We're in the same situation concerning heat, dryness and grasshoppers. Also have hundreds of black blister beetles, which I am leaving alone this year now that I know their larva eat hopper larva. The tomatoes are almost gone anyway, so they may as well have them. We do still have some wildlife. The birdbath and feeders are in deep shade so see birds, squirrels and frogs there, even see a hummingbird at the feeder and the water most days. In the garden there are a couple selfseeded petunias in the strawberry bed which get watered with the berries. I can't bear to pull them out because they are pretty and the black swallowtails are working them. I also am watering a clump of phlox and some zinnias for them. Keep a pan of water in the garden which I fill every morning. Saw a leopard frog in it the other day. Last evening saw a Hawk Moth on a petunia. Most years this time there are several hundred Surprise Lilies for them, but this year only about a couple dozen have come up and they don't last long even in the shade. It's been a couple weeks since I've seen the garter snake.

I'm not fond of winter either, but if I put on enough clothes and waterproof boots I venture out for a little while even if the temp is in the teens. (Sometimes build a fire in a 5 gallon metal bucket and cut and stack firewood for half a day, warming up as needed. Can't stay out that long in the 100s we're having now. In 90+ heat at 7PM when I water, I spray the water in a fine mist over me and continue watering in damp clothes.

Jeanie, Two of these hard drought years in a row is depressing. It wouldn't surprise me to see this become the USA's worst drought year ever overall. I think it already is just about there.

The flowers I have in part-shade are faring much better than the ones in full sun. They all look worse now than they did a mere week ago. Clearly these high temps in the 105-110 range do not agree with them (and I side with the flowers on this issue 'cause I don't like these temperatures either).

Still blooming in full sun? Morning glories, marigolds, zinnias, western ironweed, periwinkles, nicotiana sylvestris, Laura Bush petunias, cleome, datura, celosia cristata and hardy hibiscus. The coral honeysuckle is blooming and so are the cannas. They are at the garden entry so they get watered whenever I water the tomatoes. I've stopped watering the tomatoes though, so don't know how long the cannas and honeysuckle will keep blooming. Still blooming in full sun with no irrigation whatsoever? 'Strawberry Fields' gomphrena, and both orange-flowered and yellow-flowered trumpet creeper vines. Still blooming in shade? Four o'clocks, but only if they have morning sun, afternoon shade. The four o'clocks in full sun are wilted and done unless good rainfall comes sometimes soon, which seems unlikely..

The last couple of days have toasted the grass. We still had some green in the pasture, but now even the crab grass and Johnson grass blades are curling inward and looking pitiful, not that I care how either one of them look.

I have butterflies in the garden in the early morning hours, and sometimes in the afternoon hours. They're visiting the pickling cucumbers, Armenian cucumbers, winter squash and summer squash, muskmelons and watermelons. I guess the yellow flowers catch their attention. Oh, and I left some carrots in the ground for the swallowtails and those are in bloom, but the swallowtails largely remain AWOL.

Hummers seemed to disappear for a while but are back now and they may be migrating or preparing to.

We have lots of songbirds early in the mornings and evenings, but only doves and crows come out in the heat of the day. I assume that they have no sense or they'd be hiding in the shade like the rest of the birds.

Occasionally I turn on the sprinkler for the chickens on hot days. I only leave it on for 15 or 20 minutes because they like to cool off in the 'rain' from the sprinkler. When I go outside to turn it off, there's often a dozen or more songbirds there in the water with them. It's pretty funny sometimes.

I've seen a couple of the garden spiders, but not huge numbers like in previous years. I am seeing some spiders I don't usually see--I guess they're replacing our usual spiders this year, and quite a few folks are having black widow issues here in southern OK, though we aren't having any more black widows than usual at our house. We are seeing more brown recluse spiders and more scorpions.

The grasshoppers are very bad, but that's probably true 3 our of 5 years here, so I think I've just about gotten used to them. That doesn't mean I like them though. Along with the heat, they are one of my least favorite things about summer in Oklahoma.

Dorothy, We haven't had nearly as many black blister beetles as you're seeing there. They were that bad here once--probably in 2005. It is hard to tolerate them as long as the tomatoes are producing, but once the toms are gone, we might as well let them stay and eat grasshopper eggs. I have noticed that the blister beetles here have moved on from tomatoes to cukes and beans.

