March 29

Way, Way, Way too early but we have a couple of furry pests one of whom is being especially pestiferous. Much too early to tell what the weather looks like though we do have a bright moon showing so the skies are at least partly clear. The temperatures have been on their seasonal roller coaster between spring warmth and winter hanging on. We have seen some signs of impending spring: the pale green aura on the willow trees that indicate leaves are about to open up, the leaf buds on the maples are swelling and some of the early flowers blooming. But it is still too cold to do more than clean out the dead foliage in my gardens which depends on things drying out. We had rain a good part of the weekend just past.

March 30

As you can guess I didn't get much reading done yesterday. I did get some embroidery and crocheting done, and did a little weaving on my Kayu and Zoom looms. 

It was fairly warm this morning so I may get out to clear out some of the dead plants. So far everything that survived the winter has survived the recent cold snap. I hope it will survive the rest of the week because we expect below freezing overnight temperatures for a couple of nights. Did you all see the amazing temperatures on the east coast over last weekend? Eighties this early is mind blowing. And those tornado swarms down south are frightening. It may be winding up for another strange weather year.

We have been turning off the news for most of the time. We don't really need a blow-by-blow description and dissection of the Chauvin trial and the Republican theater on the southern border is both predictable and boring. We have spent more time on the BBC channel. At least they give us more information and less emotion.

Tomdispatch.com has a piece by Aviva Chomsky about the history of our involvement in Central America and migration from there to the U.S. I had known some of this history but I hadn't realized how stuck in a destructive groove our foreign policy has been. I have thought since 9/11 that we needed to shake out the mental cobwebs and get creative. But somehow I don't think we will.

In a bit of good news the Ever Given (the container ship stuck for nearly a weed in the Suez Canal) is finally free and shipping can continue. I haven's seen anything that says how expensive the delay has been although the N.Y. Times claims Egypt lost $95 million in transit fees. Also it will take days to a few weeks to clear the backlog of ships awaiting transit through the canal. Update: Another blog cited Lloyds of London figures indicating that losses to world economy reached $9.6Billion/day. The canal carries about 10% of world's commerce.

 Good Morning on this March 26

Cold today but not cold enough to make me take my winter coat out of the closet. Things are looking nice in the gardens--at least those showing signs of life. I finally identified the mystery plant: valerian. So far my survivals include two roses, the valerian, woad, chamomile, two mums, three chives, and lavender. Although the peppermint, spearmint, and dianthus have also come back, I am going to take those out and put other plants in their places.

I found this piece at Crooks&Liars and you just know it is going to go on to the Supreme Court. If you are interested in more details this article in Courthouse News should be informative.

And for a good laugh look at Crooks&Liars account of a certain Texas representative making a complete ass of himself in hearings. Satire anyone?

March 27

It has been two weeks since we got our J&J COVID vaccinations so we are considered fully vaccinated. J&J is the single shot vaccine. Just in time this item landed in my e-mail. Every one so wants things to be normal by which they mean normal in the way things were before the pandemic. But every once in a while something comes up that reminds us that there are ways we won't be going back to that normal. We used to go out to eat five or six times a week and haven't been inside a restaurant once since January of 2020. But we aren't anxious to go back to eating out. We can't handle the portions any more and bringing half of our meals home doesn't appeal. We used to go up to a shop that sold bulk tea, coffee, grains, and spices every couple of months. But we don't use any of that the same way any more. We simply aren't cooking or eating the way we did B(before)C(Covid).

We watched a bit of the BBC news this morning. The news readers reported that their vaccine manufacturers are gearing up to produce "booster" shots by September. Parts of France and Germany are locking down with a third wave rising and they have had some violent "protests" against lockdowns. I have read that significant numbers of the EU population are very vaccine skeptic. Mom was reading this morning that QAnon has shifted from charging that the election was rigged to sowing doubts about the vaccines. 

 24 March

I think some more rain is moving in. But I have the patio pretty well situated now. After getting the trash tote and skeleton of the mini-greenhouse out for pickup I took a trellis apart and moved it to serve a different function. I kept the wire racks from the greenhouse and have other racks that I can put up as trellises. I moved some of the 5-gallon buckets and cleared some of the dead material. In the process I found another plant coming up that is a mystery to me. Even if I had a schematic of the gardens last year it wouldn't help me identify my mystery plant because I have moved the containers. I haven't yet found a truly weatherproof method of labeling plants. Before fall has arrived the labeling has faded. Oh well. I will let the plants grow a bit, take a picture, and use one of the "What Plant Is This?" programs on-line. I used on last year to identify a Malabar spinach which suddenly appeared a year after I gave up on it.

Carolee at Herbalblessings is as anxious as I am to get some gardening done. I noticed that she is working on a lot of cool weather early plants. But she uses a trick I have: cutting the bottom out of a gallon milk or vinegar jug and using it as a cloche. I need to take out my seeds and see what I will put and think about when. It is almost April but April can be a treacherous month. Hard freezes and heavy, deep snow are not unknown events. Last year May was unusual because of a late freeze. I didn't get my garden fully planted til late June.

 March 22

I can't see how what the weather is like because it is still dark. The prediction is another sunny day and a bit warmer than yesterday. If so I will get the rest of my containers on the patio arranged for the season. I should also get out front and see if I can cut out some more of the clumps of ornamental grass that has plagued us for last few years. They were so overgrown they actually interfered with anyone going in and out from the front door and they attracted all kinds of bugs that found their way inside as we came in. I have some planters for that area.

