Dawn and GM, so sorry to hear about your trials and tribulations. As for me, I'm struggling trying to get my iris bed prepared and it is raining nearly every other day. The ground is saturated and smells spoiled. One of the pots containing my peppers and petunias got it's drainage hole plugged somehow and so I lost what was in that pot. Two of my Datura have died because of the water and DGS broke one. On the plus side, though, the remaining four are getting ready to bloom. They are not very tall and do not have many leaves so I hope the plants will be able to support these huge flowers. I have lost other plants as well, due to the standing water, among which were a couple of Cup and Saucer vines I had nursed along all spring and some english lavender I was really looking forward to. DGS is on summer vacation now and all he wants to do is watch TV and play video games and talk on the phone. He'll be a senior in HS next fall. He's kinda getting on my last nerve. I'm trying to help him get a summer job and it's not easy because he has poor math skills. Last summer he worked at Sonic and it was a struggle because he was car-hopping and he had so much trouble making change, got accused of stealing $80 and then they found they'd made a mistake in their calculations and they had to apologize to him but it left a sour taste in all of our mouths because they treated him so bad when they thought he was a thief. Yesterday we had to go buy stuff for Church camp, had to get groceries and went to several places picking up applications and I helped him apply on-line at Wal-Mart and K-Mart. You end up taking a test and everything. So that ate up most of my day because I had to field phone calls while he was working on his applications since he thinks you can't just let the phone ring, ever, and his friends call over and over and over. We just got a call from Wal-mart and he has an apppointment to talk to someone at 9pm tomorrow so they're probably considering him for night stocking. I sure hope he gets hired. On top of that, my computer is acting worse and worse all the time. It was fine till I had to install all that software when I got at&t high-speed internet. It has slowed my computer down big-time and sometimes I just have to reboot because it locks up so often. Last night I did a Norton scan, which didn't find anything, then I did an AVG scan which found 122 things to fix. Unfortunately, my computer is not working much better after all that, so I will probably do a defrag today and see what else I can do. This morning I worked outside in the mud trying to get a little further in the iris bed and now it's hot. I'm used to working in an air-conditioned office so I come inside when it gets hot, too. I'm so sad to hear about the kitten. It sounds like its mother was probably dumped off sometime previously and has fended for herself after having learned not to trust people. She will teach that to her kits, if they survive in the wild. The kits can be tamed, but the mother is another story. And do watch that bite. I was bitten by a neighbor's Siamese. He liked to hang out on our front porch and I would always pet him. One day while I was petting him he just sunk one of his fangs into my hand, just below my middle and index fingers. Before I could get in to see the doctor, I had a lump on my hand the size of half a golf-ball and there was a red streak going up my arm. The neighbors denied he was their cat and later on said they "gave him to friends who lived in the country". You can bet your bottom dollar that's a nice way of saying they "carried him off". Jerks. GM, I have plans to clean things out this winter and have a big sale next spring. The sale we had this spring was extra plants and things from the attic. It's really nice to have the attic cleaned out, but the rest of the house needs it badly. Sometimes it's good to whine. Hugs to both of you.

