Jennifer, I am not sure what I will plant. I have plenty of turnip seed, collards and mustard, but not sure where I will plant. Most of the stuff will go in the wildlife garden. I have three areas that are about 2000 sq ft ea. that I will plant turnips, radishes, and food plot mix in because I doubt that my neighbor can till because it is too wet. I have busted it up with the rippers on my box blade just enough to get some exposed soil. This will be mostly for soil improvement. The area that is the best prepared areas are the wettest and I cant get into them now, I would like to plant some beets, but I am not paying the price they are asking, when I have 6 or 8 pound of other seed that will make as good food, plus near a 100 pounds of cover crop seed. My neighbor will be gone on vacation and not able to till, so I will have to hook up my disc to prep the soil. My two house gardens will be a piece of cake. That is where I will plant my fall food, turnips, collards, radishes, and what ever else I can find in my seed bag. The house garden will be easy to clean and plant, but I have been working on those for 13 years. I doubt that the two house gardens would total over 2000 sq ft., and I dont plan on more than 300 or 400 sq ft for the fall stuff. I may plant some cover crop in the house gardens at a later date, it just depends on when I can get them completely cleaned.

Thunderstorms rolled in around 4 a.m. and we have had mostly noise interspersed with scattered showers here and there. It all added up to about 0.25", which added to yesterday's rain, gives us about 0.95" for the week. We are so grateful for every single drop of rain that falls at this point. Our heat index values still are ridiculous and will remain so today, but we're fairly used to having heat indices in the 106-116 range this summer, so it feels normal, albeit in a bad way. This is the first weekend since we got the pool last year that Lillie didn't want to swim at all---she said it was too hot to swim. I guess pool water heated by the sun to 100+ degrees isn't appealing to her.

Larry, If you get the additional rain they say is coming this week, I don't know how you'll get a fall garden planted in the part of your garden that has the best soil. For our part of OK, they are saying to expect about 5" of rain this week and heavy flooding. I'm not going to complain about it either, was we have been too dry for too long.

Rebecca, Your tomato/pasta meal from the garden sounds heavenly and I'm glad you're reaping the rewards of your hard work.

My thoughts have begun shifting towards holiday decorating, but haven't made it as far as holiday baking yet. I might be starting to crave pumpkin pie just a little bit. Lillie and I agreed this weekend that we wouldn't bring out the autumn home décor just yet--we want to leave out all the red-white-blue July 4th and summer décor until after Labor Day. Aurora, who loves fall and Halloween, wants us to hurry up and decorate for fall, but she'll have to wait a while longer. Tim, being a man, doesn't care and really doesn't even notice the decor, except he is pretty good about getting the Christmas lights put up on time. The girls are starting to fret that Covid-19 will ruin Halloween, and I've promised them it will not---that we will have fun regardless. Now, hopefully the city they live in will not cancel trick-or-treating or I'll have a harder time keeping that promise. Halloween always is a very big deal in their town and neighborhood.

Kim, That's a lovely amount of rain and they say that more is coming. I want the break in the heat as much as the rain.

Jennifer, The heat index values are so awful because everywhere around us there has been rain and we get their higher dewpoints even while staying dry. I won't say we are getting used to it, but we are getting better about behaving ourselves and just staying indoors to avoid the heat. On the days when the heat indices have hit 114-116, even the feral kittens I feed on the front porch have run into the house when I open the front door. Then they realize that running into the cool air means running into the people's house, and they turn and run right back out again. I wish I could get them to come in and stay in for a few hours on the hot days so they can cool down, but they are too wild for that.

I have water-filled ant moats hanging above the hummingbird feeders, and Saturday morning the hummingbirds were bathing and splashing in the ant moats. It was a cute sight, and probably a sign the sweet little birds were awfully hot. Today should be cooler. I think the morning rain might keep both our temperature and heat index value lower than originally forecast for today, and that would be a great thing for everyone.

Ever since we moved here, it always is either feast or famine when it comes to rain. our area does not "do" average rainfall very well. Either we go 2 to 4 weeks without meaningful rainfall in a normal summer (and 2 months without it in a drought summer), or we get a month's worth of rainfall in one week...or one day. This week we are expecting two months worth of summer rain in one week, but we'll take it because you never know when your next chance for good rain will arrive. It is hard for me to explain our weather to someone new who moves here to our neighborhood. Do I tell them about years like 2003 or 2005 when we had 19" of rainfall in 2003 and 23" of rainfall in 2005 fall over the course of the entire year, or about 2015 when we had almost 79" and when almost 24" of that fell in one month, and over a foot of it in one day? Or maybe mention 2018 when we had a higher than average 46" of rain, which seemed fairly normal after 2015's flooding rains. If I tell them our annual average rainfall is 39", that seems deceptive because we rarely have a year when 39" actually falls. Do I scare them by telling them that on 3 or 4 occasions since moving here we've had 12+" of rainfall in one day so their house needs to have a raised foundation or be sited on the highest point of land so the excess rain runs off instead of running into the home? It is hard to describe our rainfall in terms that show how very erratic it can be, and people who moved here from somewhere that has more normal and consistent rainfall get sort of freaked out over the extremes.

Jennifer, Your poor finger! That sounds awful. Don't postpone going to the doctor for too long.

You're allowed to get grouchy here. If not here, then where? I consider this weekly chat thread to be our place to grouch and grump and blow off steam if needed, and also to brag and share and go on and on about our amazing gardens when the weather permits them to be amazing. Everyone here understands exactly how challenging life (not just gardening) is in the 2000s. I saw the photos of Mason's shower---they looked amazing and she clearly was thrilled and grateful for all the love shown to her and the time that went into planning and throwing such a magnificent shower. I hope you were able to relax and enjoy it.

I don't think you'll have to mist the ground with water. Rainfall is coming, and my hornworms actually seem to survive better in dry years than in excessively wet ones.

Oh, I saw your comment to Moni. I am a homebody too and everybody who knows me knows I am and has (maybe, finally) stopped trying to get me to leave what we jokingly refer to as "the compound" to go places that I don't want to go. I'm always happiest at home no matter what is or isn't happening out there in the real world.

Nancy, Our woodland acres are covered in Virginia creeper. I just ignore it as long as it doesn't make a run for infiltrating the garden (which is does constantly try to do). I'd rather see the Virginia creeper running everywhere instead of poison ivy and greenbrier, and we have plenty of them in the 12 acres of woodland as well. Every few years I pull down all the vines climbing trees so that they cannot reach the top of the trees and grow over the canopies the way that kudzu does in the deep south.

I've grown crossvine in full sun and in morning sun/afternoon shade, and it blooms much better in full sun. When we had some in afternoon shade in Fort Worth it still bloomed pretty well though. I don't know how it would do in a lot of shade, but if it gets 4-6 hours of full, direct sun, then being shaded the rest of the day wouldn't bother it.

Moni, Could you have your summertime biking trips and a garden too? Is there any way you could put soaker hoses on a timer set to water deeply once a week while you are out traveling? A good soaking of the veggie garden once a week would at least kept everything alive for you.

Nancy, Poor Gary with those chiggers. Do you have any meat tenderized? The white powdered kind? I bought it in a gigantic container at Sam's and keep it just for chigger bites. You mix it up into a paste and put it on the bites and it really helps. I've only ever used it when I could apply it immediately after noticing the bites. I don't know if it is as effective when the bites are already several days old.

Larry, While you didn't need more rain, at least you didn't get the hail. We didn't either. Places both west and east of us had power lines and trees down from yesterday's thunderstorms, but all we got was rain and I am not complaining.

dbarron, The endless dry spells are so frustrating, especially when the rain keeps missing your specific location. Our luck finally changed this weekend, and maybe yours will change this week.

Y'all, there is a lot of rain in the forecast. My specific forecast has rain in it daily, and on some of those days the NWS forecast predicts "Heavy Rainfall". I hope it all falls.

Here's the 7-Day Qualitative Precipitation Forecast---it updates off various model runs sporadically throughout the day, but it has been very consistent for several days now in terms of predicting widespread, sometimes heavy, rainfall this week. Hopefully all of us will at least get the rain that our plants need, and hopefully not too much excessive rainfall beyond that. I think if we could get 5" here, the cracks in our clay soil might close up.

7-Day QPF

Have a great day everyone!

Dawn

Like Dawn about 4am today, we got rain...I'd estimate less than .25 inch, but certainly welcome and no watering today I hope. There's chances for the next 3 days..hopefully we see some more (even if it resuscitates the grass).

We got .06" of rain this morning.

On my tablet, only in Houzz my keyboard drops away when I hit the space bar or a period. It is too annoying to work with.

Ok, I will type in a notepad app and paste to houzz. I can even do split screen and read the posts while I type.

It looked like Dawn was getting rain the last time I checked radar. HU, it looked like Okmulgee got a bit. I woke up to thunder and rain this morning, just not enough. But we want to plant the stuff we bought Sat, so I guess that's good. I would like to plant turnips, but what to pull out? I need to pick the dried pods of Cherokee trail of tears before it rains more. If enough are dry I could pull those.

I'm tired of tomatoes. I have one that never produced anything. Granted it was overwhelmed by cowpeas, but everything else in that bed made a few.

I have a witch hazel in a pot, my 2nd year trying to grow one. I hope it's been watered enough to survive. It was only a little 4" pot to start with. It will get mowed down if I put it where I want it before it's bigger.

