thank you.
A few weeks ago I was praising Dixiondale. For some reason it didn't get posted.
I'm the same way.
Dreams are always fun.

I love this time of year also, more so when I was younger. I loved to camp and hunt. Nothing better than sitting around a camp fire on a cold night telling tall tales with a bunch of guys that you may not have seen since last hunting season.

Leslie, It is my favorite time of the year too. I used to think Spring was my favorite time of the year, but now I think it is fall. We have the mild weather in fall, but a lower probablity of severe weather.

The garden catalogs have been arriving fairly regularly the last few weeks, but I haven't had much time to look at them yet. I think the only one I've had time to flip through is Dixondale's.

Despite having a lot of rain in October on the heels of a decent amount in late September, we're still Abnormally Dry, but at this point I'm just grateful we aren't in a deeper form of drought because we were in moderate or severe drought all summer. I don't think we ever made it to extreme, although maybe we did and I just don't remember it. Drought has stomped all over my garden dreams the last three years, and I hope we have a rainier spring and summer here next year so it won't be such a struggle to keep the garden alive in July and August.

Every gardener's garden is perfect in their dreams, but here in OK, it is hard to have a garden that remotely approaches perfection. The weather gets us and our plants one way or another: too much rain, too little rain, hail, tornadoes, late frosts and late freezes, or very early frosts and freezes, large hail, severe thunderstorms, gigantic hail, microbursts, straight-line wind gusts in the 50s or higher, dust storms, flash flooding, ice storms, and relentless heat. Did I leave out anyone's favorite weather phenomenon?

Tree, I love, love, love Dixondale. They're about the only company I order from every single year without fail. I've been using their mail-order onions for about a decade now and cannot imagine using anything else. If I could get Dixondale onions here locally, I'd buy them, but all the stores here usually have Bonnie Plants' onions or Brown's of Omaha, never Dixondale. One of my favorite thing about ordering them is that they are pulled and immediately shipped so still are fresh and green when they arrive here.

Larry, I think that a lot of our friends who hunt seem to enjoy the camaraderie of the deer camp just as much (if not more than) they enjoy the actual act of hunting.

I also love the colors of the autumn leaves, though some years the colors are much better than others.

I'm not crazy about the cold nights and chilly mornings, but most autumn days still warm up to a really nice temperature, so at least we have that.

Dawn

Dawn, I saw somewhere the potential for snow next week... and a lot of it. Of course it could change between now and then, but I hope it doesn't and your area gets a reprieve from slow-draining moisture.

Dawn, I'm glad you (and most of the state) have been receiving more rainfall lately. Reading your post made me go look at the drought monitor map and it's nice to see so much of the state completely out of drought conditions. We haven't been as lucky here, as we're still in the exceptional category. We've only received a little over 15 inches of rain so far this year, so it's looking like we're going to stay there. Maybe we'll have a wet winter to make up for some of the rain we've been lacking, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

I've been trying to find more drought tolerant varieties. As far as tomatoes, Heidi produced really well last year despite the conditions. The only other tomato that produced was Principe Borghese. Those two are definitely going to stay on my list, but the rest of it is getting a complete overhaul. It's possible nothing else would've produced anyway, but the fact that Heidi did makes me think I need to be smarter about choosing varieties. I know it's early, but my grow list so far consists of those two tomatoes and Rattlesnake beans.

I'm also going to be much more proactive when it comes to saving water. Unless we get a lot of rain, we're still going to be under water restrictions next year. We're in stage 3 now and it would be crazy for me to deny the possibility of being in stage 4 by spring. Stage 3 is outside watering one day a week and stage 4 is no outside watering at all. I should probably just give up the idea of having a garden, but I'm not going to. That means I'll have to get creative to water my garden. Collecting rain water, buckets under the faucet while the water is heating up, things like that. I said I was going to do that last year, but I didn't really do it very often.

Leslie

Bon, Snow? Ack! I am not ready for snow to fall. I guess if it happens, I'll get excited about it when it does fall because snow is too rare down here in southcentral OK.

Leslie, There was a point in the summer, after all the rain fell from mid-May to mid-June, where we almost made it out of drought. I think there was a point where another inch or two might have gotten us back into the white area on the map, but it never happened. Instead, we slipped deeper and deeper into drought. We spent most of the summer in moderate or severe, though we might have hit extreme for a week or two. I certainly knew that, as dry as it was, it could have been worse.

