It's way too hot! Amusement park nightmare!

Talked with a friend that works at BGW, he told me that they have only had 1 busy day all summer due to the extreme heat. The water park has been of the hook busy though.

When we were at the park on Sunday everything was walk on except for Verbolten, it was a full 1-2 train wait.

I gave up trying to keep my grass greenish-brown, now I'm just trying to keep it from turning into dusty dirt.

Meh, I don't even care. My grass is brown. So what. I'm not going to waste water by pouring it onto the ground when rain will eventually come.

Considering how hard I worked, and how much money I put into that lawn in the last 3 years, I want to make sure it stays.

The previous owner of our place let it grow knee-high, then hit it with round up so that it all died. I didn't have much to work with, and the soil's still a little bit sketchy as it is.

edit: That, and the new Arborvitaes we just planted need water so they'll take root in the soil.

You put toilet water on your lawn? I use Gatorade.

I remember reading somewhere a long time ago that turning brown is actually grass's defense mechanism to protect it during drought. People giving their lawns little amounts of water now and then to try to keep it green do more harm to it because it makes the root system more shallow.

The grass becomes "Dormant" when it goes brown, so NOT watering it means you don't need to mow it constantly, so that keeps those costs down as well. God does a good job, even if he holds back rain from time to time, so I just place it in his hands.

Grass will go dormant without water but it typically doesn't all come back to green. And it will be a thinner lawn. By drinking water (tap if its available), I can afford to water my lawn. :)

My lawn goes brown every fall, and comes back green in the spring. No watering necessary. :)

That's a bit different than "so dry it stabs through your skin when you walk n it barefoot" dry, though.

Also, it snows/melts in the winter, and actually rains in the spring.

GoBucks89 said:

By drinking water (tap if its available), I can afford to water my lawn. :)

My lawn is a snooty little bitch. It refuses to drink tap water and insists on Perrier.

Josh, most grass stays green year round. I was alluding to the type of grass on my lawn (at least most of it, which spread from my neighbor's lawn two houses down from mine): zoysia.

If you can deal with brown/yellow grass from October to May, I highly recommend living next to someone who has zoysia grass, which will likely spread and take over your weeds, clover, and crabgrass over the span of a few years so you won't have to maintain it.

When we bought our house 8 years ago there wasn't a blade of zoysia on it. Couple more years and my lawn should be weed-free.

RatherGoodBear said:

Timber-Rider said:

since I am not Canadian...

Well there's your problem. When they said the high would be 68, they meant in Celsius. Silly American.

Well, considering that 30 Celsius is a little over 80 degrees, that would be one extremely hot day! What is that around 180 degrees at 68 celsius?

Reduced to discussing weather and lawn

Really outdone ourselves on the excitement meter this time :p

sws said:

GoBucks89 said:

By drinking water (tap if its available), I can afford to water my lawn. :)

My lawn is a snooty little bitch. It refuses to drink tap water and insists on Perrier.

I just put a Fiji sticker over the Hunter marks on my sprinkler system and my lawn can't tell the difference.

jonnytips said:

Reduced to discussing weather and lawn

Really outdone ourselves on the excitement meter this time :p

Well a thread about it being hot in the summer got to 5 pages. Excitement meter was pretty weak on this one from the start.

I moved to Seattle in November, its rainiest month, and I couldn't figure out why every property had a built-in sprinkler system. Then I learned, from late June to the first week of September, that it essentially doesn't rain at all. Yes, the myth is busted... Seattle is actually not as rainy as certain places in the Midwest (this year notwithstanding).

Raven-Phile said:

Considering how hard I worked, and how much money I put into that lawn in the last 3 years, I want to make sure it stays.

For me, it's not even the amount of work put into it that keeps us watering our lawn. It's that we actually use it.

It finally did rain here in Michigan last night. We had another 30 minute thunderstorm which brought up all kinds of warnings, followed by 3 hours of quiet. The weather stations claimed the rain had ended, and all the warnings expired. Well, after midnight even worse storms came through, and it rained for 10 hours straight, with one storm after another. Of course the weather folks say they can't always be right, and issued another advisory for storms that were supposed to come tonight. That has yet to happen.

Here's an example of the difference from yesterday at noon, and today at noon. Temp yesterday. 98 dregrees-heat index 110. Today at noon, 69 degrees with light rain and no heat index. By 3 we were at 82, clear and sunny. They originally reported no rain for the next 14 days from last nights report. Now they are saying it may rain Saturday night and all day Sunday.

Michigan has the weirdest weather. I remember one day in March, everyone was at the beach one day with 80 degree weather, and 3 feet of snow fell the next. I know because I drove in it!!

Jeff said:
I moved to Seattle in November, its rainiest month, and I couldn't figure out why every property had a built-in sprinkler system. Then I learned, from late June to the first week of September, that it essentially doesn't rain at all. Yes, the myth is busted... Seattle is actually not as rainy as certain places in the Midwest (this year notwithstanding).

Statistically, Seattle is the second rainiest city in the country (after Portland, OR) based on the number of rainy days, but that is only because it almost never snows. Count days when water in some firm falls from the sky, and Seattle falls to 6th place, right ahead of Columbus, Ohio and behind Pittsburgh and Cleveland.

In terms of total rainfall, Seattle doesn't even make the top 10.

The trick is that Seattle and Portland get *all* their rain from September to June. And it all comes as a miserable, annoying light rain that never seems too stop.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.