H/J go to the doctor, you don't want sepsis. Glad the shower was a hit.

Well, I'm going to try to do something. TTFN

Dawn, you sure popped my bubble with that rain chart. I looked on Ft. Smith weather, and it shows from 10% to 80 % every day for the next 2 weeks. I am going over to the wildlife garden and bringing my tractor home, I keep it over there to power the electric fence around my pumpkins. My only hope of planting anything is to clean a spot in the house gardens. I will have to take the electric fence down and mow the peas and pull out the Egyptian spinach. The house gardens are well amended and a little above grade, so the drain pretty well, but I have to have them clean and ready when I do get a break in the weather.

Dawn, I got my tractor and pushed out 3 rows, like the one shown. I have 2 more I can push out in the south garden, but it started raining again.. It I have to I will toss potting soil in the tractor tracks and plant in them. When you live in a crazy location you have to do crazy things.

Larry, I always say that if we were not already crazy to begin with, then gardening in this region is making us crazy. Does anyone here doubt that?

I'm sorry I mentioned the rain forecast and busted your bubble of optimism. I just wanted you to be forewarned in case you need to build an ark or something. There are some wet years when I feel like the only way I can even have a garden is to plant in containers, and as the years go on, that seems more and more true. I spent the first 16 or 17 years here mostly learning how to deal with lack of rainfall and drought, and now, ever since 2015, the pendulum has swung back in the opposite direction with lots and lots of wet periods, if not entirely wet years....and some of them have been entirely wet. Even the raised beds just do not drain well enough when we get lots of moisture at once. September is our 3rd rainiest month of the year, behind May and June (I think April used to be our third rainiest month) so, while I look forward to the rain and the break from the heat, I don't want a repeat of last year's flooding rainfalls either. They started up for us either last September or October, though when it happened, we had no idea it would go on for months and months.

At one point that were showing about 7" (that small mustard colored patch) of rain near us, but then over the last 2 or 3 days, it moved away from us and closer to your region. If we get the 5" they indicate we will, I'll be thrilled...but also hoping for no more for a while. I guess we'll know by the end of this week just how bad it is going to be and maybe then we get a couple of days to catch our breath and regroup before the next rain comes next week.

It is trying to rain right now Amy, but after the early morning rain, nothing else has fallen yet. A lot is supposed to fall. We'll see. The nice thing is that our temperatures are a lot lower, which is a great thing because our Dewpoint is 78 and we'd have unbearable heat index values if today's temperature were 95 or 105 instead of the current 86 I see on my thermometer (which still gives us a current heat index of 98-99 this afternoon). The air is so heavy and thick that it almost feels like it is raining even when it isn't raining. We've had too much New Orleans-style dewpoints lately and I want for them to stop and go away, unless they also are going to deliver us some Mardi Gras beads for the girls, Cajun food, and beignets. We have been mostly cloudy all day which has kept the temperature lower than forecast. If we don't have fungal diseases popping up on plants by the end of the week, then I'll be greatly surprised.

dbarron, I'm so glad to hear you got rain and hope you'll get more.

Those of you in central through northeastern OK, watch the weather for thunderstorm development. The tornado risk is low to very low, but does exist, and hail up to the size of baseballs is a possibility. For those of us south of the Arbuckles, hail up to the size of ping pong balls is a possibility. Flash flooding is possible today, tonight and tomorrow, especially in southeastern OK.

It is ridiculous how happy this rainfall yesterday and today made me because I've gotten a two-day break from going out and dragging around a hose to water the containers. It has been a long summer.....

Tim and I have been collecting the treated lumber to build our much-postponed deck and hope to be able to build it in September. It still is in short supply and only available in shorter 8' lengths, but after this year's pressure treated lumber shortage, we're just happy we've been able to find and buy as much as we have. We knew we couldn't start working on building the deck in August when our heat index values were in the 110-116 range daily, but September seems like it will have better weather. Unless. it. rains. every. day.

Covid-19 has struck our neighborhood---hitting a lovely couple that lives a couple of miles up the road from us. I hope their cases are mild and that they recover quickly with no lingering side effects. They're the first ones I know of who have had it here in our little neck of the woods, but the cases in our county are now the highest they've been all year and increasing fairly rapidly for such a small, lightly-populated area.

The August wildflowers are exceptionally unhappy and not blooming much. I've seen a little goldenrod and the ubiquitous snow on the mountain, but not much of anything else. Maybe with the cooler weather, more wildflowers will bloom. Our goldenrod here at our house, which is the tall one that blooms at 6-8' in height has formed blossom, but they haven't opened and bloomed yet. Tim and I noticed that some of the leaves on some of the persimmon plants on our property are beginning to turn yellow. Usually they change color beginning around mid-September, so they're a bit early. I'm trying to not read too much into the leaf color change---could be heat stress-related or drought-related.

My phone just dinged to indicate a Flood Watch has been issued. Let me see if I can find a map that shows it, and if I do, I'll link it below. On the linked page from NWS-Tulsa, page down to the county map to see the large area covered by the Flood Watch:

NWS-Tulsa Webpage

Dawn

Whoever said (I read it more than five minutes ago) that growing things (esp seedlings) forced you to stay home to water them (or they die). Well, this has been a good year for that...we were all supposed to stay home right? It always makes me feel good when I hit multiple goals when shopping or I guess staying home. I had to go get dog food today (and of course stopped and topped off my grocery stock with what I was wanting). I didn't want to go out..which was odd, because since quarantine,etc, I've always treasured being out of the house..but I guess I'm just tired this morning.

Hi everyone. I'm pretty sure we've gotten over 2 inches this afternoon/evening. I am thankful for the break between showers so the ground could absorb some of the water. I care about this because of my chicken set up situation. (which reminds me that I need to go close their doors.)

I wonder if we will get a true fall this year. Have y'all looked at the forecast? There's no 90's in it. We deserve a true fall after this year's craziness! We just don't want an early freeze. How about a true fall with no freeze until mid November? Wouldn't that be lovely?

My finger is less sore today, but is still swollen. I'm going to give it until Thursday with the herbal remedies and if the swelling doesn't go down by then, I'll go to the doctor.

Y'all who were talking about holiday baking/decorating, that's always at the back of my mind. Always. But, this year I've sucked at it. I still have a "spring" wreath hanging on the mirror above my faux fireplace. And some "red, white, and blue" flowers in a thing hanging on the chicken coop door. It's been that kind of year.

Tomorrow is September, so I'm going to change out my decorative plates with the fall ones, which I'll take down in October for the "witchy" ones and then put them back up in November until December when I'll put out the yule ones. :) Such fun. I miss the old me sometimes. The one who was on top of this stuff.

Work is so demanding right now. Both jobs. I am grateful to take the day off tomorrow. I just need to let everyone know that I'm truly not available to deal with stuff unless it's an emergency.

I'm going to pick up around here and slice, bread, and freeze okra. HU is coming over to help tomorrow night and we might pickle peppers.

I won't have to water and for that I am grateful.

The plan I dreamed of for today was to get to Lincoln 3-4 pm and pull out tomato plants that needed to go (and survey the garden and take pics). And then go to Lowe's in Muskogee to hopefully get pansies, collards, ornamental kale and cabbage for Lincoln, and then polish it off with dinner at Chile's.

First, a tremendous amount of weeding in the raised veggie beds, until I saw the back third/half of a mottled good-sized snake slither right under my hand into the rosemary. No idea what it was, but now I know how Dawn feels about weeding. Since the only one I've seen here who is kinda like that kind of mottling is a pygmy rattler, you might understand why I backed off. And in fact, why I decided I didn't need to be weeding.

I think this is the first year we've had tomatoes producing continually. Every 2-3 days we go out and pick a half a doze-dozen more. I'm tired of tomatoes. lol Same with summer squash. I keep taking a lot of stuff (including the Armenian cukes) to the school. I pray some of our families actually want them.

Onto Lincoln. I was flabbergasted by the number of Monarch caterpillars we saw on two of the mature milkweeds. Over 20. But in two separate instar stages. Not only that, but 2 females were ovipositing while I was taking pics of the caterpillars! I was so excited. Spotted several other butterflies.

GDW and I harvested many okra, many tomatoes. Then John and Suzanne got there and we yanked out all of the early-planted tomatoes. Saved a lot of the green ones for folks who like fried green tomatoes (including me). Saved the ripe ones and breaking-color ones for others. Suzanne asked me if we were going to have a fall garden and if so, what were we going to plant. I said, "HECK no, I'm sick of gardening." She thought that was the funniest thing ever. I'm not sure she realized I meant it. In fact, I would suspect she didn't. But I did.

We ended up with about 3/8" today. I sure hope we get more in the next couple days. But I appreciate the cool-down.

I don't have any work nowadays that I get paid for. But Lincoln is a job. BUT it's a job I asked God for and He found it for me and gave it to me. Likewise, our property is a big job, one we don't get paid for, and one I'm not sure we can handle for many more years. I never miss the old me. I LOVE the now me. I treasure the lessons I learned along the way; I've always been a lifelong learner; love the art, the quilting, the literature. Loved my boys and learning and playing with them. But now it's as though everything has come together--all the pain, all the trouble, all the $$ struggles-- through God's love. Garry and I are so very blessed.

