People who complain that the news is too negative often end up blaming the messenger. If we followed the strange logic in this, vegetable gardeners would be carping this month about the local meteorologists who bring us bad news nightly and whoever prepares those depressing five-day outlooks in the newspaper.

And let’s not forget the slick professionals on The Weather Channel, who keep replaying footage of swirling cloud formations and atmospheric pressure systems that never manage to drop any rain on northeast Kansas.

For the record, most of us have had less than an inch of rain this month, and we’re down more than five inches for the year. Friday’s 108-degree high temperature was just for emphasis.

For people who grow vegetables, watching or reading a weather report these days is an excruciatingly painful experience. To add insult to injury, the TV weathercasters can’t seem to wipe the smiles off their faces while they’re telling us how hot and dry it will continue to be. At such moments, these folks have all the charm of a game-show host awarding the lovely parting gifts.

What most people don’t realize, however, is that from a vegetable grower’s perspective, the average weather forecast tells only a fraction of the story about what’s really important. Most gardeners don’t care whether about the outlook for the morning commute, and no pollen count is going to keep a gardener indoors.

So, when vegetable gardeners watch the news, they fill in the blanks and flesh out the details for themselves. If the TV weather report were a foreign film, what’s going on in a gardener’s head would be the subtitles.

When, for example, the weather meteorologist cheerfully announces that we’re in for the umpteenth day of afternoon temperatures above 90 degrees, gardeners are wondering whether their indeterminate tomatoes, which need some sunny days in the 80s, will be able to set more fruit. Then they’re likely to make a mental note to pick their sweet corn again tomorrow, before it starches up.

This also would be one of the many points in the weathercast when gardeners who water worry about their utility bills. They’re also apt to think about piling on more mulch or, in a moment of despair, whether they really like winter squash that much after all.

A few may even be thinking about getting up at sunrise so they can work in the garden before breakfast. Some will curse the grasshoppers, which seem happiest and hungriest when it’s hot and dry, and the rabbits and deer that seem to visit vegetable gardens more often in a drought.

The only people who smile through this part of the forecast are those who can pump free water, from a well or a pond, and those who plant a garden just for the okra, the only garden vegetable that seems content in a midsummer drought.

Throughout the weather report, gardeners are longing for rain. In fact, this is something of an obsession, fed by faint hope and the slimmest of hints. The gardener’s heart palpitates at the meaningless words “partly cloudy”; a mention of “scattered showers,” even if it’s just a 30 percent chance, is like seeing the first Powerball number on your ticket.

When the forecast shows no promise of rain, the positive-thinkers among us console themselves in the knowledge that their veggies may bake on the vine, but at least they won’t have to mow the lawn.