Ok, now I'm ticked.

Yesterday evening there were some rain clouds in the distance and thunder heard.  And what did we get?  About twenty minutes of a light drizzle.  Not even enough to wet down the dusty road.  And this morning?  Light drizzle that lasted a whole ten minutes.  And when I look on the radar (I’m a computer radar addict) there is rain to the north, east, south AND west of us.  Now how the heak does that happen??? 

Same thing happened the weekend my Dad & Sister were in.  They called when they were about a half hour north of us and were in a driving rainstorm.  Cross over the Missouri border into Arkansas and just like magic, no rain.  Not a drop.

Well, I’m pretty sure it has something to do with the lake and the hills surrounding us.  It’s like a storm will come from the west and the hills will cut the storm in two, leaving us in the middle with nada.  Well, I do have to admit that I like that little feature in the winter when the nasty weather comes in.  But right now, would it KILL somebody to let us have a little bit of rain???

The goats have nibbled away just about all the greenery in their enclosures.  The lawn crunches when you walk on it.  We have to water every day, sometimes even twice a day just to keep things from getting crispy.  And I think we’re going to lose a big oak tree as the leaves have all turned brown and crunchy.

Local forecast shows three digit temps until Friday and only a 20% chance of rain later in the week.  Insane.

I can’t imagine how one would keep a garden alive without a well or city water.  We’d like to one day have a large cistern by the house to use for garden watering, but in a drought like this, how large of a tank would one need?  I can’t even begin to guess how much water we’ve been using on the gardens this summer, although if I did have to take a wild guess, I’d say maybe three hundred gallons a day.  The eighteen fruit trees probably get the most soaking, but the rest is on the two gardens and the handful of potted veggies. 

We’ve got to get an irrigation system set up for next year.  Not only will it save tons of time, but we can really focus on watering the actual vegetables we planted (and not the nearby weeds) and not waste so much water.