As far as I can tell, it hasn't rained today in OKC--maybe this is the start of drier days! The weather map around Houston earlier today showed some nasty looking stuff churning around down there. Hopefully it will move northeast of us and stay away.

Clear and sunny day in Helena. Hang in there, the sun's gotta come out sometime!!

Lucky Y'all!

Every morning I wake up with a positive thought in my head....you know, it goes something like this...."I am going to look out the window and see clear, blue skies and some sunshine today...." And, every day, what I see is clouds, fog, drizzle or rain or some combination thereof.

We are having a little afternoon sun every day, and our rains are lighter and more short-lived, but our general rainy pattern remains, at least so far.....there is a rumor that the sun may make an appearance here this afternoon.

Dawn

The sun's out today, and boy, is it humid, but I'll take it! My plants are loving it.

I've been too afraid to look at the weather map this morning. I'll take some of this temperate weather the rest of the week, if that's okay.

I didn't want to say anything until enough time had elapsed, but we have now gone 24 hours without rain. When you go outside you are immediately slapped in the face with a wet steamy towel. If you pause too long in any one place you are swarmed with mosquitoes while you slowly sink in the muddy muck. And all the time the sulfureous aroma of rotting vegetation is wafting through the air. Ummmm....really makes me want to garden. Fortunately once the water evaporates I may not have any plants left to worry about (except for a Sweetgum and an Ironwood).

I actually did look at the weather map this morning, and it looks pretty good--and the farther north you go from Texas, the better it looks.

I mowed for almost 3 hours so I could enjoy all those summer delights up close----the mosquitoes, the humidity, the mud puddles, and...of course, that lovely aroma of rotting vegetation that Mary described so well. We have even had a small amount of sunshine the last couple of hours, but the thunderclouds are popping up pretty tall now. I hope it doesn't rain.

We had 4/10ths of an inch of rain in the rain gauge this morning, but I think it all fell yesterday, so nothing new has fallen since about this time yesterday. Thus, I do believe we have gone about 24 hours without rainfall. I don't remember the last day that happened!

Mary, I am starting to wonder what I will have left growing when this is all over. Today I noticed my daturas have joined the four o'clocks in wilting and dropping leaves, so I think they are goners too.

I even noticed substantial browning of the bermuda grass leaves....oh, if only it would all die!!! I doubt I would be so lucky! If, by chance, the bermuda grass does die, I will be the happiest woman in the world. One has to wonder, though, what I would do with all my time if I didn't have bermuda grass to dig out of the flower beds and vegetable gardens. lol

I hope y'all are enjoying your Independence Day. It may be muddy, moderately hot and humid, but I also remember last year's 4th of July when it was much hotter (92 or 93 degrees here, I think), the humidity was in the 40s, it was very dry, we'd had less than 1/2" of rain in the preceding month, and we fought wildfires all day long. By comparison, we are having a lovely day here, and no fires to fight either!

Dawn

Well, the rain is pouring down again. At least I cut the grass cut first.

Rats! I hope it isn't coming north, although they have a chance of rain in our forecast for the next few days. I sympathise with you about your plants. Do you have clay soil?...... Funny though, with all this rain I've found myself feeling like I'm not doing something I ought to be doing out in the garden. Then I remember how many years our drought has lasted and how much time, effort and cursing I usually put into the watering.

I got out and fertilized and weeded today. I'm waiting one more day, and if no more rain, I'm going to go ahead and try to plant my milkweeds and some other plants. Today I also hit the milkweed with a hard spray of water to dislodge the oleander aphids. There are SOOOOOO many this year. You'd think this hard rain we've had woulda done the job, but oh no!

I have little spiders all over the passion vine (caerulea), and spent time plucking them. Put out some watermelon rinds for the QMs and Hackberries.

OMG, Dawn, my tomatos are growing so fast now - they are getting big and no sign of needing to be staked at all. I have figured out a stake design for people like me who stake too late.

It has been really nice not to water as much this year. I've seen so many butterflies - they seem to prefer being in areas that have more precipitation, and the people in the northern states are wondering where they are. Well, they have kind of taken a temporary hiatus by staying in Oklahoma, Kansas, and Texas. Yeah for us!

BTW, I'm raising BOTH Silvery Checkerspots and Bordered Patches right now. Have one BST left to go. All the QMs have hatched but I found one cat yesterday on the elm along with a Hackberry Emperor, so they are sharing a room.

