Greenville SC here... I feel your pain, but differently, I was in the garden laying out the drip irrigation system when the rain came howling in, my wife opened up the window and told my son and I hail was forecasted. At that moment I looked at my 11 year old son who is my co-gardener and in charge of the squash and hot peppers and at the 800+ cherry tomatoes on my 2 plants, the 4 romas and beautiful squash plants(3 a day easily) and massive amounts of hot peppers and i called him on his dedication to maintaining the garden. Without even a blink he answered "what do i need to do" for 15-20 minutes we both sat in the hail holding a tarp tight over the garden, in shorts and t-shirts, he had my panama hat on which protected his head, however he took a beating and never flinched once. When it was over the only damage was that the zuke leaves had some holes torn in them and about 50 cherries got knocked off, all in all a great save. My poor son looked like he got stung be 200 bees, you could count every hail stone that hit his body. I told him I would understand if he went inside but he said not after all the hard work we put in, he knew i loved my garden and his mom loved the zukes and maters. I had never been more proud of him at any other moment in his entire life, I calculated the cost of replanting the garden and figured it to be the cost of a new bicycle, which i took him out the next day to buy. I will never forget watching him on the couch with his eyes misting from the pain and when asked if he was okay, he said it hurt be he would get over it. That night we harvested some zukes, fried them up with onions and olive oil and ate a toast to the garden we both saved that day. I have a feeling your hail was worse than mine granite. condolences. gg

This is by far the most snow I've ever seen in Chicago. Storm totals of over 20 inches are being reported. My downtown Chicago office is closed for the day for only the second time in my 38 years there. I have drifts of over 4 feet in height crossing my driveway. Tonight it is supposed to go below zero so the snow will insulate my perennials nicely. The worst thing, however is that my heat went out this morning. The air intake on the furnace became clogged with drifted snow and after I cleared the intake the furnace would still not run. I called my heating contractor and he said he cannot make any service calls today; the roads are impassable. Fortunately, we have electricity and we can run a space heater. I hope that it is adequate until the service can get here. The birds are huddled in the shrubs near the feeders. I counted 10 cardinals at one point today. It is getting brighter and the wind which had been over 50 mph seems to be dying down. It's a good day to stay in and look at catalogs and old pics. Think Spring! Mark

Carol, Our drive is a very steep incline about 150 yards long and facing northeast. If I don't get it down to the blacktop rapidly the warmth turns the snow into a glacier and it stays till spring. One year, we were away on vacation, and when we returned, we could not drive up it for over 3 months. Incidently, I do park at the bottom when snow is forcast. Just long work, not really hard, as I have a small plow on my garden tractor/mower. I'm way too old to shovel that stuff much any more. George

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