[gardeners] The weekend

Michael & Bambi Cantrell (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Sun, 31 Jan 1999 19:54:31 -0500 

What a wonderful month of January!  The temps have been
above average, and rainfall has been adequate.

Many of the plants are ahead of their normal bloom times by a
month or more.

The maple tree in my front yard is blooming as are the early daffodils,
and even some azaleas.  The buds on the Bradford Pear trees are
getting noticably larger, as are the dogwood buds.

The highs have been in the 50's to near 80 most days this month.  We did
have a couple of nights with the lows below 30*F.  A cold front came through
today and dropped the temps from the low 50's to the low 30's.  Freezing
weather to us.

Yesterday was a very busy day here.  We picked up our middle child
from a friend's house, then took the kids to the Scout's Pinewood Derby,
where David's car won first place with the Scouts,
and Erin's car won second place in the family catagory.

Then it was off to a soccer game for Erin.  Her team lost as they went
into overtime due to a tie score, and the other team got the first goal.
She had another game an hour later, which they won 12:1.
In the meantime, I had run David over to a pizza party with his Scout troop.

At home Mike was fixing a broken water faucet on our outside faucet.
It was old and had deteriorated, and was the main faucet that I usually
use year round.

After all the games, etc were over we went to a cookout at Mom's with
a bunch of friends.   All the kids cooked marshmallows over the
fire we had outside after we ate supper.  We adult kids did wait for the
young children to get roasted marshmallows first. :-)

Everyone had a good time, and it was a great, if very busy day.

To add a bit of gardening to this, I got my ground prepared and planted
snow peas between the Pinewood Derby and the soccer games.
Interestingly enough, I found a piece of potato that I had planted last
spring!
It was a cut little chunk of potato with little roots growing from it, but
no
signs of any greenery.  It was in perfect shape with no signs of rot.
I've never seen anything like this before.  I reburied it.  I'll see what
happens.  It was a seed potato that I got from a hardware/gardening
store, not one that I had gotten from a grocery store, so should not have
been sprayed to retard growth.  We did have floods then a bad drought
here last year, but the 2 other potatoes that the squirrels didn't dig up
grew and produced as did the peas that I had planted there earlier,
and the peppers that I later planted.  Kind of strange.....

Hope y'alls month was as good as ours.

Bambi
Coastal Carolina
USDA zone 8; AHS Heat zone 8; Sunset zone 31