Gary: Window AC's are cheaper than portables, but require a large cutout in the polycarb, while the portable ones need only a 4 - 5" hole and we could add one next to the existing heater vent, where we reinforced the walls with aluminum sheet metal. Then, sealing it off for winter would be simple. Dcharch: The only live plants in my GH in summer are aquatics and they are under lights anyway. All of the tank lights will soon be connected to a single timer with a built-in bypass swtich, so I'll be able to turn them all off/on during the day if needed, with a single flick. So giving my GH a lot of shade in summer won't be an issue for any plants, and closing it all up if I really feel the need for some genuine chill, would be as simple as turning off the the power to the intake vents and exhaust fan and sliding the storm panel up in the door. When he installed the lines for the vents/fan, my husband put a switch on the main line, to avoid the need to fiddle with the thermostat. The roof vents would of course, remain open, because I can't reach them without a ladder, but with the ceiling fans pulling cold air up, it wouldn't take all that long for them to close on their own. As long as the cold air is directed at the smaller tanks, which are set above the big ones, even if just for those few hours on the relatively few days each year they might need it, could be just that extra edge- and if just one small tank that doesn't overheat has a spawn of a particularly valuable species in it; alive and growing, they would pay for the AC and the cost to run it all summer, let alone at most- 150 hours a year. In any case, the lattice shade fence is under construction and will be up by the end of the weekend, just in time for me not to especially need it this year. The portable AC will very likely be bought anyway. My husband was looking at them with me and mused about how nice it would be to AC the curtained off section of the garage where parks my rival for his affections. Another good reason to go for a portable: they are on wheels, and even I can roll one out of the garage and into the GH, all by my old, arthritic self. So it's likely there will be a portable AC here anyway, just in case. But I really am so close to not needing one. Again: all I can do is see how well the extra shade will do the job next summer. But I admit that having the ability to chill it would be a nice security blanket. Kind of like the stand-by generator. Always gratefull when it's not needed, and even more so that it's there, ready to crank up when it is.

"Shrek" is my kids' favorite movie. If you are familiar with the movie you might remember the scene where donkey asks "who would want to live in a place like that?!" Well I would. It's pretty! And the whole walk there was covered in moss and flowers. Lovely. I wear whatever I'm wearing (usually jeans and a T or tank) to work in the yard. If I KNOW I'm gonna be doing dirty work I put on my OLD jeans or overalls and the ratty sneakers. But mostly I just end up getting my "good" jeans dirty. I have been known to pluck weeds on the way out dressed up for a wedding or a party. Dirt under the nails is constant and I have to keep them short. And, to stray from the clothing topic, I credit weeding with sending me into labor with my daughter the next day. One of my husbands favorite pictures is of me out there on a little stool weeding the day before she was born. Or it might have been the mexican food we ate that night... -Ais.

It was 60 degrees here this morning and I worked in the garden for couple of hours. First, I picked okra and blackeyed peas, having already picked tomatoes for a long time last night. I had to use the ladder to get all of the Tess's Land Race Currant tomatoes because that cage is 8' tall, and the plant has gone all the way to the top of it and then back down again. Today I am going to dehydrate small tomatoes and make salsa with the large ones, but I did spend time weeding and mulching the fall veggies until we got the phone call to come see the cougar in the trap. It wasn't a cougar...but that's a story on a different thread. I do not want an early freeze....no, no, no, no, no! This is the first year in ages we've had enough moisture in July and August to have a good fall garden and I want for it to last a while. I do have some floating row cover frost blankets that give 8 degrees of protection, so I might be able to get some plants through the first cold night or two. Then, if we had a few weeks of Indian Summer, we'd still get production. I can't believe some of you had temps in the 40s! That's just crazy. The Farmer's Almanac does forecast a very cold winter, but I haven't seen the Old Farmer's Almanac yet....and the NWS forecasts an El Nino, so that should mean a lot of rain beginning around December. I was cold enough at 60...not ready for 40-something, so y'all keep that cold stuff up there! Dawn

