Dawn, chiggers are pretty much the only thing that will make me get out the Deep Woods Off. I swell up like crazy with those bites.

Any time this this week I spend outside will probably be spent pulling septoria infested tomatoes, and trying to keep everything else alive. It’s so dry. And I can’t believe I’m saying that.

Should i be deadheading the coneflowers? They look like crap.

Dawn, I mowed the lawn Friday afternoon and ran into app. 2 dozen frogs and/or toads--or more-- all over the back yard. Crazy!

So many flowers I wish I could have but can't--including cosmos. I decided I need to devote my one raised bed that is full sun to milkweed. And so will proceed to plunk out the red salvia so I can put the new milkweed plants in. I think there's enough room that I can leave the tithonia there. Maybe I could just do away with the driveway and put bunches of raised beds in, since that's the only space where we DO get full sun.

Yes, with the deadheading. I was out this morning and noticed how many things need it and thought to myself, I just DID that. Well, yes, a couple days ago.

Gotta run. Happy Sunday, all!

I watered more deeply yesterday. Not the tomatoes, but the other beds, and probably not as deep as I should, but we are still above .5 on the soil moisture map. But new plantings needed more water. Apparently, from what I've read on George's blog and Dawn's comments, I never water enough. It might rain tonight. I'm thinking about putting fertilizer out and if it doesn't rain, I will have to water it in Monday. The trouble is, I've seen the dog eat it. I know it's organic, but it can't be good for her.

I've discovered lidocaine for chiggers. You can get sun burn spray with it, aloe vera gel with it, bactine, which also has antiseptic, good if you scratched the top off. I wish benadril would put it in one of their topical products.

Dawn, I'm sorry for your recent losses. Our thoughts and prayers are with you. I hope it rains on your garden and dot on the funeral. The donut hole is due, right?

Old trucks, chuckle chuckle, we have had our share of old trucks! I guess the one we have now is old, though maybe still too new to work on. We used to put lawn chairs in the back and take the kids to the drive in movies. Remember drive ins? We have the famous Admiral Twin featured in the movie The Outsiders.

Nancy, if you decide you want to go to Bustani's in Sept we could make it a group trip. This link to Tulsa Audubon's last garden tour has a list of vendors of native plants. Another link. Duck Creek and Utopia were doing the plant sales at Linnaeus gardens last year. They are doing sales in Sept, too.

Time to go. Have a good week everyone!

Greetings from my living room couch and the air conditioning.

I survived one of the most difficult weeks of the year at work - the week leading up to our annual Kids’ Career Day, which is more like a week’s worth of summer camp squeezed into a day for Middle and High Schoolers. I’m responsible for every.single.detail and it eats my lunch every year. This year was the most challenging by far, though. It’s been one of those things in the past that I was so proud when it was over that I didn’t mind doing it but this year - not so. Anywho - I’ll stop my bellyaching. That was the 18th and we got in the truck the next morning and spent a week at Lake Eufaula. I‘ve never had weather like that when camping at Eufaula - it was a family tradition to camp there every summer from before I was born until I was in my early/mid twenties. I think the hubs and mini me were sick of hearing me say how unusually cool and calm the weather was.

I had already fired up the drip irrigation on the vegetable beds and put it on my peak summer settings due to the temps leading up to our vacation. With the temps being cool, it ended up being too much water and all my ripe tomatoes were badly split and invaded by bugs when I returned. Quite opposite of what I would have expected. I knew to expect some loss taking a vacation in July but that wasn’t how I expected. My beds that weren’t on irrigation got pretty dry but I only suffered a few losses. I did move my small containers to other areas where I could piggyback them on the irrigation so they’ll need extra fertilizer this week.

I was a obviously disappointed to lose the tomatoes but after a pity party, I remembered that despite the loss this is the best I’ve ever done with slicer/beefsteak tomatoes. Thankfully, I found fresh Cherokee Purple plants at Home Depot in early July and got them planted before my vacation. I think most are going to do well and the first one I planted about three weeks ago, is good sized and starting to bloom. I need to pick the blossoms since there’s little chance they’ll set but it’s hot outside and I don’t wanna! LOL

I am beginning to think about my fall garden but when it’s this hot all I want is a rock garden. Too bad rocks don’t bloom.

Last week was so, so nice. I'm very happy we had it, but so wish it could stay like that until fall....with a little rain thrown in, of course.

I'm still trying to figure out my watering issues, especially in the back garden. I'm afraid I let it get too dry back there attempting to not over water.

It looks like they've taken our rain chances away. I told myself that maybe it's a good thing to not have rain for a couple of weeks. I can get all the mother hens back in the main coop, put all the babies together in the old coop and won't have to deal with rain in our makeshift brooder areas. Tom put a wood roof on the dog kennel that Rosa/Jorie are in. But their "safe" sleeping spot is a wrapped dog crate sitting on some pavers inside the kennel. Not the best for rain, but Rosa handled it just fine last year when Jean Luc was a baby. Tom also built a nice broody box for me. It is made out of crates, but has some space in between some of the slats that he lined with hardwire cloth (I've heard snakes can squeeze into the smallest spots). I had it all planned--I put a gate in Rosa's dog kennel and the kennel was to be divided between Rosa and Stormy. However, the broody box is about 2 inches too big to fit through the kennel door. SO, I attached a doggie playpen to the broodie box and covered the playpen with shade cloth. It seems to be working well. The only thing is that the spaces between the slats will let rain in, although covered with hardware clothe. I'll have to put a tarp on it, I guess, if we are lucky enough to get rain.

During the fall or warmer winter days, the plan is to take the chain link off the dog kennel and replace it with a more predator proof hardware cloth. As it is, I have to cover the bottoms portion of it with the cloth so the babies don't squeeze out.

Once the chainlink is off, we can put the broody box in the covered kennel and possibly make another one. I'm not completely happy with the dog crate that Rosa and Jorie are in. It has security breaches (probably not the right phrase).

Since broody hens seem to be our lot, we might as well make nicer looking places for them....'cause right now it looks like a jacked up deal in our chicken yard area. "Jacked up" is not the look I'm going for.