At this point, we are back again in that almost-out-of-drought area, where I think about 2 or 3" of rain in a fairly short time-frame would get us back into a non-drought state on the Drought Monitor map. The question, though, is whether or not that rain will fall. Usually if we are going to get out of drought, it happens by the end of November. December and January traditionally are, at least in my county, probably the driest months of the year. Even July and August usually have more rain, but with higher temperatures it evaporates more quickly.

I am glad Heidi and Principe' produced well for you. You're in such a challenging area. Between your near-constant extreme to exceptional drought conditions and the fact that later cold weather in spring and earlier cold weather in fall make your frost-free growing season shorter than ours, I don't know how you have a garden at all in any given year.

I catch and use rainfall, but with a big garden I cannot catch enough of it to make a big difference in how much I have to irrigate using purchased water. Having a big water bill in summer is just a fact of life for us, but at least we have a water co-op that has enough water for everyone---as long as you are willing to pay for it. As far as I can remember, in the 15 years we've been here, we have never once had watering restrictions for the customers of our water co-op. Other water systems that serve other parts of our county have had a lot of water restrictions some years, so I certainly know how lucky we are to have a rural water co-op that maintains enough capacity to ensure we never have watering restrictions.

I am on the fence about 2014. We need to have really good rainfall between now and about the end of February or my garden plans will be scaled way, way back. If the drought worsens between now and Feb, I might completely skip having an in-ground garden and only have plants in containers.

Dawn

A foot of snow would do the trick... LOL! Looks like it'll only be cold. Darn.

"Only cold" is good enough for me. If we have snow before December arrives, I'd take that as an omen that the winter is going to be as bad as everyone says it is going to be.

It is cold enough this morning to make me start feeling nostalgic for a nice summer day with a high around 100....but not nostalgic enough that I want to wake up to 100 degrees tomorrow morning or anything.

By the way, Bon, since we're in Oklahoma where the weather often seems to defy logic, we are going to be close to 80 degrees down here on Sunday. In what normal world are people waking up to temperatures in the teens and twenties this morning and yet looking at hot weather (relatively speaking) before the weekend is over?

Dawn

I'll pass on the snow too, thanks! As much as we need moisture, I'd rather not have snow or ice. Rain a lot, but only when it's warm enough to keep from freezing. That's not too much to ask, is it?

I don't know how I have a garden here either, but I'm not the only one. There was a big discussion earlier this year about edible plants being excluded from water restrictions, so there are a lot of small gardens here in town. I was surprised there were so many people involved.

Water restrictions have been pretty common here over the last five or six years. No one has ever paid them any attention until this year. The broken line from Tom Steed Lake is really what started it, but things were serious before that. At this point, we're getting half our water from Tom Steed and half from Lake Lugert. Lugert had an algae bloom this summer that killed all the fish and it's been very low for a few years now, so I'm not sure how long it will last. I guess using it is helping to conserve because nobody in town wants to drink that nasty water. Everyone is just buying bottled water! Hopefully it will rain enough soon to fill those lakes back up.

Leslie

Leslie, I thought of you a few minutes ago when I clicked on the website of the NWS-Norman office and saw they had posted a banner announcing that Wichita Falls is implementing Stage Four: Drought Disaster watering restrictions beginning Nov. 16th.

I can't believe y'all let Wichita Falls beat you to stage four. (grin)

I clicked on the banner and then clicked on Stage 4 to see what all is involved in Stage Four and all I can say is wow. You cannot water anything. They even pull the contractor water hydrant meters from construction sites and suspend their service until Stage Four ends.

I've linked the NWS page in case you want to look at their restrictions and see how they compare to the ones you're facing.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: NWS Norman Webpage

I'm sure we'll be right behind them. I hadn't seen that Tom Steed level. It's at 31% and our stage four is implemented when it gets below 30%.

Our stage four is a little more serious than theirs. There's a provision in there for them to turn water off to certain parts of the city during the day. Probably the same rotating cycle that they're using now for our one day a week watering...only the opposite.

Leslie

If it weren't for defying the laws of the universe that require lengths of time for sticky snow fall or warm swimming hole temps, the possibility to ski one day and swim the next weekend would not be totally unreasonable. rofl

But I'm thinking that 30 day window is probably sufficient (and probably has occurred in Oklahoma)!!

