okoutdoorsman, I feel exactly the same way. Exactly. I told Tim yesterday that I am not going to spend my whole summer watering the garden and nursing it along and that I'll just harvest what we're getting and when that is done, I'll take the rest of the summer off until it is time to plant for fall. If rain were falling regularly like it did here at our place last year beginning around mid-June, I'd water if needed in between rain storms and would be happy. With the temperatures roasting the garden (and the gardener) this month, I do not feel motivated to get out there and put a lot of time and effort into the garden in the current conditions. I won't be going to the lake though. The lake isn't air-conditioned. I'll be here inside the air-conditioned house.

We have enough tomato plants heavily loaded with fruit that I am sure we'll be harvesting fresh tomatoes through sometime in July even if it never rains again, and the peppers look pretty good, but still are far behind. The heat is burning up pretty much everything else. My potato plants look awful and I need to dig potatoes soon before the extreme heat starts causing them to rot in the ground.

Heather, I looked at that this morning and felt a little hope. Often the QPF seems to over-promise and under-deliver. This time I hope it delivers! It is so ridiculously hot and dry right now and it has been hard to adjust because our bodies didn't get to gradually acclimate to hotter weather...it was just like someone flipped a switch and we immediately went from mild and rainy to hot and dry.

We also need for it to rain to wash all the mud and silt off the formerly-flooded areas. As water has receded, you still can see how high it got by the dirty coating on all the trees that show the height of the former water level.

I was looking at a bottomland pasture near the Red River yesterday. The folks that own it got out there and hayed it right before the flooding began so at least they got 1 hay cutting out of it. Now that whole field has who knows how much silt/sand covering it, no grass showing at all and the trees look like they were spray painted with mud up even into their crowns. At least a little rain might wash off the trees a bit----and cool down the air! I'm hoping we all get some rain-cooled air. I won't even complain if we have mud and puddles again because that would be better than dust and cracks in the earth.

Dawn

I'm ready for some more rain, too. Standing around with a water hose at dusk is bad enough, but I've been getting eaten alive by all the mosquitoes we still have hanging around from back when it was actually raining. Ugh.

I'm not ready for any rain. I still need to get my haying started. I'm just now trying to finish getting my equipment ready since I couldn't get it done last month.

Garden is what it is. I'm not that excited about it. I might try and do one row of taters this evening. I'll use the middle buster on the tractor or they can rot in the ground.

With what I'm seeing for this weekend, I can see steamed potatoes in the next week or so. Hopefully you can get them dug!

Other than a couple of experimental efforts on potatoes, I didn't mess with them, this year. One is from grocery store potatoes that started sprouting before we could eat them. They are growing in a cage.

The others I'm watching are from potato peelings thrown in the compost bin. A few test probes indicate I'm growing some decent potatoes from peelings. Go figure!

I'm glad someone finally mentioned the soil condition since all the rain and I kept checking the forum to see if others have the same problem. I have cracks and the soil is hard as a rock on top, I think its compacted and silt has either run down and formed a covering or has somehow filtered to the top forming a layer of 'concrete'. Pulling weeds which I usually do with ease, is impossible without a lot of pressure with sharp tool which takes forever, otherwise they just break off at the soil level. I am hoping time and some future rains put things back to right again but my typically easy to work with soil is now just awful. The growers at Farmer's Market said their soil is the same way.

I think you're probably right that the silt has risen to the top and formed a layer of concrete. When I first noticed it, it was in downhill locations so I thought soil had eroded from our neighbors' higher ground to our south and was just covering our property, but then it was such a uniform layer that I knew it really wasn't anything the runoff had carried down. It is like that all over our property....and the silty layer that currently lies on top of the ground is about the color of sand, so it looks like we bought lots of yards of sand and had them dumped, and then raked it out all over our property, but Mother Nature did it with no help from us.

It is not as much of a problem in the raised beds that had mulch on them when the rain started, but the mulch got so wet that it turned kinda slimey in the rain and then hardened into a sheet of solid mulch. I've been puncturing the mulch with a gardening fork to poke holes in it to let water through. Maybe the mulch kept the silt from rising in those areas.

I do remember this happening in previous periods of really excessive rainfall, and I guess it eventually goes away although I don't remember there being any certain point where I just suddenly realize it is gone. I think it must go away slowly and quietly, or maybe over the winter when I'm not really paying attention. It was even like that in our gravel driveway, but that part is all gone now so I guess the vehicle tires must have broken it up and dispersed it there.

