The rain was moving pretty much straight west to east and the farm was right on the N edge of the lucky area and got 2 inches overnight. The house is 11 miles north of that and got about 7/10. Both places got more than the immediate surrounding areas so that was good. No runoff at either place (surprised about that), but both places are saturated and can easily last until Sept with no more rain. I just wish the ponds would fill up.

For the growing season and year the farm is now at average and the house is a few inches below. Not to get greedy, but I wish all precip would now stop for a few weeks so the trees could keep the foliage and nuts as clean as possible. The crop is looking fairly good as of now.

I'll check the other threads, but how did you do?

Looks like some of us in the northern half will get another shot this evening. Most don't need any but I'd take another couple inches at the house. This system will be moving more north to south and looks promising.

The weather models show showers hanging around down south for a couple of days.

Scott, Hooray! So glad the rain fell, especially at the farm. I hope the trees enjoy the moisture and benefit from it.

I went outside to harvest yesterday and told Tim I was going to work in the garden until rain started falling. I spent the first four hours in the back garden, harvesting, weeding, deadheading flowers, cutting back some monster herb plants, taking out some spider mite-infested cucumber plants and, generally, accomplishing a whole lot. No rain fell. It was cloudy and I thought I heard thunder a time or two to our far north, but nothing, nada, zilch.....

After lunch, and a phone call from Tim asking if I was through harvesting and was in the kitchen canning, I told him I still had the whole front garden to do and that I'd work there until rain fell. I tried, I really tried. I harvested, deadheaded, weeded, etc., but by now it was hot, the clouds were gone and my hopes for rain had evaporated with them. I was careful to drink lots of water, iced tea and Gatorade. No rain fell and as the afternoon went on, the plants wilted and drooped, and I am pretty sure I heard them start crying. So, I guess today I'll water.

We are ridiculously dry. Even the Johnson grass is curling up and withering (not that I care....I hope it dies), and the bermuda grass is the color of straw or hay. The cracks in the ground enlarge daily.

I suppose I am frustrated beyond belief that in a so-called rainy summer in Oklahoma, every rain storm misses us and the drought drags on. When rain finally started falling in May and kept falling in June, I thought we were going to have a good summer and wouldn't be spending the whole summer in drought and running the irrigation lines. I couldn't have been more wrong!

I still have to harvest the southern peas--five 40'-long rows of them. I'll try to get outside shortly after daybreak and do it early in the day, and then spend the rest of the day processing the harvest from today and yesterday.

Except for the pole and bush beans already planted for the fall garden, and the fall tomatoes in pots, I think I am done. There is no point in attempting a large fall garden if rain won't fall. I'll just water enough to keep the remaining summer plants producing a bit longer, and I'll water the beans along with them and hope for a good fall bean harvest. I'll probably plant lettuce in containers for fall and winter, but not in the ground like I did last fall.

Chris sent me a text yesterday saying it was pouring down rain on them there at D-FW Airport, so I guess I know where "our" rain went......

Suddenly we have a tremendous snake problem, and we are mostly seeing venomous ones. Our little female tabby cat who got bit in the face by a venomous snake late last week finally came home from vet's office/clinic yesterday. She's a lot better (I can't believe he saved her life and appreciate him so much for even trying) but has some facial paralysis---she cannot close her eyes. Her eyes are fine and she can see, but she seems unable to close her eyelids. The vet thinks maybe some of the venom got in her eyelids and that as it goes away she'll be able to move her eyelids again. So, I wore very heavy, very uncomfortable leather work boots yesterday in the garden, and will wear them from this point forward until snake season ends. Normally I wear much more comfortable athletic shoes. I don't know why so many snakes are out moving into our yard all of a sudden, but it is getting scary. A timber rattler almost got me a couple of weeks ago right near my garden gate out front, and I've been nervous about snakes ever since that day.

I have a strong urge to stop watering and let the garden die (but I have to water the aspargus, fruit trees, berry brambles and perennial flowering plants, so couldn't stop completely) and to just hibernate inside the air conditioned house until cold weather arrives and the snakes go away.

Okay, I'm about through whining now. The hot, dry summer of my discontent continues and I'll just have to deal with it because real rain relief seems impossibly far away. Just like last August, the QPF promises real rain, and then fails to deliver. I didn't even have to look at it yesterday afternoon to know that our rain chances had evaporated.

Notice I haven't mentioned fires. It has been much better with regard to grass fires, and the last wildfire we had was back in spring before rain started falling. The last 7-10 days, though, some little grass fires have started up. They have been in areas of our county that have had more rain than us, so they weren't moving very fast and were relatively easy to put out. I don't know how much longer I'll be able to say that. When you stand and look across the countryside, the trees look great---all green and happy, but then you noticed the ground beneath them, presumably grass, is a lovely tan color instead of green, and that reminds you that the KBDI is a little high for this time of year and the grasses are turning into fuel for the almost inevitable fires.

At least, by the end of this week, after I process the huge pepper harvest, my canning season will be over and it will be relatively easy for me to leave the house abruptly if the pagers go off.

This is nowhere near as bad as 2011 was, but to have one drought on top of another on top of another is just discouraging.

Dawn