I'm seeing your snakes here. They seem especially heavy in the veggie garden this year, but not really out in the yard. I guess that's because there's still some green in the garden, though it is less green every day, and maybe (with luck) they're helping by eating grasshoppers.

Winter never has been my favorite season, but since winter scarcely feels like winter any more, I'm liking it more and more. I bought a new coat last year and it never got cold enough to wear it. We had one pretty cool week in December, but that was it for cold weather other than an occasional cold night. The days were fairly warm for winter even when the nights were cool or cold.

I think we're in the middle of a hot decade like our part of the USA had in the 1950s and 1930s. Who knows how long it will last. In those decades, the drought nonsense lasted year after year, athough there were some rainy periods in the midst of the dry years---just not a lot of rainy periods.

Dawn

Padilla; I'm so saddened, but I'm glad you enjoyed at least one peach! We moved onto this land to find a pear tree! But it's fruit is not edible. We found that out the hard way. I need to pick those pears up off the ground and toss them in the compost. I'm with you on the winter perspective. While I truly hate the cold I find it a far better alternative than your apt description of "breath from hell".

bon

Bon,
Tisn't me who enjoyed the peach. I have no fruit trees out here. I WISH.
I, also, have no, none, zilch shade near my house, thus only really tuff stuff has survived these last two Summers, such as Crape Myrtle, Perovskia, Gaillardia, Cacti, Yuccas------
I, probably, would see more wildlife if I had a pond and some shade.
Dawn, I really hate that you are plagued by snakes! Ugh! Please be careful. I grew up in the 50's, and I SWEAR I don't remember Temps. like we are experiencing, now! Maybe 103 every now and then, but NOT
the 110 - 112 we have seen the last two Summers.
Dorothy, amen on the working in damp clothes!
Covet that shade, those of you who have it. Apparently, the "critters" are drawn to it too. Also, you are blessed if you have your own well.

Jeanie

Yesterday evening while I was in my studio painting I looked up to see a hummingbird hovering right out the window looking right at me! he went up into the sycamore. I'd only seen one other a couple of days ago, feeding on the cannas.

My purple coneflower and Laura Bush all fried while I was away, that really surprised me. The Gaura are fine, one lantana is fine, the other one went to seed over a month ago.

I haven't had the grasshoppers, and have been seeing a few honeybees. The milkweed is re-blooming and has lots of tiny bees. The Baptiste that got totally stripped by ugly caterpillars again this year came back and got stripped again. Is there some way I can keep that from happening?

The Armenian melon is happy as can be.

Jeanie, We only had two trees near the house when we moved here--the big pecan tree in the front yard and a post oak that was about 20 years old. Everything else we planted as small saplings dug from the woods, and I mean really small. Most had a root system about a foot deep after we dug them, and their top growth was between 6 and 15" above ground. By transplanting them very small (in a drought year), we increased their odds of survival since the root system was big enough to support the topgrowth. Other than having rabbits gnaw on them, or deer step on them and break them off at the ground a few times, the trees, mostly oaks, have flourished. Some of them now are as tall as our two-story house and we've only been here 14 years. For ages and ages it seemed like they never were going to grow big enough to shade anything, but they finally got tall enough.

We have so very many big, grand, old trees down in the woods, but it was too heavily wooded and too sloping to be a good building site. We didn't want to take out a bunch of trees just because someday down the line they might fall on our house, so we built in the open area and have worked to make it shadier. It is an ongoing process. I think that 10 years from now we'll be pretty happy with how much shade we have.

Ponds and shade can attract some undesirable wildlife too. Lately we have skunks and water moccasins at/in the lily pond, so Tim's job for this week is to trap or shoot them and get rid of them.

I planted a lot of stuff our first few years that couldn't tolerate the drought, so all that I have left now is the pretty tough stuff....and regrets that I spent so much money trying to make our country landscape resemble our city landscape. In this climate, that's just not going to happen without us watering on a grand scale I cannot even comprehend.

I grew up in the 1960s (born in 1959) and I, too, remember when 102 or 103 was an insanely hot day and 105 was very rare. Now, I think 105 feels pretty good compared to all the 108s, 110s and 112s we've seen in recent years. We had some really high temps our first year here, and one of the old local farmers (he was almost 90 at the time) told me "Congratulations! Y'all have managed to move to the one place in the country that will be both hotter than Fort Worth in summer and colder in the winter". I thought he was kidding! I've since learned he wasn't joking. He came here as a child in a covered wagon around 1903 so he taught me a lot about the native (and invasive non-native) plants, especially treee, and also about the weather. I tried to listen carefully to him when he discussed the 1930s and 1950s because I figured that sort of weather would occur again....and here it is happening to us now. Whenever he discussed the "droughth" (because all the old timers here add that extra h at the end when they discuss drought) periods I listened and learned. I knew we'd likely see bad droughts again here in my lifetime, but I always thought of it more in terms of dryness, not extreme heat. I can handle the dryness a lot better than the heat.

