It seems I'm a day late - didn't realize what day it was!
1) The weather forecast here keeps changing. Now it's to be in the mid-80s today (instead of almost 90F). Nicer still tomorrow (cooler). Monday it's supposed to be 70F again (the normal). It's causing havoc out at the garden - the rocket has all bolted. On the good side, the broccoli is beginning to make tiny little broccoli heads. Which hopefully will be much larger, eventually, than they are now. (Otherwise they will be suitable only for the hamster!) The tomatoes all survived their transplanting and are happy under their shade-cloth. A corner of the garden has a natural water seep under it, and there is a spring-fed pond farther down the hillside. (That part of the garden "schlooped" when I put a turning fork into it and tried to wiggle the soil around a bit after a few weeks of heavy rains earlier this year.) Apparently summers are relatively dry here - it does rain from time to time, but not gully-washers or days of continuous rain. So I got to thinking that if there's a seep a foot down under the surface of the soil now, plants that like a little bit of moisture in their soil should do well there. I put in the Heinz and the Cosmonaut Volkov tomatoes in that area. When I dug down to plant them, the soil was damp and semi-clay, but not sopping wet. So I mixed some gypsum and some Tomato-Tone in with the soil and planted them in that. Fingers are crossed. The Berkeley Pink Tie-Dye and the Rutgers are in a slightly deeper and drier soil. Will be interesting to see how they all fare.
2) We went to Massachusetts the other day, to Northampton to go to Webbs for the Daughter to get a supply of knitting yarn on mega-sale. That place is amazing - absolutely huge, and the sales were very good. Took the MA turnpike over most of the way, and the back-roads coming home. Very pretty drive. Going to stick to the turnpike both ways if we do it again. Some of those back roads were kind of "The Hills Have Eyes" and not somewhere I'd want the car to break down in! Not even sure if there was cell phone out there.
3) We are driving to NJ next week. I need to visit some family graves that haven't been visited by anyone (as far as I know) for a very, very long time. Going to sneak a red geranium in to plant by my grandfather's gravestone. My grandmother did that every year on his birthday when I was a kid. She's been gone for 40 years now, and moved across the country 15 years before then, never returning for a visit again. I doubt anyone has been to visit it since the last time she did. So it seems like the thing to do. I'm sure they'll just rip it back up again, but at least it will have been done. I'll only have missed his birthday by a couple of days. I also need to go to Ikea to get a futon or a love-seat for the living room, anyway, so it all works out.
4) Still waiting for Canada to open their borders. No earlier than late June, I'd bet. If then. Want to take the train up and visit, rather than driving. They sell my favorite curry kit in the grocery stores up there, too!
5) Looks like they will be running the county fairs this year. Will have to enter a pie or something....
