The Victory Garden begins to take shape
I told everyone in budget preparation meetings to plant a Victory Garden this year, just in case this recession spirals into a real depression. During the Great Depression and the following war, over 40% of all food eaten in the USA was grown in Victory Gardens. There is an immense space in the Mineer's back yard in Salt Lake for such a garden, so while we were up there last week, in between snow storms we pruned the raspberries and the grapes; found seeds at Market Square for 10 cents per package. and started to prepare the garden. Later in April we'll probably return to till the ground and plant all manner of summer veggies. Jonathan is living in the house and will be responsible for watering and some weeding. We'll see how this all works out.

The Gift Given Again
The amaryllis that the Johns (the other Grandparents of Mike's kids) gave us a year ago has once again come into bloom in our kitchen window, with a four-blossom display from the center stem. With luck we'll see more flowers as the other stems go into blossom.

Ivy Roll

We decided to cut down the huge growth of ivy from our front patio wall, and started from the street side, cutting everything away to the top of the wall. Then we went to the back side of the wall to similarly cut away the ivy, but when we pulled on it, the whole mass of ivy rolled off the back wall. We've been cutting it up, filling the city trash barrel for two weeks now, and what you see behind Marolynn still remains. After that is gone, we still have some more trimming before we reach ground level.

The Santa Fe Arrowheads
There are arrowhead-shaped formations on the mountain above the reservoirs that hold water for Santa Fe, and I can tell what the water situation will be by how long they remain white. In a really good water year, they will stay white until mid-May, but this year the rock beneath the snow began to show early this month before we had a couple of storms this week that finally gave more moisture to the area. But they'll continue to melt off until they are bare about Conference time unless we have more storms. However, April is usually a dry, windy, dusty month in New Mexico.