Good Monday to all out there.  We should have a nice warm day and I plan to get as much of the digging in the gardens done as I can.  The weather people say we should get more rain tomorrow, especially in the afternoon.  I did get one of the old 30 gal containers half emptied--after I dug up the pyrethrum and put it into a container I won't be working on soon.  I have the drain holes put in one of the new 30 gal tubs.  I thought I would try something new this year.  When I put in the old ones I placed the drain holes at the very bottom edge.  This time I am putting the holes about 5 inches from the bottom all around.  I figure that will keep a reservoir of moisture that the plants can draw on during the really hot weather when it is often difficult to make sure the plants have enough water. I also trimmed my rosemary and bay a bit when I watered them.  They are doing very well--both showing vigorous new growth.  I pulled the roses.  The winter killed all three of them.  I won't replace them but will put in something else in their place.

Evidently the story I linked to a couple or so weeks ago citing a paper presented in an American Chemical Society journal claiming high levels of led in rice has been withdrawn because the results were highly inaccurate.  As in 1000x higher than they should have been.  Natural News presents a  good summary along with the contrasting Consumer Reports results.

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It is now a cloudy and soon-to-be wet Tuesday.  I got part of my garden digging and rearrangement done.  However, I have much more to do.  But I think it will be too wet to do anything before Thursday.  Yesterday's work was some hard slogging.  The containers I worked on were still very wet and the soil more like clay.  I will pick up some bags of vermiculite and, when I start filling the new containers, I will mix it in generously.  I got a potentially pleasant surprise.  I carefully dug out the lavender, sage, and oregano and found really nice roots.  They may come back after all.