Glad you got some rain. I was blessed with nearly 1" a few days ago.

Good luck with the rest of the summer.

Dax

I was giddy with joy when it rained here yesterday.
Twice!!

Simple pleasures, my friends!

Rained here yesterday as well!... just about a half inch, but will take what I can get.

awesome plot there Gary.

maybe mine will look that good in a decade or so...

Everything is on soaker hoses weekly at my place (very common conifers and assorted trees, nothing fancy) even though we had rain 7 days ago, the 10 day is bone dry and I'm trying to stay ahead of what I know will be a dry spell until the Gulf systems get active later in the year -- High pressure has set up, so we're blocked from the drifting Gulf rains....

great garden.. thx for the pix

ken

The saying goes, In South Dakota your always two weeks from a drought, it's been two weeks, we could use a shot of rain. Congrats on your rain, hope we're next. It's rained all around us, got to be our turn soon or I'll be getting out the soaker hose. Beautifull pictures!

Heh, we're at a little over two inches since last night. I can hear the ground drinking!

+oM

Glad somebody's been getting rain - dry as a bone here. There was 3 inches of rain 20 mile North of here - nothing right here. I haven't seen rain in 4 weeks - I've forgotten what thunder sounds like! The ground is baked hard, the wind has been sucking the moisture out of the crops, it's been scorching hot - Pretty bleak picture here!

Great you got some rain in the midwest. Drought sucks. Unfortunately my pity for all of you is minimal since most years the upper midwest hogs all the precipitation while much of the southeast gets hosed and is bone dry plus hot as hell for months on end. I would love to live someplace where drought is a rare event rather than what seems like the norm anymore. This year I am currently more than 5" below normal and others on the board in Florida are way beyond inches behind.

"I would love to live someplace where drought is a rare event rather than what seems like the norm anymore."

From looking into this, it seems few areas in the US are truly drought proof. In the attached "movie", the PNW and Maine seem to seldom show up in the bright red serious drought category. But of course the PNW is dry in summer anyhow, just not very warm so that coupled with the wet winters keeps it from looking like Southern California. Given that I was looking only at the summer months, and that the data is of hydrological drought instead of short term rainfall deficiency, this just implies that the PNW never has a dry winter. Which we already knew anyhow! At best you could be somewhere with anomalously high rain, and then in dry years you'd still come out ahead of other people. There are various such areas of relatively enhanced rain in the Eastern US: the most prominent of course is Transylvania County, NC (wettest place in the US East Coast: 70-90 inches per year) but a similar effect can be found along the "Front Ranges" of Virginia SW of Charlottesville (http://www.prism.oregonstate.edu/state_products/index.phtml?id=VA) although there seem to be no towns in those areas, and they are even colder in winter than Transylvania County. (which has rather warm winter averages, but discouragingly cold performance during major freezes)

To be drought free you really have to be in one of the moister maritime-modified climates (i.e., not Northern California), or a monsoonal climate, but then you have to put up with what you may see as the annoyances of some such climates. Cornwall, UK's 66F average July high doesn't exactly make for poolside BBQ weather if that's what you want. But I doubt they have to water very often there. Auckland, NZ might be a little more appealing to someone from South Carolina. And China and Japan have reliable summer precipitation, but it may seem like too much of a good thing. I've wondered if the highland areas along the SE coast of South America - like Curitiba and Serra Gaúcha, Brazil, have many droughts...I doubt it. These are kind of a unique hybrid maritime/subtropical highland/monsoon-like climate. Even Sao Paolo basically fits this category, being surprisingly mild in summer for somewhere near the tropics that is only 2400' high - all time high only 99F, summer average high only 82F. And very wet in summer - it's kind of like San Diego with free and abundant overhead irrigation.

Here is a link that might be useful: drought movie

Of course, I assumed you wanted a climate with seasons and no drought. If you just want 365 days of humidity and thunderstorms every day, there are numerous tropical areas to move to.

The 'best' climate on earth, in my opinion is inland Northern California. They get genuine four seasons(though no real monster snows most years), looong growing seasons and highs rarely get into the 90s/100s. Rain is rare but not 'drought-like' conditions. You can grow a HUGE variety of plants there(including spruce/pines/other colder weather plants) and they get plentiful sunshine.

Everyone's idea of a perfect climate though varies. I am VERY uncomfortable in weather above 80 unless I am IN the water or there's a strong breeze. I also don't like frigid cold, below 20 is miserable and isn't a good thing for gardening either. I tolerate our more-grey skies here and enjoy what sunshine we get and in turn I am rewarded with plants that grow slowly but happily and droughts are a term very seldom used.