It's a lot of work, but baby chicks and their mommas are so much fun. Honestly, I would be okay if they never went broody again, though.

Megan, so glad you had nice weather on your camping trip! And that you're having a decent garden year.

Amy, you gave me a couple of plants (I think it was you) at the SF. One is a really pretty, yet wild looking yellow flower. The names on the tags faded. The other hasn't made flowers yet and a dumb grasshopper nibbled on it's leaves. I'll come back with a picture because I would like to know what they are.

I really did very well on not killing my plant gifts this year. I just had a couple of things from Nancy that didn't make it.

Our neighbors to the east and to the west are watering their fields. I wonder if it's because they have horses and goats...

Our grass is crunchy.

So...should I not transplant right now?

My two surviving fall tomato seedlings are ready to go in. We bought potting soil yesterday and I had planned on putting them in a couple of the mineral tubs that our neighbor gave to me. Is this a bad idea?

Also, my Mom gave me a lantana. It is a perennial one that stays in full sun at her house and grows to be enormous every year.

Also, also, my neighbor gave me a few ornamentals. One is a banana tree. I have no idea what to do with it. She has them all around one side of her pool. Lovely. They come back every year. Right now all the plants are sitting on my porch giving it a wild jungle look that I like.

My coleus is beautiful. I hope the ones I took to SF are doing as well for y'all. They are quite big and full. I've been pinching off the flowers. Around my porch is a happy, colorful area. I accidentally left the water on overnight. It was on the "mist" setting, but still! Anyway, the hydrangea and others didn't complain. haha!

Next year, I'm considering doing only white annuals around my front porch. Of course, there's a few perennials that are colorful.

The veggies are doing okay. They are wilted right now because the sun is so hot. I hate that they do that even when well watered. Sadly, I think whatever got on my last bush beans (and are currently on my pole beans) are also on the new bean seedlings. Mites, probably.

The pole beans look rough, but they are all filled in over the cattle panel arch and I love that! Maybe I'll pull them off and let the Seminole pumpkins sneak over there. Those things grow a foot a day and I'm not joking!

Okay, enough rambling from me. I should go check on all the animals and see how they are doing in the heat.

Dawn, I have forgotten to comment on the deaths of your two dear friends. I cannot believe I did that. I am SO sorry about it. One of my dearest friends died from cancer in 2010, and I still miss her every day. We used to write long long long emails back and forth--and before that, snail mail. So I know it will hurt for always. Hugs. But like I'm so glad I had Leann in my life, I know you're glad you had these two in yours.

HJ, I enjoyed your longer-than-usual note and your ramblings. It was fun. I have my three new containers of milkweed, the asters, St. Johnswort and miniature sunflowers (Sunfinity) to get in the ground. I "hardened" the tomatoes off on the deck, increasing their sunlight hours. So they transplanted beautifully. Good luck. BTW, my coleus plants did beautifully.

Amy, I've been wanting to go to Bustani's ever since I learned who they are!! That is a grand idea!! Can hardly wait,

The heat, the heaT. . . I felt the same way you're feeling about gardening Megan. Just didn't have it in me today. I did end up being outside quite a while, anyway, though, deadheading and picking milkweed bugs off the flowering milkweeds. Dadgummed milkweed pests! First Monarch showed up today so that was fun. Lots and lots of butterflies out there.

Amy, I wasn't sure what lidocaine was so looked it up and landed on a page full of warnings about using it. Had you read about the possible side effects?

Beneficial insects. . . aren't purely "good guys." LOL This is my newest "discovery."

Dawn, I hope the funeral is what you want it to be. There’s something calming to me in going through the ritual (whatever it is) of preparing to say the final goodbye to someone. I’ve lost 3 friends I was close to in the past 5 years, and with only one there was a funeral to give closure. The other two families chose to do nothing public. It leaves an emptiness behind. Being able to give someone a fitting send off shows how much you honor them.

I spent some time outside this morning, watering, feeding, and starting some fall flower seeds. And trimming off septoria from tomatoes. Seems like the ones I’ve trimmed back heavily are trying to put out new growth. Is that how it works? I’ve pulled a couple plants, but I’m trying to keep the remainder going for fall. I suppose I should have fed them today.

I have some pansies I want to start for fall, but 90 degree weather isn’t right for sowing them in jugs. But I don’t have a way to do them inside. I have a vision of an orange and black flowerbed for football season. I have the pansy seeds to do it. Just need to figure out how to start them. I can usually find orange pansies in the stores (and marigolds and calendula), but I need the black pansies.

I started some tall tall traditional and red sunflowers, snapdragons, hollyhocks (desperate to get a stand of these going), calendula, and zinnias in jugs.

I also spaced out and left the hose running when I went inside, and had to go back out after my shower with my deep conditioner and shower cap covered head to turn it off.

I’m up for a fall Bustani pilgrimage.

Was just sitting here trying to figure out who would be taking cars to Bustani--then realized I have to cuz I'm pretty sure none of you would come get me. LOL So I have to, but then that means that someone else will have to, also. I don't think we'll all fit in my little dinky car. It was Mom's and fit her perfectly, her little 4'11" self, and she never had to taxi anyone around. She got a 2-door car because it was "sportier." Let's see, she was 87 when she bought it. Gotta love it. So technically, there's ROOM for four people--it's just getting into the back that's the challenge. I'm alMOST too tall for it. Garry has a terrible time getting in it. Wow. Talk about rambling!

Good morning to everyone!

I believe we’re all in the same boat, this heat with no rain in the forecast. I’m looking into different drip irrigation systems and would be interested to learn what set ups anyone has tried along with pros and cons. It’s a bit flustering trying to give all of my garden plants consistent and even watering and I’ve heard with drip irrigation along with a timer could help with that. plus, I hope my water bill won’t spike as severely as it does now in the summer months!

Well there’s my pic! I’m wondering what these are that I’m finding al over my tomato plants. Some kind of beetle

H/J, that looks like a cosmos. I believe my yellow ones are "Bright Lights" variety.

They all volunteered. I must have dug up a volunteer for you, but I have no memory of it, LOL.