Sheri, During the last week I have begun watering my garden heavily because at this point it is either water heavily or close the gate and walk away and let it all die. For the last 6 days, I have watered every other day for up to 2 to 4 hours each time. My soil remains bone dry. If you go into the garden an hour or two after I water, you can stick your finger into the soil and it is moist, though certainly not wet. Eight or ten hours later, it is bone dry. The next day is it dry and baked hard, even under mulch and you can't pull the weeds. This is in raised beds. Obviously the pathways and grade level beds are even worse. It is not uncommon for our clay soil to shrink/contract and crack in hot weather. However, this is the first year ever that I have had cracks in the ground IN THE GARDEN where I am watering every other day. So, if watering every other day and mulching can't prevent the ground from having 1" wide cracks in it, what will? I am rapidly giving up on my tomatoes because the spider mite population is exploding. I am about to the point where I can't see the point in watering the tomatoes any more because the spider mites are so heavy on the plants, the stink bugs are hurting the fruit and there is no rain relief in sight. Yesterday I was in the yard when the water company guys pulled up down alongside the road to read the water meter and I remember thinking "Uh oh, a heart-attack-inducing water bill is going to arrive next week." However, I did pick about 60 nice tomatoes last night, with about half of them being pretty large ones from varieties like JD's Special C-Tex, Indian Stripe, Dr. Wyche's Yellow and Gary O Sena and the other half being from Goliath, Early Goliath, Heidi and Cluster Goliath. Sixty tomatoes from 22 plants isn't bad and most of the plants have several green tomatoes still on them, and I need to check the other tomatoes this morning and pick fruit, including cherries. I already picked squash while outside turning on the water. When spider mite levels get this high (even some of our bermuda grass has the stippling typical of spider mites), if you leave heavily-infested plants in the ground, the mites begin to spread from the tomato plants to everything else. So, I think it likely I'll soon begin removing the most heavily-infested tomato plants in the hopes I can save the rest of the garden. So far, the mites are mostly on bush beans, which are winding down production anyway, and on the tomato plants. I don't want them to spread to my squash, peppers, melons, southern peas, okra etc. You just know it is going to 'hurt' to start yanking out tomato plants. Normally, my container plants are my fall-back plants if the ones in the garden are declining, but all my container grown plants had mites first, so I'm yanking them. So, I think it is possible your soil is staying far too dry, but I also think it may be impossible to water it "enough" unless you have a bottomless well and don't have to pay for municipal water. I have been watching the rapid increase in my county's Keetch Byram Drought Index, a fire index used to convey how much moisture is in the soil. For firefighters, it provides insight into how intensely fires will burn because at a certain point the soil is so dry that duff/humus layers burn and even roots burn underground. We had a lot of trouble with underground roots burning during the 2005-06 fire season. After watching the KBDI for years and comparing its numbers to what I see personally in our garden, I know that it isn't worth my while to try to keep tomatoes alive in our specific soil if the KBDI is at or above 500. The last time I checked it a day or two ago, it was at 467. I know that the "Decision Day" is coming soon and so I need to be making plans for what varieties of southern peas I'll use to replace the tomato plants. I don't think I'll take out all the plants at once, but rather will start by yanking those with no fruit, then those that are most heavily infested with mites or whatever, and eventually they'll all be gone. I might try to keep a row or two of bite-sized tomato plants going. It just depends on how hard they're being hit by the mites and stink bugs. Usually in a drought year, I stop watering the garden in early July, but have stopped in mid-June once or twice. In 2008, some lifelong gardeners who live near us stopped watering their garden about a week after I did, and they told me it was the first time they'd ever "given up" and stopped watering. It just got to the point that it didn't make sense economically and also wasn't making enough of an impact to justify spending the money on the water. I'd say that in our neck of the woods, most folks are about at that point now. I've already been watching some gardens wit soil that's not nearly as 'improved' as mine, and either they've already stopped watering or the watering doesn't appear to be helping at all. A few folks that often have gardens that are a half-acre or an acre or larger planted cool-season crops and then had such poor results that they didn't even plant warm-season crops. The weather is always a cruel taskmaster here, and this year it is so much worse than usual. I don't think my garden is about 'done' but I think my tomatoes are. Loretta, The news out of Medicine Park this morning isn't good, is it? The last report I saw says at least 5000 acres burned and about 15 homes destoyed. They have roughly 25 fire departments onscene and should get more help today from regional fire managers, Forest Service personnel, and maby air support from tanker choppers or planes that can drop water laced with fire retardent. I hope they can stop this fire before it destroys any more structures, and let's not even thing about all the wildlife displaced when their habitat burns. We have religiously removed all cedar trees within 100 yards of our house because when they are burning they can literally 'explode' and send burning sap flying through the air. Wherever that sap lands, it starts new fires. However, our next door neigbors have tons of cedars on their acreage, and some of those are only 10-15 feet from our southern property line. There's nothing we can do about those. I was looking at our unirrigated aceage yesterday and everything is dead or dormant out back of the house, which is west of the house. Down along the road east of the house, the only real green remaining is the Johnson grass and sumac in the bar ditch. How sad is that? I hadn't been watering the yard around the house, but because of the prospect of wildfires, I've started doing that, so we have a little bit of green around the house. Not a lot, but a little. You can easily tell what has been watered and what hasn't because of the sharp difference in color. The good thing about drought is you don't have to spend a lot of time mowing, because there isn't much to mow. Dawn

I'm going to take a pass on this swap...I am still trying to get over the Thanksgiving that was supposed to be elsewhere....but ended up here anyways....and now onto Christmas LOL....and if that wasnt bad enough, someone decided to trash half of my outside Christmas ornaments tonight(some people are just sick, they tore up my elderly neighbors display as well!)...I almost lost the little bit of Christmas spirit I had, but I refuse to let some idiot spoil it for me AND I am determined to get into the full spirit just to spite them LOL! So if I don't talk to you all again before the season ends(I am sure I will)... I hope you all have a Happy Hanukkah and/or a Merry Christmas Donna

Hi Autumn hopefully your new home, however tight, includes an outdoor-air ventilation system. Basically, a dedicated fan that exchanges indoor air with outdoor air. Energy raters, home performance contractors and some HVAC professionals can evaluate and advise if not. For health more than humidity. There is no such thing as too tight. The tighter the better. Your descritpions sound like classic leaky, inefficient house to me. Dry, leaking winter air requiring excessive heating during the cold season and infiltrating humid summer air the wrongly sized AC, can't deal with in the warm season. Could be wrong just sayin. Strive for cooktops vented to the outdoors and if having home performance contractors out to evaluate, have them check bath vent fans. They should be exhausting at least 50 CFM, most dont. Keep the bath door closed while showering and vent until moisture is gone. Easy ways to control big sources. A lot of moisture comes from the ground which is harder to fix on existing construction. Hopefully you don't have a crawlspace and maybe a home performance contractor can make suggestions for the foundation. Exterior grading adjustments uphill of my old home have stopped basement water intrusion, keeping it much drier. For vulnerable foundations lacking appropriate finish grading, gutters should be used and maintained with reckless abandon. I feel most east coast climates require at least some summer air-conditioning, even in MI. Mini-split heat pumps are a good solution but don't settle for HVAC contractor sizing and brand recommendations. Try to find a third party to evaluate needs for load sizing and brand. One can probably lower energy bills by offsetting some of the gas-burning. Lower energy costs plus my friends in PA and uncle in WY appreciate your concerns over their well water quality from fracking threats.