April 7

Sunny again today after an absolutely beautiful day yesterday. Temperature yesterday was in the low 80s and today's is expected to  be in the high 70s. I have already been out in the gardens today. I took apart the tower planter. I moved the middle planter to the bottom with its nice growth of chives. The other two I simply dumped--the lowest planter had a growth of fungus and I wanted to wash it before refilling it and the other had oregano the roots of which simply filled whatever space was there and made a good start on invading the planter below it. That oregano hadn't survived. The other oregano in the window box style planter had survived but I plan to move it to the front of the house and fill it with flowers. The survival wasn't worth the effort to move to another pot since I don't plan on doing much in the way of herbs this year. I plan to prune the roses which did survive nicely. I am thinking of adding other roses if I find ones I want. I might try a blueberry bush again. I tried roses and blueberries before but they didn't survive. I changed from buckets with bottom drain holes when those began to breakdown (after about 15 years of use) to new ones in which I put drain holes around the sides about six inches above the bottom. They drain better after being frozen in winter. The old ones became waterlogged. I will get what I can done today but we expect rain starting tonight and extending through the weekend. Next week is forecast to be cooler (50s and 60s) with lows in the mid 30s.

We did our regular shopping yesterday. That has gone down to every two weeks for both the grocery and the dairy instead of every week. We also had to fill up the gas tank and got sticker shock to see the price at a tenth of a cent below $3/gal. We haven't even come to the seasonal shift in the blends to the summer gas which is always more expensive. Some of the pundits I read are expecting more increases and in groceries as well as gas. We try to keep an eye on such things and are always looking at "what if" situations. So far we haven't had to make changes because of a tight budget but we are always prepared for that possibility.

I found another survival in the gardens. I think it is dyer's woodruff.  I will let it go and see how it blooms. One of the two mums that had survived the worst of the winter did not make it through our last really cold spell. I should have given it some protection but I didn't.  Although one of the oregano sort of survived I pulled it anyway. I will put something else in that pot.