Dorothy, Sometimes I work in damp clothing too. Often, I just wet a hand towel or bandana and lay it around my neck as we often do with the firefighters when they are in danger of overheating. Or, I wet a hand towel and put it right on top of my head underneath my hat. I may look drippy but I stay cooler. Or, I turn on the sprinkler near the chicken run "for the chickens" but make a point of walking over there and letting it sprinkle me every now and then.

We don't have a well, and I wish we did. Neighbors drilled for a well a few years back, using our county's most experienced and expert well driller, and got nothing but dry holes after spending a lot of money (thousands of $) to drill several times. I think the aquifer must be dropping because it used to be pretty easy to drill and find water here.

Let's look at it this way. The temps are not as bad as last year and, at least here in southern OK, most of us have had more rain, year-to-date, this year than last year. Those are only minor improvements, but we'll take them.

Dawn

I went over to the old house to take pictures of the pastures and the water supply. While there I had to take a picture of a Bald Cypress I started about 9 years ago. Nobody in their right mind would try to grow a Bald Cypress in this area, but I think it looks pretty good. I also think the pasture looks good enough to buy a few yearlings if the price drops low enough.

Larry

Dawn,
whoohee! I'm old enough to be your Momma! I was born in 1938. Maybe, I should have said I grew up in the 40's and 50's! Yeah! Those "Old-timers" are a wealth of experienced wisdom! Whenever my son and I go "ghost-towning", we always like to find a senior native to give us the straight history of the area. It is ALWAYS fascinating.
Trouble with transplanting trees out here is that I don't have the physical strength or equipment to do so. Your "spread" sounds really, really nice!
Harkening back to the 50's heat, I remember my Daddy (a building contractor) coming home at night, burned to a crisp from roofing houses. He was a red headed Irishman, 'dun't ye know! I remember no AC and sleeping in the yard on pallets and waking up, damp with dew. I remember the adults and neighbors sitting in those old steel lawn chairs, chatting and fanning with cardboard fans while the kids chased fireflies. Funny how the heat didn't seem to bother us so much then! Wow! Kids today don't know what they are missing! Remember the phrase, like it was an echo, "Nary a leaf stirrin' tonight!". Miss those days. Miss those people.............

Larry,
Love your Bald Cypress! Your "spread" looks good, too!

Jeanie

Padilla .. yeah ... that's why I packed 3 bags for my visit to Slow_poke Eden Asylum. Few cogs missing. Brain's burnt to a crisp. Or maybe it was the bad pears.

By the looks of Larry's picture the place is coming along quite nicely. Seriously, though it looks like a different world. GREEN!

My neighbor's Bald Cypress looks stunning like yours, Larry!

I have a lot of shady areas in my yard, so I'm always looking for more sun.

I have 3 hummers now, at the feeder, flowers, and Sunflowers as well. I love to watch them. I have a few birds, a pair of Cardinals, Carolina Wrens, House Finches, Dove, Robins, and some very tiny ones I haven't been able to ID yet.

I hook up my sprinkler under a tree branch and let it run for about 30 minutes. The Cardinals love it. Everybody gets a bath and some excitement and then it's off for the day. I do leave a BB for water, and there are plenty of seeds on the flower heads I leave for them, too. A White-Lined Sphinx visited the other day. There is always activity in a wildlife garden. So far, grasshoppers not too bad.

Oh, and I have 3 female Gulf Frits laying eggs, Checkerspots, Skippers, and Red Admirals laying eggs, too.

