Looks like my timing is pretty good regarding taking advantage of the low lake level and extracting all that muck. Usually we’re dry until April and I could easily have procrastinated knowing that I could get even more by waiting for another month of dry weather. But the last couple of weeks we’ve seen more than normal rain – not enough to budge the lake level yet but as the ground saturates, the lake will rise faster on runoff and it could be the end of the muck season. Good. I was wearing out. In addition to all the rich muck, I now have a good place to land and launch the poke boat and perhaps the trench I dug will turn into a fish hideout for Old Nathan, the biggest bass in the lake.
I decided to plant some potatoes after all. We opened a bag of Idaho spuds from Publix and noted that several of them were already sprouting. Wonder if they’ll grow in Florida? We’ll soon know – where soon is 90-100 days. The sweet potatoes I have sprouting in water now have leaves so I’m guessing by the middle of April we’ll have both kinds of potatoes in the garden. You start them quite differently. With white potatoes, you cut off chunks of the potato with an eye and plant them directly into the soil. With the sweets, you let the sprout develop then cut it off the “mother†and root the sprout by either planting it directly in potting soil or rooting the slip in water.
Notice how the higher gas prices are being blamed on world affairs – Greece, Iran, China etc. When they went up during the Bush admin it was all about the evil oil companies and Bush/Cheney’s hook to them. The energy issue/gas prices are going to be the nail in Obummer’s coffin. Before he was elected he speechified often about how we would benefit from higher prices and actually said we should be paying the same prices as they do in Europe – $10-12 a gallon; wanted to tack on a carbon tax to raise the price and reduce driving; within a few weeks of being elected, shut down offshore drilling, arctic drilling and other drilling on Fed lands. Now he’s taking credit for all the oil and gas coming on line from projects started 5-8 years ago. Makes it kind of hard now to talk your way around the high prices. Especially after killing the pipeline from Canada.
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