I think I've lost a smoke tree (which I bought in MO btw), Tx Mtn Laurel may not make it to summer, and wax myrtle has browning on leaf edges. I'll probably lose many of my newer plantings as it doesn't look like the rain is going to let up for another week. My yard is completely saturated. Even a light rain leaves standing water for hours. I know we needed rain, but most of the lakes are full now and news last night showed map that we are completely out of the drought - first time in several years.

Plants that have done well in our hard as a brick drought soil and are doing well in the black gumbo rain soaked soil are crinum (not native), Salvia greggii, lantana horrida, lanceleaf coreopsis, gaillardia, liatris mucronata, red yucca, desert willow, and yaupon hollies.

marti, those exact same plants are doing well here, we have hit 14+ inches of rain in the last 3 weeks and will break all time records this weekend, that is about 1/2 our years average total. All of the local natives are doing fine and the more xeric ones from further west are still OK. The annuals are all doing good but need thinning. The cactus, agave and yucca look fine. The whole place has a lush overgrown look to me that I don't care for, other than that what does well in drought is so far looking like its going to make it.

I've cut some things back, artemisia which looks terrible and splitting apart from the middle to lay on the ground. Mexican Feather Grass is now way too tall and I may pull some to let smaller ones take over, the other grasses still look good but larger than usual. When this weekend is over I intend to do a lot of drastic thinning and trimming. The worst is Damianitia which all need severe trimming. I think I should have trimmed them back in late winter but they are all laying on the ground top heavy. Surprisingly the western penstemons are doing good except they are quite tall. I have a firecracker P. barbatus I grew from seed that is 4.5 feet tall.

Driest winter/spring I can remember in a long time, maybe ever. Sucks too. I don't mind drought where drought is "supposed to" happen, if you know what I mean. But we're in the belt that's supposed to get fairly consistent moisture. Unbelievable how dry it's been.

+oM

Wiscon, Normal has fled to who knows where? Personally I have always thought too much water is worse than not enough but I am the only person I know of who thinks this way. I know what you mean, this weather is giving me the creeps. Its cold, rainy and cloudy nearly every day lately when its supposed to be uncomfortably hot already and mostly sunny. Memorial Day has always meant gateway to summer and thats not about school being out, its about hunkering down for summer heat. It should feel and look like summer so there is an uneasy Twilight Zone feeling about this abnormal cool wet stuff and I have the itchy sensation of endlessly waiting for something.

Oklahoma suffers both regular droughts and floods and just about any other natural terrorizing possibility with the exception of hurricanes & volcanos. We expect this sort of victimization by wildly variable weather patterns but of all of them I hate the abundant ceaseless rain with flooding the worst.

I've been watching how the jet stream keeps sending that water around California along the same path over and over. It will have to change sometime, I just hope its soon. Its like the Heat Dome that sometimes develops in summer, the thing gets stuck, we are trapped beneath it and as long as it is up there, we get hot sun with 100+ temperatures that just keep gradually rising with no rain able to get in for weeks on end.

Thanks for the suggestions. Interesting about Liatris mucronata, I would think that would be more susceptible to flooding. I lost several L. punctata over the winter that I had grown from seed and possibly transplanted too deeply. The crown of the one that survived was almost completely above the soil surface and in a dry place under eaves.

El Niño, perhaps? I heard that there was a weather station on the Canadian Arctic coast (Tuktoyaktuk) that beat its max temp record by over 20 degrees F yesterday.

14+ inches of rain is a lot. I think I'd have to upgrade the dehumidifier in my basement and maybe sandbag the garage.

L. puntata comes up like annual weed grass from seed. I dead head them, otherwise my entire landscape would be Liatris. There are several types each suited to different conditions. If its not happy it will crawl & twist like a snake along the ground but too much water simply means more seeds germinate here, no rotting at all. The roots are so deep once established that whats going on above ground seems irrelevant. Same with Missouri Primrose. I dug a three yr old plant up that was about a foot in diameter, the root was like a tree root and I didn't even come close to getting the whole thing dug out, I couldn't believe how thick it was. The only problem this year is sprawling from so much wet but the flowers are staying open all day instead of shriveling up in mid morning sun as is typical. Most prairie plants are so deeply rooted so that once established they do fine, you really can't gauge the way seedlings react as a good test of how the same mature plant will endure drought and flood in my opinion. Prairie clover is also looking great, those seed about rather timidly unlike Liatris.

The only plants I have actually dying are Desert Marigold but some are still OK. It really resents water but its more like an annual so I always get some deaths, depending on where they volunteer from seed. The Fringed Sage looks great and thats a desert plant. Another xeric plant doing fine is Apache Plume but the plumes look much better dry than wet, same is true for cactus blooms.

14 inches is an unwarranted travesty in my book. After the drought its not kosher to complain on our local forum but I think I am at least entitled to have a little pout here especially since others are also getting various bad effects from this weird weather pattern. Some people in Oklahoma are still listed in a level of drought so they and those in California are more than welcome to this water, I'd sure send it elsewhere if I could. Tornados are par for the course but not this amount of rain.

