Author: admincatsg

We still have our cold front. Its been rather nice in many ways. It hasn’t been as hot, though the temperature has been up and down. Yesterday it was warm, but by 11AM the temperature dropped and we got a little rain. Then it promptly proceeded to warm back up and of course get humid. Rain plus warm equals humid!

Today has been a nice day. We had some warmth, blue skies and puffy clouds. Then it clouded over, we dropped about 6 degrees and proceeded to get a short burst of rain. I think it was rain with a hail mix. Some of those drops left a short bit of slush, and of course it was warm enough for the slush to melt rather quickly. But it does seem to be rain. The plants will love it.

Figures, I did water some earlier. So I guess it had to rain.

Wow, we have a cold front!! Its dropped down to high 80’s and possible rain. Yesterday we were just shy of 100 here at the house.  Right now, at almost noon we are only 85. That’s quite a drop in temperature. The forecast says possible rain between now (Wednesday) and Monday but of course that remains to be seen. But at least right now there is some overcast so there is no sun beating down on us. It has been pretty bright the past few days. So this overcast and slightly cooler temperatures are welcome.

As for the garden, I replanted some seed, squash, beans, cucumbers and all the seeds are coming up. I have had some problems with the watering system so I’ve been hand watering. And so far everything seems to be doing better. Hopefully that will last.

4:30 PM update

Yippeeeee!! We hit a high of 94, but have dropped down to 71. Not only that we have had about 0.25 inches of rain so far. Maybe not the best to have light sprinkles for the Fourth of July celebrations, but the garden will love it.  And since the sky is still cloudy with some hopeful rainfall in them, we might get more rain still.

Well, we did get some rain. Not a lot, but enough to make plants happy. We also got it in mainly small bursts over a few days. So it was able to soak into the ground up here. In total we got maybe an inch. I’m sure some areas got more, but here it was all of maybe an inch of rain.

Now we’re back to hot with a bit of humid thrown in for good measure. Its hot enough that we are getting Severe Weather Alerts. To explain what that means, here’s a small portion of what the alert says:

“HEAT INDEX VALUES OF 105 TO 110 DEGREES MOST AREAS THIS AFTERNOON.”

So we’ve gone from wet and warm, with one nice cool day, to hotter and humid with heat indexes in the triple digits.

Yup, we may only get into the mid 90’s but our heat index is even higher. Even the dogs don’t want to be outside.  Right now at 7pm it is just below 90 and heat index is 97.

Welcome to Austin Texas weather!

I’d call it more like a short shower. We got it yesterday, got maybe 1/2 inch of rain. Not much. But the plants do seem happy to get it.

It appears we’ve had some problems with our watering system. The system itself waters fine. The problem is it has a rain sensor. This sensor tells it if we’ve actually gotten rain. If you got over a particular amount, you set the amount, the watering system will not water. That makes sense. If you just got 2 inches of rain over night, you probably don’t need to water the next morning. But our rain sensor says we’ve been getting rain – for the past month. So it hasn’t really been watering at all. Well, we haven’t gotten rain until yesterday. So some of my plants are a bit crispy. My garden looks more like a weed patch.

Yesterday we tried to fix the sensor. When you get the little sensor part wet its supposed to expand and say “Hi, I got wet, it must have rained. Don’t water today.” I don’t know what’s wrong with it but I ordered a new sensor. Hopefully that will help. That poor sensor has been out there for 6 years so maybe it just needs to be replaced. Let’s hope.

Since I did some work outside, I also did some weeding in the garden. Its pretty dry. One hose had a leak near the connector, but since its the hose that waters a garden bed the bed hasn’t gotten much water. Even the weeds came out easily. So I pulled some weeds and put in some more seed. We’ll see how they fair being planted in this heat. If I don’t try, I won’t know.

I wish those seeds luck.

With luck we will begin a cool down, at least a Texas cool down, starting today. Instead of mid to high 90’s we will drop down to mid 80’s. Today we are only supposed to hit a high of 90. By Tuesday we should be down to 83. Not cool by most peoples standards, but for this area that’s something. Our nights will still stay in the low 70’s.

They are also saying we might get rain this weekend, on Sunday (Father’s Day). That will bring us this hopeful cool down.

Now one thing to remember is how central Texas often gets its rain. We can get just a light sprinkle, may not even register as a quarter inch, or we might get a downpour and get 3″ of rain. You never know.

The other fun part of rain in this area, is we are considered the Austin area. So if north Austin gets rain, that counts as rain for the area. But the distance from say Round Rock (north Austin) to Manchaca (south Austin) is about 30 miles. Because of how Austin area is framed, it covers from Williamson (top north area), thru Travis, down to Hays (bottom southwest) counties. Travis county is where most of Austin resides as far as I can tell. But the Austin area covers those three counties. Sometimes they even include Burnet County when talking about the weather.