The Tropical flowers are plugging right along. They deal with the heat quite well if kept watered and fertilized. I grew Lavender Porterweed this year, and it is gorgeous. The Frits and the hummingbirds love it, too. Also have Hamelia patens aka Firebush, and Tecoma 'Miami Sunrise' with clusters of orange and yellow trumpets. My Formosa Lily is blooming now as well. Butterfly Bushes, Royal Red, Bicolor, and Ellen's Blue are doing very well and the butterflies and bees love them, too. Purple Gomphrena, Cosmic Orange Cosmos, Dicliptera suberecta aka Firecracker Plant, or Hummingbird Plant, Dallas Red Lantana, Texas Star Hibiscus, Plum Crazy Hibiscus, Maximilian Sunflower, Tall Sunflowers, Cleome, Flame Acanthus, Zinnias, Maypop, Ironweed, Climbing Milkweed, Wingstem, Salvias 'Black & Blue', 'Lady in Red'. Moonflower, Mistflower, Obedient Plant, Golden Crownbeard, White 4 o'clocks, and the gorgeous Japanese MGs, 'Grey Morning Mist', 'Morning Glow', Jamie Lynn, and 'Chocolate', are blooming, with more to come. My milkweed Family Jewels is about to bloom as well as Salvia darcyi. S. darcyi is one of the Salvia species with huge blooms. Herbs, Basil, Oregano, and Mountain Mint are blooming and the little guys love them. Oh, and Little Joe, Joe Pye Weed, is blooming, too.

Lots of dragonflies around, as you mentioned, Dawn. This is the time of the year that, altho I don't, the garden shimmers with blooms.

Susan

RAIN: Three drops or so

TEMPS: Triple digit-106� come Sunday

BLOOMING: Crape Myrtle, Perovskia, Gaillardia, Coreopsis Rt. 66, Clammyweed------------Losing Echinaceas, guess not as tough as touted; Daylilies slowly burning up (could be going dormant, as they bloomed early this year)

BIRDS: Doves, House Wrens, occassional Cardinals, Painted Bunting, return of a few Hummers (could they be migrating, already?)

GROUND: Red, Dry, Cracked (having to water every couple of days)

WILDLIFE: Above birds, grasshoppers, wooly worms covering small Redbud, folding leaves around themselves, me (frantically dragging hoses around yard)................

Jeanie

Jeanie,

RAIN: Three drops just isn't enough.

TEMPS: About the same as yours but only 104 on Sunday and not 106 until Tuesday. On the other hand, this summer we tend to go about 3-5 degrees higher than our forecast high on any given day, so the temp forecast scares me. We don't need to go any higher than the NWS forecast says we will. It is late July and about to be early August, and we always have our highest temps in this time period, so these temps are not unexpected.

BLOOMING: Everything I listed earlier in this thread is still blooming. I've noticed the goldenrod in the pasture is blooming a little bit early this year as it has been in bloom a couple of weeks now. Echinacea performance has always been spotty here for me, but I have slow-draining soil so that's most of the problem. I've noticed they aren't happy and often die when the temps are going over 105 regularly. Frogfruit is also blooming in the fields and so are some greenthread daisies. After last year, having flowers in bloom in July is a nice treat, even if most non-drought years usually have better and more abundant blooms in July.

BIRDS: I began to see increasing numbers of hummers in mid-July which is pretty typical. Some male Ruby-throats do begin to migrate in July every year so that may be what you're seeing. The heavier migration usually is in August or even September. Since hummers rely on small insects for their protein and on sugar water or nectar for the energy to hunt for small insects, I think the timing of their migration could be off this year depending on what they are finding to eat (or, maybe, not finding) in parts of the northern US where it has been much hotter than average and where many new high temperature records are being set.

The assumption would be that this year's drought is hard on hummingbirds across the country. That might or might not be true. Because high temperatures speed up insect development, we usually have a lot more insects in drought years. That would mean plentiful protein food for the hummers. However, in drought areas, there may be less nectar foods, making the hummers more reliant on feeders. Hopefully people are keeping their feeders out and full of fresh nectar in areas where the plants are not flowering well.

Across the country this summer there's been many reports of hummers avoiding nectar plants they usually frequent. No one is positive why, but it may be that in drought the plant nectar is less available or less palatable. Hummingbird enthusiasts believe watering their nectar plants daily keeps the hummers visiting those nectar plants, so based on their observations, it does seem like drought is affecting the nectar somehow. If that's true, maybe we'll see an earlier migration, but I don't know that I've noticed earlier migration in other drought years. However, last year and this year have been really epic drought years with worse conditions than the typical year.

Other than a slight uptick in hummer population, I'm seeing about the average number of birds this week.

GROUND: Ditto. Typical for July in all but the wettest years, and by wettest, I mean flooding. Otherwise, our soil always dries and cracks. Even in a wet year, if we go about 2 weeks without rain, the soil cracks like mad. So far the cracks in our ground are not as bad as last year's, but they're appearing in places that do not normally crack, which is worrisome.

