I just got back from my errands. First off I went to vote. Now the polling place at the local Elementary School is only around the corner and two blocks up from me and since I have my power I figgured all around the neighborhood here did also. Not true. The school did not have power so they are on a generator so they could have voting. Then I went to the supermarket because all traffic lights that I saw in town worked so I figgured the section with the stores had power. I asked a store employee and she said they got back power sunday night so about the same time as I did. Still, there were lots of empty cases. No milk or milk products or cheeeze. No frozen products. Limited fresh meat selection. Limited deli. They did have bread so at least I bought that and they had eggs so I got some. Got a tote thing of apples as I ate up the ones I had before and I got clementines. Both of those things will not got bad if we loose power again. And a cake. I eat up the cake before it goes stale. I did not buy any meat to restock the freezer as I am going to wait just in case more power problems. I heard a guy talking to another customer and they said they had to throw out all those sorts of stuff. Me I bought mayonase and tarter sauce as I had to thow mine (opened) away. Stuff like that. Lots of bread. I could always make toast the old fashioned way. Talked to two ladies that were customers about local outtages. One lady told me she couldn't believe what the town of OLD BROOKLVILLLE looked like, it is very closeby. No power expected to come back there for ten days and yet parts of Glen Head, right next door, never lost power. Going out today really showed me things are not soon going back to normal, even in my immediate area.

Finally back home after a temporary fix on my heater has it running again. Hope to get seeds out now to everyone promised. Sorry for the setback here. Got my seeds from Remy (Sample Seeds), of Salvia subrotunda, a red flowering subshrub Salvia, that is supposed to reseed here, Frank's Extra Large Dill, a dill that is supposed to be super tall, about 6-10', so wanted to try it. Dill doesn't generally like our hot summers, so usually wilts when it gets hot, so will let you know on this one, Salvia coccinea 'Lady in Red', Nicotiana sylvestris, Phlox paniculata New Hybrids, and Victorian Dwarf tomatoe. Will start seeds this week. On Austrian pines, I have two. One is about 20-25' tall, but very fat and squat, the other is about 12-15' tall. They have never lost any branches to ice or other elements so far. But they are so thick, the branches are so heavy and thick, and none of the lower branches have been removed either. I can't foresee them ever going down in a storm because of their sturdiness. Tiny Mama Wild Kitty came up for food yesterday finally. She is so precious. Very small, predominantly white with black spots. We hope to get her spayed this spring or summer (an effort of us neighbors) as she has become more used to contact with humans now and will come to us and let us pet her. Took a very long time. Wish someone would adopt her and Zena, the male Manx, who is very friendly and sweet. Kenna has been very sick with diarrhea, vomiting and chest congestion. I've never seen her down this long. She usually springs back after a couple of days, and it has been 4 or 5 now. The black birds discussed are probably Starlings. They love suet. I have had them on my suet feeder quite a lot, and of course, they tend to scare the other birds away. I have never seen the Cowbirds which don't come to my feeder or suet. They scrounge on the ground for food. especially food dropped by us humans. We had tons of them at Leadership Square when I worked there, because people would drop scraps of their lunch, etc. The grackles don't come to the feeders either. However, the Eurasian Collard Doves will come to scrounge on the ground for seeds or pieces of suet dropped by other birds. I wish I had my little white-breasted nuthatches back, but think all those sparrows scared them off, too. Have a nice day everyone! Susan

Dawn, Thanks for ur concern. We were in the cellar when the bad weather came. Had been planning to be there all afternoon, and when it did come we were safe. We stayed in the cellar nearly an hour. That's a long time down there, more than you usually have to stay. I'm 3 1/2 mi so of town and did not have any damage per se. It hailed for such a long time. Usually hail comes and goes in about a couple of mins., but this never really got wound up and just hailed for quite some time. I did have some garden damage. I have my tomatoes in 6x6" crw made into tunnels and it makes it hard to cover them for hail, but we had all the usual suspects in the garden for hail duty. dishpans, 5 gal buckets, discarded flower pots, wheelbarrows, plastic soda cases, old plastic ice cream buckets, and more. The coffee (1 gal) cans are too small, as the tomatoes have outgrown them. As of (Friday evening) we are expecting more of the same. Am about to report to the garden to replace the buckets. I told Betty today that I have nearly worn the tomato plants out covering and ucovering them for the hail, curling them up in the coffee cans when they were smaller. A small sidebar for you all. Of course the TV Stations were here interviewing people all over town. One dumb lady said (BOLDLY) to the TV camera "we didnt have any warning"....That's a little rediculous as I knew it was coming for 2 days. Best of luck to all of You. Bill