So saying we (Austin area) may get rain doesn’t mean which area may get rain. I have a friend who works in downtown Austin. There have been times they have gotten downpours, complete with flooding, but where we are (corner of Hays County), we did not get so much as a sprinkle.

Let’s pray for rain in our area. That would be nice.

It hasn’t been unbearable weather. That is I’m sure yet to come, usually in a couple of months. But its just hot. Mid 90’s for the days and low 70’s for the night. And that’s what we’ve had day after day after day after day. No relief in sight from this weather. We get some clouds so we have some humidity. But no rain. I can’t call it unbearable, but its hard on plants. In this weather anything that doesn’t get enough water will die. And it might be a fast death, or it might be slow.

Welcome to Texas heat.

There is something about Texas weather that is just, oh well, just accept it. We had been getting strange warm weather. Then poof, with no warning we got rain. Like 1.35 inches of rain. That happened last Sunday. Just one day of rain, then it moved on. But now we have fairly warm weather. Since Sunday we’ve been in the high 80’s with the evenings in the 70’s. This is central Texas summer type of weather. Its hot during the day, but the evenings don’t really cool down much.

Gardens don’t really love this weather. Its just too hot. But as luck and the forecast would have it, early next week we should be high 90’s. As in Monday, Memorial day would be 98, and next Wednesday should be 99.

This is why gardening in Texas can be dicey. You may have some periods of nice weather, plants grow well, then wham its hot. And its not just that the days are hot, but the nights don’t cool down that much. Our days may be in the high 90’s but our nights will be in the mid 70’s. And we’re not even in summer yet. Once we get to summer, it may be like this day after day after day. The water needs of a plant to stay alive get horrendous. And of course it can get humid in the process. So I’m not the biggest fan of summer in Texas. But its coming nonetheless.

We’re getting hot weather shortly. Gone are the nice days, coming are the hot ones. It looks like we’re leaving behind the comfortable days of the 80’s and hitting the 90’s.

On Tuesday, two days from now we should begin hitting the 90’s. By Thursday and Friday we will hit the high 90’s – 97 and 98 respectively. The only good news is the evening will still be in the mid 60’s. But it looks like the summer heat may be on its way.

At least we’ve had a good run of snow peas and asparagus. The squash and zucchini are growing nicely, as are the tomato plants. I’ve been busy and not feeling well so I haven’t done much weeding, but the tomato plants don’t seem to mind. That’s good.

One nice thing is the fruit trees have been growing nicely. The apples are just starting to get ripe. Some are getting that red blush that tells me they are ripe and ready to eat. If they don’t have that blush, you could eat them but they are still a bit tart. But the deer eat the tart ones that have fallen. We go into the fruit tree cage and pick the fallen ones then throw them out to the deer. The deer like them. So that’s helpful.

But it looks like the heat is here.

Typical Texas weather, we got thunderstorms late Thursday night then spent yesterday in rain. The good news is we got 1.3 inches of rain. The garden can use it. And today we are pushing for 83 degrees. And we will probably make that.

But we have been eating asparagus. I am still picking asparagus. I’m also picking the peas and snow peas. Even the tomatoes have been happy. We have some on the vine that are getting big, but are still green. I’ve seen squash peeking out of the leaves.

And apples!! The apple trees are full of them. The plum trees have these little plums on them. I’m hoping that the storm didn’t take down too many plums. But overall the garden has been good. Everything has been growing. I can say I’m happy with it.

What’s interesting is that the weather is warm, high 70’s – mid 80’s. And we’ve had sporadic rain ever couple of weeks. Not a lot of rain, but the garden has been happy and growing with it. We did have to recheck the lines to make sure everything is getting watered. As of this point, I think everything is.

One thing we do have to address is the rain tanks. I’ve been busy, this was not something I am used to checking. But the rain tanks collect their water from the gutter system. At the top where the two meet is filled with debris – leaves, twigs, etc. From below it looks like a birds nest but I’m pretty sure its just debris. So that needs to be cleaned so that we collect all the rain water. As is we are not getting as much water as we should from the tanks. And I need that water for the plants. Another job to be done.

I have absolutely no idea what happened to the weather last night. Yesterday we had a high of 82 degrees. Last night we dropped to a cool frigid 38. I didn’t hear anything about this coming. The good news, at least we didn’t get to freezing. All my plants have been growing, we have lots of little apples on the trees, the pea plants have flowers, as do the tomatoes. We’ve been picking asparagus and the artichokes plants are getting big – then wham — cold last night.

And it didn’t warm up today either. Its almost 6pm and we barely made it to 40 degrees up here. Right now its cooling down again. On another strange weather note, we did get a slight bit of rain last night/early this morning. I was up late and we had thunder, lightning, and a short rain fall. We’ve also had wind last night and this morning. I’m sure that was because of the weather change.

Tomorrow they are calling for we to warm up to the low 70’s. I’ll be happy if we make that. And I’m sure the plants will be happy too.