Well, we're getting rain and looks like several hours of it...and they issued a flash flood watch again (of course last time, we got not a drop during FFW). As dry as it is, I don't really think we'll have floods, the ground will simply soak it in. Yesterday's .25 inch pretty much disappeared and you couldn't tell the ground got any later in the day. I appreciate the rain.

Late last week, I received some african violets I had ordered. I tend to order AVs every year or two. I decided with the stress and strain of this year, it was time to order, to give me something to look forward to through August. Initially, I thought order from an excellent vendor in Texas that only sells on Ebay. However, the prices were getting pushed up toward $35 each...and that was just too much. I ordered from an actual vendor, which means static prices (no bid wars), and smaller plants, plus not quite the same varieties that the ebay dude offered (sadly), but I could also order some of the original selections of species collected from Africa, not just the highly overbred glittzy current ones. I did, adding two charming species to my collection and three hybrids (mostly miniatures, because that optimizes window space if you can stack them three to a windowsill row..lol). When they arrived, I inspected and found that three out of the five had incipient flowers (the one with largest buds might open next week), so incoming pleasure of seeing a new plant flower for the first time. Of course there was one that might be a disappointment, I was surprised by how variegated mine was...that usually means lack of vigor in a non-ideal (aka windowsill) setting. We shall see.
I kinda wanted the species because you see my grandmother always had AVs in her north facing kitchen window. And I now realize that those were pretty much all early selections and not at all comparable to what the hybrids now do (except maybe being easier and more floriforous, if not the stunning waves of full flower that the hybrids offer, but more constant and scattered). It seemed in homage of her that I should try some of the plain species (though I don't have any that she actually had, they're different, though I suspect one of the species was in her collection, just this particular clone is distinctly colored with a pale platinum blue, or maybe blush platinum white. Anyway, something different. I really don't welcome the 'must move all tender things back inside again' scramble that won't be more than six weeks away probably. Then I'm like do I have room for all these, why did I buy more, etc.

I'm expecting fall bulb arrival any day, the fall flowering bulbs should have been shipped in August, but I haven't heard boo yet. I wonder if the shipping issues has affected the vendor's ability to get his stock in. I almost emailed, but then figured, wait and see.

Hope everyone gets enough rain, though Larry, maybe you have too much already ?:)

dbarron, The lack of rainfall does make me stick close to home in the summer months, so I guess that's been helpful for keeping us home in this strange year, and the mask wearing has contributed to that too. Wearing a mask makes me feel claustrophobic, so trips to the grocery store or wherever feel like torture to me, and I race through the store as quickly as possible to get what I need and get out of there so I can take off that mask the minute I get to the car. So....not only will the need to water in summer keep me close to home, but the fact that I can go outside into the yard and garden and not wear a mask, and not worry about social distancing, etc. just keeps me at home more. I've always been a happy, introverted homebody who just wants for the rest of the world to leave me alone and let me be in my home and garden, so this year apparently has been tailor made for me.

Well, except for all those heat index values that keep hitting 110-116 daily as if we are supposed to be miserably humid and hot in southcentral OK. Those heat indices keep me inside more than outside, and I'd be outside more if the temperatures and dewpoint weren't so high. I was hoping this weather would change that, but our dewpoint hit a whopping 80 yesterday and even though our temperatures were considerably lower, we still had a heat index of 110. So, I'm still waiting for the part where it feels better outside.....

I want to go out. I enjoy the change of pace of shopping, getting all the errands run and checked off the list one by one, eating lunch out, etc. on a weekend day as a change from being home all week long, but not right now in this strange new normal. I want our old normal back.

Jennifer, That's great that you got so much rain. I know y'all have been abnormally dry and really needed the rain.

I'm hopeful we'll have a more normal fall, but it isn't cooling off down here as much as it is further north, so we'll see. If we can have a couple of weeks of cooler weather, then I'll believe autumn is real. It still was in the 90s here (but lower in the 90s than previously) and the heat index still was an insane 110, and the air felt so thick you could cut it with a knife, so yesterday felt very much like it still was summer and like we still are waiting for fall. The dewpoint stayed high all night and I'm sitting here looking at the thermometer and it shows 81 degrees outdoors and it isn't even 7 a.m. yet, so I don't think we cooled off much overnight...perhaps because all the rain stayed further north and missed us.

Really, I am not necessarily expecting a great autumn because NOAA issued a La Nina Watch, and La Nina weather patterns usually keep us warmer than usual and drier than usual. I am hoping we might be able to have a more normal autumn before the La Nina we're watching for finally develops (if it develops) and gives us a warmer/drier winter. I'd love a normal autumn and a cool to cold snowy winter, but I don't feel that sort of weather coming.

I hope they didn't jinx us by putting us under a Flood Watch because we've only had about 1/10th of an inch of new rain since yesterday morning's rain and I was hoping for more. If we were sitting at 0.95" at this time yesterday, we're at a total for the last 3 days of roughly 1.05" now and that's not nearly enough. We need more.

I enjoy getting the fall decorations out, but I don't decorate nearly as much as I did when I was in my 40s and early 50s. I think I just got more tired as I got older and I don't spend as much time on the seasonal decorations, especially the outdoor ones, as I once did. Having the grandchildren has made me kick it up a bit more the last few years because they love the seasonal décor but they still haven't seen me in full whole-house Christmas decorating mode because I do very little in Tim's office where the dogs like to hang out and the bedrooms frequented by the cats....pets are hard on holiday decorations. Jesse is like a bull in a china shop, so last year I protected the Christmas tree from him by putting the kittens' play yard (a hexagonal-shaped 2' tall fence) around it and that at least kept him from helping himself to presents that were under the tree. It didn't stop the cats from perpetually climbing the tree and knocking down ornaments because, being cats, they can climb their kitten play yard fence---it only kept them contained when they were very small.

Nancy, Nothing stops the weeding around here like seeing a snake---any snake at all because if the non-venomous snakes are out and about, so are the venomous ones. It is funny---all my friends remark fairly frequently that they cannot believe I've managed to garden here in this snake-infested area for 22 years (and counting) without getting snakebitten. Most of them figured I wouldn't make it 5 years without a snakebite, but they clearly have no understanding of how terrified I am of having that happen and how cautious it makes me. Sometimes when they say that they can't believe a snake hasn't bitten me yet, I want to ask them if they have noticed I stop weeding the garden, thereby losing control of it, in snake season, but they aren't gardeners for the most part, so I guess they just don't notice that. I don't know of any way to keep up on the weeding when the snake risk is high. The fall is worse than the summer because the snakes enjoy the slightly cooler weather just the same as we do and they spend more time out in the daytime. Some of my worst snake encounters have been in the fall when the snakes like to lie on concrete or gravel early and late in the day, soaking up heat to help carry them through the cooler fall weather.

It seems like the butterflies are really happy at Lincoln, which is a great thing. We always have a ton of butterflies here, even when no one else does, and I think the mostly full-sun garden gets the credit for that. I see considerably fewer butterflies closer to the house where the flowers that we do have are in more of a shady situation. We had almost no shade around the house when we moved here, so I have a great appreciation for the shade we have now because we planted a ton of tiny little trees in 1999 and 2000 so we'd have shade at some future point, and we do, but it does make gardening for butterflies more challenging. As the woodland encroaches more and more on our garden every year, I worry about where I'm going to have enough full sun areas left for the butterflies.

You know, the gardening season here is long and there's nothing wrong with getting tired of it and deciding to give yourself a break from it. Some years I reach that point by the time July arrives, and some years not until the August heat sucks the life out of me...and the garden. I used to almost always plant a big fall garden, but the last few years I haven't---I'm too tired of gardening by the time actual planting time rolls around, it is too hot, it is too dry, it is too snakey….etc. I still can plant well into October down here though, so sometimes can just postpone planting a fall garden and not abandon the idea altogether. It really depends on how long the heat hangs on and also on how busy I get with other stuff. In a busy fire year, sometimes the fall fire season makes the decision for me by getting hot and fiery by September, which makes up my mind for me. Fires should be a non-factor for me in 2020 because I have not been going to them---social distancing is hard at a fire because the firefighters come right to you to get drinks and snacks, so I've just stayed home. I know I cannot do that forever, but I may do it for the rest of this year. Our firefighters have gotten used to throwing a cooler full of drinks on the truck before they leave the station because they know I'm not coming.

dbarron, I love African violets, but having the cats makes it almost impossible to have indoor plants so I haven't had African violets in years. I miss them, but not enough to engage in daily battle with the cats to keep the cats out of, off of and away from the plants. This year I have had a couple of orchids on the fireplace mantel and the cats mess with those too much, so then I moved the orchids to a higher wall shelf and put two containers of artificial lavender on the mantel. The plants look fairly realistic---so the cats jump up onto the mantel and try to eat the lavender plants, and I scold them and tell them they are the reason I cannot have nice plants in the house. Do you think the cats care? Nope, they are not shamed at all. I have 3 ceramic bees that I bought at Hobby Lobby back in late winter that have been sitting on the mantel. They're probably 2" tall and 3" long, so clearly cannot be mistaken for actual bees. Unless you're a cat. If you're a cat, you try to engage them in battle and kill them. We've already had to glue one bee back together after a cat tried to pick it up and jump off the mantel with it. Being ceramic, the fake bee was too heavy and the cat dropped it on the floor.

