George Shirley wrote:

Last two days we have gotten five inches of rain, the majority falling
over the last 24 hours. Lots of flooding in the Houston area but not
where we live. Lost power last night for about eight hours. Happens
frequently where we live, I suspect either a bad transformer or a bad
fuse. I finally turned all the electronics off last night to avoid
catastrophic failure as the power was dropping on and off for about an
hour, not the best thing to do to electronics.

for the expensive electronics always a good idea to
have a UPS in the circuit if your power company is
flaky. unplugging or surge protectors can help but i
don't think either is worth it if you can afford a few
$ for the UPS instead.


The garden has thoroughly enjoyed the rain, seems as if all the plants
doubled in size overnight. I suspect it was all the nitrogen brought
down from the rain. Squash plants a week ago were four or five inches
high, now they're over a foot high. Tomatoes, eggplant, and sweet chiles
are covered with blooms. The pole beans, both lima and green, are
climbing like lantana, fast. Cukes are finally starting to climb but as
yet no blooms. The fig tree is setting fruit and I'm already seeing
flower buds on the kumquat. The lonely two pears on our Tennousi pear
are about the size of my thumb already.

i'm jealous and envious... it was a beautiful
day out here with rains forecast for most of the week.
still i don't believe it until i see it. Saturday
we were supposed to have a 70% chance of rain and it
ended up being four sprinkles of not much at all. we
have had some rain so it isn't as dry as the folks out
west, and i would not mind another nice week of fairly
dry weather so i can get a few more gardens ready for
planting and get some other weeding or goofing around
done. nothing beats a nice early spring day for
getting stuff done that didn't get done last fall and
so it is good to me.

yesterday we went back and pulled some trash out of
the ditch, one large garbage container we can't get
and so i said we could wait until the water warms up
enough that i can go in after it.


We hoped for more pears but we had no bees at the time of bloom. We're
seeing a few honey bees plus mason, carpenter, and bumble bees but not
enough to do a good job of pollination. No bee flies as yet but I know
they're around somewhere. The new subdivision going in behind us isn't
helping as that was where most of our bees were coming from the now
non-existent woods. No need to seek out a beekeeper as the dairy farm
nearby has been spraying again by aircraft and we get the over spray.
The damned farm is two miles away and we still get spray. I think I
shall complain. In addition they plant rye grass every fall and we get
that over flight too. It's a PITA to be digging rye grass out of the
gardens and lawn. It does get into the composter though.

i've never heard of seeding rye grass by plane before...


Otherwise it's a decent day, cool, overcast with a threat of more rain,
which in Texas is never enough. It was only a few years ago that we were
in severe drought conditions. Rain is a blessing we needed and will for
some time as there are more and more restrictions on using ground water.

hope things out west start coming around too. it's
been a tough stretch for them.


We're still harvesting lettuce, radishes, beets, spinach, chard, and
other "winter" greenery and enjoying it. The Barbados dwarf cherries are
in full bloom and all of about eighteen inches high. Make a good display
in the front flower bed, backed by the perennial Bright Lights chard
and, we might actually get some of the tiny, edible cherries.



the harvest here recently has been weeds/grasses i want
to get out of some gardens before it takes over and some
bulbs we want to move and even if it isn't the best time to
do it, it is getting done anyways. none of them are the
only ones we have so they can take a year or two to bounce
back and we won't be out any major blooms.

some fresh garlic would be good if i had something to
cook... i may have to process the garlic i have in the
garage as it looks to be starting to sprout. keeping it
out there and well covered has kept it a few months longer
than i had been able to keep it before. i'm sure a fair
amount of it will not be that good any longer, but if i
can get a few jars of prepared garlic in the freezer then
they make good gifts for others and Ma will use them in
the winter months for her cooking.

still no catbirds this spring, hope they will come back,
i always enjoy their songs.


songbird