Interesting. Follow this to page 2 "Texas defies La Nina"
http://www.weather.com/outlook...
Happy for all of you who got relief from drought.

Karen

Whooo-hoooo- we went from "exceptional" to only "severe".

I'll tell you- we still rejoice every time we have to spend the day inside due to rain! I was just telling a relative the other day that we have green grass for the first time in over a year here at the farm. No joke- we never saw green grass last year (with the exception of the rye in the winter). It's quite an experience to actually walk our pastures and there isn't a *crunch*! I'm just giddy!

I know we're all hoping for a little relief this summer over what we had last year. Many gardeners in our area just aren't up to any big projects like new beds or planting trees/shrubs. They are gun-shy after last year. The gal at the local greenhouse said that the only good part about all of this is that people will be buying more new plants to replace the losses of last year.

Oh, we also went from exceptional to 'severe'. It's great! However, I was talking to a lady whose family owns a ranch near San Antonio area and after we talked about how well the wildflowers looked this year, we talked about grass. She said something about how much of the native grasses in the Hill Country still don't look like they have come back. I've noticed the same thing. The Little Bluestem and many other of the usually drought-tolerant native grasses look dead to me...not all, but most. After all those years of previous drought, maybe last year just pushed them a bit too far. We really need the rain to continue long enough for more new grasses to come up. Right now, there's some grasses growing, but the kinds of grasses that we need the most here are few and far between.

I hope the rain does last a while for you Linda. And that your summer isn't consistently so hot. You've had way more than your share.

Karen

x2!

If I am remembering correctly, the horrible summer of 1980 was followed by a 1981 exceptionally wet winter/spring and mild summer. The pattern for 2011-2012 seems to be similar and I am fingers-crossed hoping the pattern follows all the way through to fall.

So far this year we have had 2" more rain than we had all of last year, and everything is green, but I agree that the native grasses are going to take a couple of years to recover.

Thanks for the good wishes! I'm thinking of buying some native grass seeds and then maybe the rain will get them to germinate. In the meantime, I'm digging up a few Little Bluestem grasses that I neglected to remove last year from my flower beds. I can plant them out on my property...maybe that will help a bit.