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Well the weather has been warm, but cooling. How’s that you ask. Well we’ve had some days lately that have been in the low 90’s, but more like the mid to high 80’s. We did have one day that got warm, mid 90’s. But later this week we’re supposed to be down into cool. We haven’t had rain in a while, and that is due back in a few days too. Mainly thunderstorms, not slow and steady. But if we get rain, we’ll just take what we get. We did have some nice weather and all the areas have gotten green. Lawns have looked nice. But then when hot weather hit they got a bit dry.

But to give you an idea tomorrow Friday Sept. 23 should be 90, but by Monday it should be a high of 68. And the rain should start either tomorrow night or Saturday. But again, its supposed to be showers so more sporadic rain not really wide spread. But then again, who knows. We’ll see what the weather and rain gods have in store for us.

According to the farmers almanac emails I am getting it is time to start planting again. Time for bush beans, beets, broccoli, cucumber, kale, squash, and tomato seeds to be planted. Since the weather has been nice I will plant on clearing some areas and getting some seeds in. Last week we had help from Pat and Pat did put some seeds in the ground. We were lucky enough to get some rain this week so the ground is well watered. Its also been warm, mid 80’s, and some sun. I’d say this is good weather for planting. It also helps that we may be in for some (40-50%) chance of rain next week. So I’m thinking this is a good weekend to put some seed in the ground.

We’ve had lovely weather lately. A few clouds drifting by, high humidity, but overall okay weather. Today we have Pat up helping out. Its been the same – warm, clouds, high humidity. Then all of the sudden the sky just poured. The fun part, it looked like it was raining out the front door, but the back yard had a bare sprinkle. That’s our weather.

We did get rain in the back yard. The front yard went from some sun with light rain to pouring, can’t see the neighbor across the way rain. Their house was just an outline it was raining so hard. Finally the back yard got wind and rain. It even blew a couple of buckets over. The wind gauge topped at about 25mph wind. So its rather strange weather. But it dumped rain, and is moving on, I think.

From what I can tell, in its short brief rain fall, this cloud dropped about a third of an inch. But who knows if this is all or if we’ll get some more. At least the plants are happy.

We came to a grand total of 9.7 inches of rain last week. The good and bad – the temperatures have cooled down and stayed cool, and we are due for more rain.

First the temperatures. Before the rain, we had hit our highest yearly temp here at the house – 102. Now our high temps are in the 80’s, and at least one day we barely hit 80. The nights have been nice hovering around 70 or just below. So the weather has been wet rainy, but easier to deal with. Granted the humidity is pretty bad – when its almost 80 and raining, the word humid just doesn’t seem to do it justice.

They say for the next 10 days we still have some chance of rain. The forecast is all over the place – some sites say low chance of rain, maybe 25%, other say days of rain, days of no rain. Looking out the window right now it is dark dreary and looks like rain is possible. Maybe we’ll just get light rain, not heavy showers. We’ll find out.

With all this rain gardens are getting lovely and green. Oddly though I think either the deer are getting possessive of areas or some are beginning to think about rutting. I haven’t seen any horns developing, but the family groups are getting larger. Instead of seeing 3-4 deer together, we’re seeing over a dozen at a time – grown adults and spotted fawns. Either way, the rut is coming.

As I mentioned previously I get emails from Old Farmer’s Almanac. They send me planting reminders. Well, I’m beginning to get those reminder to start planting. So we now begin our second growing season here in Austin.

The current one I just received says to sow under cover or indoors:

• broccoli
• brussels sprouts
• kale
• leek

and I can plant garlic outdoors.

I guess I better go find kale seeds and get them in the ground.

Wow! This week so far we’ve had over 8 inches of rain here at the house. Today should be a day of reprieve, no rain scheduled for today. But that’s good, we need a day to dry out. And the weather services says today is our day for drying out as tomorrow we’re back to large rain chances.

So how much rain did we have?

Since about 4 this morning (4AM) we’ve gotten rain. Just after 4 it began raining, and by 9AM we have about 2-1/4 inches of rain. Now, at 4pm, we are at 3.6 inches of rain. We get a little, then we get drenching down pours. That’s the story of our rain. This rain is due to continue, so I guess we’ll continue getting flooding. The news has mentioned that Louisiana has been getting rain, they have flooding. Well, we may not have their level of flooding, but we are already getting notices of flooded streets here in the area. And of course they say another week of rain is due for us.

We’ll see how bad it gets.

But the plants are watered. That’s the good news.

Well, its been a slow light rain. Not the usual for Austin, but its good I’m sure for the plants. Last night we have about 1-1/2 inches of rain. Today, since midnight, we’ve had another 1.7 inches of rain. And the strange thing, we’re due for more rain for the next week. Currently the forecast is 80% chance of rain, and cooler weather along with it. We’ve hit all of 73 degrees today as our high. Nice weather. Who knows how long it will last? But meanwhile we have happy plants.

We’ve had days of hot weather. Even here at the house its been triple digit weather. Plants are dying here, getting brittle and brown. I’ve actually lost a couple of plants. We were gone as mentioned in my last month post, and many plants took a beating with the heat. And it hadn’t gotten any better. Grass has been crunchy and dry in our yard – we don’t water any lawn area.

Well, we suddenly got a weather change. In two days the temperatures have dropped from high 90’s and triple digits to the mid 80’s. Today we hit a high of about 85, and have fallen to 72 (as of my writing this). And it is raining.

Actually it began a short rain at around 6 in the morning. Its now the afternoon and its raining again. Our short rain this morning bare made it to 1/10th of an inch. Now we’ve got an inch, and its a light rain but still raining. I’m sure the plants are happy. With luck some of the plants will get what they need and come back.

At this point some of the tomatoes are looking a bit worse for the wear. I think I lost my 3 year old thyme plant, not happy about that. It died from lack of water. The only good news is I had already taken some cuttings and planted them and they are still growing well. These cuttings may take the place of the mother plant. Its been good thyme, and I’ve used it a lot so I would much prefer to keep it alive. I guess I can replant one of the babies into the mother plant container. The mother plant is in a large container, so I would much prefer to use that for my thyme. Also, my sorrel may have died from lack of water. So lots of the plants will benefit from this new rain.

And the weather channel says we might have this rain for the next week.

A storm just came up. We’ve had fairly clear skies with just a few puffy clouds today. Around 3pm there were some clouds in the sky that looked like they could grow.  Well, it appears they grew.  Around 7pm those dark clouds became wind. Throw things around wind. We went outside moved a few pots around. Just a few minutes after coming back in it began to rain.

In this short half hour we’ve still got wind, but now it’s got rain with it. The temp has gone from 97 to 74 degrees. We’ve had wind gusts to 32mph. And this rain. We’ve had well over 3/4 inches of rain, almost .9 inches.

This is good news since we haven’t had rain in a while. In our case we were also gone for a couple of days and as luck had it our watering system decided to stop when we left.  With all the heat we’ve had, the plants were not glad to go without water for a few days.  This water may not help those things that died, but hopefully some of the plants will revive after getting this rain.

Yeah for rain.