My plan is to cover my whole garden late this fall with as much compost as I can get and let it set over winter. I almost pulled everything to do the solar cover thing because of the nuthedge and so many weeds but wanted to try and eck out some tomatoes and other veggies this year. May have to do the solarizing after next springs garden though. The garden will be 5 years old and it might be time. Thinking about it, all the heavy rain brought many more weed seed to the surface, I bet. Of course, we live in Moore so we still could bolt out of here at anytime!

Well here we go again!!! Two weeks ago we were hoping the rain would stop now hoping for rain. We cannot be pleased!!HA

My ground is like everybody's hard and cracking. Maybe this rain will be slower and more will go in the ground instead of running off. Finished baling hay just this evening, put the balers in the barn.The good lord gave us a few days to get the hay up and that was great even though it was 24hrs a day to get it done,but we did!!!!

We still have a lot of field work to do but we are exhausted and it can wait.

Now we just wait for the rain and take it slow for a few days. Farming and cattle has to be in your blood because other wise we would be insane. Don't laugh gardeners you are just as bad, right??

Everybody stay safe and hope you get rain if you need it and none if you don't.

Unbelievable! Some have reached almost to 4" of rain within the last 24 hours and it's still pouring. The storm isn't moving away but rotating upwards making it stand still over these areas.

Before I went to sleep last night, they had raised our rain chances from 20% to a whopping 30% so it seemed the odds were pretty low that the rain would make it to us. Well, it is 30-percenting pretty hard outside right now....as in pouring rain....so I do feel relieved that our parched landscape and garden are getting some rainfall. This is our first rain since May 30th and we've been in the 90s and even hit 100 one day, so the upper few inches of soil were getting really dry. I picked tomatoes for 90 minutes last night after I finally finished making plum jelly because I was afraid rain would make it to us overnight, and had plans to dig potatoes early today in the cool morning air. I may have to rethink that plan.

It is amazing to look at the NWS-Norman or NWS-Tulsa webpages and see all the flood advisories and flash flood warnings again. Deja vu.

Yesterday I investigated some cracking clay soil near our driveway gate. It is on a steep slope and did not have the cracking silt/sand found on flatter areas of our property, but the clay itself is cracking as far as 4" down, and the cracks are wide enough for a snake to flee down into if it sees you coming, which is a fairly common occurrence here in summertime.

Robert, I hope you managed to at least get some haying done.

Stockergal, I bet it was a relief that y'all were able to get so much done during the few rain-free days. We have lots of friends who farm/ranch, so I understand all about it being in your blood. The tractors have been out in force the last few days.

Bon, I was in the kitchen on and off all day yesterday making plum jelly and would check the rainfall online periodically. It was amazing to see not just the storms on the radar or the rainfall amounts on the mesonet map, but also the flood advisories and flash flood warnings popping up right and left. I think we all probably have been dry long enough that we were hoping for rain, though I am not sure anyone was hoping to get 4" or more so quickly. I am afraid a lot of that may have run off instead of being absorbed

Since so much rain fell in western OK, maybe Canton Lake will finally get some more relief. It hasn't been able to fill up, overflow and flood like so many of the other lakes in OK did in May.

Last night, Lake Texoma was almost a foot below the spillway, but they warned us that heavy rainfall to our west that was falling/expected to fall in the Lake Texoma watershed might cause it to rise again. That's bad news for lakeside businesses who have had water falling for the last couple of weeks and who were hoping to get on with getting the water out of the businesses so they could clean-up, re-build and repair and re-open for summertime lake visitors.

We are not expected to get more than an inch or two here from the rainstorms thru Tuesday, but will appreciate every drop that falls.

The heavy rainfall that occurred in May has really watered down the flavor not just of the tomatoes but the plums as well, but I have been compensating by boiling down the plum juice a little longer than usual to help boil off more water and concentrate the flavor a little bit. Plums have been splitting just as much as tomatoes have been and this is the first time I can remember it raining hard enough during plum season to make the plums split from excess moisture. We've lost a majority of the plums that have split while still green, but I've been able to harvest enough to make a few batches of plum jelly, plum jam and plum butter.

I am not going to complain about the rain no matter how hard it falls today because our bermuda grass was turning brown (unbelievable after the May rainfall) and we even had been paged out to a grass fire a couple of days ago, which was just crazy. It doesn't seem possible that grass was dry enough to catch fire and burn at all, but the cool-season grasses that haven't been mowed are dormant and dry, and that means trouble. Tim got most of our mowing done on Tuesday and Wednesday so at least we were caught up with that before today's rain started falling.

