A Gardening Weekend!

This weekend is going to be the perfect weekend to do all of those lingering late winter chores in the garden. I wanted to work in my yard last weekend, but it was cold, rainy, and nasty. I just could never make myself get outside. But this weekend, it will be cool and sunny. Yay!

I have a few chores on my list:

1. Get pine straw
2. Prune back the lantana and apply pine straw
3. Cut back ruella (Mexican petunia)
4. Turn compost and harvest any that is ready
5. Apply compost to my vegetable beds to get them ready for spring

Only 5 items, but I can imagine those will take me most of the afternoon on Saturday. I can be a little ADD when I'm out in the garden, always finding another chore that needs to be done. I need to transplant one "Miss Huff" lantana, but I'm not sure that this is the best time to do it. I might wait until early March after it has leafed out some.

Spring vegetable gardening is just around the corner for me down here in central Mississippi. I plan to start lettuce, sugar snap peas, carrots, Swiss chard, and beets in just a few weeks.

In 2010 I neglected my garden a bit. in 2011 I hope to be more involved. I have big plans and high hopes.

High On LeConte

One of the blogs I link to in my blog roll is High on LeConte, a blog kept by the caretakers at the LeConte Lodge high in the Smoky Mountains. This winter has dumped many, many inches of snow on Mount LeConte. According to the National Weather Service, there is 32" of snow on the ground at LeConte now. Wow!

I am fairly obsessed with the Smokies, and I check the blog daily. Feast your eyes on these amazing photos that the caretaker, Alexander Hughes, has taken this winter. These are some of my favorites.

Deep snow drifts on the trail to Cliff Tops

Now this is what I call a winter wonderland! Can you believe that people hike up and camp at the backcountry shelters in these conditions? Woah!

Did you see the flash of light?

http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20110111/NEWS/110111049/Mysterious-flash-of-light-causes-uproar

I saw it out of my bathroom window! It was about 9 PM CST and I was getting in the shower. I saw a flash out of the bathroom window. We have one of those large glass block 'privacy' windows. I asked Chip if he saw the flash (he didn’t), and I joked that I had a stalker taking my nekkid photo.

Really, I thought it might be the neighbor’s motion light acting up. Guess not!

According to a few other reports, it was a meteor that fell in Oklahoma.