Dawn, Bermuda Grass dying from too much water is wishful thinking, you know. I have a piece of bermuda that wound up floating in my wheelbarrow full of water, and it is growing very nicely. Hee Hee!

Susan

Susan,

As soon as I came in from mowing and hopped into the shower to clean up, it poured down rain again! I think I will try to plant tomorrow no matter what. I am afraid that if I don't get this stuff into the ground, the rain will stop one of these days, the temperature will skyrocket to 105 degrees overnight, and it will be too hot to plant, so I have to do it now!

Don't you have ladybugs around eating the oleander aphids? Every time I have an aphid hatch or invasion, the ladybugs come out of nowhere in droves.

The tomatoes I have that are in VERY well drained soil are growing like crazy like yours. I don't think you should have to stake your Husky Red Cherry at all, unless it gets so heavy with ripening fruit that it begins to lean sideways!

It has been nice to not water this year, and I hope we don't have to water much, if any, in July too.

I have a lot of butterflies when it is not raining, but since it rains every day, I only see them a part of every day. I do think they are liking this weather.....there are so many of them, esp. the Bordered Patches and Silvery Checkerspots. I have been having a lot of swallowtails, but not so many this week as in previous weeks.

I don't really think the bermuda grass will die, Susan, but I can dream and hope and wish, can't I? Seriously, it does look bad....brownish and not nearly as vibrant of a green as usual. I suppose the nutrients were leached out of the soil long ago by the daily downpours, but I don't especially want to encourage it by feeding it either.

We still have a 60 to 70 per cent chance of rain daily, especially with the cold front that is coming our way. I would love to have a whole day with no rain, but don't see it happening anytime soon.

Dawn

Mary,

I do have clay soil and I think that is why my plants are suffering horribly from all the rainfall. We have a tiny band of sandy soil that is about 60' x 30' and even the plants in the sandy soil are wilting and dropping leaves and attempting to die.

After watching this horrible clay crack wide open enough last year that you could step down into the crack and twist your ankle, I never thought I would get tired of the rain, but I am. On the other hand, I don't have a gigantic water bill from watering the landscape, so that is nice.

We have 4 ponds that are FINALLY full for the first time in a couple of years, and our 5th pond, which is seasonal and merely temporarily catches runoff that overflows from the big pond, is also full. It isn't really a pond as it drains fairly fast, but it will hold water for a few weeks, and it is as full as it can be also.

Our weather is greatly improved, and I hope that yours is as well. Instead of having an 80% to 100% chance of rain, we now have only a 30% to 60% most days. So far, it has continued to rain every day, but in lesser and lesser amounts--like 3/10s of an inch or a half-inch instead of 2 or 3". Our rainshowers now seem to be coming from the late afternoon thunderstorms that pop up on hot summer afternoons, instead of being the all-day-long 'rain events' that we had been having.

So, it is improving, but still weird since huge puddles remain everywhere and we are having higher humidity levels which is fairly rare for us.

Our rainfall for this year so far already exceeds our average annual rainfall, so who knows what in the world will happen for the rest of the year!

I just want life to get back to being a little more normal--you know, not as dry as last year or the year before, but not as wet at 2007 has been so far. On the other hand, you could argue that Oklahoma NEVER has normal weather. lol

Dawn

We had about 4 days with no rain until the 4th. We now may have a few more with no rain, so I guess we are pretty fortunate. My brother is a climatologist/meteorologist, and he said that the wetter it is further into the summer, the cooler the summer will be usually, there are always exceptions. UNFORTUNATELY, there is also a strong chance that the rest of the summer will be wetter than usual also.

And he also said- for all of you trivia buffs....that we had a summer this wet back in ................1908!!!

Dawn,

FYI, the tips on the tomato plants is working wonders. I have continued the baking soda sprays, and did the seawead spray 2 days in a row, (I didn't have a compost tea available) and the plants are doing alot better, alot of the yellowing is slowed down, and even some turning green ....I think. Did the serenade tonight. I got some coco coir and will plant the fall plants tommorrow.
I got the 1st ripe green zebra the other day-it was far better than any other homegrown tomato--can't wait to try the other heirlooms! Thanks a million. Sheri

My gardening buddy across the street said he had some chelated iron he would share with me for those plants that are showing signs of deficiency - all this rain is washing lots of nutrients out of the soil. This may also help the tomatoes, Sheri. We'll see what Dawn says.