WILDLIFE: Pretty much everything the same as usual, but lots and lots of deer. Often they are fairly scarce in summer and do not often show themselves. This year we are seeing them all the time, not just at dusk and dawn. Cottontails are very abundant.

PEOPLE: Same old same old summertime survival tactics: staying indoors in heat of the day, venturing out in early morning and early evening around sunset, surviving by relying on air conditioning, ice cream, iced tea, ice cream, Gatorade, popsicles, ice cream, popsicles and lots of fresh melons from the garden. (After typing that I realized that we eat like three-year-old children in the summer....ice cream and popsicles.) Counting the days until late summer when the temps begin dropping and the sunlight is less intense. We old fogies at our house spend lots of summertime reminiscing about the summers in the past which surely were cooler and wetter and much more pleasant. Were they? Maybe our memories are false and it always has been hot and miserable here in summer.

Every summer I start out the season hoping this summer will be better than last summer. I have no idea why I do this, because pretty much every summer is hot, dry and miserable. I guess hope of a better summer is all we have, even though we seldom see our wish fulfilled.

Dawn

Seems to me. Just about everything, plants and birds were about 4-6 weeks early this year, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised if certain plants are going dormant already, that my Autumn Joy Sedum is putting on buds and Hummers are, possibly, getting ready to migrate a bit early.
Love your Summer diet, Dawn. ONLY way to go! HA. Am trying to be inside by 10:00 AM, at the latest...........

Jeanie

Jeanie,

To my horror, I discovered somebody has eaten all the ice cream in this house. That means either a trip to the store in the morning, or I'll have to survive on popsicles alone. Well, I could make jello or something. Or, I could make ice cream.

I do think everything has been early this year, but wonder if that trend will hold for autumn. I don't necessarily want an early first freeze or anything, but earlier than usual autumn rains would be nice.

I thought of you tonight. I was sitting outside in the middle of the driveway near the birdbath. I was trying to get the little feral cat, MiMi, to let me pet her. I had great success and spent almost ten minutes petting her and talking softly to her. Then, at some point she realized that...ugghh...a human being had touched her and she ran off and hid under the car. That, however, isn't why I thought of you. All that time, a juvenile Painted Bunting was sitting about 20 feet away from us on the barbed wire fence. I think it wanted to come to the bird bath, but not as long as we were there. Then, I turned my head and looked at a big rain puddle in the driveway from last night's rain, and one female cardinal and two more juvenile painted buntings were splashing in the puddle. I've had two painted buntings at once before, but never three. Seeing them was so cool, and if I hadn't been trying to tame MiMi, I likely would have missed it. This was around 7:30 or 8:00 p.m. and the temps finally had dropped enough that it was almost pleasant outside. Our high today was 102 and our maximum heat index was 108, so I mostly hibernated inside. Later on a deer and armadillo came by, and didn't even notice me sitting there on the ground until they were about 20' away. Well, the deer saw me and took off like a rocket. The armadillo never noticed and went on plowing its way through the now-moist soil in the pasture.

I bet if I sat out there all night and watched the parade of wildlife, I'd be shocked at how much roams around out there at night.

Dawn

Dawn,
Omigoodness! You have a zoo on your property! What fun! I haven't seen deer this year. Think they are staying among the trees down on the river. I haven't seen the Armadillos, but two very large holes have appeared close to the house, and my more knowledgable neighbor has told me they were made by Armadillos. I was blaming the poor little Gophers, even though the holes are quite large. I'm SUCH a "City Slicker"!
I've been out here 5 yrs. now, and my first Painted Bunting showed up last year. Assuming this is same bird, returning. Have seen a rather drab bird of same size on BB with him. Female, maybe? Of all the bird visitors, he is most "skittish". If I am lucky enough to be outside when he flies in to feed or drink, I have to stay completely motionless to enjoy viewing him. I am hoping they will bless me with more of their beautiful off-spring!
We have NO cats in this area, as every cat disappears that shows up out here. Again, my more knowledgable neighbors tell me it is coyotes.
I don't venture outside at night, even to empty trash, as I truly don't know what is lurking in tbe shadows. Especially leery of snakes.
Living alone has it's advantages. If the ice cream or other palatable "goodies" disappear, I have no-one to blame but my own gluttony, and, there you go, another grudging trip into Pauls Valley's WM or, perhaps, Braum's.