Dawn

"30-percenting" lol **snort**

U know, I think it was a couple days ago as I was lugging boxes across the alley and performing a dance over the worn path. The foot prints and dolly wheel tracks were stamped down and hardened creating a terrain with rock-hard ridges.

Cracks were through out; deep as you indicated on your property. The first thought I had was Oh gawd, stinking fire potential! You and Tim came to mind. The dogs are not able to shed their winter coats fast enough. The good part of the quick dry heat belongs to the opportunity to pour footings for the construction.

The flies are apocalyptic with the help of the dogs' ears and, here, I was griping about mosquitoes. The boys are allergic to pet dander under normal circumstances and I cannot bring them in now because they're shedding prolifically. Though I do keep them cool and tend to them frequently. It's miserable for us all. I need to be moving, cleaning and renovating and I spend half the day tending to my dogs' needs.

Then, rain returns and I'm thinking Paula's yard, again and Texoma and those 4 inchers AGAIN. The muddy path has surely returned and I dread pushing heavy dollies through it, again. The cooler weather will stymie the dog's shedding causing more misery. I've seen that happen in years past. Now it's too wet to continue with concrete construction on the stem walls.

Sooo, I'm up late worrying to death about potential tornadoes or the roof leaking severely in the other house and, making general progress in our plans. I throw up my hands and convince myself I need to just relax and wait things out. Right? Can't control nothing. Will pick up the pieces or patch and replace later. Right?

So, I'm browsing for a movie to watch and take my mind off my troubles when a 2.7 quake hits in this area jolting this house and its weak foundation.

LOL!

We got .5" overnight right after I watered my outside container stuff. Go figure . I'll take it as things were starting to look sad. Looks like we may get just a little more.

Mike

Sending positive thoughts your way, Bon (and to everyone who the rain may endanger-hope any received is slow and soaking.) We got our mowing finished yesterday (some of it amidst sun showers.) I watered my front flower bed last night, thinking "This will ensure it rains tonight!" Our top soil layer has been hard and crusty, like most everyone's.

Interesting Mike, I had 1 7/8 inch in the gauge this morning. When I went to bed the radar looked like we would be on the southern edge of a line that could move northeast for hours, so you must have been far enough south to have missed some of what I got.

Dawn, I remember, Memorial Day 1976, a guy in the laundry room of the apartments telling me there was a 15 % chance of rain, as it poured out side. That was one of several 500 year floods I have seen in my less than 500 year lifetime.

Stockergal, ain't it the truth, city people have no idea what it takes to put that steak on the table and I'm pretty sure there is some insanity dna in farmer and rancher (and gardener) blood, at least in OK.

Bon, I thought of you when I saw the earthquakes. My dogs were nervous and needy, so I checked the website and sure enough earthquakes near stillwater. You are having a stressful summer!

Amy, That's funny about the 500-year-floods. Right at the end of May, after TX and OK pretty much floated away, Bob Henson wrote a great blog post on Jeff Masters' Wunderblog at Wunderground in which he discussed the average recurrence interval in a discussion that centered on May's heavy rainfall and flooding in Oklahoma and Texas. He specifically mentioned 100-year floods and 500-year floods and mentioned how misunderstood they are. I was thinking at that point that everything about our weather and climate are just crazy. How else can anyone explain a 5-year-drought being ended for many places with only one month's rainfall? California should be hoping to get so lucky with their drought! I don't know though. With all their unstable soils and hillsides, if they had a month of rain like we had in May, the whole state may wash downhill.

Anyhow, I liked the way Mr. Henson described a 100-year-flood in easy-to-understand terms for someone like me who isn't a climatologist or hydrologist. He said that with a 100-year-flood, you essentially have a 1% chance of having that kind of flood in each year within a hundred year period. Looking at it that way, I realized that, based on all the 100-year-floods I've seen in my lifetime, I am not 5600 years old after all. What a relief it is to know that as I was afraid that maybe I was older than I thought I was. I'll link his blog post below since it talked about Oklahoma a lot.

Bon, As we dried up the last couple of weeks, the fly population decreased a lot, which has been a relief.

I have been brushing our dogs and cats with The Furminator brush/comb thing. It takes a while to do each animal, but it removes old winter coat hair and undercoat and such and leaves the pets so sleek and shiny they look like they've been to the groomer. I think the pets equate being combed with the Furminator with getting a massage because they love it so and just fall at your feet in delight if you walk into the room with it in your hand.

