Right. I bet summer will switch it back, but at least this will give us some moisture lee-way. Then, of course, this summer could be totally different!

Bumping this down the page. A new map comes out today and we'll see if drought conditions are improving, worsening or staying the same across the state.

I think we'll see some improvements in next week's graphic after the rain a lot of us have received the last few days. We still have a long way to go, but it's a start.

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