Jeanie

Jeanie, you are too funny. But as one who lives along herself, I agree - no one to blame but me if I don't have any ice cream left especially.

Dawn, hummers are quite interesting. In July, I usually get the juveniles and females. I rarely see a male with the red gorget. My garden is watered daily every year, so I have plenty of food for them, including the protein from the tiny insects visiting the Sunflowers. Also hang a big feeder. They are so spoiled here. They remind me of kitty cats, too, perching inside the plants and trees waiting for another hummer to dare to visit "their" feeder and then they pounce! Everything a hummer could possibly want is available for them. This is one reason I grow some tropical plants. They can withstand the heat and humidity without losing a step. In fact, they thrive here. Many are drought tolerant, too.

I am beginning to worry a bit about the Monarch migration, too, with all this pervasive drought throughout the entire nation. If they are unable to find food and water, they will surely die en route to Mexico. So, those of us that maintain our nectar flowere will probably see a lot, but for those that follow the plains and prairies, may succumb.

Susan

Jeanie,

If you haven't seen female painted buntings before, they may be visiting along with your brightly colored male and likely the drab bird you're seeing is the female. The females are shades of green--not as bright as a parakeet, but more of a medium bright yellowish-green in some areas of their body to more of a dull olive green on other areas.

The juveniles look like a smaller version of the female, but not as brightly colored--kind of a dull brownish-green. I'll link a photo of them.

I consider seeing painted buntings to be one of the great joys of living here, along with seeing an occasional bald eagle or golden eagle (usually only in winter, but in the summer of 2004 our friend, Ken, saw a pair fly over our yard twice in one day, and I saw them several times while out walking the dogs).

Armadilloes are a hoot to watch. They have very poor eyesight and sometimes will walk up within a few inches of me and practically run into my legs before they realize I'm there. Then the jump into the air, make a funny little huffing sort of sound and scurry away. We have 2 or 3 out plowing up the yard every night, eating grubs. I'm happy to have them eating those grubs. Our dog, Sam, used to chase them through the woods when he was younger and more foolish. When the dillos reached the creek, they'd walk right across it under the water. It so perplexed him that he'd stop and stare and wouldn't continue the chase when they came out of the creek on the opposite bank.

My least favorite wildlife? Skunks, venomous snakes, raccoons (they are viciously mean), bobcats, coyotes and the cougars. I never, ever, ever in my life expected to see a cougar up close and personal and it was not a good experience either time. Feral hogs are very frightening because they are very dangerous, but we've only had them on our property a couple of times.

I love watching the deer, rabbits, ringtails, birds, frogs, lizards, butterflies, dragonflies, bats and just about everything except the aforementioned predators, snakes and stinky skunks. We usually have the standard black and white skunks, but I finally saw a spotted skunk last year for the first time.

It likely is coyotes getting your area's cats. That's why our cats are trained to come inside before dark. Cats that stay out at night tend to live short lives, and that's one reason I'm trying so hard to tame MiMi.

I am not tremendously worried about coyotes right now because we have a huge cottontail rabit population. If you walk outside any time between about 7 p.m. and 9 a.m. you'll see cottontails in various places. I couldn't have a garden without a rabbit-proof fence. Tim gets home from work late at night and says they are tons more rabbits in the dark of the night---many more than I'll see in the twilight. He says they hold conventions back in the area behind the garage near the big compost pile. When the rabbit population drops, that's when I know the coyotes are getting way too close. Two of our dogs tangled with coyotes last year and lived to tell the tale. A week later, the much larger dogs (and my dogs aren't small) belonging to friends of ours who have property that abuts I-35 were attacked and injured by coyotes. When she showed me the photos of her dogs' injuries, I was just sick about it. Our dogs had their hair pulled out on their hips, but her dogs couldn't get away as quickly and had their skin and hunks of flesh ripped out of their hips. They recovered.

My least favorite thing about being at wildfires (aside from the obvious miserable heat and danger) is seeing wild animals that are on fire and are fleeing the flames. We cannot help them. If you hit them with a stream of water it worsens the situation by causing steaming, among other things. When wild animals run ahead of the flames and are on fire, I turn away and just cannot watch it.

At least I can blame others here if the ice cream disappears. We all like ice cream and it is hard to keep any in the house in the summertime. When we lived in Fort Worth we were just about a mile from a Braum's so that's what we always bought. There's not a Braum's within 25 miles of us so we don't get Braum's ice cream as much as we used to.

