Dawn I posted my views on another thread about the map. It is already hot here this morning and looks to be that way through next week. Which will diminish conditions some. The trend shows chances of moisture picking up the 1st of July and through July. I'm just over 8 inches of moisture currently. Which isn't far off normal. Had around 7 inches for all of last year. The wheat on average is around 20-25 bushels per acre. Last year was zero except in a few cases. I have been training to line locate the last few weeks. Have performed locating from the OK Panhandle to Pueblo,CO. I will say placing markers, driving ground rods and removing them and digging a few holes that the Pueblo CO and SE CO areas of CO are drier than we are. They are where we were the 3 previous years. I feel for them. I saw several fields of sweet corn that was burning up. They don't have enough water to get to all of it with no help from mother nature. Just like we were last year. Scott I hope you get some rain. I know the feeling all too well. I'm thankful we have received some relief and hope it is a sign of continued improvement. I don't expect a sudden change but a steady gradual change is better than none at all. Jay

Carol, Lucky you! We had rain earlier in the week and it was such a relief to see it fall. I haven't had to water this week, except for the containers. I think maybe a lot of us have a chance of rain over the next 3 days. I hope some rains falls on everyone here who needs it. I bet the poor, drenched gardeners in the northeastern states would trade us some rain for a few days of sunlight and heat. The abnormally dry conditions haven't reached y'all or us yet, although it is very dry here. Dawn

Paula, We have a resident deer herd here that were living deep in the woods when we bought the property. We've done our best to peacefully coexist with them. Of course, we've had to fence the veggie garden to keep them out, and we do feed them in the winter. Last July, during horrible drought, one of the does begin bringing her twin fawns to the yard to look for food while they were tiny. I started putting out deer corn for the three of them, and other things...like melons, okra and fresh corn as well. They always 'scavenged' around the back compost pile for kitchen scraps, so I just started putting the kitchen scraps on the ground beside the compost pile. Watching the twin fawns grow up has been twice as fun as watching a lone fawn grow. We saw them almost daily, and sometimes twice a day, all winter and in early spring. They still come check out the compost pile for yummy goodies once or twice a week. Until about a month ago, the doe kept coming back with them, but I havn't seen her lately. We aren't getting the rounds of rain y'all are getting, so we're having the opposite problems....hot, dry issues like hordes of grasshoppers, spider mites, stink bugs, sunscald, dry cracking clay ground, etc. Still, we have better mid-level soil moisture levels now than we normally do in August, and we had dew a couple of days earlier in the week, but now it is apparently too dry here for that. I have begun seriously yanking out declining spring/summer plants and replacing them with fall garden plants this last week or two. It was almost a relief to take out the old, tired squash, zucchini, watermelom and muskmelon vines. I already had new muskmelon vines in the ground for fall since sometime in late June or early July so pulling out the old melon vines wasn't that hard. I should have ripe fall muskmelons by late August. The new squash, zucchini and cucumber plants should be producing before the end of September. I took out a lot of tired tomato plants, kept some of the old ones as is and pruned back others pretty hard to stimulate new growth. I don't blame the spring plants for being tired and worn out, diseased and pest-infested. It's been a long summer and they've used up a lot of energy. I love the healthy green appearance of the fall plants too. At least we're getting a break from the hot August temperatures. Even though our Heat Index was 103, our high temp was only about 92 or so, and for August that's fairly mild. I have to admit I'm looking forward to September. Most years, my pest and disease issues just go away in September. Dawn

Damon, I use potting mix. My ferts are various. Tomato-Tone, Bio-tone, MG for tomstoes, and my secret formula and procedure for starting seeds. If you search for my posts, I have detailed exactly how I grow in containers here in North Georgia. Organic is okay, but not where I'm located. Just too many critters and diseases here in this heat. Ted