April 3, 6

 Sunny and warm today after a stormy night, again. But a lot more of the green is showing up as the grass is fully back and several of the early trees and shrubs are budding and blooming. I picked up several small twigs and branches that the wind had blown onto my patio. And I pulled several dead plants out of the planters. One of the sage plants MAY come back and the two stands of chives are doing really well but I haven's seen any new growth on anything else. We took advantage of the nice conditions to run up to the little dairy and the local grocery. We fill our water jugs at the grocery--at half the price of the lowest commercial water. It is the city water but treated to remove most of the calcium/magnesium salts which makes cleaning my coffee pot MUCH easier. And having the gallon jugs on hand releases our mind in case of another water outage. I was surprised at how many gaps the dairy had in its supplies. They were out of cream and yogurt and were limiting eggs (2 dozen) and Jersey milk, cream and other products. I saw some big gaps at the local Meijer when we shopped there on Monday.  We were also surprised by the hike in gas prices at even the low cost outlets. We filled up at Meijer Monday paying $2.99/gal and the signs announced prices $0.30 higher (the internet said the same for Meijer.)

06*********************************************

The sun is trying to shed some light and warmth but so far this morning the effort is only sorta successful. I am having a VERY lazy day. I slept until almost time to turn on the soccer games. We are avoiding the broadcast news for the weekend and I skimmed the e-mail entries for the last two days. It is either stressful, irritating/angering, or boring. And sometimes, amazingly, all at once.

Bill Astore has a short read that comments on the current political state of the U.S. through an old favorite patriotic song: You're a Grand Old Flag. I guess there is a reason it isn't played much any more. We seem to have a taste for bragging, arrogance, brittle claims of strength and militarism.

Stray thought: the list of Trump's tariffs  shows the same slipshod laziness shown in his pardons of J6 criminals. According to reports Trump started considering the cases individually, as he promised he would do, and said "F##k it. Pardon them all." It looks like he told his people to put a minimum of 10% on every identifiable spot on the globe and then went to work on his favorite punching bags.

Another stray thought: China retaliated and put 34% tariffs on U.S. goods and sent the stock market down for a second day with one of the largest losses in history. China's reaction should not have been a surprise. They know how to deal with bullies being accomplished bullies themselves. You smash them in the mouth and knee then in the nuts. China did that though and Trump is seemingly oblivious.