Nancy, I will have to go look up lidocaine side effects. However relief from the itch might be worth it.

We got some rain last night. I don't think it was a lot, but I won't have to water today. Didn't get fertilizer out. Another chance later in the week.

Darn dogs want to be fed. XOXO

Hazel the pretty little flowers are Bright Lights Cosmos. I have them too. They are beautiful and come in yellow, orange, and a kinda red. Mine are yellow and orange. They take the heat and reseed prolifically- however, they can overtake a bed unless you keep the seeds picked off and for the bed I have them in they get too tall and bushy so I keep them chopped to about 1-2’ and pick the seeds off to plant somewhere else.

Rebecca I spent an hour this morning deadheading my cone flowers and cosmos. I like to leave the coneflower seedheads because the birds love them in the winter, but you are right - now they are looking pitiful so I cut them off and dropped the tops in the flowerbed so either they will reseed or the birds can find them there. I am fairly certain they will now produce another flush of blooms before Fall.

Tonight i plan to pull out the last of my green beans. Eventually will replant beans, cucumbers, and squash, but think would be a waste of time and seed for next couple of weeks. I do plan to cover the bare soil in the raised beds with blocks of straw to keep it moist and the earthworms alive.

Dawn I'm sorry you are having to deal with funerals and losses, seems as we get older that gets too frequent. I’m glad you have your grandchildren to give you a bright spot and lift your spirits. As the Bible says - “there are seasons for everything”., but some are really tough to go through. I appreciate all of you - this is a good group of people.

Haileybub, I have drip irrigation and started with this Rainbird kit and got this expansion at the same time because I knew I needed at least one head per container and the base kit didn't include enough - I have a lot of containers/mineral tubs that needed their own head or multiple to get the flow I wanted. The following summer I ordered another of the base kits because they worked so well, I wanted to add drip lines elsewhere and buying another base kit was cheaper than buying needed parts a la carte. Orbit is another brand that sells drip kits and I've seen where others have built systems out of PVC pipe. I don't know a lot about the PVC option. If you buy tubing, buy the Rainbird tubing. I purchased some extra tubing this year because my new dog chewed some of the lines and the no name stuff they carry in Home Depot or Lowes kinks easily, a problem I never had with the Rainbird line. You can also tell the Rainbird is all around a better quality and more durable. To my knowledge, tubing is universal regardless of the brand. The difference between Rainbird and Orbit is that rainbird offers color-coded GPH (gallons per hour) heads and Orbit offers heads with controls you turn to adjust the amount of flow. The lowest flow Rainbird offer is 1/2 GPH which can be too much for smaller flower pots. However, one solution that is working for me - I have some pots stacked on wire shelves and only have drip lines at the top pot and allow the overflow to drip down through the remaining pots. Another difference between Rainbird and Orbit is that Rainbird seems to focus on true drip where the Orbit heads are typically sprayers/sprinklers. I have a 4-port timer to run everything which works really well. Having the timer and because I'm almost 100% in containers, I prefer the Rainbird system because I know based on how long it has run how much water the container has gotten. Also, as the weather changes, the only thing I have to adjust is how long it runs. The downside is that if I grow something else in the same container next year, I might need to completely change the head based on the new plant's water needs. If I had the adjustable orbit heads, I would only need to change the flow on that head, not replace it. I have used the Orbit heads when I was in a pinch. I have found them to be more likely to malfunction or even fall off. If you decide to order the ones I linked to from Amazon, please let me know and I'll send you some special links that will give me credit for your purchase. I use their ads on my blog and could use the traffic on my links. I might make a few pennies off your purchase but I really need the traffic more than anything right now.

Dawn, I'm catching up after being tuned out for nearly 2 weeks and had to go back to see who had passed. I'm so sorry for your losses. Two funerals is not easy, and two in one day is brutal. As a friend, I hope you'll allow yourself to be exhausted afterward and not be obligated to do anything you don't have the energy for.

The flash drought you warned of has come to fruition based on this morning's Mesonet Ticker. Here's a link. I don't know who Gary McManus is (the author) but I feel like he and I really should be friends - or drinking buddies. ;) I always get a good laugh from the ticker and bet he's fun to hang out with.

HJ, the word you might be looking for to describe your chicken arrangements might be "janky." A co-worker who has teenagers at home uses that word a lot to describe things I might refer to as Okie-engineered, so maybe you've heard it from your kids?

Nancy, based on past experience you might want to take an empty car to Bustani. You'll need the space on the way home. On the other hand, it might keep you from overbuying if you took friends in the same vehicle, but don't be surprised if everyone but the driver rides back with trays of plants on their laps. If you guys make the trip be sure to let me know. I try to make it up there in the fall and would love to meet up with y'all at the same time. Though I suspect we would all be bad influences, encouraging one another to try new things we really want but are struggling to justify to ourselves.

I did get out yesterday and do some work in the gardens/yard. I added about 60 lbs of rabbit manure to a hugelkulture-ish project but I'm struggling to get it turned over enough that it doesn't make my whole yard smell. I don't have much top soil on it right now because I'd planned to cover it with the soil I dug out to create my rain garden, but with the wet spring, I didn't get to that. So it's mostly trying to turn over wood chips with just a rake because there are enough tree limbs incorporated that I can't use a shovel. Now the ground is so hard that I couldn't dig anything up without using a pick ax first so I can't just go dig up the dirt I'd planned to use in the first place. I'm probably hugelkulturing all wrong but someday I'll turn it into something useable. I'm sure the heat will help kill the smell quickly. Or at least my mom who has to sit outside a lot because she smokes sure hopes it will.

The little work I did outside did mean I had to wash my hair last night which was a huge disappointment. The tap water at Eufaula is so much softer than ours that my hair feels like silk until I have to wash it again here. I told the hubs that we should have been refilling our empty water bottles with the tap water (it tastes and smells bad) so I could rinse my hair with it but he wasn't in any hurry to load down the trailer any more than it already was.

