Saturday, March 17, 2012

Good Saturday, Everyone.  We are still in a March heatwave.  I think the weather people said that the 82 we had yesterday was the highest temperature ever this early.  They predict another couple of 80s and then a bit of a cool down.  But even with that we are expecting higher than normal temps.  I found three of the four cherry tomato seeds have sprouted and one of the two Brandywine.  I will take a closer look when the sun comes up.  Right now all I see is a light streak that promises a nice sunny day.  They say we may get some pop-up storms.  I transplanted the thyme yesterday but didn't split it.  It is still a nice compact plant.  The leaf buds on the the blueberries are swelling rapidly so they appear to have come through very nicely.  Most of what I did yesterday was clean-up--sweeping the remaining leaves for the compost bin, emptying the long planter, hooking up the water hose, sweeping off the table/potting bench, and filling the newspaper pots to plant today.  Today I hope to transplant the roses and clean up the mums.  I haven't decided where I will put the mums.

I have already turned off the TV news.  Everything is either fluff or repeating stories with no new information.  Last night they had another segment on 'pink slime.'  Some chef decided to compare the cooking quality of beef patties with and without the product.  He said you could definitely tell the difference because the 'slime' patty produced less fat/water and had a different consistency.  Problem--what quality of beef was he using in his comparison.  We buy ground round which is about 93% lean and get very little fat/water off of it.  When we ground our own the result was even leaner.  I still resent the notion that the industry is trying to sell us ground beef that contains scrap that once was considered fit only for pet food.  And I don't want something that has been subjected to ammonia no matter how safe they say it is.

Well, I didn't see much to comment on in my trip through the internet.  But I did get the roses, mums and lavender transplanted.  I have all of my largest containers clear of plants so I can start shoveling the soil out of them to be mixed with new garden soil and vermiculite.  By the time I am ready to transplant seedlings into them they will be ready to receive them.  I also started the pyrethrum, tansy, and marigolds.  I still have to trim back the dead branches on the mums but that can wait till tomorrow.

1 comment:

Nicola said...

I haven't blogged for a while so I am now catching up. The weather has been good for gardening and great progress has been made. How is yours coming on?