At Chris' fire station their fully-stocked kitchen even has an ice cream machine so on slow and quiet days sometimes they make ice cream after dinner.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Link WIth Photos of Female, Male & Juvenile PBs

Thanks for the Bunting pix, Dawn! Yep. Bet that's a female or younger bird with the beautiful male. Had NO idea that it takes a couple of years for male to grow his gorgeous plumage! Now, I'm wondering what their life-span is. I just have had the one, but feel blessed that he decided to fly this far North! Must say that my favorie birds are the male Painted Bunting, Hummers, the colorful Cardinals, the friendly Black-capped Chickadees, Titmice and the gawky-looking Road Runners. Bird watching is a delight.
Have heard there are wild hogs out here, but haven't seen any yet. The prettiest skunk I have ever seen had very long fur like a Persian cat.
Hope you can get MiMi trained soon. I don't trust coyotes, at all.
Oh my, oh my, oh my! I could NEVER watch an animal burn! Don't know what "steaming" means, but it sounds horrible! Poor babies!!!!!!
Armadillos must come on my property only at night, as I never see them, and I am outdoors as much as is possible, except in brain-baking heat.
Since you are so close to Texas, are there no Baskin-Robbins near? However, Blue Bell is a very good choice, also! Of course, there is Hagen-Daas (sp?), but can't afford it. It's amazing that we even exist with ancestors who didn't have a clue about the latest choice of flavors. HA.

Jeanie

Steaming means that when you hit their burning skin/hair with water to put out the fire, the water turns to steam and burns them more. It is the reason you won't see a firefighter spraying water on a burning animal to put out the fire, and it is tough to see. That's why I turn away--I cannot bear to watch it. The first time I saw animals on fire (armadilloes and possums), I begged the firefighters to spray water on them to put them out, and they said "Can't do it. It will kill them." I think they probably died anyway though.

There is nothing near me. Are you kidding? Even a trip into Marietta takes 30 minutes round trip and that's just if you're popping into a gas station convenience store for a cold drink. Other than whatever is in Marietta (which in terms of shopping is not much), we have to drive 30 miles north or south to reach any decent shopping destination,and by decent I mean something like Wal-Mart. That sounds like a long way, but when we first moved here we had to drive 50-60 miles to get to a Lowe's or Home Depot. We also had NO cell service within 2 or 3 miles of our house, and no internet service. We had to buy a DirectPC satellite dish to have the internet. Our then-15-year-old son thought we had moved to a foreign planet. Eventually cell phone service moved closer to us. At one point we had cell service if standing down in the road 300' from the house, then eventually we had cell service in the living room of the house but no farther, and then finally anywhere in the house, but not north or west of the house. Now we have cell service everywhere on our property. See how we're moving on up to the big time? Eventually we had dial-up internet but it was painfully slow after having had DirctPC. However, it only cost maybe 1/3rd as much. Now we have (hallelujah!) wireless internet. You still lose all cell service when you get pretty far out west in our county, although a new cell tower was supposed to solve that. I haven't been out west since it went up, but someone who has been out that way said it was not the solution they said it would be. Once you get far west in our county, even the fire/police radio reception can be spotty, and I don't like that.

Don't get me wrong. When we moved here we knew it was very rural and very remote, but the lack of cell service and internet service was a little surprising. Because we're in a lowlying area, Channel 12 was the only tv channel, period, that we could pick up and that was spotty and with a big antenna. So, we got DirecTV and still have it. Sometimes you have to give up some modern conveniences in order to live way out in the sticks. I am grateful every day for internet shopping and UPS. It is so much easier to order stuff and have it delivered than to drive 90 or 100 miles one way looking for it.

The nearest Baskin-Robbins I can think of, by the way, is in Denton, TX, and I am not even sure if it is still there. There's a Braum's in both Ardmore and Gainesville but both are sort of off the beaten path and we rarely go there. During the dry months we leave Love County as little as possible because there's nothing worse than being 30 miles from home when the fire pager goes off. It makes Tim crazy and it is hard to get him to patiently wait while I finish the grocery shopping, for example, before we head back home. The fire either will still be burning when he gets there, or it won't, is my attitude.