wbonesteel, I am thrilled y'all have had rain recently. I've just been wishing and hoping we'd get some too. We finally did last night during the tornado warning. I crept outside right before bedtime with the flashlight and checked the rain gauge and it had a half-inch. A little after midnight another thunderstorm hit. It was mostly thunder, lightning and wind for the longest time and then finally more rain fell. This morning there is a total of 0.95" in the rain gauge from yesterday and last night. The skies are darkening up and it is beginning to thunder, so maybe we are about to get a little more rain. So, our month-to-date total at our house for May rainfall jumped from 0.04" to 0.99". That's a nice improvement. I haven't watered any more than the bare minimum to keep everything a little happy. I've been holding out for the rain we should be getting at this time of year. We have completed one new garden area out back (our original garden is in front between the house, which sits 300' back from our rural road, and the road) and another new area is in process. My goal with the two new areas is to be able to grow everything at once, instead of relying on constant succession planting. I get great results from constant succession planting, but the water bills in 2011 and 2012 were off-the-charts and I'd like to grow the same amount, but get it all to finish up by the end of July, more or less, so I don't have to water heavily all summer during drought. This year most of the big garden out front is cool-season crops, and all those are clustered together. When they come out, if I think it is too dry to succession crop without extensive irrigation, I'll sow their areas with a cover crop and let it be. The portion of the big garden in warm-season crops is only about 30% of the total area, so at least I'll only have to irrigate that portion of the garden if the rainfall remains below the needed levels. The entire back garden is warm-season plants, so the majority of the irrigation needed will be done back there. I'm planning to lay out the drip irrigation lines this weekend, as soon as I get the last little bit of that area planted, which likely will occur today....or tomorrow if it rains all day today. I have a corner of that garden with Johnson grass regrowth and I need to hand-dig all those clumps out before I plant southern peas and sunflowers there. The third garden area that still is under construction could have been completed this week, but we got sidetracked (willingly) by other tasks, mostly shopping for butterfly plants and putting them in. I had half-way made up my mind that I wouldn't even finish that 3rd area and plant anything there this spring if rain didn't start falling. Now that rain is falling, maybe we'll work on it next week. There's lots of storms in the weekend forecast, so maybe I should say we'll work on it if the weather allows. This 3rd area is mostly for several varieties of C. moschata winter squash and summer squash that need room to roam. I am trying two varieties of C. moschata avocado summer squash that are new to us this year, and then I have about a dozen rozelle plants to put in that area too, but they are still small and in the greenhouse. Since the new garden area out back is new and I don't have any sort of image in my head of how it has to be or should be planted, I have been having fun with it. I don't have to stop and think, "okay, tomatoes were here last year....so this year they need to be moved over there...." That has left me free to just put stuff wherever I want, which is sort of liberating. With the rain that fell in the last 24 hours, we are up to about 9.7" for this year at our house. That still is way below average, but it is better than the 8.7" we were stuck at for the last few weeks. I can remember good years here (2002, 2004, 2007 and a major portion of 2010) when I hardly had to water at all. The drought years have been tough ones. Our spring-fed pond no longer is spring fed and stays empty most of the year. Our overflow pond that catches the runoff from the big spring-fed pond, hasn't has any overflow water in it since 2009. Our spring-fed swamp in a different area no longer is swampy. Our big creek is empty most of the time, and our smaller creeks are empty all the time except during a rainstorm with heavy runoff. We used to have tons of little ponds, spring, pools of water, creeks, etc. all over our acreage, and now we don't. We're lucky though, because we aren't ranchers. Many ranchers around us have reduced their herds to almost nothing the last few years, and others have spent a lot of time and money putting in new stock tanks, hoping to be able to catch and hold enough water to get the cattle through the summer. When I look at all the challenges our ranching friends face in these recurring dry years, I stop whining about how dry my garden is. Early in the year we had decent rainfall and I thought it might last, and I was so excited. Then it pretty much stopped. We had made it out of severe drought and back to moderate drought, but only stayed there about 2 or 3 weeks and then slipped back into severe drought. When you are in severe drought before summer even arrives, you know it will be a tough summer. I have been wishing for a nice wet year like 2007, minus the flooding, but I guess this isn't going to be that year. I'm going to go find a year-to-date rainfall map and post it, and we can look at it and see how the state of Oklahoma is doing overall. I know some parts have had great rainfall but many others are still hurting. One problem with early spring rainfall is that it causes a lot of plant growth. Then, when the rain stops, there is more fuel in grasslands and woodlands to feed the wildfires that have become increasingly common here in the summer months. It used to be our big wildfire season was winter when everything was dry and dormant, but in recent years, the summer wildfire season has been almost as bad. It is so dry here in our county that green grass has been burning, which freaks out a lot of people because they think green grass doesn't burn. Here in OK when the grassfires and wildfires start up, everything can burn....and that is what I'd hope we can avoid this summer. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Rainfall Summary Maps