Warming weather, blue skies, temps around 70F and up. Looks like spring
is almost here. Tearing out the winter garden in bits. If it looks like
it might bear a bit longer we let it live. Eggplants are gone, one sweet
chili left with at least two fruit on it. Lots of chard, spinach,
mesclun mix, beets and other greens to harvest. Will do our best for those.

Soon we will be going to our favorite garden store and picking up
tomatoes, eggplant, sweet chiles, etc. Black crowder peas came in
yesterday from Victory Seeds, will plant those along the back fence with
string to climb. Have seeds for green beans and everything else we will
plant.

The kumquat tree still has about a dozen fruit on it that will be picked
tomorrow. We make a tossed salad with sliced kumquat fruit mixed in that
is very tasty. Fig and pear trees are starting to put on buds. Need to
prune the pear tree, to many "rain" limbs on that one. Won't take long
to lop them off and set the limbs aside for possible smoking meat later
in the year. We're hoping to get at least a small crop of the Tenousi
pears, a mix of European and Asian pears that is supposed to be tasty.
Tenousi is self pollinating according to the ag agent.

The blueberries are starting to put on buds too, seems the Christmas
tree limbs we laid around the bushes are helping as they slowly turn
into a nice mulch. Need to find a place to rake up a bushel or two of
pine needles to help with the blueberries, they need the acid of those
plants.

We've been getting some days up into the mid-seventies that make me
happy. I could not survive somewhere it gets cold and stays that way for
months. I guess it is because the USN ship I was on in '58-'59 was
always poking around the Atlantic ice shield looking for Russian subs.
Never found one but it was always cold on the bridge, my duty station. I
reckon we Texans from SE Texas just never adapt to cold. I was 18 years
old before I ever saw snow and that wasn't in Texas.

George