Posted on 07/01/2026 5:19:22 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
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3 more counties added to the flash flood warnings, including McCracken in KY, so the warnings are now a continuous swath from Phelps County, MO (Rolla) to the Ohio River. pretty impressive.
I have about 1-1/2” of water in my old garage - luckily there is not much in there that can be damaged unless it gets a lot worse. If the lightning lets up a bit, I need to go out and see what’s piling up the water. (Ditch flooded? Debris dam in west yard? — whatever. Drainage should not be that bad there.)
There’s a large, definite swirl in the radar pattern NE of Paducah - might be trying to form a bookend vortex, headed east. Hopefully not - nobody needs that kind of trouble.
I should be at work right now and did head out but we’ve had 5 inches of rain in 12 hours so even the safe, long way was impassible.
Got to a low spot and it was a raging river. There’s another spot further on that floods more so I can only imagine what that’s like. Had to make a 7 point turn and come back home.
I had already been across one low spot and going back across, it moved my truck sideways a little.
Flood Warning on my phone’s NWS app has been going off every 15 minutes for a few hours now.
Gravel road is trashed.
Well, I’m glad you’re safe. You and Augie have been having onehellofatime with too much rain this season!
Does your employer give you ‘rain days’ like we have ‘snow days’ up here? ;)
We were talking about homemade wine on another thread, so I thought I’d share my recipe here, too. Super easy.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/58561/homemade-wine/
High 80’s, flirting with 90 all week long. Little to no rain expected. Perfect tomato growing weather, so there’s that. Will be watering again mid-week, with spot watering from the rain barrel in between.
Humid, but not unbearable. Yet, anyway. :)
Going to finish up my bagel, do the AM barn chores, let Emma out and do a few things in the garden before the sun hits it. I might even put down another bag of mulch! Staying home the rest of the day to tackle indoor projects, but mainly just goofing off since I’m on my Mini Vay-Cay this week from being a Farm Wife which generally involves, “I need your help for a few minutes.” Then, Three Hours Later...LOL!
Life Is Good! :)
I got NWS flood warnings starting at 3am and just now got another saying do not leave the house unless you're escaping flood waters or been told to evacuate. No longer raining though. Went and checked things out a little bit ago.
A few hundred feet on either end of the creeks, I can see where the water was 2-3 foot up.
Was going to go out at 9:30 or so but the truck had a flat. Guess I hit a sharp rock or something trying to get out this morning. I hit a couple of trenches in the road pretty hard because I couldn't see them in the dark downpour. Plugged the tire for now.
Might go out with the tractor with grader blade and fill a few trenches in close to the house. My driveway is on a crown in the road. Did that so I wouldn't need culvert. Still had enough water come off my driveway to make a trench in the road.
Haven't seen the gravel road so wrecked in the 15 years we've been here. Grader has been parked up on the State Hwy for a few days and now there's a dump truck with trailer with loader/backhoe on it so hopefully they'll take care of us first. I'm sure even when the creeks are no longer raging rivers, they'll be washed out on each end making them impassable. Will be 2-3 days before things subside enough to fix them. Supposed to be getting a package in the mail but don't know if that will happen. Bad day to be a mail carrier working gravel roads around here today.
Hard to tell from the angle but it's washed out a foot deep on either side of the road. They're gonna be bringing in lots of gravel. 
Yesterday I emptied 3 1/4" from my rain gauge. It rained overnight and I have not seen the gauge today.
AM radio National news...Ginger Zee just on. Training T storms over Missouri, including Iron County, 6-11 inches in just a few hours. Rescues are underway from places including campgrounds.
I do it with half gal bottles of 100% fruit juice and do it in the bottles they come in. Only other ingredient allowed aside from the juice is ascorbic acid.
I just snug the caps down a little lighter than you would a canning jar lid so the gas can escape but a vacuum will pull the cap down and seal it.
Gotta keep and eye on it for a couple days to make sure the bottle’s not swelling which means the cap’s too tight. I tend to use apple juice because it’s cheap.
With one extra clean bottle, I get 7 bottles from 6 by pouring off a little from the 6 full ones to fill the 7th which leaves enough room for sugar and a little head space. 6 from 5 works too.
I’ve got some saved brandy bottles and one of these days I’ll siphon off the juice bottles into those and let it go a little longer and help clarify it. In that case, I’ll need balloons or corks with vents. I can get the corks/vents locally because we have a wine town nearby.
According to a couple on youtube that tested it when done, it can range from 11-15% ABV. Cheaper than cheap beer. Saw one guy on youtube who does triple fermenting, buys real generic wine bottles and will mix it with Sprite “to make wine coolers for the girls”.
My buddy up the road bought 5 gal carboys and does it in those.
We went from much too little rain to much too much!
‘Tis quite unusual for us: Normally early July is when the spigot turns off, not on.