A couple of years ago we were in Lewisville shopping for a new treadmill and started getting phone calls and text messages urging us to hurry home because there was a big wildfire. We did. By the time we reached Denton, TX, we could see the smoke plume from the fire in western Love County, but we kept thinking it must be from a closer fire in Cooke or Montague County. We probably were already between Sanger and Gainesville before we realized that the smoke plume we'd been seeing since we were east of Denton was from our fire. That was a fire that took several days and all the departments in our county to extinguish it fully. In the summer or winter fire season, any time we leave home, we have a 'to do' list and hurry, hurry, hurry to do it and get back home. To me, it is a thrill to get to spend 4 hours in Denton without rushing back, but that only happens a couple of times a year. We'll eat lunch at a real restaurant, walk around the mall, maybe browse the bookstore. It is like a vacation, albeit a brief one.

I am not complaining, either. One day of dealing with traffic and crowds in the D-FW metroplex and I'm ready to stay home for the next month. I love living in the country for many reasons, but shopping convenience is not one of them.

Dawn

Dawn,
After living in OKC for about 45 yrs., I was a bit spoiled with conveniences! I had to subscribe to DISH out here (no cable); get an
I-phone for Internet speed (dial-up drove me crazy) and with the price of gasoline, plan ahead for shopping. Pauls Valley only 8 miles North, but for serious shopping, Norman is about 40 miles North, Ardmore is about 38 miles South. By serious shopping, I mean malls, Lowe's and Home Depot. If you are "dead" serious, it is about a 70 mile trip to OKC. Will have to admit, the traffic in the City now makes me extremely nervous, now that I have been weened away from it. Those drivers hate me, and road rage is the norm, now! So I just settle in behind the old pick-up in front of me going 10 miles UNDER the speed limit and tootle along, although will have to admit, this, too, has been an adjustment. Besides, it's difficult to stop and smell the roses in rush hour traffic!

Jeanie

Dawn, We know you are in the sticks when you live in Oklahoma and there is not a Braums close. LOL Actually I believe there are 2 in Ardmore but even when there was only one, it was on my 'beaten path' when I lived down that way.

I buy a lot at Braum's but I am mad at them because they quit making my favorite bread. My husband says that if I have Walmart, Braum's and Lowes, I don't need anything else. He is about right. Of course, when we lived near Ardmore, we didn't have Lowe's, then we moved up here and they didn't have one either, but it was built soon after we moved here.

I only live a few miles from Grove, but we still can't find a cell phone company that has a signal strong enough to use in our house. If we get a message, we have to go out in the street to hear it, but that is better than when we had to go outside to talk. We do have DSL tho.

I also agree that your restaurant choice is limited. We don't go to the casinos and I don't like your fish place. There was a little place near the old cookie factory that was OK, but usually we went right on by and into Texas, then over to Lindsey for bar-b-que and onion rings. Makes me hungry just thinking about it.

There are malls in Ardmore (cough, cough, choke, choke, not much of one) and in Sherman and Denton. At least now Sherman has one of the big new strip shopping centers anchored by a big Target, etc. and it is about as good as shopping in Denton, but the new shopping center has about killed the old mall in Sherman. I like the Denton Mall, but for a "real" mall that is big and full of stores, we have to go to Lewisville, which is about 80 miles. That's about a once a year trip there. I don't think we've been there this year either, so we're overdue.

I really don't miss having a big mall that much, but I miss having the Ma and Pa type nurseries that have been around forever and whose owners know every answer to every question. There aren't many left either near to us or far from us.

I miss being able to drop into Marshall Grain Company in Fort Worth to pick up organic supplies. They had everything organic you ever could dream of needing...and that was in the 1980s or 1990s. They have their own store brand of some of those products now. I could pop in there in January and get bundles of onions, seed potatoes, seeds, even little bundles of bare root collards or broccoli or cabbage. You had to take them home and plant them right away. I haven't seen bare root bundled seedlings like that in quite a while now--maybe since about our 3rd or 4th year here.

Carol, Things are getting better. We have a Red Lobster in Sherman, though that still is quite a drive. We don't like our fish place either and don't go there.

I guess our cell phone system has a lot of room for improvement still. I wouldn't even get a cell phone for the longest time because they were fairly worthless in our locale. I finally got one when Chris went off to college so I could stay in touch with him. We joked that I was the last person in Love County to finally break down and get a cell phone, though I actually wasn't. We finally dropped our land line last year because the only ones using it were telemarketers.

I'd be happy with a Walmart, Lowe's, Braum's and CostCo.

One thing I distinctly remember is that when we looking for property to buy in about 1996 or 1997, we went all over Marietta and couldn't find an ATM. We were in total shock! lol

Dawn