My grandmother always said there was no point in worrying about the weather because we cannot do anything about it, so yes, watch a movie and relax and take it all in stride. I do hate that y'all had another earthquake. I think I'd be a wreck if I had to put up with them all the time. Down here they are so rare that people get all silly/giddy/excited when they feel one. Of course, that is because we feel about one quake every 2 or 3 years, at most, here in this county. At our house, we have felt 2 in 16 years so we feel them less often than the folks that live closer to the fault line that runs through part of Love County.

In two separate rainstorms today we received a whopping total of 0.60", so we don't even really have mud, though we do have one puddle in the driveway. At least it seemed like it soaked right in....in fact, the ground hungrily slurped up that rain.

I was able to work in the garden, on and off, all day, mostly harvesting and weeding. I have bowls of produce stacked up everywhere and bags of stuff in the refrigerator in the house, and in the extra refrigerator out in the garage. I didn't even get started on digging potatoes yet. I'm still working hard to get all the plums processed (and, of course, we are eating them fresh as well) before the peaches start ripening. There's worse problems to have, but I really need to stay indoors the next 3 or 4 days and do something with all this produce. My plans for the next few days do not really involve staying inside either, so I am going to have to rearrange my schedule to the extent that I can. There's some social gatherings you cannot skip out on though because no one wants to hear you say "I can't make it to this event as I must stay home and chop up tomatoes for salsa.....". There's always a week or two every summer where I just give up sleeping, and this next week might be that week. The older I get, the less I like skipping sleep just to get all the canning, freezing, dehydrating and fermenting done. Why does everything have to get ripe all at once? (I know there is no answer to that.)

My big achievement of the day is that I found stink bug eggs on the underside of a tomato leaf and squash bug eggs on the under side of a squash leaf (and I wasn't even looking for them) and I destroyed all them. That's a few less pests the beneficial insects will have to deal with later on.

I'm keeping an eye on the storms in Texas as they seem likely to be moving into some part of OK tonight! Raise you hand if you want some more rain.

Dawn

Weather Blog About OK/TX Rain & Average Recurrence Interval

"Raise you hand if you want some more rain." .....hello?.....anyone?......tap, tap, tap.....is this thing on? heh. Deafening silence..........

=)

My gardens were getting a little dry and I had started watering in areas I wanted to cultivate (ground get's rock hard without moisture). We had a shower Friday night and another one last night. That little bit helps.

George

Well, I want rain! Prior to yesterday's rain we had gone almost two weeks without rain and the garden was getting very dry, partly because our high temperatures have been in the mid to upper 90s and even hit 100 one day. Those kinds of temperatures deplete the moisture in the plants and in the soil really quickly. I've been watering containers every day and had begun hand-watering new plants that only recently were transplanted into the ground (after the May rains stopped). I cannot believe how dry we have been just days after flooding rains ended.

We got slightly over a half-inch of rain yesterday, which was not enough, but it still is better than nothing and is greatly appreciated. We also are not forecast to get much rain over the coming week, unlike some of you who have had good rainfall the last few days and are forecast to get more.

It looks like we're already back in our usual summer pattern here in our location where we often have rain all around us but find ourselves in a dry slot that gets little to no rain. (sigh) This is not the summer rainfall I was hoping for.

One problem with all the May rainfall is that it has cause tons of lush new growth on all kinds of plants, and rainfall needs to continue to some extent in order for all that lush new growth to be survive and to keep growing. The trees and shrubs look great and have lots of new growth for the first time in a long time. I'm not worried about them as they are deep-rooted and should be find for quite some time even if rain doesn't fall. The grass, though? The bermuda already is browning out from the lack of moisture combined with abundant heat. That seems ridiculous considering that same grass was under water a month ago.

Amy. I don't have a guage I just check the mesonet station in bixby which is about 1.5 miles south of me. I know that's not too accurate. I think you did have a cell that stayed north of us. Last night we had a real good one that put down another .5".

Supposed to get another 2 to 4" through Tuesday.

The rain we got night before last was a little more than I wanted all at once, but at least I don't have to water for a while. Our mesonet gage was down when I checked, but we supposedly got 2.2", according to the weatherman.

Fortunately I had tilled most of the concrete silt and had most of my weeding done before this hit. I got most of my tomatoes mulched in the front garden and will be starting on peppers as soon as it dries a little.

My initial squash, zucchini, okra and cuke plantings were still stalled, so I moved over and put some more in the ground last week. If the early ones don't step it up, I'll clear them out and get ready for a few fall crops.