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Late last night, around 11:30pm we got another storm. It rained until a bit after 3am. We got about 1-1/4 inches of rain. The plants are happy. And as weather will have it, we may be in for more over the weekend. We’ll see. At least the plants are happy, the garden is growing, and the fruit is getting ripe.

Remember I purchased some more fruit trees that came in the other week? Well those poor trees looked like sticks at the time. The first one started leafing out in less than a week. Its now been about two weeks and they look good. The only one that hasn’t gotten any leaves yet is the pomegranate. Considering how well the others are doing already, I’m not worried. Even the banana is putting out new leaves. Most of the new fruit trees are in pots, but the pomegranate is in a planter, in the ground. But they all have water to them so I’m not concerned. We will have more fruit trees giving fruit next year.

Dear hubby and I planted the new fruit trees. Most of them were pretty small, more like whips than trees. And that’s okay. It meant we were able to put them in large pots (5-10 gallon) rather than worry about putting them in the ground.  Then it rained. First we had light rain, then we had more rain. So at least they’ve all gotten good rain water.

We should have a couple days of no rain, then rain again this weekend. At least the plants are happy.

I took one of the breaks in weather to pull out the bak choy. I had Pat pull out the peas. They were all looking pretty ratty. We have a number of caterpillars – from what I can tell swallowtail not monarch. Currently they’re munching on fennel. But we’ve been eating yellow squash, which is growing well. The tomatoes look good, lots of green ones on the plants. The corn is growing but we have a problem with something boring into the stalks. Since I know its not squirrels or birds, we have some sort of infestation, maybe grasshoppers or locusts, I’m not sure. I cut back the spinach and some of the lettuce. Since the weather has been warm then cool and wet, somethings are bolting and growing. Oh and the melons are growing well. 

Texas Star Banana, Tropic Gold Apricot, Blue Damson Plum, Fuyugaki Persimmon, Russian Pomegranate.

This has been a strange spring, but we have definitely hit spring weather here in Austin. It has been warm, by Texas standards, and nice. The current weather has been low 80’s, sunny, with some light clouds. Knowing we can get much warmer, this is nice weather. Don’t know what summer will bring, but we’ll take the beautiful weather we have.

So how does our garden grow in this weather? This is how it grows.

We have a new bed being made for trees coming in.

Apples are growing.

Fresh from the plant blueberries.

Friendly bunnies. Too friendly.

Container tomatoes. Patio I think.

Awaiting corn. Its growing.

Gardenias.

Last year’s pepper plants. The hot ones.

And more lettuce.

Pears are doing nice.

Rhubarb, at least I hope.

Sorrel. Its been moved around and still survives.

Tomatoes in a large planter. They are growing.

This has been somewhat wicked weather here in Texas. I just spoke with a friend in San Antonio. The storm two weeks ago left them with hail damage – totaled two cars, windows on their house broken, etc. We here in Austin at this house we got no hail.

Last night we had another storm. And again we were lucky, no hail here. Wind, rain, temperature dropped from mid 70’s to 60 and with it came rain. We topped out at a wind speed of 43, and luckily only about half an inch of rain here at the house. And in case you wonder how I come up with this information we have an actual weather station here at the house. It records our temperature, humidity, rain fall, wind speed, etc. Weather even five miles away may be different from what we get.

Other parts of Austin are without power and have downed trees and roads closed. They’re hoping to restore power to them by later today.

To give you an idea of the fickleness of the weather here, weather.com says we are clear weather until Saturday. Saturday we might get another thunderstorm.  Accuweather.com says clear today, then possible thunderstorms Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. We’ll see what we get. And as I mentioned, what we get here at the house, may not be what happens five miles away.

Its Thursday and we’ve already have just over 3 inches of rain this week. The good news is we’re also not likely to get any more rain until Sunday. Much as we need the rain, getting a respite from the rain will be nice. There’s been a lot of flooding, creeks are flowing a bit much, earlier this week there were even school closings due to the rain. But the lakes are pretty much full or full. Lake Travis was 102% full on Wednesday, and Lake Buchanan 93%. And Lake Buchanan is still rising. So its been good to have the rain and fill the lakes.

And of course the garden is growing gangbusters. Everything is growing. Its green and lush. And the other nice thing about the weather is it hasn’t been real hot. Normally we would be warmer, but with this rain we have slightly cooler weather. Its still high 70’s, with nights in the mid to high 50’s. But the next couple of days should warm into the low 80’s. But at least its not any warmer than that. 

Okay, the rain came in at 1.45 inches last night, and .14 today. So just over 1-1/2 inches of rain. We have happy plants. Though we do have corn that is blown over. So we did get wind with the rain last night. But we should be clear skies the next couple of nights. Then we just might get rain again this weekend. We’ll see.

Weather had said we would get rain. We’ve been waiting all day for it. at about 10:30 pm it finally arrived. In the 15 minutes or so its been raining, less than half an hour, we’ve had over 1.25 inches of rain and it is still coming down outside. We’ll see what it shows in the morning. But we finally got  rain.