When I closed up the turkey coop last night, I noticed the back pasture is turning brown at a pretty rapid rate, and that the big pond, which was overflowing after the early June rain, is half-empty. It is crazy how quickly we went from green and wet to hot and dry and brown. I hope this isn't an omen of what the rest of the summer will be like.

An Okie friend said to us once, "My dad used to say that the difference between flood and drought in Oklahoma is two weeks." So there you go. We're in the same situation.

LOL. That is so true. Today there was a motor vehicle accident (not in our fire district) and apparently the vehicle ended up in the grass, on fire, and set the grass on fire. This might be the quickest we've ever gone from flood to fire and, you know what, it has been almost exactly two weeks since our last real rain that amounted to anything.

Everything here is starting to burn up. We missed a lot of the last rains that came thru, they went around us. So, yes we are waiting for rain. With this unbelievable heat evaporation is almost day and night. Got out the water sprinklers, hate to start that!!!!!

It is crazy. We were so wet, and flooding, and with fungal and bacterial diseases breaking out on every shrub, tree, weed and grass. Now the green has gone brown and dry. This happened a few years back. I think it was in the summer of 2008. We'd had all that rain (and flooding, sound familiar?) in 2007 and the 2008 started out pretty decently. We seemed green and wet and it was nice enough, and then it was like we hit a brick wall and suddenly were hot and dry. This month reminds me very much of that year, and from what I remember of 2008, we ended up miserably hot, dry and back in drought with tons of wildfires through April 2009. I really don't want for this year to end up like that year did.

I did water the garden today. I left the gate open and the chickens were all over the place. They like the damp mulch, and they weren't really bothering anything. Since I've been letting them into the garden for a few hours a day, the grasshoppers are disappearing. If they start pecking tomatoes (which they haven't done at all yet), then I'll have to keep the gate closed and ban the poultry from the garden.