I agree. It's been a long time in coming but I'm beginning to think it may be a wee bit excessive. We received almost two inches Saturday night and it looks like we may have gotten that much again last night with heavy rain expected to continue until early afternoon. "When it rains, it pours."

I don't have to water the lawn! I did plant two new, small areas of lawn last fall next to the new patio on one side of the house. Now it's finally looking better. Another feeding and some seeding of a few thin spots and that will be that!

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The rain woke me up a couple of times, it was coming down pretty hard. What a lovely sound! And it is still coming down hard right now. I put out a measuring cup last night to measure how much rain we get. Time to lay down the mulch!

We had a light amount of rain Saturday night and now it's been raining slowly but steadily since about 4:00 Sunday afternoon, just what is needed. I'm hoping that we get enough capillary action happening in the soil so that most of the heavier rain that is predicted soaks in well. The Merrimack River has been at typical August levels for a couple of weeks, something I haven't ever seen in the spring. Even our sump pump, which tends to run often in the spring, has been August quiet, so between the river and the cellar I know that shallow groundwater is quite low. Because of the almost constant wind and the lack of rain, the soil has been very dry for this time of year, though not deeply dry; it was still quite moist down about 3 inches. The farmer at the end of my road, who is new to the site, has been watching his own mini Dust Bowl going on for a couple of weeks now.

I am particularly relieved that the fire danger is down as the combination of lack of snow, lack of rain, unusually warm temperatures, and wind has been worrisome. My immediate area has been relatively lucky in that nothing has gotten out of control, but least one house was damaged by a brushfire elsewhere in NH. Since plants are greening up and last year's detritus is now well-soaked, I think we can consider ourselves through the worst of the spring fire season.

I put out the rain gauge also, though not until about 6 PM yesterday, so I expect that I may have missed something around 1/4". From indoors, it looks like we may have gotten about 1/2" so far.

I have been doing a lot of chipping and shredding yard waste to use as mulch and it has been so dry that I come in every night feeling like that character in the Charlie Brown comic strip that had clouds of dirt surrounding him.

I must admit the early dry spring has not only been confusing the plants in my landscape but my internal calendar feels off as well. What is different in your landscape this spring?

It started here almost exactly at noon yesterday as a fine mist that slowly increased in intensity over the course of the afternoon but didn't become a raging deluge until sometime during the night. I'm glad it started slow & gentle so the ground could gradually absorb it rather than have it all run off. Wind was pretty strong and brought down more snapped tree limbs that had been caught in the upper branches since the October snowstorm. My rain gauge shows we got a full two inches for which I'm thankful since it hadn't rained in so long. I set out a half dozen large plastic storage bins to catch as much as possible for watering plants when they need it.

What's different in my landscape are the missing perennials like blanket flower & coreopsis that are generally tough as nails but which got pounded into the soil by huge tree limbs in the October storm before they had a chance to go dormant. There's no sign of them. Glad I grew plenty more via winter sowing and can replace them.

My neighbor mowed his dustbowl/lawn on Saturday and the cloud of dust that followed him was about 15 ft. high and wide. I'm surprised he didn't choke on it since he uses a walk-behind mower.

Hey Gardenweed,

At least your neighbor TRIED to cut his dustbowl/lawn! My neighbor did not cut his desert-studded-with-weeds NOT ONE TIME LAST SUMMER. A new record. However, there is a God, people...... There is a For Sale with Sale Pending sign on his house! Thank You Jesus!

debra_boston - hope that Sale Pending sign gets taken down very soon and a SOLD!!! sign put up in its place!

All my neighbors keep their lawns neatly trimmed...consecutively. If Neighbor A mows Saturday morning, Neighbor B will mow Saturday afternoon and Neighbor C will mow at/after dinner time so there's never a quiet moment (before dark) without the sound of roaring engines. Neighbors D, E & F fire their mowers up on Sunday and repeat the pattern. Where I live, minimum lot size is an acre; many homes are built on larger tracts.

Ah the grass looks greener already and I think many of plants have grown a few inches in the past 24 hours.

The only "damage" we had here was that all the petals were knocked off the tulips.