I'm gearing up to start seeds for frost hardy things. In the spring I debated whether I would mess with a fall garden but you all know how it is. I'm not ready for summer to end which means I'm also not ready to wind down the garden. I'm NOT going to try for a 4-season garden this year though. Period. Not gonna. I plan to grow some green manures in a few places, but I'm not going to intentionally try to keep things alive through the winter. I don't have the setup for it and my janky (that's for you HJ) setups are more work than they're worth. I gave it a try a couple of years and don't think it's worth investing in the correct setup or dedicating time with the underperforming setup I finagled before.

I do need some input on what to look for in a grow cart. I know it's one of those things that you can never have one big enough for all the things, but realistically, I need something small and I'd like to stay close to $150 and definitely under $200. I was looking at this one on Johnny's but even it is bigger than I have space for without a lot of rearranging, so I wanted to know what you all thought of it, and what recommendations you had in general.

Somehow I got mixed up on which grow cart I was eyeballing. This Gardener's one is more in my price range. https://www.gardeners.com/buy/stack-n-grow-light-system/8590139.html?utm_campaign=PLA&utm_medium=googleshopping&utm_source=google&SC=XNET0095&gclid=Cj0KCQjwsvrpBRCsARIsAKBR_0JIuled0rR3RM3owDEbFFwdhRO-QzuzHWxx53x6tAGAxwbrYN2GDBYaAptyEALw_wcB

I feel like I've missed a whole week here, and it is only Tuesday morning. I'll try to catch up today, but may not manage to do it all in one sitting.

We left our house at 7:30 a.m. yesterday to head to Texas for my aunt's funeral and then, after the whole day was over and we'd eaten a quick dinner in town with a very dear friend who'd come up from the D-FW metro area for Jesse's funeral, we finally made it home a little after 6 pm, though Tim had to turn around and leave quickly thereafter to go back to town for the monthly fire chiefs' meeting. It was a long, draining day, but both funerals were very well done. Jesse's had the whole traditional pomp and circumstance of a firefighter's funeral---the formal dress worn by the several dozen professionals in the crowd, the drums and bagpipes, the huge procession of fire, police and EMS vehicles, etc. It was a hard day, but also a good day.

The only thing I noticed about the garden as we drove past it upon arriving home yesterday was that all those white zinnias I had planted in June as veggies finished up were blooming in pretty much every bed, tying everything together no matter what else is in any given raised bed. So, yay for that, as I think it is working the way I intended.

I found 0.25" of rain in our rain gauge. I know that isn't much, but it was our first real rain in about 3 weeks.

Rebecca, Yes, I just deadheaded my purple coneflowers last week. They'll rebloom.

I know you cannot believe how dry you are despite all that rain. We're all in the same boat there, I think, but it must feel especially surreal in areas that had standing water for weeks. I also feel like the high moisture conditions have left behind their calling card in the form of heavy pest outbreaks, plant disease, and even trees and shrubs struggling now to maintain all the lush growth the rain brought them.

Nancy, Could you and Garry live without your driveway? lol. If only it were easy to put in a new shady area driveway and have the sunny space for gardening. That would be my hoped-for solution, but because of the lay of the land and the way our driveway ends at our garage, we couldn't move ours.

Megan, At this time of the year with all the heat and pests, I start thinking a rock garden would be lovely too. I'd just have to paint the rocks colors and pretend they were flowers, I guess.

I'm sorry about your tomatoes. This is a super-hard year, and it is so hard to get the moisture just exactly right when the weather is crazy.

Your photos from the lake were incredible and I could tell y'all were having a great time.

Okay, I have to go outside and move the sprinkler that is watering the flower garden (all that remains of veggies are peppers and okra, which thankfully do not mind overhead watering). Using a sprinkler is not my chosen method, but it is this year because I did not set up drip irrigation or soaker hoses in spring when the garden was filled with standing water, and I cannot set them up now because they'd crush all the over-crowded plants. Tim keeps saying he dreads seeing the July water bill, and I keep reminding him that (a) it always is high in July so this year's will be nothing new, and (b) I am only watering the flowers about 1/3 as much as I water veggies, so he'll have to blame the high July water bill on filling up the swimming pool, not solely on the garden. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Then I add that the August water bill usually is higher than July's, so he should just be happy when he sees July's because a worse one will be coming at the end of next month.

I'll be back to continue in a few minutes. See how far behind I am.....

Dawn

Nancy, Thank you. You know, when Jesse was first diagnosed with cancer, we were deeply concerned---when you are starting out at Stage 4, there is not necessarily a lot of hope. Still, we hoped treatment would have help him live as long as possible. When it became apparent that nothing would ease his intense physical pain, then instead we began to pray for God to end his suffering. So, why does it hurt so much that God answered our prayers? Oh, I know there is no real good answer for that....but we all remain shell-shocked by his loss. I think we all just thought he was invincible and would live forever.

So, this morning when I went outside to put out the cracked corn for the doves and the sunflower seeds for the cardinals, there was a herd of 7 deer waiting for me---and I was out an hour earlier than usual. The deer acted irritated. What is their problem? There ought to be plenty for them to eat out in the wild. So, the biggest buck (I've dubbed him Kyle's deer, because our friend Kyle hunts west of our house on land inherited by his grandparents, Jesse and Joyce, and he always gets a big buck that has been feeding at our place in summer and autumn) decided he wanted to engage with me in warfare this morning. He came right at me, lowering his head/antlers and tossing them into the air and waggling his head a little playfully. I yelled No at him and told him to retreat. We had a barbed wire fence and about 20' between us. Instead, he came right up to the barbed wire as if he were going to jump it, putting him about 10' from me (I had the pickup between us though), and I retreated to the garage, with the cracked corn and sunflower seeds still in my bucket.

I went to a different area and fed the mourning doves and cardinals (they watch me and follow wherever I go with their breakfast) and told the deer I don't mind them stealing some of the bird food, but I'm not going to put up with aggressive behavior. When the deer start thinking the bird-feeding area is their territory, I stop feeding the wild birds there. From this point forward, I'll feed close to the house instead of close to the compost pile until the deer get the message and back off. They probably still will creep up close to the house and steal bird seed, but not while the dogs are out in the dog yard, as they are now, close to the bird seed.

