The drought has eased a little (for now) around my house, and maybe else where in Arkansas. About 3 weeks ago there were burn ban in all but 2 of the 75 counties. Now we have 17 counties without burn bans. The closest area without a burn ban is over 100 miles south of me. The others are in the south and east part of the state.

Larry

We just barely broke a 100 today. Happy about that because the bearings are wearing out in our main a/c unit. It feels like it's easing up.

I think someone lost a mobile home in one of the fires in or near Yale but no other damage - mostly acreage.

Larry, I'm glad to hear it's easy up over there. I hope it rains soon for you.

bon

We only went to 102, which wasn't bad compared to last week's 109 and 110.

There are a lot of grassfires and wildfires across many parts of Oklahoma this week, but (knock on wood) our VFD has only had a couple of little piddly fires lately. To me, it seems like we are not busy at all compared to last summer, but Tim says we've had only 6 fires fewer year-to-date 2012 than we had by the same date in 2011. Maybe the difference is that these are smaller and less intense, thus less time-consuming, so far. With the heat about to crank up again in a couple of days, I think this weekend and next week might be kinda rough on everyone and on our gardens.

Larry, I am glad y'all have had some relief. I looked at your state's burn ban map a few days back when every county in the state had a burn ban. It was kinda shocking seeing the whole state red. It is nice to know there's some green counties on the map now. I just hope they didn't drop the bans too quickly.

One Texas county to our southeast implemented their burn ban today but the Texas county due south of us declined to do do today. Their commissioners usually approve a burn ban well before our county commissioners do, so I'm afraid we may not see a ban in our county for several weeks yet. I wish that our commissioners would be proactive and pass a burn ban before we start having big wildfires instead of waiting until after we're already having a lot of them. Burn bans, in and of themselves, do not prevent all the fires but they sure do reduce how many there are.

Dawn

Larry, I meant to type "easing" not "easy". Nothing "easy" about this heat in any of the states.

Dawn, I agree. They should continue the bans until rainfall. Temps may drop and the wind die down but it's too dry. They recently dug to lay down a new line on our property. I took a peek at the soil 4 feet down. Bone dry and we have a lot of black gumbo-type clay. It was all brick-like. They didn't dig first. They, literally, cut it up with a piece of equipment that looked like a giant 6 foot long chainsaw with 4" blades on the "chain" section and then dug out. Fist time I've ever seen that type of equipment. Makes sense.

bon

Bon, They are building a large natural gas pipeline in our county that crosses the Red River from Texas near Thackerville and then proceeds east or northeast. In the area a couple of miles from our house where they recently were laying pipe, they dug down what looked to me to be about 8-10' deep to lay that pipe. They hit water! For a long time that trench sat there with water in it. I am not sure if it finally dried out on its own or if they pumped the water out of it. I just know that every time I went past that spot and saw that water down in that red clay trench, I said to myself "so that's where the water is".

The best way to remove bermuda grass sod before putting in flower beds or veggie beds is to rent a sod cutter and cut out the top few inches of soil (especially if it is clay soil) that contains the stolons and roots. It sounds like their big digging equipment operates the same way, just on a larger scale.

You have black gumbo clay? I am so jealous. I have icky, sticky red clay. We had black gumbo clay in Texas, and once you amended it with organic matter, everything grew like crazy in it. Our red clay is also very fertile and things grow well in it when it is amended, but not as well as they grew in black gumbo.

Dawn

Dawn;
You're right. Apparently, it was gardened for several generations until about 20 years ago and then left idle. Just outside our property line in every direction the dirt turns red. I inquired with the previous owners. I don't actually know if that is why, but guessing.

bon