To continue--we had bright sun until just a bit ago. Right now clouds are moving in and we are supposed to have about four days of rain. We did our major grocery shopping this morning and made a trip over to Michaels so I could get the thread I need to finish a table topper. It features penguins and I wouldn't have enough black and white thread to finish. Hard to do penguins without black and white. We have reduced our grocery trip to twice a month. We will go to our local dairy Thursday or Friday.

23 March

Clouds are building--we do expect rain. Don't mind that since I won't have to water anything. Not planning on any outdoor work today. I didn't do anything after we finished putting everything away we bought yesterday.

Axios headline pretty much said everything: America mourns--again. The story covered what (little) is known about the nation's second mass shooting incident in a week. This is getting way too "normal". I desperately wish it wasn't.

 During the coverage of the Atlanta crime spree a thought came into my head that has often occurred in various horrific stories: the notion of "hate crime" is pretty much a neutered concept. I remember the elation when Georgia (yes, Georgia) adopted an apparently sweeping hate crime law that covered race, gender, religion, ethnicity (and maybe even more) but the discussion of the investigation made clear that it may be toothless. If the investigators don't find some expression of animosity toward Asian Americans or women generally they might not have the evidence to charge a hate crime. Perhaps it would be better to include hateful attitudes as a reason to impose harsher sentences rather than as a stand alone charge. 

Chatter on the news/talk shows have moved on to President Biden's "Build Back Better" infrastructure plans which have a $3TRILLION price tag--at least in the full package. They say it might be passed piecemeal if it is passed at all. What was interesting was the breathlessness which accompanied the story. Joe Scarborough quoted Everett Dirksen's "a billion here and a billion there and pretty soon you are talking about real money. He noted that the phrase needs updating: the billion has become a trillion. But what went through my head was what I have been reading for some years now on what we really need to update our infrastructure. The estimates have ranged from $1 to $3 Trillion for the last several years. The problem is we, as a nation, have kicked this can so far down the road that catching up is a pipe dream.

I went out on the patio since it hasn't started raining yet to look at a couple of the pots that showed some promise of winter survivors. I trimmed back the sage and the two mums all of which are showing some new growth. I noticed some small leaf buds on the two roses and nice green plants of woad and chamomile. The biggest surprise was the lavender. It is showing some new growth also. I didn't completely clear the old stalks of lavender but there is definitely new leaves underneath. It may be time to start clearing all the dead plants out. I left a lot of the growth to act as ground cover to prevent hard rains splattering dirt out of the container.

 March 2

Lovely sunny day though still a bit cool. I got a few of my containers rearranged and some more of the patio swept up. I don't yet know what plants will still survive through the season. The mums new leaves are looking a bit stressed. My sage surprised me by putting out some new leaves from the base. I hope both will survive. I am pretty sure the peppermint and spearmint will survive but I am thinking of pulling them up for other plants this season. I started growing a number of herbs for tea but we have changed our preparation of both coffee and tea over the last 2 years. Now we do a pour-over coffee in the mornings and use tea bags in the afternoon. I used to use the coffee pots for both coffee and tea but what we do now works. All of the varieties of tea I use don't use any metal, and the bags and tags are biodegradable. If I were still composting I would put that to a test.

Some of you may remember a couple of months or so ago I completely unraveled a crochet table cloth I had nearly half done (40+ rounds of about 73). I realized that somewhere I had made a serious mistake and couldn't find a place to go back to where I could make progress. Well, a couple of weeks ago I started it again and have just about reached the round where I had difficulties. I found the problem. The author of the pattern, I think, tried to save her time and possible mistakes by simply referring back to rows that seemed to match the next section. So the patten said to repeat a specific row. Actually, it did that several times. But the first instruction I was told to repeat said to repeat the row 3 times and that is what I did. But that last part (the 3 times repeat of the round) is what threw the later part of the pattern off. Instead, the row should have been repeated only once. I found a couple of other instructions that should have been changed to fit the pattern. Well, it is now progressing well. I hope to finish in a couple of months. Right now each round takes me a little more than an hour and that time will increase as the rounds get longer. 

 Happy Vernal Equinox💕💕💕

The shadow of the house has retreated to just below the top of our fence. From now until the Summer Solstice that shadow will retreat further and further until only a small strip nearest the house will be shaded. The patio planters will warm up quickly now barring any sudden freeze--which may happen though I hope not. I am getting the area cleaned up and rearranged.

Found this item just now. After the drought years broke and they had a couple of wet years with bumper crops, the people of New South Wales has a plague of mice.

 Good day on this nice sunny, dry March 19

I might get back into the patio gardens tomorrow--after things dry out a bit after a very rainy yesterday. I finished house cleaning for a while. I think the spirit has moved on--thank goodness.

I found this on Naked Capitalism a bit ago. I have been a skeptic when it comes to any expectations of either the pandemic (as in it will be over by what ever your favorite date) or the notion that the economy will go back to whatever anyone considers normal. First, we (in the U.S.) won't get all adults vaccinated, without the problem of the vaccine refuseniks, before fall. Yes, we might have the vaccine but distribution has been the bottleneck. Second, we won't have data on child vaccinations before the end of the year and the vaccinations won't be accomplished before sometime next year. Third, the economy has been pushed and pulled out of the pre-Covid grooves. Many of the jobs and businesses won't ever come back and many more will come back slowly. And that is without the possibility of another wave of Covid infections. We'll see what we see and somehow adapt.