Wolflover, So do y'all still live the same location, or did you move after that? Randy, Congratulations to your daughter on her outstanding performance this past weekend! AND congratulations to the parents who are nurturing her talent! I was hoping you'd report back to us on how she did on Saturday! Ouch! I hate to see a tree that size brought down by the weather. Especially since Shumard is one of my faves. I have learned to fear straight line winds after seeing the damage they can do!!! The worst winds I can think of that we have been hit with since moving here in 1999 were in the 60 to 80 m.p.h. range. Try walking in wind that is blowing that hard! One night the wind hit our house so suddenly and so hard that it felt like a truck had hit the house! Woke us right up. I know it was in the springtime, because we had to get up in the middle of the night and move all the garden transplants from the screened-in porch to the house, as the temps. dropped rapidly. The second time it happened, we had a derecho expected, according to the weather guy on t.v., who was right for once. At about the time we were expecting it, we went outside and walked down the driveway to the street, so there wouldn't be any trees to block our view. It was so strange. Everything was deadly still and quiet...and then here it came. You could hear/see it coming. Within a few seconds the far-away howl of the wind and the intense rustling of the trees hit us. It was amazing. I guess we've had derechos since, but that was our first, and was so dramatic. That wind came rushing down to us and past us like a freight train. I had never heard of derecho winds until we moved to Oklahoma, and I lived my whole life in the Fort Worth area, so its not like I lived in a place that didn't have severe weather. Yes, it is raining VERY LIGHTLY here and I am so glad!! We need it desperately, and they say it will rain lightly most of the day. I checked the rain gauge just now and it appears that we have received a whole 3 or 4 one-hundredths of an inch. Isn't that pathetic? I don't know when we last had a good rain at our house. All we're getting this year is light, drizzly stuff that doesn't amount to much. But maybe if it rains all day long, we'll end up with a tenth of an inch or two. I feel like we live in a bizarre Bermuda-triangle area when it comes to the weather! Dawn

