Dawn,
By now, I'm sure our fellow Garden Web readers are aware that I live on a hot, windy hill with soil that challenges an interstate surface in South Central OK. When I moved out here in 2007, looking forward to creating eye candy scapes everywhere with visions of Gertrude Jekyll gardens floating before my eyes, I had NO idea what I was facing! First. It rained the entire Summer, most every day. My cabin was like an island in a swamp. THEN came the really bad news. You couldn't sink a shovel into this concrete soil. Ah, but I tried, succeeding in killing several shrubs and trees, even though I was amending and pampering every step of the way. Couldn't afford to replace the entire plot with good topsoil, so settled for the raised bed solution with very tough drought-resistant shrubs and perennials. Gone were the dreams of lush greenery, roses everywhere, garden rooms with paths wandering through and tinkling fountains, not even a pond, when I discovered there were dangerous snakes about. Besides, if a rose DID take root, the deer nibbled off all the buds. AHA! The lightbulb moment. DUH! Quit fighting the "lay" of the land and go for a SW/PRAIRIE look. If I have ANY advice for new gardeners, it would be, look around you and see what NATURALLY grows in your area of the map. Well, having more success now, and adapting to the hill and not torturing poor "English" garden plants which love loamy soil and canopies of large shade trees and consistant moisture into existance. Ya gotta deal with what you've got! The ONLY way I can achieve the "Englis Way" is to move back into town, but then I would have to give up the wonderful space around me, the fresh air, the (sometime irritating) wildlife and neighbors down the road who are as good as gold with huge, caring hearts. NAH! Tain't worth it. So, "goodby" beautiful, lush gardens and "hello" tough desert-like shrubs, hardy perrenials and cacti. Besides, with the intense weather cycle we are in right now, why waste your time, money and energy on plantings that are going to croak, as you said, when something as tough as native cacti can't even survive. If we DO have a repeat of last Summer, I will only be "spot" watering and trying to be inside the house by 1:00 PM, at the latest. Can't take the heat the way I used to............

Jeanie

Enjoying the conversation you guys are having, and, Jeanie, I am growing Rayless Gaillardia (Gaillardia suavis). I like it very much. Want me to save some seedheads for you?

The House Finches and the Carolina Wrens were out playing in the garden, on the old sunflower stalks that I leave up for them (just a couple because they love the perch material), and gabbing about the Sunflowers to come, I'm sure. They sure are funny. I leave some of the Blueberries on the plants for the Cardinals, who love them dearly. And, the butterflies had their bananas replenished this morning as well. water for the birds, but I don't feed them during the summer because they get plenty of food from seed heads and caterpillars in my garden. I don't want to make gluttons of them. I saw the first red wasp today, and I have a nest above my front door that I'm going to have to take care of soon. I am kinda of relying on "don't bother me, I won't bother you" theory right now.

The Blazing Star is blooming, Dallas Red Lantana, Verbena, Mountain Mint, Vernonia (Ironweed), Salvias, Fennel, Hummingbird Plant (Dicliptera suberecta), Cleome, Clammyweed (native Cleome relative), Tecoma 'Miami Sunrise', Esperanza with orange/peach blooms), Datura, an old established Hydrangea that I rarely water. About to bloom are Butterfly Bushes - Bicolor, Ellen's Blue, and Royal Red, Texas Star Hibiscus, Fantasia Hibiscus, Lavender Porterweed, Golden Daylily, Crotalaria sagittalis (Rattlepod), Cosmos, and Monarda (huge draw for the Clearwing hummingtbird moths).

I truly hope beyond hope that we do not experience a summer like last year. Sigh.........but we do live in Oklahoma!

Susan

Hi, Susan
Yes, yes, yes! Please save some Rayless Gaillardia seedheads for me. I was going to drive down into the Ringling, Ok. area and gather some this Fall, but it is a pretty good little drive down there. Am going down to Turner Falls area, also, as I have seen Echinacea Pallida and wild Scabiosa growing there. For some reason, these don't grow out here by me. I, too, have several things blooming or, at least, in bud now. Lots of Clammyweed. Gotta watch this one, as it is such a prolific re-seeder. Many, many black-eyed Susans, Horsemint, Ratibida and, though now fading, Indian Paintbrush, etc. As I said, love my wild flowers. As Dawn said, our wet Spring really caused the wild flowers to germinate this year. Last year, practically none. I have a bad feeling about this Summer, since the temps. are already approaching triple digits in parts of our state, and it isn't even June yet!
Still planning on going to the Cacti show on Saturday, June 16, if you can meet me out at Will Rogers Park, that would be wonderful! I know you aren't interested in cacti, but it is always fun to go out to the park and roam around.
The most exciting birds I have visiting right now is a Painted Bunting couple. Oh, how I wish they came in flocks like the Goldfinches and the Housefinches, but they don't, and I'm tickled just to have this pair!
It is so windy out here on my hill that it is just sucking up all the moisture out of the soil. You can water one day, and by morning, the ground is dry and cracked, again. Hoping for rain, SOON!

Jeanie