Beth, We had sunshine! Rain returns Thursday though. I am starting to think it might be a hard winter too because our daily high temps and overnight low temps are consistently averaging 15 degrees below normal and have done so for almost all of Sept. and Oct. That cannot be a good sign. I'm glad you're prepared for winter. I think we are too. We don't get much ice here, and are happy if we get one snowfall a year because we seldom get that. We do seem a little more prone to get sleet or freezing rain instead of snow, and I'd rather have snow. It was almost 10 degrees colder here last night than the forecast had predicted...went all the way down to 39 degrees which surprised me. I'm glad it didn't get a few degrees colder or the misty drizzly light rain could have been sleet. I'm not a cold weather person, so if it gets colder than usual, I'll stay inside more. With the cougar roaming, I'm unlikely to work clearing brush at the back part of the property (the back prop line is about 1000 feet from the house) this year like I have most years in the past. (sigh) Maybe I need to come up with something else to do inside if it is a long, cold rainy winter. Dawn

I have been busy bringing in the plants that I want to keep over the Winter. I brought the two Hibiscus in a couple days ago since the weather guy was warning us of a frost. Today I cut back the Mandavilla and brought it in. Also two large hanging begonias and one Coleus. I've never tried to keep a Coleus, but it was just too pretty to throw out. They are all in the end of the garage where I have an entrance door with windows. Also I dumped some container plants, and took down the deck umbrella and brought it in. I'm right proud of myself!! The weather today has been perfect with sunshine, and temps in the high 60's. S'posed to get some of that rain on Saturday, when the family will be here for my DD's birthday. I hope it will hold off though. Enjoy the weather while we can. Winter is just aeound the bend. Sue

Amy, Unfortunately it is about to start feeling like July. The good thing about the rain is it has kept us cooler. There's no rain in my 7-day forecast, so I expect we'll dry out a lot over the next week, and we're expected to hit the upper 90s early next week. Can 100 degrees be far behind? Bon, Yay for the rain. You did need it and I'm glad you got it. You may feel stormed out, but it will be a fleeting feeling. We are about to feel the wrath of July heat + high humidity from all the moisture in the ground, so I think it is going to feel worse for a while before it feels better. Carol, Well, Grove was overdue for some heavy rainfall and apparently it finally happened. With all the accidents on the lake over the July 4th weekend, I hope people will be exceptionally carefully out there on the water now that there's all the runoff from all that rainfall. I have about half of my garden weeded and more or less under control---the upper half that dries out more quickly. I got a lot of that weeding done in the two hours I was out there this morning. I quickly harvested the one row of tomato plants that I hadn't harvested from prior to the storm, and then I weeded, weeded, weeded as the sun climbed higher in the sky and the temperatures began heating up. The fence lines are a mess, though, and I have to go slowly and carefully with them because that's one of the favorite hiding places of the timber rattlers. I do the same thing with rain gauges. I've noticed that even the radar-indicated rainfall this year has rarely matched what I've recorded in my rain gauge, and neither does our mesonet station's. It's why I try to keep an unbroken rain gauge (and occasionally a slightly-cracked one that manages to record most of the rainfall) out in the yard at all times. I left the one that cracked in the winter and put a new one beside it. There is only about a 0.10" difference between the two, so the broken one is almost recording correctly. Dorothy, For so long this year, I was worried y'all weren't getting enough rain, but I can see now that you're getting plenty. Last year was perfect for us in terms of rainfal, beginning in mid-June, and once the rain started, it's hardly stopped at all. Prior to mid-June, the drought was so bad I was about to close the garden gate and walk away, so the rain began falling in the nick of time. It can stop now if it wants. After the drought years of 2011-2013, I am just thrilled to have plenty of rainfall and (so far) not too many grasshoppers. It has been a struggle all year to keep up with the bare minimum of mowing, trimming and hand-weeding, but we just keep plugging along, doing what we can when we can and not worrying or fretting about what we can't get done. You can only do whatever the conditions, weather and time available allow, so I try not to worry about the rest. Eventually we'll get it all done. Sandplum, I weeded all I could this morning and was happy with what I got done, but some of those weeds were so big already that I had to dig them out rather than pulling them out. I'll get out there in the cool early morning hours tomorrow and try to work on it for another 2-4 hours. In June and July the harvesting and canning keeps me too busy to focus too much on weeding, and the rain this year has made weeding even harder to accomplish, but the tomato canning is winding down now, so I should get to weed every day for the next week, especially with no rain in the forecast. I think that with a week of weeding every morning, I should catch up on the backlog of weeds waiting to be removed. Y'all, I don't remember exactly what our all-time record rainfall is, but I believe it is around 59". I need to look it up and see. I am fairly certain we'll break that record this year, as Burneyville is sitting at 54" right now. Never, ever, even after 2007, did I think we'd see that sort of rainfall here. Dawn

Just made my own. Trader Joe's Tomato and Roasted Red Bell Pepper soup that I always keep on hand in my pantry. Unfortunately, the "grilled cheese" on my homemade oat tortilla just didn't have that same awesome, old fashion cheese flavor that it would have with 2 slices of "regular" bread.