This post was edited by ChickenCoupe on Wed, Nov 13, 13 at 18:23

Leslie, Tom Steed has been in trouble for so long this year that I am kinda surprised it still is at 31%. If rain had not started falling here in September, we'd be in trouble right along with y'all.

The rain finally began to fall about a week after we spent several days fighting a 1,000-acre wildfire in northern Love County. Without that rain, our autumn fire season would have been a disaster. The September rain wasn't enough to put water back in ponds or creeks or lakes, but it greened up the grass enough that grass fires stayed relatively small and didn't become big wildfires. It really was the October rainfall that saved us. October is usually one of our wettest months and we got an inch or maybe 1.5" more than usual in October, which was even more wonderful. I hope we don't pay for that by having below average rainfall in November.

You know, it is likely we'll end this year with average rainfall, but while it will look good on paper, all it will mean to me is that we have 3 or 4 rainy months (May and June, half of Sept and all of Oct) where so much rain fell that on paper it made up for the months when rainfall was below average.

Bon, Were you here in OK in 2010? A lot of places, especially in northern OK had all-time record low temperatures and heavy snowfall. Then, a couple of days later, the weather did a total turnaround and high temperatures were in the 50s through the 70s. I think that was in February of that year, but it could have been March. Either way, from sub-freezing (and in some areas sub-zero temperatures) to 50 degrees or 70 degrees in a couple of days was a huge change.

Dawn

I'm glad it rained enough there to keep your autumn wildfire season under control. As dry as it is here, we don't really have problems with wildfires. Probably because we're all farmland and "mountains" here so there's not much to burn.

I'd take a year like 2010 over a year like 2007 (I think?) where we had that huge ice storm. We almost never have weather like that here and I am happy about that. We spent a week without power and it left a huge mess.

Leslie

2010 was great for us. It was one of our wettest years here. I just loved it. The garden did really well and I didn't have to expend much energy watering it in order to keep it happy.

I remember that ice storm and all the damage it did in your part of the state. It was stunning to see how long it took to cut down all the trees and get the broken limbs and collapsed trees off the power lines and get the power grid up and running.

I know I am going to jinx myself by saying this, but we've been here since 1999 and never have had an ice storm come far enough south to hit us and cause that type of trouble. The closest one damaged trees maybe 3 to 5 miles north of us. We've had several rounds of freezing rain that did coat the power lines and trees, but they didn't bring down the power lines or tree limbs. We've been incredibly fortunate.

I know that Marietta was hit by a storm like that about 10 years before we moved here, and our local electric co-op had to replace miles of power lines and tons and tons of poles. Ever since then, they have worked very hard to keep trees trimmed way back from the power lines in order to avoid a repeat of that year.

One year Tim and I were at Wal-Mart in Gainesville on the day after a fairly mild snow/sleet storm. Our VFD was paged out to a pasture fire. We were shaking our heads because we've just driven though that area a few minutes earlier and knew that everything was covered with ice and snow. How could anything burn? When our son got to the fire in the brush truck, he found a power line had fallen, and apparently it melted the snow/sleet enough to catch the ice-coated grass on fire. That's sort of our all-time strangest fire.

I'd like a nice, calm winter with some pretty snowy days that don't coat the roads with ice and cause problems, but that's asking for a lot here in OK. The good thing about our winters is that there is so much variability in them, so that whatever weather we are having, good or bad, won't last long and next week we'll have different weather from whatever we've had this week. At least we get those occasional warm, pretty, sunny days instead of having months of endless gray skies and gloom.

The yard is so depressing today---browned and blackened foliage and limp blooms where we had tons of green foliage and bright flowers in bloom just a couple of days ago. It has been cloudy all day and I am tempted to say that I am "over winter" and ready for spring, but the truth is that winter isn't even here yet.

A few years ago, I jinxed us by saying we only had hail an average of 1 time a year, and some years never had hail at all. So, what happened? That year we were hit by hail on 11 different occasions. Now, I guess I should be expecting an ice storm in the winter of 2013-14.

The one little bright spot in the garden is a couple of Laura Bush petunia plants that had some freeze damage but which also still have some green leaves and small, barely-damaged flowers. Two plants isn't much to get excited about, but it is better than nothing.

Yeah, buddy. That ice storm destroyed part of our roof with the help of the over-hanging pecan. Then the bugs.. and the drought.... Still not sure if it's going to make it (or our roof, in that case).

bon