Some of you may have received too much rain already (Larry?) and may get more, but all the rain keeps missing us. Those words "heavy rainfall" in last night's forecast were a waste---we barely got light rain and got nothing that even remotely resembled heavy rainfall. I'm still hopeful the heavier rain will find us today, tonight or tomorrow, but maybe not as hopeful as I was 24 hours ago. Watching all the rain fly right by for 24 hours is so disheartening, like, here we go again.....Tim came home from work all excited about the heavy rain that was going to fall, heal our land, green up the plants, etc. and lost hope like I did as the hours rolled on and nothing much fell. Maybe it just isn't our turn yet, and maybe our turn will arrive sometime in the next couple of days. What I have noticed though is that whenever the NWS puts us under a Flood Watch, that is the biggest jinx and we hardly ever get those forecasted flooding rains. This feels like that sort of jinx, no matter what the QPF shows ought to be falling. We didn't get what the QPF showed we would get yesterday or last night, and our 7-day totals on the QPF this morning show considerably less rainfall than yesterday's QPF showed, so the handwriting is on the wall.

Have a great day everyone. I've revised my expectations downward. Instead of hoping for a lot of rain, I'm just hoping the dewpoint stays away from the upper 70s or 80. Sometimes in this region, you just take whatever slight improvement you can get.

Dawn

Rain Update: I went outdoors to feed the chickens and the feral kittens and it felt like rain. It wasn't raining, but it looked like rain was coming and it felt like rain was coming. The dewpoint was/is so much more pleasant than yesterday's. I also fed the 3 deer that were waiting for me, and as soon as I fed them, three more appeared. Each bunch of 3 deer was a doe, a yearling male and a small fawn. Then I fed the little cottontail who is out by the plum thicket waiting for breakfast each morning, while the morning doves and their one city cousin, the lone pigeon, sat on the power lines waiting for cracked corn. I fed all the wild birds. While the deer, bunny, wild birds and chickens plunged into the food and started eating, it started getting dark very quickly. The feral kittens were eating on the front porch, and 3 older feral cats were eating out back by the garage. I put the food on the covered patio so they could eat and stay dry. I hurried indoors, sent the dogs out into the dog yard to do their thing, and got the last dog back indoors just before it got as dark as night and rain started falling. At first it was light rain for about 5 minutes, then thunder and lightning arrived with heavier rain. I am thrilled. I don't care if we only get another half-inch or inch, at least we'll be getting something. The ground already had sucked up and used up the inch of rain that fell between Sunday and Monday and the cracks in the ground didn't close up at all, so I know we need a lot more rain.

I just reread this paragraph and it sounds like the peaceable kingdom with all the wild critters showing up and waiting for their breakfast, doesn't it? Sometimes it is the peaceable kingdom and everyone gets along. Other times, too many deer show up and run off the bunnies and wild birds so they can have their food. Thankfully, this morning's bunch must have known the rain was coming because everyone was staying in their usual spot and wolfing down their breakfast as if they knew they didn't have long to eat before the rain began. They probably had a better idea than I did that rain was coming soon.

I'm grateful for the rain because I was so disappointed it didn't fall last evening or in the overnight hours while everyone else was flooding.

We are still getting rain,I don't know where we are going to put it all. Highway 71 was closed yesterday ( there were people killed in a flood there a few years ago). We are expecting company from Mena today, so Madge is keeping and eye on the flooding report.

I am concerned about my sweet potatoes. I am concerned that they may split, and or rot. I have not been weeding then either. I know there are mice/rats in the plants, I also see frogs at times, so there can also be snakes. It is hard for me to stick my hand down in the plants to pull the weeds, and if I get hold of the top of the weed, it just breaks off.

My okra is still producing, but it is tall enough that it is hard to pick. I need to make the trellis farther apart. I was trying to make them where I could drive the tractor and lawn mower between, which I did, but did not allow enough room to keep from damaging the out of control plants on the trellises. The trellises I plan on installing in the wildlife garden will be about 8 to 10 feet apart. That way I can grow cover crop, food, or just lawn between the trellises. Those trellises will all be of steel, so I can use the weed burner to clean them. The weed burner has worked fine cleaning the 75 foot trellis that I have over there, I also use it to kill the grass and weeds under it, but I need to improve on killing the weeds and grass under the trellis. I have some black weed block, I may give that a try. I try to do very little maintenance over there.

There is a lot of video on the TV showing flooding south of us, so we wont be getting the company today. Maybe I had better start building my boat, if I can find the lumber.

Just remember Larry, make room for in-boat planters so you can grow things while you float on the flood :) Two by two, two artichokes, two beets, two carrots, etc to repopulate the gardens after the flood.

I started writing this in notes, about 8:00 this morning. It's 9:22 now... but honest, in between I got a text, and then called back in stead of texting.

WOW, some real thunder boomers happening right now, 8:10 am.

Yes, I said, I had to stay home, to water... but then I have been in such a pattern of being gone during the heat of the summer... it feel hard to hang around, and not even escape for an overnighter, because I have to water, and to take care of my kombucha. :)

I surely have to put in soaker hoses for next summer. Used to have that all the time at the last house. This will be my winter project, to align the planting beds to the best option for them.

The interesting thing is I had actually planned on not going on any longer trips this summer, before our traveling got curtailed. Funny the way things turn out sometimes.

Wow, the heavens gate has opened again... it is pouring.

I saw my first Monarch butterfly larvae on my parsley yesterday. I am so glad, I got the plants, after the seeds wouldn't come up till way later, when I had totally given up.

Dawn, I totally recall you saying all that about staying home. Honestly, I love my home... but loved the previous more.... But I love getting out and seeing the world. Like you, I can't wait to get out of the store and take my mask off. Yes, I take it off prior to getting in my car. I feel the need to REALLY breathe.

Nancy, I would love to come by sometime, for you to show me what you do at Lincoln. Really.

I had a lot of rain, and my cracks are closed. Between yesterday mornings rain, and 8 this morning I had 5" + 1/10 of an inch.

I better get off here, and do something productive... but want to share this lovely photo of one of my tomatoes. :)

Moni

We've had .74" since noon yesterday. Some setting is off on my weather station and it goes from noon to noon instead of midnight to midnight. We are on the northern edge of this and not getting as much as Tulsa and further south. Rain makes me lazy.

I had trouble breathing yesterday so didn't accomplish much. We picked the Cherokee trail of tears pods that had dried.

The cardinal vine has been spectacular the last few days, but I'm not seeing hummingbirds on it. Usually if I see hummingbirds they are on the wisteria. There's honeysuckle in the back corner of the yard I'm sure they make use of, but I can't really see them there. I gave up on feeders. Mine always overflow and make a mess, so I've been trying to plant flowers for them, like agastache and hyssop and cardinal flower.

The flies have invaded the house. When I put fly strips up Ron gets stuck in them. Currently trying the ones that stick on your window.

Doesn't help that Sasquatch likes to stand half in and half out of the screen door and the old beagle barely gets off the patio to poop.

I used to have African violets. Kind of miss them.

Lowes did not yet have pansies.

Nancy, you should plant some collards, kale, Swiss chard and turnips at the school. Most Okies will eat Collards and turnips. They are pretty low maintenance in cool weather.

Yes, I totally see Dawn as a Disney princess skipping through the forest talking to birds and deer. LOL.

I have to find room for turnips. I have some fall varieties to try.

I'm just rambling now, so I'll sign off.

Dawn, y'all have cooled off now, right? Marietta is showing 72, but I know you're not exactly in Marietta.

It's nice for sure...the cooler weather.

I've been pretty busy this morning. Nothing too exciting--just washed towels and sliced, breaded and froze 4 and a half trays of okra.

That clears all of the okra off my counter and fridge. Of course, there's more waiting in the garden.

I'm hoping to jump into an earlier Pilates class in a few minutes. That will free up this evening. We'll see if the zoom thing works for the earlier class. I should tidy up the house where people can see. That's the thing about zoom--people can see your house...or at least a small portion of it.

After Pilates, I might slush around in the garden and see what it looks like. Maybe I'll even take a short nap.

Moni, the tomato looks good. Makes my mouth water.

Larry, our okra is still producing well too. It's sorta cramped and it's easy to miss pods. Now, it's sitting in mud. That will be a fun harvest later. Hoping to not lose a boot in the mud.

I'm not complaining about the mud, though. So happy to get some true rain.

Okay...now I'm going to get those fall decorative plates up before pilates. And maybe take the spring wreath down. haha.

That's a beaut, Moni! I'm having BLTs this evening--GDW might have bacon and egg sandwich instead. And I brought green tomatoes home from Lincoln, as well as some of the okra--can add it to what we picked here yesterday. I love to have visitors in the garden. Come any time--but not Nov-April! :) Thinking that's probably swallowtail on your parsley, since Monarchs only lay on milkweed. But swallowtails are the cat's meow, for me. I still have a devil of a time distinguishing between eastern tiger female dark forms and black swallow tails--and many many others. So glad we have the amazing Sandra Schwinn to guide newbies like me. There are other knowledgeable ones in that large group, but, boy, is she good. Like Dawn.

And yes, Amy--Yes to the collards, for sure. I got four mum plants at Lowe's, but they didn't have any pansies, collards, ornamental kale or ornamental cabbages. GRRR. Sanders said they'll be getting pansies in a week or so and they have the rest. I asked if they'd still have the rest in a week or so, and the lady said, "Oh, sure." I guess that'll be the plan.

