Can you say snow? lol! Just a light dusting but the ski area nearby has over 4 inches so far. Crazy! It's not unusual for us to get a light snow the first week in May but not this late. It's perfect timing though because my roses are finishing up their first flush and ready for deadheading anyway. Good thing since half of them are hanging on the ground. lol The tornadoes were about an hour south of us in Moreno Valley. We have several friends who live there and they said it was quite a sight. They almost thought it was a joke when they got the warning on the tv. We just don't get many of those out here and basements are almost unheard of unless you live in a very old home. And my DH experienced the CO. tornado via telephone. A business colleague had just phoned him from Greeley when the roof blew off the building he was in. He and several other guys were on the staircase and decided to stay put. Everyone was ok but DH said he could tell the guy was shaken up. Crazy and weird and COLD! Whaa! Give me back my heat wave! : ) Thanks for thinking of us all! Diana Here is a link that might be useful: tornadoes

Janet, Even though we have lived in the same place for the last 13 years, it is as if we packed up and moved to a whole different country around 2005. Before 2005, we had normal Oklahoma weather and the only wildfire I remember was a couple of counties north of us. Then, it all changed. Since 2005, our weather or climate has gone haywired in our county. We have had drought for a part of each year, and it seems the native vegetation is slower to recover each year. Dry trees and brush burn more easily. Ponds and springs recover less each time, etc. Beginning in 2005, our small rural VFD went from running maybe 30 or 40 calls a year to running between 140-260. Obviously something changed. Many of them are wildfires now or very difficult-to-control brush fires or grassfires that don't really become wildfires--it is a very fine line. After the drought of 2005-06 and late 2007-April 2009, I thought we'd seen it all in terms of wildfire. Been there. Done that. Then 2011 arrived and it was so much worse than anything that has happened here before that I find it hard to comprehend. The easiest way I know to compare 2011's wildfires to everything that came between 2005-2010 (or the 'nothing' we had in terms of wildfires before that) is that in previous bad drought years, we might have had 1-3 wildfires so large and out of control that we had a "page all" summoning all 15 fire departments in the county to those extreme wildfires. This year? I think we have had about 15 page-alls since July 3rd, and had 1 or 2 back in mid-spring. I hope we never have a year like 2011 again. I lived in Fort Worth all my life before we moved here, and we were lucky to have snow once a year. So, I loved the fact that it snows more here. In recent years, we have had more snow than in the early years and I am done with the snow. I love to watch it fall, but then I wish it would stick around a couple of hours and then melt. I want to have our 1999-2004 weather back again. It may have been mostly hot and dry except when it was wet and flooding, but we were not literally burning up or buried in ice and snow. Carol, Now that you mention it, I do remember around the time of the Spring Fling/Plant Swap a lot of our eastern OK residents were dealing with soggy soil and standing water. My heart goes out to the people in Joplin. To have so much destruction on such a large scale must be so daunting. I am so proud of the resilience they've shown. I think of how Greenburg, KS, has recovered so well from their F-5 and hope Joplin has the same success. I know your soil stays wet a lot most years and it can drive you to distraction, but one thing I've noticed by watching the moisture maps this year is that your soil dries out more quickly than mine. We'll both be at 1.0 or 0.9 and yours will fall a lot more quickly than ours. This drought likely has been just as hard on your plants as on mine, even though you've had probably twice the rainfall this year that we have. I admire the pioneers too. Our first few years here it was my priviledge to get to know some of the old timers who then were in their 80s and 90s. Many of them came to Oklahoma around 1903 or so and remember the covered wagons, living in dugouts in the bluffs near the Red River, or in sod houses. Their tales fascinated me. Those people back then were tough. They knew how to scavenge for native food crops too, and they ate stuff a lot of us probably wouldn't eat willingly. I mowed the rye grass jungle this morning, and I hurried because it looked like rain was coming. Here we are, hours later, and it is sunny and warm. I hope the rain gets here soon. Scott, I have no idea, but you can bet the weather will drop in at least one more surprise. As I am typing this, there are tornadoes being reported in SW OK and they are moving northeast, so watch out! Tracy, You're welcome. We all could write a book about what the weather did at our places this year. Oh my! If it hit 121 here, I'd be packing up to move to Alaska or something. Were your horses and chickens OK during that heat wave? I am sorry to hear about your seeds. What a disaster! Could you put the seeds into containers in a shaded location for wintersowing? Let them sprout and stay small in those containers until the time is right to prick them out, pot them up and then put them in the ground at the right time? I agree with Cactusgarden that the early fall cooldown was welcome for a change. We were at the "I cannot stand this heat another day" stage when it finally started to cool off. Today I was doing garden clean up and found four living broccoli plants about a foot tall and forming heads. If that doesn't beat anything I've ever seen. They were tucked away in a corner that gets a lot of shade in the afternoon, but I'll never understand how they survived July and August. I am pretty sure I had pulled up the other plants in that row in June or July, and then just turned off the water and closed the garden gate and walked away and let the drought have the garden. This was my first really normal day in the garden in months and it was wonderful. For the first time since April, I wasn't worried about snakes! I haven't seen one in weeks, and that's OK with me. Dawn