The Husky Cherry Red tomatoe plants are doing much better than any other cherries I've EVER planted. The foliage is so rugose that I don't think much of anything is eating it at all. Good for the tomatoes, bad for the hornworms. They have blooms all over them, and every time I pass them, I give them a shake. I'm getting lots of tiny little green balls, about the size of a pea, all over them. YEAH! I will definitely plant these again.

The fennel is growing in leaps and bounds now, and I have about 30 black swallowtail eggs on my 4 plants.

I put my little Bordered Patch and Silvery Checkerspot cats in my pop-up butterfly hamper. Some of the Silveries are already starting to make a chrysalis, and they are SO TINY, that they just look like tiny black balls when they form a "J". I rescued them all, you may remember, because the wasps were hovering all around the sunflower patch. They love to suck them dry.

There is this HUMONGOUS red wasp that keeps hanging around - what kind is it? A hornet? Ugh.....gives me the shivers!

Dawn, a month ago I had tons and tons of ladybugs. Now, all of a sudden, I see maybe one a day. What happened to them all? I do have plenty of lacewing eggs all over, so maybe they will come along and eventually consume the aphids. I wish the ladybugs would come back. I'm afraid to buy any because in all likelihood something is eating them and I don't want to just release a bunch of food for whatever it is.

The mosquitoes are just horrible! I sure wish I had that bat house. But, I've almost decided I'll have to get a 30' pole (bury and set part of the pole in concrete) to mount it on. My house is a small cottage and doesn't have a very tall roofline. The website Dawn referred me to suggests at least 20' off the ground.

I tried washing those aphids off, but it is so hard for me to bend over and get them all. I think I'll take some alcohol and Q-tips and just go sit on the ground and swab them off. I don't think the power spraying is really killing them.

While I think the aphids serve a good purpose (they are great for identifying milkweed in the field) or growing around the house (like I have cynanchum laeve, milkweed vine, popping up all around), they sure do cause the black sooty mold on the plants. In the past, I've never had to worry about it cause the ladybugs did their job. But, it looks like it's a "hands on" year for me.

Does anyone know how long it takes trumpet vine to blooms from seed? I have one that is the peach flowering one that is now two years old and hasn't bloomed yet. I think I heard that sometimes it takes 3-5 years for them to bloom when grown from seed.

BTW - I think we had about half an inch of rain yesterday afternoon. It was very loud, hard rain storm.

Susan

Good day All

We are having sunshine and the heat has came with it

The spider mites are eating my tomatoes up and a few plants just looking like they are going to kick the bucket anytime from so much rain and no sun

I did put out some miracle grow to see if that will help and need to order some lady bugs to help with the aphids and spider's

Hope everyone is getting some sun today

Hi Y'all,

My computer died last week, so now I am back with a new one.

Susan, The disappearance of your lady bugs is, strangely enough, a good thing....because it most likely indicates that you have a very healthy, relatively pest-free yard and the lady bugs had to go elsewhere in your neighborhood to find something to eat. Once the aphids get to a certain level, the lady bugs should return to eat them. My ladybugs disappeared from the 'civilized' part of our landscape a couple of week ago, but I have been seeing them out in the wilder areas on the wildflowers and trees.

I think trumpet creepers can bloom the 3rd year from seed, but 4 or 5 years is more typical. You know the old adage about perennials....the first year they sleep, the second year they creep, the third year they leap.....well, it seems to be true! I have a three-year-old trumpet creeper from seed that is growing like crazy this year, but hasn't bloomed yet. My older trumpet creepers are in bloom right now, though.

Sheri,

I am glad you are getting ripe tomatoes. It has been a very frustrating year for lovers of homegrown tomatoes, but the sunnier, warmer, less-rainy weather is leading to more rapid ripening of tomatoes here in our part of the state. I hope you are seeing the same increase in ripe tomatoes.

Sheepie,

I am glad you haven't floated away in all the way y'all have been having. I HATE spider mites. Hopefully the lady bugs will help. Spraying the leaves of the plant, and especially the undersides of the leaves, with water, compost tea, liquid seaweed or fish emulsion also helps control spider mites.

It is hot and very humid today, as it has been all weekend, but we are having lots of sunshine and my tomatoes are ripening and putting on all kinds of new tiny tomatoes, so I am thrilled.

Dawn

Susan,

After all this rain, I imagine almost any and every plant you have would benefit from a little chelated iron!

Dawn