My garage flood was at least partially caused by leaves and twigs that blew down partially blocking a culvert. Got that cleared a few hours ago: Where the ditch goes in the culvert, it’s still a “babbling brook”, but, it is going down - hopefully “mostly” by the time the next round hits later today (says NWS, and I believe them. We are very humid - 97% at 10 a.m., and warming up, and there’s another atmospheric ripple on the way.) We got over 4” of rain last night - much more than predicted* - and as much or more than yesterday’s prediction is predicted for later today & tonight.
*That of course that varies a lot across the area, but I’m wondering if anyone in the area got LESS than the forecast graph was showing for them at this time yesterday. I rather doubt it.
I may have to take a nap after taking wifey in to go with some of her friends on another trip: a 3-day church retreat. Like Pollard, both my phone and my weather radio really got a workout with the warnings / alerts last night.
Under February -- https://uprootkitchen.com/tag/seasonal-produce-list/ Apples, bananas and citrus in February? Making things up.
Zoykes, Shaggy! And I thought I was buried in the hillside! While the driveway is a mixture of gravel and recycled blacktop (just had some fresh put on last week) at least my roads out of here are paved!
What a mess for all concerned. :(
Is it Friday, yet? Why, Yes! Yes it is!
Re: Broccoli
Just finished processing and harvesting from my 12 plants. 6 gave me nice big heads, which surprised the heck outta me. I planted them in May and we went straight to HOT. Then it rained most of June and this first part of July - a LOT!
That ‘Lieutenant’ variety is AMAZING. It seems to take whatever Mother Nature throws at it! So, I cut them into florets, blanched them in boiling water for a short 3 minutes, put them in an ice bath to stop the blanching, then portioned them into 3 1-quart bags and froze for future meals. There will be another cutting in another few weeks - I want the smaller heads to get bigger and the side ‘bonus’ florets will fill in, too.
Again, cannot say enough about that ‘Lieutenant’ Broccoli!
AND - absolutely NO Cabbage Moth worms in it - had to shake out a few earwigs though when I was cutting the heads out in the garden. The second round is sometimes a bit more ‘buggy’ but hey - Free Protein! ;)
And that BIG stockpot of Broccoli Blanching Water is cooling now, and when it’s room temp I’m using that water to water my outside porch plants. (Don’t use it inside - it’s kinda smelly!)
I didn’t really have any stems to deal with but I found this interesting:
What to do with Broccoli Stems?
https://montanahappy.com/broccoli-stems/
I killed one tomato hornworm yesterday and disposed of the tomato it had been living in.
Harvested all of my celery yesterday. (Pascal...bought seedlings at hardware store and planted in the spring.) They were doing poorly in the heat. Very spindly and thin stalks. I blanched and froze the cut up these tiny stalks and leaves for use in soups and stews.
Perhaps I will plant them in late summer and grow as a winter vegetable. I will need to give them more space and thin them Pill bugs loved hanging out in and damaging the base of the stalks. Perhaps put something around the base to keep the pill bugs out.
(Note...Things that help with circulation...beet juice, celery juice, arugula, hibicus tea, pomegranite and cherry juice, watermelon juice...they all have nitrous oxide, (N.O.) or compounds that turn into N.O.
Lore of the rings Trees contain an archive – tales of planetary shifts, cosmic events, historical pivots – that we’re only just unlocking
snip...."Trees hold stories: they are witnesses of time and history. Of course, we can read a tree’s age and local climate from its rings, but in recent years we’ve discovered so much more. Deep inside a tree’s trunk is an archive waiting to be found: tales of planetary shifts, cosmic events, and even turning points in human history. And the oldest trees have seen it all." ...snip
Link to a picture from the Aeon Article.
On the descent from Mt. Smolikas, one of the lower Bosnian Pines growing from a barren ridge
I grew this variety too! It worked out well, but I harvested because it was larger than the garden fabric draped over it and the cabbage moths got in and the worms were starting to damage the leaves! A very good variety! (I have always peeled and cooked my broccoli stems. You can get another foot of vegetable from your planting!
My Russet Norkota potato vines are starting to yellow and wilt so I suppose I will need to dig them up soon.
Planted Butternut squash, supposedly resistant to beetles, 3 types of melons, and in the last week, some Red Kuri squash. (French call it macaron, or chestnut squash.) need to set the traps soon.
I used the Youtube "Grow 50 Lbs of Sweet Potatos!" in a 30 gallon plastic bags idea, so far, underwhelming. The vines need to get going. I think it needed additional aeration and I poked a bunch of holes up near the top of the bag. If it needs hot weather I suspect that will come soon.
Mrs Pete said NO! No more Okra Plants! So I planted only Three and they are starting to flower ;0. I skipped peppers entirely and cut back to 12 tomato plants, which all have green tomatoes at this time.
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