Loved the shower pictures, Jennifer. When's the big day, again? October something? What a klinker 2020 has turned into for us all, huh.

I'm like you, Dawn, as you know, Dawn--total homebody. I'm pouting cuz I have to go to Broken Arrow to get plants!

We had fun (kind of) yesterday. A good visiting day with John and Suzanne. He is such a character. (If you go to lecwagoner.org and scroll down the home page, you can watch the short video, John Jones, an Excellent Educator. Very cute--of John AND the kids.) And then we tore the old tomatoes out. And will take the melons out soon. We'll have to add some soil to those beds and then I can plunk the new plants in.

And so then GDW and i headed for Chile's and dinner. Excellent Covid 19 protocols--makes us pretty comfortable to go there. And afterward to Lowe's where we ran into. . . John Jones! LOL We all got a laugh out of that.

We ended up getting 1.5" more rain overnight and this morning. So we are happy.

Dawn, I'm sure you know who I thought of when I ran into the snake! LOL. Probably scared the poor thing half to death. I am so GLAD you got some rain! YAY!

Amy, I thought of your "Cherokee Trail of Tears" yesterday when we were tearing tomatoes out. John had started toward the compost pile across the grounds with a cartful, and there were tomato plants that fallen out along the way. Carnage. I thought it was a tomato trail of tears, not to make light of the Cherokee's Trail of Tears, at all.

You'll have to keep us posted on the flooding situation(s), all. And, Larry, I found myself wondering about a couple of the okra plants at Lincoln. They're already in raised beds so are getting hard to reach. Even if I get into the beds, they're going to be out of reach one of these days. Hmmm.

Oh rats. I best go do something. Later, all.

I did not get out of the house till late today. I went to check the gardens and picked the okra in the south garden, checked the sweet potatoes, I must be raising a large herd of rats in the sweet potatoes, many of the potatoes are sticking out of the ground, and all that I saw were part eaten. The north garden was very wet, with water standing in a lot of areas. The soil was so wet and soft that some of the roselle plants were blown down. The wildlife garden was practically flooded, but the area I have been working on to contour it to drain better looked really good. There was a little water standing in it where if was so muddy that I could not get the tractor in so I could dump soil in that area, but that will be corrected as soon as it drys enough to get the tractor back to the lower areas.

The area I busted up with the box blade were a swamp, but looked very good considering.

My daughter called this evening and said she had been without power for 12 hours. She hates to call me for help because I don't get around well, she does not understand that I want to help her any way. I took the generator over there and got everything going. I did not know all the damage that had been done in this area. My brother-in-law's house was flooded, many trees were down, and I have no idea how long my daughter will be without power. I had better go around this place tomorrow and check for damage. To make matters worse when I was coming from my daughters, I saw a very nice buck eyeing my pumpkins. The deer are eating the vines that grow past the electric fence and could easily jump the wire and eat all of them, they are also eating the ornamental sweet potatoes in the lawn. It is a pain to try to grow critter food and people food in the same area. It is also sorta funny that I string a wire around the garden and the deer wont step over it to eat the garden, the fence around my gardens have not been turned on in weeks.

Is it possible to get those lows already

Did you get your big rain finally, Dawn? I saw crazy flood video from Ardmore.

Raining again here,

Scott, Yes! We did. It fell fast and furious, not as much as in Ardmore for most of our county, but still plenty. The crazy thing about Ardmore is that it was the usual roadways that always flood, so you'd think people would have expected it and wouldn't have driven into it! We're now at 4.6" for the week, and I won't whine or feel sorry for us any more this week. I'll check the cracks in the ground this morning to see if they've closed up yet. They should have, but the rain fell so fast (sometimes at the rate of 2" per hour) that it may have run off before it could soak in. I could hear thunder all night long but that rain all was in Texas so we got the noise from it but not any additional rain or flooding. Parts of our county had all the usual issues--roads covered with water in low spots and closed until the water receded, paved roadways in a couple of spots undercut by heavy runoff causing the pavement to collapse, etc. In our neighborhood, the roads held up well. The most important thing was that the horrible dewpoint of 79 or 80 went away and we didn't have a heat index in the 112-116 range as we so often have had lately.

Larry, Y'all can put your excess rain where we put ours yesterday: in the yards, in the fields, in the bar ditches and in the roads. Oh, and in the once-empty ponds and creek beds. In my son's town (Ardmore) which is one county north of us and had more rain than we did, some morons were trying to drive through rain that was up to the hoods of their cars. Do people not have common sense any more?

I hope all your rain has somewhere to go...ours ran downhill, making me happy we were at the top of the hill. People's water gap gates on nearby ranches were pushed out into the horizontal position and debris will have to be cleared so the water gaps can close again and keep the cattle in, but that is a minor inconvenience compared to having an entire fence brought down because there is no water gap gate. In our neighborhood gravel driveways washed out and trash cans floated away but that was about the worst of it here. I'm sure we'll all be out with shovels trying to reclaim our gravel from the bar ditches and put it back into the driveways.

It sounds like your daughter's area is a mess, and I hate hearing that your brother-in-law's house had water in it. That does so much damage...ugh. Our county had a few hundred without power, but the local electric co-op got them back online in a relatively short time. The outages appeared to be caused by random trees falling on power lines here or there. We really didn't have that sort of wind at our house and no one in our neighborhood lost power.

I'm worried about your sweet potatoes too. I don't see how they can handle this amount of rain and not crack. They still should be good and edible once cured though.

Nancy, Maybe put planting "dwarf okra" on your list for next year? There are lots of great dwarf varieties that get only 3-5' tall and stay very manageable. I'm short and have a sloping garden, so climbing a ladder to harvest anything is dangerous (I did it one year with a Tess' Land Race Currant tomato though and the ladder and I stayed upright) and I prefer planting dwarf okra varieties that won't become impossible to harvest.

I have felt safe eating out in recent weeks because the places we usually go have great Covid-19 protocols in place and always seem half to three-quarters empty. Well, this past weekend, it was like someone threw a switch and the restaurants were jam packed. I felt somewhat less comfortable and think we'll skip going out for another couple of weeks. I'm glad we took Lillie out to eat and to shop, though, because she'd had a hard week and we wanted for her last weekend before school started to be fun for her, which it was. The issue is that Covid-19 cases are exploding here on both sides of the river, with the number of active cases being the highest they ever have been so, suddenly, eating out feels a smidgen less safe. The parks and playgrounds are open so we can grab fast food this coming weekend, take the girls to a park with picnic tables and then go to the playground. Our little one is about to turn 6 in a couple of weeks and she always loves going to the playground. It shouldn't be too hot to swim this weekend, and if the coming cold front is real, it might be the last weekend to swim. Just like that, it seems like autumn is arriving and I hope it is a long, mild one.

Jennifer, Yes, we finally got the cooler weather. You know, I could have been happy even without the rainfall as long as we didn't have a dewpoint of 79 or 80 and a heat index of 116....and we had neither of those yesterday plus we had rain, so I was the happiest camper around all day long after that rain started. Last night, a friend of mine posted a photo of his electric fireplace with the fire on and glowing and said it was raining and his feet were cold, so he was having a fire to warm up. I was just laughing. It is funny how quickly a cool-down and some rain can change things.

The girls will be here this weekend as Chris and Jana both work, so I'll leave all the red, white and blue decor up for Labor Day and then next week after they are back home, I'll take down all the summer stuff and put up autumn stuff. I need to stay away from Hobby Lobby or I'll start thinking I'm behind and start wanting to put up Christmas stuff. We were in there the other day to get tie dye so the girls could tie dye shirts in autumn and Halloween colors and the Christmas decor had us oohing and aahing. Of course it is too early to drag out all the Christmas decorations, but Hobby Lobby is a reminder that the time is coming, probably sooner than we think. Autumn always seems to fly by more quickly than the summer months.

Amy, You know, I never intended to be a woodland Disney princess, but it just sort of happened. lol. There have been so many days this summer that I dragged a water hose 200' to fill up an old Mr. Turtle sandbox we use as a waterer for the deer and other wildlife, and on days I didn't feel like dragging that hose back there, I just reminded myself that often in the mornings I see deer and other animals drinking there and they need that water source when it is dry. Hopefully this wonderful rainfall has put an end to me dragging that hose way back west of the house.

We have had incredible numbers of hummingbirds throughout August, but the last 7-10 days I have seen the numbers drop incredibly fast and believe they are migrating early. They are smart and know the weather is changing long before we do, and when they leave in August instead of September, they are telling me an early autumn is coming. I believe them. We still have some, but not in the huge numbers we had just a couple of weeks ago. After next week's cold front rolls in, we'll have even fewer I bet.

Moni, I'm so glad you got the rain, and your tomato looks yummy.

Those caterpillars on your parsley are Tiger swallowtail cats. They look somewhat like monarchs, but monarchs only eat milkweed and swallowtail cats feed on all members of the carrot family. We have had more swallowtail cats this year than monarch cats.

dbarron, I'm laughing picturing the plants marching up the ramp two by two to save themselves after Larry builds them an ark.

Larry, Y'all are getting more than your fair share of rain again, and I hate this. I always hope for all our weather to arrive in moderation, but the rainfall here certainly doesn't do things in moderation---seems like it is always feast or famine.