Where I am is not as bad as other places in Texas. I get a tiny bit of rain almost every day. Today it was .06" but we were in a fog all day and all day yesterday and for days before that , and rain every day for weeks. Sometimes 1/4", once an inch but mostly just little pieces of rain, but never drying out. and COLD. IT is June and I have a velveteen pants, high socks and sweater on yesterday. We actually got to 71F today. Yesterday it was 61 for a high. THIS TEXAS and almost JUNE! South of us and east of us and North of us seems to get inches for every itty bit that we get. My Rain Tanks are almost full which means less than 5 inches of rain this spring. That might change tomorrow and the next day. They say heavy rain but it might be in Austin or san Ann or San Marcus and not on my hill. I am 6inches below normal and we have mushrooms. Weird.. I have mushrooms in my cactus and liatris is coming up more places then ever before. But sometimes I need to water my tomatoes... weird. But the grass is HIGH and greener than green. UPS stuck in the driveway earlier . My Opuntia dark night did rot. And all the hail hits on the cactus are turning to rot, so I am slicing it off .The just planted winterfat does not look to good. The Dalea aurea is huge that is in the caliche and pushing out blooms everywhere. Some of my Ipomopsis rubra have now reached 6.5'. My desert marigold has died too. I am thinking I am having a rain pattern like the Pacific northwest or Hawaii where it rains a little every day but Hawaii gets sunshine between the showers. We are socked in fog.

Some girlfriends drove to Beaumont and Houston on Monday. One girl spent 2 hours waiting for a river to go down , then turned around and went down another road and a house was in the road. She did find her way over that stream and then ran into a dead alligator. The other woman had a close encounter with a small tornado at a restaurant. They were both glad to get home.... OH it rained another itty bit just now. I think the fog condenses hard and then just abates. We are now up to ,01" to start off Saturday.

The trees and shrubs are LOVING IT here in muggy Houston! We've received over 6 inches of rain in the last month - more than double the long-term average - and some places around town have received even more. We usually get close to 50 inches a year - but this year we could be on track to receive 60 or 65 or more if all goes well.

Nothing seems to be dying around here. The native bottomland forest here has flood-adapted, water-loving species like Bald Cypress, Loblolly Pine, Sweet Gum, Black Gum, Water Oak, White Oak, American Elm, Wax Myrtle, Yaupon Holly, and American Holly. We routinely get tropical storms and flooding. It has been that way here for thousands of years. The native trees are ready and willing to accommodate the rainy bounty when it arrives.

The mosquitoes are also loving it. The millipedes are invading houses.

It's going to be a mild, damp summer - with lush vegetation, abundant berries and bugs. All the volunteer seedlings from last fall seem to be surviving and thriving. We see mushrooms everywhere.

It's all fantastic. Great news for nature-lovers and outdoors-lovers of all types.

Yes, Texas varieties of plants usually can handle both. The ones that grow in Central texas usually di not have standing water types of floods like East texas. Floods mean raging water down culverts and rivers. West of Blanco had almost 10" this afternoon and I hear that the Blanco river rose almost 20', 12'above flood level in a couple of hours today. small Bald cypress gets ripped out and stream beds are reformed, first generation rattle bush is swept away. Lots of seedlings get removed in the culverts.. I saw a pecan tree sprouting out of some mulch I brought in. I will pull it because it will not live where it is sprouting. Exciting night. 2 wannabe tornados were said to be headed to my area according to all the weather reports. Got the gear together . The cat got in the closet. Saturday ended with 2" of rain today.

Thanks, great info. For those of us in Houston with ditches in our yards that feed into community retention ponds, we see similar fast-flowing water on a micro scale during big rain events. Your comment gives me ideas about how to landscape my ditch. I was wondering if seedlings would get ripped out by the current. You've confirmed it.

I don't think all seedlings get ripped out and a ditch over flat land is different than a rocky thing that drops down from a rock shelf. The water speed can get atrocious and In was talking about a river Like the Blanco. I would go and garden your ditch but use natives because the ditch will act as a vector for seeds. Rattle bush is designed for this transient and changeable beach land. Its roots that often remain act as rebar in the gravel bed and are a first generation plant for firming up a stream bed bank. I just did a walk around because my arroyo was not dry and the flow was interesting to document. I am interested that it is flowing hours after the rainfall. Before I trimmed the cedar. I only had water flow during the rain event. The water used to be muddy. Now it is clear strained by the fallen brush that I have left in the stream bed. OOOH, Ooh OOH, I found another rare wild orchid on my walk BUT I lost my very expensive glasses..

You might want to send us a photo of one of those arroyos. They sound interesting to those of us in places without arroyos.

Well, we're no longer dry up here, a slug of your TX OK moisture having gotten to us in a big way, more later today/tonight. I'm happy.

+oM

Sorry about your glasses wantonamara. Which orchid did you find? There is a native yellow one I'd like to have.

I found the glasses on my fourth retracing of my steps. I had slipped and landed onto of the glasses pressing them into the soft caliche. I will start another thread about the arroyos and restoration efforts that I have done when I have some time. The orchid is a saprophytic species named Hexalectris nitida. There are 30 known populations not including mine. I found one uphill from this last year. It is not growing this year at that spot. I will keep checking. It appears it needs mushroom weather.

I saw that picture you posted last year of the Hexalectris nitida. So cool, like an extraterrestrial plant.

here is a thread about the flood event and the orchid.

Central Texas Storm Effects

Have things calmed down for you now? It looks like your hard work is really paying off in terms of preventing soil erosion.