Hi Wantonamara, Welcome to the forum. The drought, heat and fire situation are scary and have been for months now. It is just that everything seems to be escalating almost out of control now in terms of heat, drought, and plants that are going dormant or dying---whether they are native or not. If it is any consolation, I don't want to do anything outside either. I try to do my gardening chores and animal feeding chores very early and very late. Otherwise I attempt to hibernate inside the air-conditioned house. I agree that we have reached the point in most of TX and OK that mowing can be dangerous in terms of sparking a fire. I think it is more dangerous to not mow, so I'd mow, but with a water hose hooked up and ready to go and a bucket of water very close by to where I was mowing, and a rake, shovel and wet burlap bag or other heavy-duty cloth all close to hand. I'd keep a cell phone handy too so I could call 9-1-1 right away if a fire sparked. We are seeing incredibly rapid spread rates here with grassfires, and once they are up and running, they can get into brush and trees very quickly and become full-fledged wildland fires. For about 2 weeks now, I've been watching fires spread more quickly than I've ever seen any fire move in summer. They are moving as if being pushed by 35 to 50 mph winds even though on most days the wind is in the single digits. I'd mow closest to the house and work my way outward if I could so you always have the shortest grass between your house on the one hand and your tractor/mower and the tall grass on the other. Often people start out at the farthest point and work their way inward, but during high fire danger, that's a big risk. Having said all that, if I had those brush piles, and especially because they do contain cedar, I'd consider plowing a WIDE firebreak around the property if that is possible, or at least around all the structures. We've been having very bad fires in the western half of our county this month and you wouldn't believe how many people have started plowing firebreaks around either the entire property or the structures or even both---the outer firebreak just inside the fenceline and the inner firebreak around all the structures. The closer people live to the site of a recent fire, the more likely they are to be out plowing wide firebreaks. A few ranchers are plowing up entire fields. I am not sure if it is for fire prevention or other purposes. (It certainly is far too early and too dry to be plowing in order to plant winter wheat here.) The time to decide to cut back dry landscaping near the house is not when a fire is a few hundred yards away, but rather somewhat earlier than that. I hope it is not a choice I ever have to make. We have worked so hard to plant nice trees that will eventually shade the house quite nicely and I do not want to sacrifice them for fire prevention if I can avoid doing so. We have limbed up all our trees, except for the fruit trees, so that the lowest limbs are 8' above ground in order to keep fire out of the crowns. One thing that anyone with a house in an area prone to wildfire might want to consider is to buy a homeowners kit of sprayable fire retardant that can be sprayed with a simple garden hose. You can spray-coat your house or whatever else you wish to protect in just a few minutes. It isn't terribly inexpensive, but protecting our home with it would cost less than paying the deductible on our homeowner's insurance policy. When fire is near my house, I focus on wetting down the ground on whatever side the fire is approaching from. Other than that, I try to get all the cats and dogs in the house so they are as safe as they can be as long as the house stays safe. Finally, I make sure the car is already parked facing the street and ready to go in case I have to make a run for it. To be honest, when we moved here, wildfire was the last thing on our minds. We've seen several horrid droughts and fire seasons since then, and we have an 'escape plan' in place. You have to. If the fire is close enough you can see flame or smoke, it is too late to be making decisions about what to do----you need to be doing it! Stay safe everyone. We had three fire calls today. That's right. Three in one day. Except in the worst of drought years, that just doesn't happen. It is happening now. There are many, many fire retardants available for use by fire departments, insurance companies (some insurance comapnies hire fire protection companies to come in and spray homes when a fire is approaching, if time permits), and even homeowners. You can find them by Googling, but I'll link one below to get you started. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Thermo-Gel Fire Retardant

