Paula, I worry about you and Ken and all that high water. Y'all be extra careful! After all these years of fearing that wildfire would burn us all out of our homes, now we are at the other end of the spectrum. It hasn't even taken hail to knock fruit off our plum trees. Every time we have had really high wind and heavy rain together, the ground is covered with fruit. I still hope to get enough plums to make some jelly, but that looks more and more iffy every day. My garden is the same as yours---without raised beds, there simply would be no garden left to produce anything. This week I yanked out the snap peas----the plants, though heavily loaded with peas and still in bloom, were rotting off at the ground, and they are in raised beds. I harvested all I could find as I pulled out each plant and put it on the compost pile. I'm not going to plant anything else in the ground where they were growing until we have had a few days of sunshine to dry out the waterlogged soil in those raised beds. I fear that any seed sowed there now would just rot or wash away anyhow. Robert, What is a sunny day? (grin) I feel like we have become obsessed with mowing and edging the property, precisely because we cannot do it. On the first sunny, dry-ish day we get, Tim will be mowing, and I'll be out there with the string trimmer tidying up the edges, and along fence lines and such. Tim did mow the other day, so at least the grass in the area closest to the house, garden and outbuildings is low, but the roadside and the pastures are high. You know, that snakey sort of high. I can't wait for us to at least be able to mow pathways through the fields. After Tim mowed the other day, he had just parked the riding mower in the garage when gas became pouring out from underneath it. As he was pushing it back out of the garage, I was running to the house to grab cat litter to absorb the spilled gasoline. He eventually found a hose loose and then two parts on the ground that surely must have had something to do with the loose hose, which I assume was a fuel line. So, before he can mow again, he'll have to fix the mower again. It is always something, isn't it? We've never had to work so hard just to mow the grass. Larry, Thanks for the laugh! You always say something that puts a smile on my face. I like the idea of a boat delivered by a drone. Yesterday when I heard the UPS truck coming down the road (you can hear it from a long way off once you are used to what it sounds like) I went down the driveway to meet the driver down at the road. I wouldn't have wanted for him to bring that big old truck up our flooded driveway as he might have gotten stuck in the mud. Has anyone here been counting days and nights of rain? Is anyone approaching 40 days and 40 nights? It might be time to start building an ark, and if I was building that ark, it would have two sections---one for two of each kind of animal and the other for two of each kind of plant. Oh, who am I kidding? It would have a third section for 100 tomato plants. Dawn

I'm glad you and the wife are ok and not in danger from this terrible rain. 4" and 10 days of it Is a lot. About 2 days here in AZ and I'm done with it! do you have any larger trees up by the house? (I don't remember). As I plan to plant some here I'm being very careful about how close to the house they'll be. Don't want one to crash on my roof during the monsoons. Columbia might have come to my mind because I've been hearing it so much on the news. Those poor people going thru this. I can't even imagine.

Bruce, Thanks for letting us know how you and Janet are doing. We missed y'all at the Spring Fling, but we knew you were busy dealing with the aftermath of Mother Nature's weather temper tantrum. I am so pleased to hear how much recovery progress you've already made, and doubly pleased you have reclamation crews coming in so quickly. I believe your hard work and quick action will save some items you otherwise might have lost. It is impressive what y'all have managed to do so quickly, and it is inspiring for the rest of us who someday might face similar issues---y'all will be the shining example of what we need to do if we're ever hit by the same type of weather destruction. You know, here in OK in the springtime, anything can happen and it usually does happen to someone. I still cannot believe it happened to y'all. Hang in there and keep smiling and keep growing. I know you need your garden more than ever this year because it is such a great stress reliever and y'all certainly have had a lot of stress these last few days. Dawn

It was a dark and stormy night and our weather radio went off for at least 4 hours nonstop as tornadic circulations danced through the skies near us, but not many made it to the ground. A tornado touched down near Ringling in the county adjacent to us and headed towards Wilson, Healdton and Lone Grove. After spotters confirmed power flashes and a tornado on the ground near Ringling, they got a Particularly Dangerous Situation Tornado Warning and that got everyone in our county stirred up. And, that was the way it should been because all those communities at risk are right along the Carter-Love county line, so folks living near there should have been watching and even heading for shelter. We had spotters out, lots of traffic on our GroupMe app and radios, etc. but all we got out of this was hail, rain and wind as far as I know. Our final tornado warning, for the one seemingly headed towards us, was abruptly cancelled when that supercell abruptly jumped the river and headed away from us. Then we got pounded by a severe thunderstorm that dropped 1.25" of rain (more than we'd had the whole month of May so far) and, in some parts of our neighhborhood but not here, hail. I was more worried about hail than tornadoes because I have some huge onions bulbed up above ground but not yet developing soft necks. I had to resist the urge around midnight to run yank them out of the ground for their own good as big hail approached parts of our county. I found no damage in the garden except for 1 onion with a snapped neck (it wasn't at the soft neck stage so the wind merely broke its neck early), a rain gauge blown over and lying on the ground and another rain gauge totally missing. Ok, I'm out for the day. Y'all have a good time and let's be thankful that the wicked weather seemingly did little damage and missed most all of us. I hope the folks who haven't checked in are okay. I haven't watched the news yet to hear how folks outside of OK fared. I hope the damage across the country isn't as bad as they feared it would be. From watching TWC last night, I suspect there is a lot of wind damage in some areas across the country.