The garden is simply full of butterflies today, and those dreaded oleander aphids are back in the garden on the butterfly weed this morning...but there are lady bugs there eating them. Let's hope the lady bugs can stay on top of them. We started out our day here with fog, condensation on the windows and 99% humidity. I cannot help thinking that our temperature and heat index will be much worse today than yesterday, because the rain-cooled air yesterday really did give us surprisingly pleasant weather for so late in July. Our max heat index was only 100 yesterday, and I do not think we hit that until late afternoon after the clouds broke up. With the fog and clouds this morning, we started out cool but humid and now that the clouds are breaking up and melting away, I expect it will be smart to spend the rest of today indoors.

Jennifer, Chick management is really time-consuming, and I'm just glad those days are behind us. We used to have so very many chickens and I miss having that many, but I don't miss all the work associated with it. The five we have now are the perfect number.

I would assume that, yes, your neighbors are watering their fields for the sake of maintaining forage for their livestock. There is a place a few miles south of us that does the same for their goats and horses. I guess it is a matter of whether the livestock owner wants to feed their animals on green pasture this time of year by spending the money for irrigation or if they want to spend the money on hay or bagged feed instead. Also, depending on the lay of the land and how common grass fires or wildfires are when it gets dry, it can pay off to keep at least one field well-watered and green to reduce the fire danger. Yes, green fields will burn, but they are slower to ignite, so it buys time for firefighters to get there and get a fire out, or for livestock owners to get home and move their animals to a place safer from a nearby fire.

Don't let the wilting of plants in hot weather get to you. Just remind yourself that they are transpiring water out more quickly than they can take it in due to the heat and that transpiration process is essential for plant survival....don't we humans all continue to breathe and sweat out in the heat? Of course we do. Just let the plants do what they do and don't worry. It is only worrisome if they are not recovering from the wilting in the cool overnight hours. I don't worry about wilted plants in the daylight hours or the early evening hours. I might worry if they weren't beginning to bounce back by dusk, and would be worried if they still were wilted in the early morning.

Hailey, Over the years, I have used several different kinds of drip irrigation systems. It is really complicated in our sloping front garden, which slopes downhill so strongly from south to north and also downhill from west to east that I have to use pressure-compensating emitters. I like to set up shut-off valves on different raised beds, so I can exclude any given bed from irrigation if it doesn't need it just by turning the knob on the valve. It is much easier to set up drip irrigation in the more level back garden or in the landscaping around the house. Go to the website of Dripworks and read their blogs and FAQs and you can learn how to set up driplines that will serve you best. I don't know if they still do it, but it used to be that they would help you design your system too. You can start with one of their drip irrigation kits if you see one that you think will fit your needs, and it is easy to add on more lines and emitters to any of the kits if you need to cover more space. My biggest issue with drip irrigation is that in the back garden, once the voles discovered there was water in those lines, they started chewing them in dry months, which means lots of repairs have to be made constantly. So, I'm less in love with drip irrigation than I used to be----but it does work great if you don't have voles. Soaker hoses work well also, but don't hold up for nearly as long to the sun's UV rays. You do need to lift, dry out and store your drip irrigation system each autumn so there's no water left in the lines to crack the lines and emitters in freezing weather.

Beneficial insects are not purely good guys for sure, but they're still the best helpers we have. I absolutely refuse to release praying mantids. There is no logic in it. If you put out an egg case and dozens (or hundreds), guess how many you end up with within a very few short months? One. You end up with one, because they eat each other and, in the end, only the one survives because he or she outlasted all the others. They also eat other beneficial insects, butterflies and hummingbirds. Now, I won't kill a praying mantis if I see it, but I'm never really happy to see them either, and I won't buy them and release them here on purpose. It took me only one time to learn not to do that. Blister beetles are another perfect example. If you have a handful around, and if they aren't clustering on one plant and eating it to death, then they are beneficial because they eat grasshopper eggs. But, if you have hundreds or even thousands of them, then there is nothing beneficial about their presence at all. Lady bugs? Don't we love the lady bugs? Sure we do, but they'll eat butterfly eggs and probably very small, newly hatched butterfly larvae, so.....shrug....what's a gardener to do? How about wasps? When I see a wasp carrying away an armyworm from the garden, I am happy, but I also know that same wasp doesn't discriminate---it will prey on the butterfly caterpillars for whom we plant host plants. I just try to provide an ecosystem where they all can thrive, but we have to remember that everybody in the garden eats something and also gets eaten by something, so there's that.

A fall trip to Bustani sounds lovely, but I'm not sure one will be in the works for us this fall. It depends on the degree of ongoing drought probably. I definitely want to make that trip next Spring because I'm going to redo our landscaping around the house, and plan to drag Jana and Chris along so they can see Bustani for themselves.

Rebecca, I think funerals help a great deal with closure. My strongest feeling after my aunt's and Jesse's funerals yesterday was just a sense of relief---that feeling that we had celebrated their lives and said good-bye to them, and offered comfort to their families. I do understand that some people don't want a funeral service for themselves, though, and we have to respect their wishes, but it is harder to feel a sense of closure in cases like that.

Hailey, That's a black blister beetle. I kill them if they are devouring plants...in my garden they will eat cucumber plants right down to the ground, but if there's just a few and they aren't concentrating on one specific type of plant, I try to ignore them. They eat tons of grasshopper eggs, so usually are beneficial in that sense. I usually see a lot of blister beetles either in the same year that there's a bad grasshopper outbreak, or in the following year. If they clustering are on your tomato plants in any appreciable number (I'll ignore them if I see only 1 or 2 per plant), then they need to die. I cut them in half with scissors and get about 75% of them on the first try. It sometimes takes a few days of snipping with the scissors to get them all.

Farmgardener, That's exactly how I deadhead my coneflowers, and I never get volunteers. I think the birds eat all the seedheads, or my mulch is so thick the that the seeds never find soil. Or, and this is a really good possibility, the red harvester ants may feed all the seeds and carry them off---I see them carrying stuff out of the garden all day long.

