Drought Update

My husband thinks I'm starting to sound like Wendell Berry on all this, but I guess that's not such a bad thing. Anyway, for anybody who is interested, I talked drought over drought conditions with my father-in-law yesterday.

He said the recent rains were really helpful, and the top part of the soil is back to normal. It's just the depths that are still hurting. He'd uprooted something or other, and he said the top two-thirds of the rootball were moist, but the bottom third is dry. I asked him how much moisture we'd need to wet the ground deep enough for the corn to do well (3 feet minimum), and he estimated at least 24 inches of rain on top of what would be normal for the year -- you have to take into account evaporation and what the seedlings are using up, of course. And that 24 inches has to come slowly. If it all came at once, there would be a flood and lots of run-off and it wouldn't soak into the ground the way it needs to. So we still need rain, slow rain, and I hope anybody reading this will kindly say a prayer regarding that important issue.

P.S. I'm adding a weather pixie to keep track of the weather around here. I couldn't find a pixie that looked like me (what -- no mom-types with chin-length brown curly hair??), but I did find one that kinda looks like what I would want to look like, if I was still single & childless in my 20s. Good thing those days are over!