I'd be happy if no more rain falls for a couple of weeks because we have a deck we'd like to build in September, but the weather pattern seems to favor cooler weather and rain.

Are all of y'all ready to break out the long sleeves, the hot cocoa and your favorite cool-weather treats? The weather for next week certainly looks very promising if you like autumn weather. Of course, some of you who are further north probably will get substantially cooler weather than we will have down here further south, but any cooling down of the temperatures will be welcome. I'm already planning on hot cocoa and apple-cinnamon muffins or maybe pumpkin-streusel muffins for the first cool morning. This year sort of reminds me of the way that September used to be, when rainfall and cooler temperatures arrive and put an end to the insanity of the hot summer days. Too often in recent years we have stayed in the 90s and even sometimes hit the 100s until the end of September and I have hated that and longed for a September with more traditional autumn weather. It looks like this year we're going to have that.

Here's the 6-10 day outlook that shows how likely we are to get cooler weather on the temperature outlook map. This map doesn't forecast actual temperatures. Rather, it shows by percentage how likely an area is to get below average weather or above average weather. The darker the shade of blue, the higher the odds of cooler weather, or of rain if a person is looking at the rain outlook map. It does the same with the rainfall outlook map---shows the odds of getting rain but not the amount forecasted. I love how much blue we are seeing on this map:

6-10 Day Outlook Maps

The toughest decision I face in the next few days is whether the first cool morning will feature hot cocoa or hot apple cider. Decisions, decisions, decisions. Of course, it is too wet and muddy to do anything outside other than feeding all the hungry varmints. I expect our goldenrod, which has been on the verge of blooming here, may burst out into bloom with all this rainfall and cooler weather. It is about time!

Dawn

Lows in the 50s starting one week from today!!

I love rainstorms, but they seem to make my migraine flareups worse every year. So yesterday was spent mostly in the dark bedroom surrounded by puppies (our three plus we have 4 guests here). But on a positive note, the garden is thoroughly soaked. Think I might try planting some more fall goodies this weekend.

After hearing Dawn talking about snakes for all these years, I've been thinking about how to place my garden when we move to the country. I think I've decided on putting it next to the house with the dog run around it. Maybe with all the dogs running it'll deter some of the snakes from coming into my garden.

I absolutely abhor wearing a mask, so it goes on just as I'm stepping inside and comes off as soon as I'm back out. I don't see any reason to wear it while walking. I'll be glad when this all dies down & we can go back to normal.

And it looks like I'm the latest gw casualty. Hitting space or any punctuation minimizes my keyboard, so now I have to figure out how to fix it again.

About 4:30 this morning I typed out a long long post complete with pictures, then hit submit. I guess it’s floating around in space somewhere and this post will be a lot shorter.

Moni the tomato looks delicious- I am jealous.

Amy, I buy these fly sticks at Lowe’s- we have them in the garage, shops, barn, feed room, and on the patio. Ours don’t catch too many flies but we haven’t seen many, however they are covered with dirt dauber and yellow jackets - that was what we wanted them for. As long as you don’t hang them where they get wet they last forever, stay sticky, and have no smell at all. They have hooks on each end so you can hang them anywhere out of reach of pets or grandkids.

Larry I have cousin in Mena who sent us pictures of the flooding yesterday. We got 1 4/10” here - perfect amount .

Jen, I think you were the one with hurt finger? My memory is fuzzy. Please do not neglect it. My uncle almost lost his hand due to a little scratch he got working in the garden. He washed it and splashed a little peroxide on it and ignored it till it got infected. He ended up in hospital almost a week. Was years ago but still - just a few germs from the garden dirt

Well, it seems like everyone got a good soaking.

So thankful for the rain and for the cooler weather.

Only bad thing about rain is animal care. I had to put pavers in the momma hen/chick "coop" just so they can have a dry(ish) place to stand and eat.

(I apologize if I've already said this.)

farmgardener, I would like to try those fly traps inside the coop. Do you see any reason I couldn't?

My finger is better. Still swollen and a little sore. I'm keeping an eye on it for sure. There's no visible injury or cut, etc.

The weird thing is there was a small tiny knot thing at the base of that same finger for over a year. It was not visible but you could feel it. It was only slightly tender. It's now gone. I'm wondering if it broke loose and moved upward to my fingernail area. I don't know...it's weird.

Jen, I wait until the last minute before entering a store to my mask on...and take it off immediately. I don't know...maybe the mask will keep our faces warm this winter. haha.

I have a team of volunteers making reversible holiday themed masks to give to people who visit our drive-thru Trunk or Treat. One side of the mask is fall themed and the other is Christmas.

I just want to go out for a nice relaxing dinner at an amazing restaurant in the art district area of OKC and for it to be chill...and can walk around looking at stuff and absorbing the energy there. OR I want the Art Walk to come back to Norman. It's a monthly thing and I miss it. I miss my "in person" Pilates classes. Speaking of Pilates classes. I was able to jump into an earlier Zoom class yesterday because I had the day off. I didn't know that this was a class of pretty girls. Everyone started showing up...and I almost left to put on true yoga clothing. I'm pretty sure I looked like a weirdo in my garden shorts and socks. "Oh. Everyone is pretty in this class...and wears cute yoga pants? Okay... I'll change be right back". LOL

Next time I'll know.

Even though I'm a homebody, I like to soak in the energy of certain places every month or so. Music, art, food....

Rambling.

HU and I were able to pickle some peppers, both hot banana and jalapeno.

We also harvested the okra in the mud...and harvested other stuff too.

Our fall crops are up.

A neighbor and friend gave us many canning jars, so we unloaded them from my car.

I could have gotten 100's more, but I was too late to get back with her. She had given them away to someone else. She has a friend whose wife died 2 years ago. The wife was a canner (he is not) He gave my friend a truck load of jars of all sizes/shapes. My friend said that he had just eaten the last of her canned food. That's sorta sweet and sad at the same time. I wonder what he was thinking as he opened and ate that last jar....

I'm hoping to work on chicken coop stuff tonight.

And maybe pull out the winter squash. It's mostly dead now anyways. I'm going to put some peas along that trellis.

Has anyone tried a method of carrot planting that involves making a gel of cornstarch? It's an interesting thing. The neighbor that I mentioned above just did that and her carrots are sprouting beautifully and she won't have to thin. The basic steps: let carrot seed soak for a few days until they start to sprout, make a gel with cornstarch and water, let it cool completely, add the seed. Somehow the gel keeps the seeds separate. Then, pipe that stuff in a row and lightly cover with soil.

Okay...I need to get back to it.

HJ, sounds like arthritis.. Is the swelling in a joint? I have four finger joints it affected. They started as you describe. They resolve after a while, and you may have a bump as a reminder. Check out verifiable arthritis sites.

I saw these on Amazon while I was looking for face masks. I thoroughly researched before buying. But what sold me was one of the pro's--people aren't tempted to touch the mask to make it more comfortable or to scratch an itchy nose, etc. They came today. SO comfortable! Yay!! https://www.amazon.com/MAGID-Reusable-Clear-Safety-Shields/dp/B088L99Y7Y/ref=redir_mobile_desktop?ie=UTF8&aaxitk=wVWqQxdAJBFEmlodmKFigA&hsa_cr_id=3142382930001&pd_rd_r=cf2a3db9-886a-48da-b59b-ec4b0dae91b4&pd_rd_w=ISH2i&pd_rd_wg=2yA4F&ref_=sbx_be_s_sparkle_mcd_asin_2_img

Update: https://www.nbcnews.com/shopping/wellness/face-shields-coronavirus-n1234773

Ten Monarch caterpillars on the milkweed in front. Yay. This is the second batch. There were 20-30 on the milkweed at the school. I do believe, however, the black swallowtails are done for the summer, which is okay, since they stripped the fennel clean--both here and at Lincoln. lol. Oops, I lied. The swallowtails are NOT done. I just walked by and saw this little dude/dudette on the parsley.

I had 2 more snake sitings in the front shop bed. I saw it go into the bed as I approached. Smallish. I think it was a water snake. Solid gray. But I still waved my knife through the weeds before weeding. And I must have scared the poor thing, because as I was leaving, it was outside of the bed, and dived back in. And Garry had been buy earlier with the weed eater along the borders of that bed. Snake must have been terrified! Oh--and Garry killed a pygmy rattlesnake in the veggie bed where I saw it yesterday (day before?). Aha. So everyone remember to watch for snakes.

I have been griping about not being able to find any beet seeds around here. About an hour ago my great grandson came in with a half pound of beet seed, I am a happy old man. When some of this mud drys up there is some seed going into the ground.

hazelinok, the fly sticks would work fine in chicken house. Just hang them high where they can’t get to them, and secure them where they can’t blow down. I put a zip tie on mine and they can’t blow loose. Worst that could happen is they knock them down. There is no poison involved.

Jen if you figure out the keyboard problem let me know!

Grandson is here doing school. His headphones are broken, luckily we have a pair. We'll see what meltdowns we have today.

Farmgardener, I will tell Ron to look for some of those fly traps. Would be good to catch them outside before they come in. I used the stinky traps around the chickens, worked great. It seems like there's a point in late summer when we're always inundated with flies. Like spring time ants it doesn't last long, but is soooo annoying. My grandson is afraid of the flies. He says they look like bees. He said there was a fly in the toilet. I said drown it. Huh? Oooh. I think they have their house treated regularly for bugs, so he gets an education when he comes here. Wonder what he'd think about an outhouse? I was scared of my grandma's outhouse...and the chickens along the way.