Sheri, During the last week I have begun watering my garden heavily because at this point it is either water heavily or close the gate and walk away and let it all die. For the last 6 days, I have watered every other day for up to 2 to 4 hours each time. My soil remains bone dry. If you go into the garden an hour or two after I water, you can stick your finger into the soil and it is moist, though certainly not wet. Eight or ten hours later, it is bone dry. The next day is it dry and baked hard, even under mulch and you can't pull the weeds. This is in raised beds. Obviously the pathways and grade level beds are even worse. It is not uncommon for our clay soil to shrink/contract and crack in hot weather. However, this is the first year ever that I have had cracks in the ground IN THE GARDEN where I am watering every other day. So, if watering every other day and mulching can't prevent the ground from having 1" wide cracks in it, what will? I am rapidly giving up on my tomatoes because the spider mite population is exploding. I am about to the point where I can't see the point in watering the tomatoes any more because the spider mites are so heavy on the plants, the stink bugs are hurting the fruit and there is no rain relief in sight. Yesterday I was in the yard when the water company guys pulled up down alongside the road to read the water meter and I remember thinking "Uh oh, a heart-attack-inducing water bill is going to arrive next week." However, I did pick about 60 nice tomatoes last night, with about half of them being pretty large ones from varieties like JD's Special C-Tex, Indian Stripe, Dr. Wyche's Yellow and Gary O Sena and the other half being from Goliath, Early Goliath, Heidi and Cluster Goliath. Sixty tomatoes from 22 plants isn't bad and most of the plants have several green tomatoes still on them, and I need to check the other tomatoes this morning and pick fruit, including cherries. I already picked squash while outside turning on the water. When spider mite levels get this high (even some of our bermuda grass has the stippling typical of spider mites), if you leave heavily-infested plants in the ground, the mites begin to spread from the tomato plants to everything else. So, I think it likely I'll soon begin removing the most heavily-infested tomato plants in the hopes I can save the rest of the garden. So far, the mites are mostly on bush beans, which are winding down production anyway, and on the tomato plants. I don't want them to spread to my squash, peppers, melons, southern peas, okra etc. You just know it is going to 'hurt' to start yanking out tomato plants. Normally, my container plants are my fall-back plants if the ones in the garden are declining, but all my container grown plants had mites first, so I'm yanking them. So, I think it is possible your soil is staying far too dry, but I also think it may be impossible to water it "enough" unless you have a bottomless well and don't have to pay for municipal water. I have been watching the rapid increase in my county's Keetch Byram Drought Index, a fire index used to convey how much moisture is in the soil. For firefighters, it provides insight into how intensely fires will burn because at a certain point the soil is so dry that duff/humus layers burn and even roots burn underground. We had a lot of trouble with underground roots burning during the 2005-06 fire season. After watching the KBDI for years and comparing its numbers to what I see personally in our garden, I know that it isn't worth my while to try to keep tomatoes alive in our specific soil if the KBDI is at or above 500. The last time I checked it a day or two ago, it was at 467. I know that the "Decision Day" is coming soon and so I need to be making plans for what varieties of southern peas I'll use to replace the tomato plants. I don't think I'll take out all the plants at once, but rather will start by yanking those with no fruit, then those that are most heavily infested with mites or whatever, and eventually they'll all be gone. I might try to keep a row or two of bite-sized tomato plants going. It just depends on how hard they're being hit by the mites and stink bugs. Usually in a drought year, I stop watering the garden in early July, but have stopped in mid-June once or twice. In 2008, some lifelong gardeners who live near us stopped watering their garden about a week after I did, and they told me it was the first time they'd ever "given up" and stopped watering. It just got to the point that it didn't make sense economically and also wasn't making enough of an impact to justify spending the money on the water. I'd say that in our neck of the woods, most folks are about at that point now. I've already been watching some gardens wit soil that's not nearly as 'improved' as mine, and either they've already stopped watering or the watering doesn't appear to be helping at all. A few folks that often have gardens that are a half-acre or an acre or larger planted cool-season crops and then had such poor results that they didn't even plant warm-season crops. The weather is always a cruel taskmaster here, and this year it is so much worse than usual. I don't think my garden is about 'done' but I think my tomatoes are. Loretta, The news out of Medicine Park this morning isn't good, is it? The last report I saw says at least 5000 acres burned and about 15 homes destoyed. They have roughly 25 fire departments onscene and should get more help today from regional fire managers, Forest Service personnel, and maby air support from tanker choppers or planes that can drop water laced with fire retardent. I hope they can stop this fire before it destroys any more structures, and let's not even thing about all the wildlife displaced when their habitat burns. We have religiously removed all cedar trees within 100 yards of our house because when they are burning they can literally 'explode' and send burning sap flying through the air. Wherever that sap lands, it starts new fires. However, our next door neigbors have tons of cedars on their acreage, and some of those are only 10-15 feet from our southern property line. There's nothing we can do about those. I was looking at our unirrigated aceage yesterday and everything is dead or dormant out back of the house, which is west of the house. Down along the road east of the house, the only real green remaining is the Johnson grass and sumac in the bar ditch. How sad is that? I hadn't been watering the yard around the house, but because of the prospect of wildfires, I've started doing that, so we have a little bit of green around the house. Not a lot, but a little. You can easily tell what has been watered and what hasn't because of the sharp difference in color. The good thing about drought is you don't have to spend a lot of time mowing, because there isn't much to mow. Dawn

Ok, then she is tornado savvy, at least. (smile) As I recall, it was 3 days after Hurricane Donna, before the flooding receeded enough to drive on our street in Miami, and we were on the surge side of the storm. It wasn't too bad, but you do tend to wish for a bath. You flush the commodes from tub water filled up ahead of the storm, and of course, you store as much water as possible for drinking, and have as much edible food without cooking, on hand as possible. The power will usually be out for days, although the newer underground power subdivisions, have made that less of a problem, in the cities. Generally speaking, though, it is just like having to camp out in your house, because the yard is too wet, and you can't go anywhere, without a boat. If the water doesn't flood the house, itself, you will be ok, as long as the house doesn't sustain any major damage. The way they build houses these days, though, most frame homes can't withstand the full brunt of a hurricane. We had reinforced concrete block/stucco, with a gravel roof (wind can't get under the shingles), etc. when I lived in Miami. In later years, the building code got sloppy, and they allowed a bunch of frame houses, and then came Andrew. Hope they learned their lesson after that. They could learn a thing or two from Bermuda. As I feared, Ike probably has put Galveston Island on a 10 yr. recovery schedule, as of right now.

Glad you're ok, how scary to have a tornado so close. Alex and I got woken by pounding rain, thunder and sirens going off in our town. On and off they went, the rain and wind would ease up and then it'd start again. Finally went to bed and got woke up again around 3 am. Lauren slept through the whole thing. Lot of wind damage here and in nearby cities. I'm so tired but had to wash some scrubs for work tomorrow, otherwise I'd be in bed already. I hope everyone else is ok. Lot of people died here and surrounding states.