… or so I thought!!!  Mother Nature threw us a curve ball yesterday… or was it that darned groundhog that gave us the 6 extra weeks of Winter?  Either way, we had snow on the first day of Spring… eight hours and three inches of heavy, wet snow.  We had temps in the 50s and 60s most of last week so, because the ground was so warm, what fell in the first few hours melted, but then began to stick, giving us a sloppy mess.  It should be gone today (or most of it, anyway), because it’s supposed to be in the low 50s again.  Because the prediction was temps in the 50s for the weekend, I was hoping to get outside and, at least, do some clean-up in the garden, but that’s not happening now!!!  I’m glad the snow was heavy and wet.  Had it been light and fluffy, we might have ended up with a foot, if not more.  Maybe I’ll be able to get outside next weekend.

I’m going to start some of my seeds today… indoors, of course.  I’ll be starting my Broccoli, Cabbage, Lettuce, Onion, Pea, Pepper and Tomato seeds.  I’m so looking forward to seeing those little bits of green poking their little leaves through the soil.  In a short time, I’ll have all my seeds started and hopefully, the winter will be gone and I’ll have worked my garden in time to plant them.  Fingers Crossed!!!

I’m also going to try to make dishwasher tablets, today.  I’ve been thinking about green cleaning products for quite some time now and have been searching the web for natural products to buy or make.  I found a lot of sites to purchase products and a lot of sites with instructions to make different products.  I’ve decided to make them myself and have taken the best of each “recipe” and will concoct my own version.  I’ll let you know next week how they came out and how well they work… or don’t work.

I read an article about using newspaper as a mulch.  I’m going to try it in the garden this year and I’ve saved quite a lot of it over the Winter.  I would have had more, but I bagged what I had a while back and my husband thought it was for recycle and put it out for pick-up after I left for work one morning.  Boy, was I mad when I got home and saw that the bags were gone.  Now, I’m just leaving them in a pile because my husband won’t bag them; he waits for me to do that.  So, if I don’t bag them, he won’t put them out… problem solved.  lol  I just hope I’ll have enough and I hope it works as well as what I’ve read.  I hate to think that I saved them all Winter, only to find out that it doesn’t work as well as I thought it would.  Has anyone ever used newspaper as a mulch?  How did it work for you?  Let me know what you think.

Well, that’s all I have for today.  I’ll see you next Saturday.