Thanks. I agree with you that as we get older, the losses pile on more and more quickly. Only my mom and one aunt remain from their generation in our family, and that is sort of hard to think about. What we are going through is nothing new---everyone goes through the same, but between friends and family, we just seem to have a lot of that happening this year within a fairly short time frame. We'll get through it. It is, after all, such a blessing to have such wonderful. much-loved people in your lives that you suffer such grief at their loss.

Megan, Thank you. Two in one day was a lot and I did nothing but collapse on the couch when we got home. Except for feeding animals and watering the garden, I'm not doing anything today either. I know I need to rest and decompress. Well, I already did a load of laundry, but you know how that is....laundry, like death and taxes, is inevitable, and I hate to let it pile up.

I need to go read what our state climatologist, Gary McManus, said about the impending flash drought. Isn't he brilliant? I love his writing. I know he must be highly educated to hold his career position, but I love the humor he exhibits in the Mesonet ticker and in his FB posts. He makes the climate and weather so easy to understand, and sometimes with our climate and weather, if we didn't laugh, we'd cry. I think he uses humor to get our attention so then he can feed us the facts we need to know.

I'm gearing up, too, to start cool-season seeds. I really cannot put anything in the ground, in terms of cool-season plants, until at least October and sometimes not until November if the hot weather holds on, but I want to have plants ready when the timing is right. The last few years, we have had temperatures hang on, even into the 100s and upper 90s, through the end of September, so I cannot get into too much of a hurry.

The grow cart looks fine if it meets your needs. My first one wasn't too much larger than that---it had three shelves I think. All of mine have been homemade--plastic assemble-it-yourself shelving from Lowe's or Home Depot, with shop lights suspended from shelves by chains that we can raise or lower. No matter what size you get, it won't be big enough. I learned that from experience.

As much as I love gardening, I no longer try to keep crops going all winter. I used to, but it was inevitable that when I was really busy with Christmas or winter fire season or whatever, I'd have kale, mustard, spinach, turnips, etc. demanding to be harvested and it just made it all so stressful since I have zero control over when wildfires break out in winter. Or, I'd be gone to a wildfire all day, or for several days in a row, and then not at home in the evening to put row covers over the plants if a particularly bitter cold night is expected, and that was stressful too. Nowadays I'm just happy to keep a few simple things going all winter in the flower border inside the garden---pansies, dianthus, stock, ornamantal cabbage and ornamental kale, etc. If I plant them too early, the pests devour the cabbage and kale, so there's no point in getting into too much of a hurry. I think that Lowe's and HD here get their transplants of those things in the store in serious numbers in late Sept or early Oct, and they don't keep them long because the live plants get in the way of Christmas merchandise, so it is easier to grow my own and have them ready at the time best for me. Of course, we never know when an early autumn freeze will come, but in recent years those have been very few and far between.

Have a good rest of the day y'all. Since it is hot and I promised myself a lazy day today, I'm going to make a list of things to plant in next year's cutting garden, which will be the change of pace from growing an edible garden that I've been craving. Am I worried that in January or February, I'll panic because I'm not planting all the usual veggies? Of course I am, but I really want to do something different.

I just realized that I get to be REALLY lazy today. I don't have to cook dinner because tonight is our quarterly VFD Fire Board meeting and Tim goes straight from work to that meeting, eating fast food on the way because there's no time to stop at home and have a real meal. I feel really, really bad for Tim and all our fire board members. Jesse has been (always and forever, I think, since the VFD was founded in 2002) the Fire Board Chairman, so tonight, of necessity, they will need to decide whether a current fire board member will step up and become the chairman, or if they want to recruit a new community member to fill that role. I think that is a hard thing to do just one day after his funeral.

I'm going to be content today to sit here with my notebook and gardening catalogs and make lists of things I want to grow for the fall cool season and for next year's cutting garden. There's so many options available since I'm not having to save space for veggies. I think I'm going to make the back garden a wildflower/pollinator garden too. When I say I'm taking a break from edibles, I really mean it, except for tomatoes and peppers in container right next to the back door.

Dawn

I have not checked my tomatoes in a couple of days, but I doubt that I have any new fruit set. It is very dry here and I should drag some irrigation tubes off the top of my shed and slide into the pepper and tomato rows, but I doubt I will fool with it. I have spent most of today working in the wildlife garden. The bird are really hitting the Brown Top millet. The Buntings seem to really like the millet. I just turned the tractor off and watched the birds for a good while. The Buntings were as bad as humming birds, they seem to want to fight over the grain. There were a lot of birds there, but no where near enough to eat all the grain. There were different kinds there but I thought the painted were the prettiest, with the Indigo coming in a close second.

Growing grain has its down side also, I have rats and mice knee deep. I told Madge that if our Yorkie was younger he would sure have a good time over in the wildlife garden trying to catch the rats and mice.

Hey Everyone. Enjoyed reading your posts. Will be back tomorrow to post more.

It's so deathly dry here. I know most of you have had some rain, but it's been over a month since we've had any rain. Nasty. It's my least favorite type of weather.

Megan, Congrats on your first tomato on that CP plant! I am so happy for you. Believe me, I gardened for a long, long time, trying to nurse tired tomato plants through the whole summer....for decades....before I started planting fresh, new plants for fall. I think I've only grown fall tomatoes for maybe the last 25 years. I know I started doing fall plants a few years before we moved here, and we moved here in 1999. It is not impossible to keep Spring-planted tomato plants going until frost, but when you think of everything they go through---crazy weather, heat, diseases, pests, etc., it just makes sense that a few fresh new plants transplanted in late June and early July would have a lot more vigor simply because of their youth. Now, if only we can get an occasional summer cool spell to roll through here and give your plants another opportunity to set more fruit. If not, they surely will set more fruit in the fall.