The heat and humidity of the Midwest/Southeast/South is just so oppressive to me, I wouldn't live there unless I was inprisoned.

To each his/her own I guess.

-Will

Will,
Do you mean some place like Sonoma County? About 25 miles from the Bay or so? Yeah, I agree, that might be the best US climate. I think I'd find the immediate Bay Area just a little too chilly, even though it permits many oddball montane plants to be grown (like the giant daisy trees). OTOH, the central Valley can be WAY too hot. You do have to water anything interesting (ok, you can see I prefer broad-leaved evergreens to nolinas & agaves...) but it's not an uncertainty, it's a certainty.
An example of this climate is the wonderful Sonoma Horticultural Nursery. Mild enough in summer for big leaf & yellow rhododendrons, mild enough in winter for some citrus and many other tender plants, but with enough winter for hardy fruits and classic perennials. Highs are in the low-mid 80s but nights always fall back to the 50s. He has a couple wells that obviously supply water that is sufficiently non-alkaline to keep the rhodies happy. Oh the conifer front, there is a large Araucaria angustifolia there.

Yes David, more or less, maybe a little North for colder Winter temps. I couldn't garden without Fall color and unless you have something CLOSE to resembling frosts, you usually don't get that.

Santa Rosa is my cup of weather-tea. 70s and low 80s and plenty of sun in a long growing season. Fog is more common again but it keeps the days managably cool and I think plants LIKE fog.

Cool but not brutal Winters, some frost, some rare snows. Four seasons. Can grow just about anything non-tropical.

It's probably why a 2-bedroom shanty costs $400,000 though...

Here is a link that might be useful: Santa Rosa Climate

I'd say western North Carolina would be the ideal place to live - say Boone or Bryson City. The next best place would be one of the Canadian Maritime provinces, like Nova Scotia or P.E.I

davidrt28 7

Pickens, WV averages 70" a yr. Pocono Mnts, PA a similar amount. Rain-shadowed Upper Tract, WV avgs 25".

However, the local landform geology & soil can have even more effect. Trees in Upper Tract along/near water sources & deep soil are better watered than trees on steep, rocky slopes in nearby Pickens.

Up over 3 inches in the last 48 hrs. Not bad at all. Where was this stuff the first half of June?

+oM

jimbobfeeny, that's funny, I've also thought of Boone, NC as an ideal spot climate-wise. The elevation does away w/the incessant summer heat of the nearby lowlands. It's far enough south to avoid most winter arctic blasts, but high enough to get generous snowfall, even intercepting lake-effect snow from the NW. And, I don't know the numbers, but would guess it gets ~60" precip a yr.

Boone isn't bad; unfortunately you pay for those mild summers with winter record lows that are 10F-15F lower or so than Piedmont of NC. In looking around ages ago I couldn't find anywhere in the NC mountains with mild summers (> 2700 ft.) that didn't have at least one freeze of -10F or below. Brevard has an astonishing -20F in the 1930s. Compare to Durham, NC's 100 year low of 0F. Can't have something for nothing! Certainly for someone coming from a zn 4,5,6 in the midwest or northeast, it would overall be a vast improvement, climate-wise at least. And if you wanted, say, a garden of conifers and classic perennials, you'd be much better off in the mountains.

rain:
http://www.sercc.com/cgi-bin/sercc/cliGCStP.pl?nc0977

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.sercc.com/cgi-bin/sercc/cliGCStT.pl?nc0977

Finally, after a month of bone dry conditions with above average temps and pillaging winds, several inches of rain fell to the 400 plants I planted over the last 16 months. My heart filled with joy with this simple pleasure.

I can finally spend some time with my wife and young daughter.

Damn, that was a dream! Raped by temps in the 90s and 30mph winds yet again. Still no rain.

Please can you identify the upright fir on the right of the first photo. Thanks.
Richard

Richard,
The tree is an Abies alba 'Pyramidalis'. It got spread out a bit from several inches of heavy wet snow earlier this spring. It also does not get very much sun. Still, a really nice tree and anchors a corner of the bed.
Gary

Richard,
The tree is an Abies alba 'Pyramidalis'. It got spread out a bit from several inches of heavy wet snow earlier this spring. It also does not get very much sun. Still, a really nice tree and anchors a corner of the bed.
Gary

Thanks, Gary. I agree it is a lovely, distinctive plant. A friend of mine has a large one in his garden and it looks great. Think I will have to get one!
Richard