Bon, They are defoliating in order to survive. If you are able, try to water them deeply at least once a week. That amount of watering will not bring them out of dormancy from a once-a-week deep watering, and you don't want them to because coming back out of dormancy too soon would just be stressful. However, watering is essential for them now. They are saying to you "I am too dry, so I am going dormant to save myself, but I need help or I'll die, so please water me." At least they are putting up a good fight to survive.If you cannot water them, they may progress to death. Moisten the leaf pile bit, but not too much. The last thing you want is a really wet leaf pile that could start cooking inside and combust the way that hay bales do if they are baled and put up in storage while too wet in the middle. What I do is this. I keep them a little moist, but if a fire is on the property next door, I wet down a couple of old blankets and throw them over the compost pile. It is hard to get a wet blanket to burn, so the wet blanket should keep your leaf pile from igniting. In the last couple of years, we've had 3 or 4 fires each summer on property adjacent to ours or across the street from ours, and I'm always worried that if the firefighters don't get those fires extinguished quickly, they'll burn up my compost pile, my remaining bales of hay mulch and my garden, so I usually run out with the hose to try to protect them. My gourds are now sunburning. I left them on the vines hoping enough foliage would hang in there for a while so they could dry down on the vine and cure they way they usually do. I think I will pull them today and try to dry them in the shade. They may still be too green inside. The foliage is toast so there's nothing left to shade them. Next year, plant your gourds in April or May so they have a chance to flower and form gourds in summer and then be dry enough to harvest by fall. Late gourd plantings often have gourds that are still very green by frost and sometimes they cure well (though slowly) but other times they don't. Most years we probably are not hotter than most other places in OK, but last year we hit 115-116 a couple of times at many places in our county, though not at our Mesonet station, and this year we've hit 112-114 at some places in our county, but there again not at our Mesonet station. I think our Mesonet station's highest temperature this summer may be 109, and that was yesterday. It also was 109 here yesterday. Overall, this summer has not felt as hot to me as last year overall, though there have been a few times that it felt so bad out there that I was sure it was the worst day ever, even though it wasn't. Often, when firefighters are fighting those multi-day fires, some of them don't even go home. They'll sleep at the nearest fire station, sleep in their fire trucks, or sleep on the ground. That's why clean socks and undergarments are so helpful to them. Often they fight fire between 12 and 20 hours a day and just catnap. Sometimes they cannot sleep, which I think is part heat stress and partly from the big adrenalin rush that is inherent in firefighting. After having that adrenalin rush through an entire firefighting day, their bodies cannot just "turn off" the adrenalin easily and allow them to sleep. I heard that some departments received so many donations of bottled water and Gatorade that they ran out of room to store it, so that's good, although I don't know if it is true of all the fire departments in the fire-stricken areas. The firefighters always can use bandanas and small towels too. A lot of our guys wear or carry bandanas to use to wipe sweat off their faces, to keep the sun off their neck, or to wet down and wear around their neck or on their heads to help keep them cool. I buy white terry cloth shop towels at Sam's or CostCo in bundles of 60, and you wouldn't believe how many bundles I buy in a year. We started out using old kitchen or bath towels, but I like the shop towels better. Trust me when I tell you that firefighters flinch when you hand them a flowery kitchen towel or a hot pink hand towel from someone's bathroom. White is simple and isn't too feminine for their taste. Socks get wet fairly often and are very uncomfortable inside those fire boots....your feet just steam, so they love having an extra pair or two of dry socks stashed away in the fire truck. I usually have dry tube socks stashed away in one of the cabinets at the fire station so that anyone whose socks are wet can grab a spare pair. My concern level for all parts of Oklahoma remains incredibly high. Between the heat and the drought, I believe many counties have the highest KBDI they've ever had, or are approaching that level, and August is not necessarily known for being a very rainy month. We need rain in a big way before the winds pick up speed in autumn. Even last week and this week the winds are high enough in some places that fires have been and will be hard to control. This year it isn't just plant stress we have to worry about---people and animals are really stressed too. As we go about our daily and routine activities, I think it can be easy to forget that we are now living through what likely will go down in history as the worst drought ever in the USA since they began keeping records. That's monumental. For decades after this, people may look back at this point in history and talk about the drought of 2011 and 2012 they way our parents and grandparents talked about the drought years of the 1930s and 1950s. Dawn

WOW, do you have MY bluebirds? LOL! My male will swoop me and clack those wings like crazy and has made head AND shoulder contact a few times. I wear a large hat and sunglasses and just GO FOR IT! I know they can't hurt me (it's really only the male who attacks) and while I don't monitor every day I do when I need to see what's going on like hatching, etc. and then about 3 times a week to make sure all is well inside the box. Sometimes I make my hubby go out with me, I use him as a distraction, and he has ducted and run for his life every time. I remind him it's only a tiny little bird that weighs around 60 grams. My male also swooped my poor dog when she was trying to do her "business" but he thought she was to close to HIS box. She was deaf as a post and couldn't hear him clacking those wings right above her and I'd stand inside and watch out the window and LMAO! If you ever happen too close to a Mockingbird nest, no joke, they really will come after you. I've had them chase me across the street with neighbors standing there watching, just amazed, and me waving my arms to prevent an attack! I was not trying to get close to their nest and didn't know they had three babies in the juniper right behind my mailbox when they first came after me. I kept my distance and our mail carrier, a very nice woman, brought the mail to the door till they fledged. She didn't want to be attacked either! LOL!

Make sure there are not 2 video out puts on the office desktop and your possibly in the wrong one. Easy to do, I mention this because I have done it on my computer. I have a dvi connector on the motherboard and a stand alone video card with the same dvi connector. I have to make sure I 'm plugged into the stand alone card or receive no signal as the motherboard connector is disabled. Other that that not sure what your problem could be