Oww. Sorry to hear that, PV & Maggie. What a mess. :-( DH is home while I am off galivanting in NYC. He said our basement was luckily dry this time. We usually got sewer back up in the past. Last month some neighborhoods were flooded & the city received so many complaints about flooded basements that the city must have kept the flood gate open. Otherwise we wd have been ankle deep in water by now. PV, the thunderstorm woke me up. I didn't have the television on so I didn't know anything about the tornado. I didn't know tornadoes would hit NYC! All I thought was there goes my trip to Liberty Island. I still did not understand when I was told that the ferry was delayed because people were late to work. My kid got it made. It takes him 8 minutes to walk to work. I told you he lives in an apartment that nearly bankrupted us. We just chalked it up for his education. I am sitting on his bed looking out the window. I can see New Jersey across the river. And if I angle myself a little bit, I can see the Statue of Liberty too. I told him this is once in a lifetime deal. If he comes back to NYC again, he will live in a dorm like any other college kids. I also keep telling him to be careful with money because had we been spendrift, we would never ever could afford this apartment for him. I hope that message has sunk in. He loves it here in Manhattan. Me? Give me Alaska anytime. I am making the best of my stay in NYC. My legs & feet will never be the same.....so is my pocketbook ...........:-0

I've lost a good deal of the poppies, blooms rot before they can open. The heat/humidity has done a number on what little I was able to plant. :( Calendula Off. Didn't even come up for me this yr. Was terribly bummed about that one. I was so looking forward to that! Ah well. The one surprise I did get was a few poppies turned out to be White ones. It was a butterfly or hummingbird mix I sprinkled in a cruddy spot. I hope the Lantana I planted comes back next yr. My day lilies that got transplanted from a neighbors yard bloomed even though the outer leaves withered. I'm currently waiting on the morning glories to bloom. My Fireworks Clem had one bloom that was unopened when I purchased it, it opened, so I was excited about that. :D Veggies I'm having to water every other day, just to keep them from wilting on me. Potted flowers, I have begonias doing pretty good. Looks like I have pods on the pinks and hopefully soon on the reds. I also have a few young maple trees(neighbor dug them up and gave them to me) Not sure what they are, but they are doing better now. Next year I will have far more things planted, winter sowing things and sowing things here shortly to get an earlier start on them. As well as putting things into the ground in the fall. I pray good blessings on each and every one of your gardens this year and next! ~Tina Marie

My only tree damage occurred today, over two days after the winds and rain. I just happened to be looking out my back door when I saw the 60 year old Japanese plum tree come creaking down to the ground, and come to rest quite artfully to miss the deck, other smaller trees and my house. My first thought was, "Thank God I wasn't up in the damn thing pruning it when it came crashing down." I feel for all of you without water and power and real storm damages, but still, am not really looking forward to renting a chain saw to clean this mess up! This tree is the last remnant of the original landscaping before I bought the house, so I guess the garden is finally all my own creation... I also thought I would touch base with various garden clients to see how their gardens fared with the high winds. In particular I am hoping my client with the 2 100 foot tall and 100 year old Monterey Cypress trees in the top of the Oakland Hills still has his house and garden intact. I have been trying to persuade him that it is time to take these trees out for the past 2 years, but the cost has scared him from tackling it. I need to get up there and see if there is any indication of heaving soil from rotten roots, and pronto...

I am concerned about what comes next if y'all have a dry winter and spring in 2014. It is hard for me to imagine y'all suddenly having a lot of moisture falling in the next few months, especially since the drought outlook says to expect continued drought the next few months in the parts of OK still in drought and also warns that those of us who are barely out of drought may see it return this winter. I want to see a drought outlook that tells us all to start building an ark! We need a good El Nino pattern next winter that will bring us oodles of water. I thought of you and your region on Sunday when the Dallas Morning News had an article about how the reservoirs that are used to provide water to the Dallas-Fort Worth area are about 10% lower right now, on the average, than they were at this time last year. They made it sound very dire, and yet most of those reservoirs still were at least at 60-70% capacity, although the main lake used for the North Texas Municipal Water District (which is Lake Lavon) sits at just under 50% of its capacity. I cannot even imagine what they'd be talking about if the reservoirs were at, let's say, 20-30% capacity. Just because their lakes have water in them, though, does not mean that they are in great shape. The water district that supplies Fort Worth just switched over from one reservoir to another, and the water is being piped in from east Texas. Since those pipes apparently hadn't been used lately, there are complaints that the water tastes bad and smells bad, even though it is treated with chemicals and is safe to drink. As you've already learned there, "safe to drink" doesn't mean it is pleasant or enjoyable to drink. Big Spring,TX, has its reservoirs at only 14% capacity and so they have built a treatment plant that cleans sewer effluent so efficiently and so well that it is returned to the system as clean and usable drinking water. I understand that Wichita Falls either already is building something similar or is in the planning stages to do so. I probably wouldn't rat out anyone who was watering during water conservation periods, but I can understand why people who are following all the rules get frustrated with those who aren't. It is unfortunate, perhaps, that it takes shaming to get some people to comply with water restrictions, but nowadays there's so many people who think that the rules don't apply to them that maybe publicly exposing their actions and shaming them is what it takes to get compliance. We had roughly 10" of rain this past fall (it was as wonderful as it sounds to see actual raindrops falling from the sky), which brought our year-to-date rainfall right back up to our annual average. Unfortunately, most of that fell after everything was dormant or going dormant, so we didn't really green up too much. Sadly, though, even with all that rainfall, the water available at 4" below the soil surface is just barely, barely, barely enough for us to not need to water. At least it did put some water back into the ranchers' stock tanks so they aren't having to haul water to their cattle. Having moisture in the ground at planting time is good, so I feel fairly good about the cool season crops, but we need for some more rain to fall before I can feel happier about planting a lot of warm-season crops. The last summer that we had where I didn't have to water all the time like a crazy woman was 2010 and I've almost forgotten what it was like. I even redid the layout of my big front garden last winter so the drip irrigation lines could water it more efficiently. We changed it from a layout that was more like a potager (although the purpose of that layout wasn't to look attractive, it was to reduce runoff and erosion in our sloping garden) to straight boring rows so the drip lines all could run in straight boring rows. I don't like how it looks now, but it is more efficient to water it effectively with the least amount of wasted water. January is always my county's driest month (and that may be true of all of OK, but I don't know that for sure). Here we are halfway through the month, and we have had something like 0.23" of rain. Maybe it is 0.27". Either way, we are a long way from our January average of 1.74". We need to get some good rain in the next couple of weeks, or we'll be slipping back into drought in the blink of an eye. Dawn