Larry, I bet it is as fun as it can be to watch those Buntings fight over the grain. I love buntings and we have had both indigo buntings and painted buntings feeding here in our yard the last couple of weeks. They are the prettiest birds we ever see here too. I do agree that grain crops attract rats and mice, which is why I try to steer clear of them, because then the rats and mice attract snakes, and y'all know I don't need any more snakes around. I should add this, though. A couple of years ago I switched from hay, straw and grass clipping mulch to bark mulch and, very nervously too because I was worried copperheads would blend in with the mulch and I wouldn't see a snake and would step on it. Maybe the copperheads would blend in well with the mulch...but I've scarcely seen a single snake in the garden itself since switching to bark mulch, so I doubt I'll ever go back to hay, straw and grass clipping mulch. Now, I don't know if the snakes aren't in there, or if they are blending in so well that I just don't see them, but almost all the close encounters with snakes I've had the last couple of years have been in the lawn, driveway, or chicken coop and not in the garden, leaving me a very happy camper indeed. Well, except for a few encounters with the rough green tree snakes, which are the only snakes I don't mind seeing in the garden. They tend to hang out in the canna lilies or coral honeysuckle plants where they blend in very well. A friend of ours recently was bitten by a rattlesnake. He told me his bite wasn't "that bad" and he only had to have 4 vials of antivenin, which isn't bad.

The name of the gardening game this time of the year is just survival, isn't it? I don't even like dragging around a hose and watering, but it is a necessary evil. I feel like about the best we can hope for in late July and all of August is just to keep things alive, even if they don't look great, and then hope they'll perk up a bit more when cooler weather returns in the autumn.

I am increasingly uneasy about how quickly we're drying out---both the soils and the unirrigated fields and roadside areas and all. Our worst wildfire last summer was on August 3rd, but I do believe we were a bit more dry then than we are now.

Jennifer, We just had that quarter-inch of rain this week and I'd like to say it helped, but you really cannot even tell it fell. Our soil moisture levels are more and more dismal every day, and I see lots of native plants like sumac and plum thickets starting to brown out now. If they don't get a reasonable amount of rain soon, they'll start dropping leaves as a survival mechanism. It is astonishing how quickly we can go from heavily-saturated soil and standing puddles to bone dry. It happens pretty much every year, but it still shocks me.

We've always had bees feed at the cracked corn we put out for the morning doves, even when there seem to be lots of flowers in bloom for them. I'm not sure what drives them to the corn dust when lots of flowers are available, but what I have noticed recently is that the dragonflies now are feeding on the corn dust, which I've never seen before. It is odd.

Today when I tried to put out the cracked corn for the doves and the sunflower seeds for the cardinals, I was stalked by a herd of 9 deer, including two good-sized bucks, quite a few does and two fawns. I thought for a minute they were going to try to follow me right into the garage. (sigh) They stood there just in the neighbor's pasture, with just a 5-strand barbed wire fence between us, watching me put out the food closer to the house, then came immediately over the fence and headed straight for me, not for the food--they were bypassing the food to follow me. It was creepy. So, feeding closer to home only drew them in closer to the house and didn't serve its intended purpose of keeping them further from me. There is water for them in an old Mr. Turtle sandbox out by the compost pile, so they weren't trying to tell me they were thirsty. Maybe they are mad because I'm not tossing tons of garden produce scraps on the compost pile. I believe they are used to me doing lots of canning at this time of the year, and constantly throwing produce scraps on the compost pile. I think tomorrow I'll put the cracked corn and sunflower seeds inside my fenced garden, so I can close the gate and keep the bird seed just for the birds. The deer are too aggressive right now, and for reasons I don't understand. The fields and forests should be full of things for them to eat---this summer is not like 2011 when everything dried up early in the summer and there was no food for them at all. If the deer come into the front yard tomorrow while I'm making that trip from the front garden to the house, then I'll just have to stop putting out bird seed for a few days until they give up and stop coming to visit. I always carry a gun with me and can fire a shot into the ground to scare them off if they get too close, but I hate for it to come to that. The chickens, cats and dogs go through a major freakout episode every time they hear a gunshot.

I noticed the real heat-lovers in the garden are deliriously happy today. The Yellow Bells (Tecoma stans) and whatever orange relative of theirs I have (it isn't Orange Jubilee Tecoma stans, it is an older one....) are blooming happily as is the Pride of Barbados, which looks prettier and prettier by the day. Zinnia, cosmos, cleome, various, salvias, lantana, verbena bonariensis, moss rose, and celosias (I have both cristata and spicata types) all are thriving in the heat. The dill and nasturtiums are burning up though and likely won't be with us much longer. Some of my daylilies, which I didn't think were rebloomers, are on their third separate round of blooms this year, so maybe they are rebloomers after all. Even the marigolds are happy, and are not covered in spider mites as they are in some summers. The comfrey plants are reblooming after being cut back hard several times already this year and remain the bumble bees' favorite plants.

The granddaughters are coming over in a little way to spend a few days here. I'm looking forward to that. We'll have lots of pool time in the hot, summer sun.

Dawn

Good morning! Well, it's a late good morning. I'm not going to be working in the yard! I just spotted four Pipevine Swallowtails on one small clump of zinnias! (I know they're Pipevines cuz I got up close and personal with them yesterday. I think there are currently six of them flitting about.) And more silver-spotted Skippers than can be counted. They're cute, too. And BEES and WASPS everywhere. Thankfully, they're all on their own missions so haven't been a bit of trouble to me, probably just to our plump little caterpillars.

My biggest Galia melon is sitting right next to me on the table. I told Garry I might not even eat it cuz I'm so enjoying smelling it. It weighs in at 7.3 lbs and IS as big as a bowling ball, too.

Dawn! That's what I need to so--carry a rifle when the deer get too close! How fun that would be! I mean, Titan shouldn't have all the fun. I hope you have fun with the girls and know you will have.

I LOVE indigo buntings. We haven't had any painted ones, and don't expect we will have. We did have a bunch of goldfinches fly through last week and munch on the anise hyssop and the big sunflower plant. . . but they've moved on now. And--the cicadas are so LOUD today. And the katydids and tree frogs at night. It is NOT quiet in the country! lol

Hahaha. . . oops, not even late morning. I got totally sidetracked on the other computer and trying to take pictures of butterfly visitors. I have a million failed photos now to removed from the picture "album."

That dill best be growing; I've got it planted in two clumps now; neither clump has germinated yet. The tomato plants are smallish still, as are the cucumbers and Seminole. Oh but wait. It's not even Aug. 1 yet. I believe I am right on time. I need to get the flowering kale potted up, too. I just had NO energy for gardening today. It was hard just moving the water hose.