Scott, I have such low faith in the models any more that I don't believe what they say when they say it. It doesn't matter what they have forecasted for us this year. We've consistently been both hotter and drier than the forecast, so I always look at the forecast and then assume we'll continue to be hotter than forecast and drier than forecast. Since very little rain has fallen here in our area the last 2 months, a lot of trees are dropping leaves as a survival mechanism. At first it was just the types of trees that really don't like the intense heat and dry weather---like sycamores, cottonwoods and redbuds, but now I'm even seeing the native persimmons, oaks and pecans dropping foliage. Obviously I can't water almost 15 acres. Even the trees in the yard, which has been watered regularly, are dropping leaves. If rain fell right now, and in a fairly decent amount, I don't think it would be enough to help them much now. We're in about our 15th consecutive month of drought here, so the trees are really hurting. I realize that's nothing compared to how long some people, like Jay for example, have been in drought, but it's hard to see the trees in bad shape for the third summer in a row. Our last good rainfall year here was 2010. Greatplains, I think that people who never have lived here in this region and dealt with the conditions we have just don't get it and never will. The way that our heat and lack of rain can combine to wreak havoc on plantings, even native ones, is beyond the comprehension and understanding of people who've never experienced it. Even a lot of the non-gardeners I know that do live here just don't understand how severe a combination the heat/drought can be on their plantings, and tend to put in landscape plantings that never will be happy on low irrigation to no irrigation. There probably are a lot of people from other regions who think we're all hillbillies and rednecks, and I don't let it bother me. How long would they and their gardens last here? I grew up in dry north central Texas and the weather I have here is as bad as it was there in dry years and probably a little hotter and drier than when we lived in Fort Worth. We're not going to pack up and move away, though, so I just have to live with it. I feel like every year the list of what can grow and survive in the soil we have here combined with the weather we've had since around 2003 is getting shorter and shorter. Water rationing is becoming a more or less permanent thing in many of the Texas areas south of us, but not so much in our part of OK yet. I remember when they used to enact water restrictions in Dallas and Fort Worth only once the water levels in the lakes hit a certain point. Now the watering restrictions are written into law to start on a certain date, no matter what the weather is doing. From there, the restrictions do tighten up based on certain conditions, but the restrictions are in effect even in wet years. When we are down there, I see both residential and commercial plantings that are incredibly dry and brown compared to how they looked 5 or 10 years ago. It almost looks like a lot of people have just given up and stopped trying in terms of keeping their landscaping looking good. More likely, though, they probably are doing what they can with whatever watering restrictions their communities have in place. We're pretty rural here so I suppose the demand for water is much lower overall than in more heavily populated areas that have more homes and residences per square mile. Of course, it depends on which municipal water supplier or water co-operative you belong to. Other water co-ops and companies have often had water restrictions in place, but not ours. In 15 years, I don't remember our water co-op ever rationing water or imposing watering restrictions of any kind other than asking people to reduce usage temporarily if a water main has broken or if a well has broken down and isn't pumping. Those are situations where you might have low water pressure for a few hours or even for a whole day. However, they have restricted membership, and that has prevented people from building houses near us at times. Our water co-op is incredibly well-managed and won't add new customers if there are not enough water wells to handle their water needs. New members have had to wait, at times, for a new well to be dug and brought online before they can buy into the co-op and get water service, though I think it has been a few years since they had to do that. Down here, you can water as much as you want any time you want, but the water is not cheap so you have to be willing to pay a big water bill if you're irrigating a lot in the dry months. I'm surprised how quickly parts of central and NE OK have dried out ever since y'all's heavy rain stopped falling...around, what, 3 or 4 weeks ago? If good rain doesn't come soon, y'all will catch up with us in terms of drought and low soil moisture. What often saves us here in southern OK in August or early September is for a nice tropical storm to hit Texas and send a plume of moisture our way. The last one that I remember which did that was Hermine three years ago this week. We got a ton of rain at our house, and we really needed it. It even refilled our ponds. Unfortunately, some of the parts of OK that got hit by Hermine's remnants also experienced flooding, so sometimes it seems like you can't win either way. We haven't had to mow our yard in several weeks now, except for the area just outside the sunporch, between the house and the garage. I keep that area watered so the ground won't crack enough to crack the water line. (The ground shifted and the water line cracked twice in 2011 and once in 2012, but this year the water line hasn't broken yet.) After I read this post this morning, I went and looked at the forecast models and the rainfall forecast and, at least for south-central OK, I don't have much hope for significant rainfall. Our high temperature has been under 100 degrees for two consecutive days now. It was 99 on Monday and 98 on Tuesday, and while that was only marginally cooler than the previous days, I could tell it was a little cooler. Or, maybe saying 99 instead of 100 or 103 just tricks your mind into thinking you can tell it is cooler. For the last 30 days, most of Oklahoma has not seen significant rain. Look at the map below to see how dry it has been. It looks awful. I've linked the map that compares the rainfall recorded the last 30 days to the 30-year-average for the same period. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: