April 20

Cold enough to give us light snow showers though nothing has stuck or accumulated. The winter survivors in the gardens are still hanging on. Some are doing better than that. The woad is trying to bloom. I cleaned out the pot that had the dianthus even though it was trying to come back. I want to put something else in that container. I may plant some more dianthus in one or more of the 5-gal buckets. It has made a good show for the last two years. When things dry out I need to fill several pots and get things ready for seeds and transplants.

I have been spending more time with my needlework. My penguin cross-stitch table topper is almost finished and I finally got my crochet table cloth back to the place where the pattern went wrong forcing me to unravel the whole thing. I may actually get it finished before summer.

I have been listening to the asinine Republican arguments about President Biden's jobs bill (a.k.a., infrastructure bill.) Those boys (for the most point) have a very narrow definition of infrastructure--limited largely to highways, bridges and airports. They are cold to including rail, electrical systems, water/sewage system, or 5G and cable repairs/improvements. As for other 'soft infrastructure' like elder/child care, education, they are absolutely frigid. Perhaps they should read this Tomdispatch.com post on China's infrastructure spending. A couple of commentators have wondered if the Republicans will agree to anything Biden proposes. They tried to low ball the COVID relief bill and they are now trying to low ball the current proposal. Normally I would try not to paint all the Republicans with the same brush but I haven't seen any of them really ready to buck the Party of Trump.

We just watched the verdict read in the Chauvin trial: guilty on all charges. One of the commentators remarked that it is sad that a black person has to be blatantly murdered on video shown the world over followed by months of massive demonstrations before a cop will be called to account. I hope that more states will do what Maryland has done and remove the qualified immunity police enjoy. I believe that those to whom we have given the power of deadly force must be questioned closely when that power is used.