Do any of you have a favorite online source for native plants?

We're watching Houston. Garry is so happy. All of a sudden last week, Garry couldn't find any Rangers games on Sling. I researched--headline came right up. Sling dropped Fox SW, meaning no more Rangers games. Well! Found out Fubo, although costing $10 more than Sling, has lots more sports channels. So we dropped Sling and picked up Fubo. Oops now we're watching Rangers.

Pool time with the littles sounds like fun, Dawn! When does school start for them?

I'm sure the VFD Board meeting was pretty tough for them all.

Nancy, August is my favorite month because we have butterflies simply everywhere! Today some of them came back to flit around the swimming pool while the girls were swimming and then they went and started sunning themselves on the side of the house.

As yummy as the melon smells, you know you're going to eat it! They do have a luscious aroma.

I don't have a favorite online source for native plants as I usually can find them somewhere in Texas. If you watch the websites of state native plant societies/groups, some of them have plant sales too. I think all the ones in Texas within close driving range are in the springtime though.

We were out in the pool by 9 a.m. and just came in and made lunch---their favorite lunch is to make their own personal sized pizzas using purchased pizza crusts. The important part, of course, is that they are making the pizzas themselves, which is a slightly messier operation than if I made their pizzas for them. lol. Until around 11 a.m. the pool was in the shade of the oak trees so it stayed really pleasant for the longest time. We'll ride out the hot afternoon indoors and go back out in late afternoon.

Tim didn't say how the meeting went the other night, and I didn't ask. I figured it was a difficult one as they discussed where they go from here without Jesse as the captain of the ship. His will be tough shoes to fill.

The girls start school in mid-August. They enrolled in school yesterday, and both are hoping we find time to squeeze in some school clothes shopping this weekend, but they also have made many plans for the playground, crafts, a breakfast picnic by the pool on Saturday morning, going to the movies, and lots of swimming time, so we'll see if Tim and I run out of energy before we work our way through the girls' long to-do list. I told them they have to leave time on the daily schedule for me to make meals, do the dishes, do laundry, etc. They don't understand why Tim can't just take off from work and be here all day on the days that they are here, so by the time he gets home at night, they are missing him terribly and all over him....poor man barely gets to eat dinner before they are dragging him off to play. lol.

I haven't even stepped foot near the garden today. I do think the deer got the message yesterday. Today they stood about 100' away while I put out the doves' cracked corn and the cardinals' sunflower seeds, and only slowly made their way over to steal what they could after the doves and cardinals already had been feeding for a while.

The garden looked great in the cool morning hours around 7 a.m., but probably won't look nearly as good by late afternoon. It is hot! I am watering deeply about every 4th or 5th day, trying to ensure they have enough moisture but not too much.

Every year I dread the August heat, and here it is. Now we can start counting down the days until September. Of course, down here in southern OK, September has been very slow to cool down the last few years. I kinda miss having the occasional early autumn coolness in September---that hasn't happened in ages. Our first year here, we had a hard freeze on, I think, September 29th. It was forecast and I built a plastic high tunnel (about 6' tall) around the tomato plants and saved 95% of them---the only parts we lost were where the plants touched the plastic and those areas froze. After that early cool spell, we then had another couple of months of good weather, but the early cool-down was so awesome, if short-lived.

Our state has slipped into drought...really, flashed into drought, and I posted the Drought Monitor map on its own thread. We've been watching the weather and have known for a while it was coming for SW OK. I don't think it will take too much longer for pre-drought conditions to reach some of the central parts of the state---it already is awfully close to them.

Have a good day everyone, and stay cool and hydrated.

Dawn

Welcome August! This year has gone by much too fast as it seems every year flies by. We got a little sprinkle here early this morning, just enough to make dirty spots on my car but it stayed very pleasant for several hours this morning. I’ll take it! I’ve been out in my garden on hands and knees hand picking those blasted blister beetles off of my tomato and cucumber plants for the last 3 days, morning and evening. They seem to only want to suck the life out of the leaves so I’ve been pleased all my fruit has been left alone. My poor leaves, though, I hope I can eliminate them or at least control the damage. I guess I’ve plucked 100 of them so far. Yuk. Deadheaded my zinnias and pulled up my morning glory plant that just wasn’t having a very good year. I’ll most likely work on my indoor to-do list for a few hours, gotta squeeze the most out of my days off! I do appreciate the input regarding drip irrigation. Watering my plants is probably the biggest struggle I have, I really don’t want to see my water bill for this month!!! If drip irrigation will save me time, money and stress, then what am I waiting for???

Oh goodness. I'm so far behind. I hope everyone is doing well. I had planned on catching up yesterday and today during work hours LOL, but had too much work because of a couple of events. Anyway...hopefully tomorrow morning will be my time to catch up. I've been helping Ethan with watering our neighbors garden/ornamentals/millions of giant pots AND trying to keep my own garden watered. It's been difficult because everything is so parched. So...both properties are requiring so much attention. Their grass/yard is pretty but it's getting crunchy so I found some sprinklers to keep it somewhat green. I hate for them to come home to a fried lawn. She didn't ask for us to water her lawn, but she probably thought we would get at least SOME rain, but we haven't. It looks like we have a chance this weekend. And the east part of the state has a chance for flooding. I certainly don't want flooding, but would enjoy a soak around here. Can't we just spread it all out evenly throughout the state? The poor western part of the state has very little chance of rain this weekend.

Anyway...I'm obsessed at this point because of how much like a desert it is here.

The garden is okay. It's not bad considering. I hate spider mites. You would think that after 3 years of spider mite damage on green beans, the "good" mites would have showed up to take care of them. I've never sprayed any chemical om them. If this happens next year, I suppose I'll spray because I'm tired of waiting for them to show up. Even ladybugs are sparse around here and I have used zero chemicals on my garden this year, except once in April. It was Neem oil on a couple of tomato plants, which was not useful 'cause it burned the plants anyway.

K. I'm about to drop. Off to bed.