I miss lunches with the Y girls and family parties...and going to the Y...and visiting my dad. Ron went to the cardiologist the other day, in St. John's Hospital. They made him check in at the main desk, they made him put a surgical mask on OVER his cloth mask then the doctor's office had him take the cloth mask off and just wear the surgical mask. A friend sent pics of her granddaughter's first communion ... in a mask.

Glad you got beet seeds Larry. There's another thing for the school Nancy.

TTFN

My cilantro is sprouting. The bed where its planted catches water off the eave of the house when it rains. Its been flooded this week, although it has good drainage. I should've kept it soaked, probably watering every day if not twice a day.

Glad to hear it's sprouting Lynn! It probably loved the day or two of cooler temps and all the rain.

Thanks for the arthritis tips, Nancy. I'll check out some sources. Honestly, I thought that little knot probably was related to arthritis. But the swelling in my finger now isn't in a joint. It's under my nail and to the side. The herbs have been soothing and have helped some....but I use my hands so much and my finger gets "injured" several times a day.

I'll make an appointment to see my doctor next week. I hate making time to got to doctor appointments and I hate taking antibiotics even more. I have a bad, bad feeling I'll be told to rest my finger/hand. There's really no time for that. Depending on others to do the dishes, feed the animals, do garden chores is awful to me. My jobs require hand use a lot too.

Didn't get much done in the garden. Just okra and southern pea harvest. Cleaned up and organized garden produce. Has anyone pickled West Indian Gherkins?

Scott, The 50s sound so nice! We won't cool off as much down here, but anything will be an improvement over the horrible August heat.

Jen, I had migraines all my life from about my teens until my mid-50s. I could tell that most of the time they were somewhat linked to monthly hormonal changes, but nothing ever really worked to control them. Then, two things happened. I read that taking magnesium can help a lot, so I tried that, and it helped a great deal but did not totally eliminate them. Then, I went through menopause and my migraine headaches were gone, just like that, never to return. I had no idea that would happen. Chris' migraines are more like yours and seem linked to allergens and pressure changes related to weather systems. It amazes me how different factors set off migraines in different people. Having seven puppies for company would be very soothing.

I keep hoping for normal too, but in our area, normal is fading away and we are getting further from normal, not closer. It is quite vexing.

Jennifer, The masks you mentioned will be so cute, and I just hate the thought that trunk or treat and other holiday traditions may have to be drive-bys this year. The children have lost so much of their usual routines and traditions already this year, and it is a shame they'll likely have a very different sort of Halloween too. We expect the same sort of changes here too, although I haven't heard that for sure yet.

I haven't tried that method of seed-starting with carrots, but imagine it will work just fine. It kind of reminds me of the way that pre-soaking tomato seeds gives you a little natural gel-sac of moisture around them that keeps them hydrated enough to sprout easily.

Nancy, We have clear face shields packed away in our "serious" Covid-19 box of supplies that we'll use to keep one another safe if one of us here in the house comes down with it and is quarantining or recovering at home. I ordered them in February or March, and bought them through a hardware store at the same time I got other masks, new filters for respirators we already had and gloves, The ones we have are reusable, and we'd wear them over our N-95 or P-100 respirator type masks (which we've had since Chris was potentially exposed to Ebola in whatever year that was....I guess 2014). We probably (and hopefully) never will need them, but I wanted to have 2 of them here at the house just in case. When our daughter-in-law works on the hospital's COVID-19 floor, she has to wear one on top of their already fairly elaborate PPE....not that I am complaining on her behalf because I want for her and her coworkers to be kept as safe as possible. Her hospital appears to have enough PPE for everyone and to have multiple safeguards in place...like a mask + goggles or a mask + face shields. As far as I know, not very many personnel at her hospital have contracted Covid-19 while working and I think their strict PPE protocol is helping keep them safe.

I'm glad Gary killed the pygmy rattler---absolutely no rattlesnakes are tolerated around our house, garden or yard because they are so dangerous. We are not having many snake issues this year. I am not sure if it is all the perpetual rain and flooding we had from last fall through very late spring, or if it is that all the feral cats I have been feeding are also feeding on rodents, thereby giving the snakes little reason to slither around near the house, but I'm glad we are not seeing them. I also don't know where all the feral cats came from, but we had several deaths of older folks in our neighborhood last year and again this year, and I wonder if they'd been feeding these cats and so the cats had to journey around the neighborhood a bit until they found somebody who'd feed them after they lost the person who'd been taking care of them.

Larry, Your great-grandson is a awesome fellow! You should have plenty of beets now.

Amy, I hope there were no meltdowns today. I think virtual learning must be so much harder on the younger ones who have the shorter attention span anyway.

Our kindergarten-aged granddaughter is attending traditional in-person school (for however long it lasts) and she loves every single minute of it. She'd be despondent if she had to switch to virtual schooling and couldn't see all her friends in person every day, so for her sake, I hope her school doesn't have to shut down the in-person learning. Our sixth grade granddaughter is attending an online school that is STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) oriented and has a very strict, regimented schedule and she loves it (although this is only her first week, so we'll see if the love lasts). They wear a uniform and some of their classes are Zoom and some are self-paced on the computer, and they keep her busy all day long until 4 or 4:30 p.m. Chris says she is so tired every day (tons of homework, which sounds funny since all her schooling is at home) that she can barely stay awake until her usual bedtime, which is fairly early anyway. I think each of these 2 children is in the educational program that works best for their age and personality.

I cannot get used to the masks. Oh, I wear them. I understand they do some good---Texas had horrible transmission rates this summer that dropped as soon as the latest mask rules were put in effect, so even a caveman could see/understand that the masks were making a difference. I still completely hate wearing them though.

All the Covid-9 news from our county is bad. Cases increase daily, after we kept them an an extremely low level for months. We had our first Covid-19 death in the county announced today. A very dear friend of ours who lives here in our county is in the hospital with it, in ICU, sedated and on a ventilator, and of course, not even allowed the peace and comfort of having a loved one sitting by his bedside holding his hand. We are praying for his recovery. This is sort of freaky....I actually thought of him this morning when they announced we had our first death. It was that sort of thought like "OMG, I hope it wasn't X because we haven't heard from him at all in a couple of weeks", and then I read the age group of the deceased person and realized he was a slightly higher age group than our friend, who is one year younger than I am. Then I told myself that I was being silly, that maybe our friend and his wife were on vacation and that's why I hadn't seen or heard them at any fires or on our GroupMe chats. Then, two hours later we get the GroupMe message about him being seriously ill. (sigh) I already took this pretty seriously, as y'all know, but knowing it has hit him and put him in the ICU has made me sort of double down and resolve to go out less and to be extremely cautious when we do so. I love being at home, but this summer home has almost begun to start feeling like a prison.

Tim has even more employees who have tested positive or are quarantining while awaiting their test results, and I particularly hate that part of his job. He just tries to always wear a mask in the buildings at work, and to social distance to the extent he can and to just be careful. There's only so much when you are out there in the work world exposed to the public every single day.

There's nothing new to report from the garden since it is so muddy. The plants do look exceptionally happy though and already are making new growth. There seems to be less grasshoppers. Everything here is still dripping moisture and there's mud and there's puddles and lots of dew in the mornings, and some fog, and I just love it. The dewpoints still are lower and the temperatures/heat indices are so much milder than what we had for the last 3 or 4 weeks prior to the arrival of the rainfall. There's still heavy hummingbird traffic. In fact, it is really heavy, and I feel certain they are beginning to migrate through. They eat ravenously and fight over the feeders, etc., like hungry migrating ones always do. It is a really, really good hummingbird year. Prior to all the rainfall the hummingbirds were sick of being hot and dry and were bathing and splashing in the water-filled ant moats that hang above each hummingbird feeder. They were quite a cute sight. Now that it has rained and there is more natural moisture out there, nobody is splashing and playing in the ant moats anymore. There's tons of butterflies, a lot of bees but most especially bumblebees, and lots of frogs. For the first week in September, it is really nice, especially with the brown grass starting to green up again.

I'm looking forward to next week's cooldown, which won't really arrive for us until next Wed, I believe, but before then we have another round of highs in the lower to mid 90s to get through. I am planning to make a pot of chili next week. We haven't had homemade chili since the weather got hot, so we're ready to have some. I just hope we don't get an early first freeze like last year.

Dawn

Happy Friday! I don't know why I feel so happy today. It's not like I'm excited for the weekend. Yep, we have cilantro, also, Lynn. And so does the school. That's good. Suzanne loves cilantro and I promised her she'd have it.

I was way wrong on swallowtail caterpillars. I saw six without even trying to find them. And am seeing lots of tiger swallowtails up in the trees. And yes, heavy hummingbird traffic at the feeders. Garry's added a fifth feeder now, and is filling them twice a day.

I think I'll go mow. Later!

I had rain in the gauge when I got back from camping overnight Wednesday night. Should have mowed on Saturday or Sunday... as Monday was to wet... but I did mow today, did laundry, and even baked banana nut bread.

My okra is still putting on... I may have to dehydrate some. At the moment I eat okra for lunch every single day....

