We get Friday as a holiday (Spring Break) but I took off today also to give myself a four-day weekend. It's a nice day, not as warm as Monday, but I'll take it. And it's the first day off in ages that didn't have to do with staying home as a defensive posture against bad or icy weather.

Last summer I visited a neighbor who had a Mexican plum sprouting in a flower bed where she didn't want it. I worked for probably an hour to dig out two sprouts and a 2' horizontal root from an adjacent tree that I planted in my yard. The leaves fell off and it looked dead for months. After the warm days this week I see small leaves sprouting! I have chicken wire around the plant to keep the dogs from knocking it over for this growing season. Once this gets established there is a larger tree I'm going to take out that isn't thriving and is in the wrong place (I learned this after it was already set in place or I could have moved it.)

Decluttering the garden of weeds today, using corn gluten meal. Where there is relatively bare soil in existing beds I'll pull any small weeds, sift over some corn gluten meal, the put mulch over it. This keeps the weed seeds in the soil from germinating. The mulch keeps in moisture and keeps the beds from being a bright mustard yellow from the corn.

SRS