Austin, TX Aug 2021. Quotes for a 300sf room mini-split not incl electric which I would guesstimate to add $500-800: 1) $4900, 2) $5000, 3) starting at $4800. The only more reasonable one was 4) $3400 which I MIGHT give up and just take, meaning paying about $4000. The thing is I would be HAPPY as hell to get the 2nd floor central AC to be exactly like our first floor central AC system and pay $5-7000 for it. The 1st floor's Sept 2020-installed 2-ton HVAC, despite being a single-stage, actually cools at 47 dB directly at the intake, 39dB 10 feet away, most of the time. Then it's like 63dB when it has to cool things down multiple degrees but that's not for very long. The 2nd floor's furnace was installed at the same time and is the same exact unit as the 1st floor's but the 2.5 ton outside is not same brand and not the same coils. When I asked the AC co. this summer to just make the 2nd floor like the first floor - replacing the coils and condenser, he hemmed and hawed and said I can't guarantee you the same situation and static pressure, blah blah blah. He couldn't explain why the 1st floor unit had two fan speeds. Isn't there a way to kind of estimate how the thing would work? Funny thing is the 2nd floor furnace is loud as hell all the time when running - I think 67dB with vibrating noises - and will cycle on and off A LOT at night - literally on for 5 minutes then off for 5, then on again for 5 minutes for part of the night, driving me crazy. It's louder than the previous 30-year system which ironically still worked. The first mini-split estimator to come to the house (the rest I just got ballparks on the phone to not waste anybody's time) - they mostly do full HVACs - when I asked about the 2nd floor, he stared at the grate and said "you need more duct board." Hilarious. Didn't even mention the fact that the intake is too small which I found out on my own but I still doubt that would help because pulling the grate off does nothing except maybe make it louder still. So I don't feel like these HVAC people know much about systems either. One of my installer AC's folks said it's the thermostat - you mean the fancy Honeywell? I called Honeywell without much luck. And when I called the manufacturer to supposedly find a compatible thermostat, the guy said X and it was their $800 thermostat. Um, why? I'm definitely looking at the Mr. Cool unit. Not crazy about learning yet a new skill and taking forever figuring things out which is how I am - I'm good, just slow but willing. I may also just install a Midea u-shaped inverter window AC - I bought my daughter one and it's remarkably quiet - crazy quiet. Luckily the window in question is on the side of the house far from the front. But I can't believe I have to resort to a window AC. $500 window AC vs $4000-$5000 Euro-style system vs $5-7000 new HVAC compressor and coils which may not do what I want and the guy really doesn't want to sell me. Geez.

(((Nicole & Benny))) Poor little Benny sure has been through a lot in his life hasn't he? You and Claude must be so worried and overwhelmed with this new diagnosis. I'll add a link to the Diabetes Association in your area. They have a parent support group and if you contact them they should provide you with a wealth of information. Two of one of my best friend's children were diagnosed with juvenile diabetes when they were 1 and 3 at the same time. Marilyn was told they contracted it through a viral infection. Both those kids are in their late 20's now. Being so little Marilyn didn't have to worry about them wanting the sugary foods or them feeling deprived because they couldn't have them. Monitoring them was the hardest part because children are on the go and exercising all the time. Of course the kids hated the finger pricking and the insulin shots but then they had to use a syringe. Nowadays injections are easier and less painful because of the new pens that have the thinest of needles. You can even get test kits that will allow you to test on your arm instead of pricking your finger. I know how painful that can be and if you have to do prick Benny's little finger you will cry just as hard as he will. I know I did whenever I had to test my Mom. She would just look at me with these big eyes knowing the pain was coming. As the kids got older because they were away from home more often they did their own testing and injections. Marilyn didn't have many problems with her son but her teenaged daughter rebelled and didn't want to follow the diet, didn't want to test herself and didn't want to take her insulin. She felt restricted and their were complications along the way. She did start taking better care of herself but just before she got pregnant with her first child she had to have eye surgery for retinopathy. My other best friend Vicki has had juvenile diabetes most of her life. She felt sorry for herself when she was a teenager and still does sometimes at the age of 51. Diabetes becomes a way of life. As hard as my friend tries and she follows her diet and does everything right her sugar levels are rarely under control. She has tried different types of insulin, met with dieticians and Doctors. She said the only time her sugar was under control was when she was pregnant. Vicki gets frustrated because eating right, testing your blood before every meal and more when she doesn't feel right and taking insulin before every meal is time consuming. She just can't sit down and eat like we all can. She can eat everything though and doesn't feel deprived unless she really wants to eat a lot of something that isn't so good for her and knows she can't. Vicki hasn't experienced any health problems related to her diabetes. She just gets tired of doing what she has to do to keep her blood sugar normal. Benny can still be a normal little boy just with monitoring and the hated testing and injectionsn. Holidays, even Halloween can just be as fun he just can't eat much of the candy. Chips and cheesepuffs, etc are good. Marilyn would buy her kids candy from them and donate it to a shelter. I think it is going to be more tough on you Nicole but you will get into the swing of things. Counting, measuring, reading labels can be time consuming but you will learn pretty fast and get into a routine. Give Benny Boy and Sophie a hug for me and one for you and Claude too. I really missed you guys at Christmas this year. Anne Here is a link that might be useful: Oakville Diabetes Association