My lettuce is coming up nicely, but my beets didn't at all. I really think, the soil was to hot. I plan to replant during the cool spell coming up.

Does anyone make anything with their figs? I may have a jar or two of fig preserves.. if they continue to ripen like they have been.

Guess, the tree gets to stay put... last year, having about 3 figs I thought, if nothing this year I would move it.

Well, I think I'll get off here, and wash my dishes.

Moni

Dawn, I'll hold out hope that they subside. I have noticed they arent nearly as painful as they were when I was a teenager, but they are more frequent. Upside to working from home, i can call out and deal with it, then login and not have to waste a whole day.

Cilantro and carrots have popped up in one of my containers. And my pomegranate has a couple of buds forming. Its nowhere near large enough to produce actual fruit, and i need to find out whether it can survive outside or not. I keep getting contradicting information. Dill is popping up again, i may not get any seed but i can at least get some leaves (are they called leaves?) to dry.

Why is there always something wanting to eat my plants !

I picked these off my Purple Leaf Sand Cherry this morning. They'd eaten half the leaves off. And they did it quickly. I mowed around it Thursday and it was normal. This wasn't all of them

Lynn, all God's critters have gotta eat, maybe it is time to go fishing, they may be hungry also, if so then you get to eat. We are all in the food chain. I was talking to my neighbor last evening. He tells me we are going to eat venison this winter. His garden is next to my wildlife garden, and his okra was stripped. Our pumpkins have been eaten back so many times that we wont get any pumpkins, except the ones I have a hot wire around. When I checked the protected pumpkins just before dark I had about 24, some pretty nice. His wife was wanting to can pumpkins this year, I will give her all she wants. I hope to rely on sweet potatoes. I will keep a few butternut and Ole timey cornfield pumpkins, along with some Seminole, but I expect to run out of storage room.

I expect to plant some turnips and Daikon radishes today. The radishes will be mostly for ground building. And if I get time I will plant the pesky deer something also, even though the have food everywhere.

I really am sorry about your loss, but It could have been worse, and hope for a better day tomorrow.

Our roommate keeps asking "what can I put on my plants to keep the bugs from eating them?" And isn't happy when I tell her "try this, or try that, but I'm not using pesticides in my garden." I'm pretty sure shes annoyed with me at this point, she lost every one of her squash, gourds, watermelon, and pumpkins to aphids and squash bugs. I told her in Feb that oklahoma gardening isn't for wimps.

I bought two of these sand cherries last summer, paid about $100 in total. And a lot of time invested in getting them established in the right spot. This is not like a hornworm eating on my tomato plants. I have no problem applying a pesticide to ornamental or landscape garden, if I didn't , I would not have any plants at all. I'm just glad I caught these when I did, one more day, and they'd killed off my sand cherry. And this just as I got rid of the scale eating up my boxwoods. Constant battle.

Wow! Sand cherries. Native--I for sure will have to get a couple for Lincoln! We have black cherry trees out here, and I'm finding saplings in my flower beds. I'll have to move some of those to the back, since they're almost as valuable to pollinators and butterflies as oaks are. That's too bad, Lynn. I was just reading that sand cherries are hosts for numerous butterflies, so you have your work cut out for you.

Jennifer--did I tell you about learning that violets are the host plants for the gorgeous Diana fritillary (and other fritillaries) butterfly? I think of you now all the while I'm out cussing the violet that grow rampant in my yard and flower beds--and now have learned I have to celebrate them instead! SO funny, So grow little violets, grow!

Suzanne called me in a panic yesterday afternoon and said the Monarch caterpillars had nearly stripped the two good-sized clumps of milkweed that morning--what to do. I told her to try and find a nursery on their way home (they were out of town); meanwhile, I'd stop and look, and if an emergency would get some from here for them. (Unfortunately, I was in town when she called.). So GDW and I went by to check, and not only were there NO leaves on the milkweeds, there were no caterpillars! I looked around as best I could in that crowded bed, but nada. I know there were a lot of fast-maturing ones when I was there 3 days earlier--so hoped maybe some survived to pupate. And had to laugh when I got home--I couldn't have taken them any because mine were also stripped. I think a lot of Monarch supporters are having similar situations this year. So I guess that's a good thing. And I have to laugh at my enormous clump of bronze fennel in my big center bed. It's almost totally gone from the swallowtail caterpillars.

Summer squash just keeps on keeping on. And the cucumbers and okra, of course. Too bad the Monarchs don't like summer squash. I'm looking forward to getting to Broken Arrow next week so I can get some bedding plants and get them in. Nothing much going on here.

Yay for the violets, Nancy!

And...you still have summer squash? The bugs killed ours long ago. Even the C. Moschata.

I am pooped. So tired. We shopped today and I don't have to tell anyone that shopping is very unpleasant right now. However, Dillards allows you to try on clothes and I found a dress. It's not exactly the bohemian/fairy princess dress that I wanted. But it fits nicely and its a forest green color...and it's Robin Hoodish (not really), so I bought it. Paid more than what I wanted to pay, but it's done. DONE!

Came home around 3 and sliced, breaded and froze okra. Then figured out how to use my pressure canner as a water bath canner and pickled some okra. On my own. The lids sealed so hopefully we're good.

My house is getting to the point that I am very unhappy. I know a clean house isn't the most important thing in the world....but I enjoy a clean home. It just feels nice to me. However, a clean house isn't anywhere in my near future.

I am hoping the robot vacuums are cheap this Christmas. That will at least help.

We are celebrating Mason's BD tomorrow and that will be fun. It's at a very good restaurant that I haven't been to in a long time. Then grocery shopping and then maybe starting more lettuce seed.

In between all of those things is animal care. Lots of animal care. There's always one of them doing something they shouldn't be doing or somewhere they shouldn't be hanging out. One of the fat buff orpingtons has figured out how to get out of the chicken yard. And she isn't swift. She is dumb--beautiful but dumb and wanders over by the dogs. So, I'm constantly leaving whatever task I'm working on to catch her or entice her back to the yard. And everyone is always hungry all the time.

The 3 young pullets mingled with the main flock today. It went very well. Having a good rooster helps with that. They're roosting in their own coop, though. It will be a gradual thing as always.

Momma Blossom will be tired of her chicks soon and those two chicks will need to move to the pullet coop at that time. Although, at least one of those chicks is a cockerel. Tom may or may not start doing meat birds and these two could be the start of it. They won't be THE meat birds, but they might be the parents of.

I've named the one I think is a girl. Her name is Gwendolyn, which is sorta funny because Gwendolyn (actually related to Jennifer/Guinevere.) means white ...and Gwendolyn is a dark cornish.

I'm simply rambling now.

Jennifer, I wish I had the" get up and go" like you do. I am so slow it takes me all day to fall down.

I started out the day planing to plant some fall garden, mow the lawn, and try to clean the deck. Well, I got started mowing the lawn and through the drive belt off the mower, that had to happen down in the bar ditch where it is too wet to work on the mower, plus it was up in the middle of the day and it was too hot to work on a mower out in the sun. I was very tired by then, and came in to tell Madge that I was going to walk to the wildlife garden to get the tractor to drag the mower out of the ditch and up under a tree for shad to work in. I was really pooped by then and Madge said that she would drive me to the tractor. Well I got the tractor and pulled the mower up under a tree, lifted it up and found it was a bigger job than I had expected, plus the mower was too hot to work on. I came in hot and tired, ask Madge to look on the computer for some dirty words to use to fix the mower. ( I learned that form reading one of Amy's post about Ron repairing a mower). Madge was no help. I came in to cool off and rest a while, went to sleep, and barely got the mower repaired and 1/3 of the lawn mowed before dark.

I drove the tractor back to the wildlife garden just before dark, so I could could hook the electric fence to the tractor battery, as I was there I saw 4 deer come out of the thicket and go into my neighbors garden, at least he will come home from vacation to a clean garden. I still have to clean mine.

Well I had better get to bed, daughter and granddaughter will be over here for lunch, and I need to get some rest before then.

Larry, you're so funny. My drive isn't always healthy--mentally, I mean. I'm so afraid I'm going to miss something in life that I want to do or experience that I push myself too much at times. As I'm getting older, it's getting worse.

It seems like you got a lot done yesterday, actually.

It is a bit annoying that the day is ending earlier than I would like. I'm not quite ready for the darker part of the year. I need that hour of daylight that has faded with the waning year. In June, we walk the dogs around 8:30 and even later. Now, we better get going by 7:30...maybe 8 if we don't mind walking in the dark, which I don't. And I'm just not finished with my outdoor work by 7:30. Rambling again...

I hope you enjoy lunch with your girls.

I think my old kombucha is maybe starting to have the beginnings of a SCOBY. Maybe.

(and maybe I talked about this at the other place....)

Alright, happy Sunday, y'all. I suspect Dawn will be around to start this week's thread.

Ha ha ha ha ha!

I thought about doing it...but I decided to wait and see if anyone else would...no one ?

I have been out working on the addition to the south garden. I have been hauling buckets of compost and bermuda grass and placing it on the addition. I dont really want the bermuda, but this is stuff I scraped out of the pasture. I will take a shower and let the garden dry while I am visiting with the girls. I will till and remove bermuda after they go home. Madge has gone to visit her granddaughter in north west AR., so I can work till I drop today, which wont take long. Madge makes me rest if she is home.