Found exactly what I was looking for at Orchard Supply Hardware today. They had a drip drainage kit for container gardens on sale for $35 with everything needed to water up to 20 containers, including a timer. Will be spending the next few days trying to figure out how to put it all together so I can give it a test before my trip. If it works well, I'll leave it hooked up for the entire summer.

Any of you old enough to remember the Spirograph? Found an online version of it here. You might wish to open it in a new browser window so you aren't trapped in the frames on this page.

I remember being fascinated by all the designs made with the Spirograph. Wonder if there is an online version of Spin Art? Now, that was a cool thing.

Not much going on around here. We're still in the midst of a 12 day heat wave with record breaking high temps on all but one day. Wednesday, it was 87 in Citrus Heights. Been getting up early morning for my walk around the neighborhood. It's been absolutely beautiful. Right now my thighs are killing me. I changed my exercise routine a bit and am finding several muscles that I didn't know were being ignored before.

The current gardening project is finding an inexpensive way to create a drip irrigation system for my container garden out on my balcony. What I've come up with so far is using the garden hose to span the distance from the water faucet to the location of my container garden and then connecting drip irrigation tubing to the hose and snaking the tubing around to all my containers. Am heading to Orchard Supply Hardware this weekend to see if I can find all the components I'll need. If it works, I'll probably duplicate it for my house plants when I group them together in and around the kitchen sink to survive my 3-week absence. Am also doing some major repotting of plants and researching websites to make a list of slug-resistant plants to purchase to replace what the slugs destroyed last year.

It was 82 degrees here today and it isn't even Spring yet!

From the Sacramento Bee:

"As the temperature peaked at 81 degrees on Tuesday afternoon, toppling a 112-year-old record, Ventura lay on his back on a softball field, wearing nothing but shorts and headphones. It was his second straight day of tanning. Monday's high was 80 degrees, tying the record for the day.


Across the state, records have been shattered for two days. On Monday, Santa Ana was the hottest spot in the state with a high of 97. It was cooler in Death Valley that day, only 93. Downtown Los Angeles also reached 93 degrees on Monday. Eight record high temperatures were set in Los Angeles County on Tuesday.

San Francisco and a dozen other Bay Area cities set or tied record highs on Monday, but they narrowly missed the mark for a second straight day."


All this warm weather must be wreaking havoc on the ski slopes. Hope this rapid meltdown of snow doesn't result in floods here in the Valley.

Just booked a flight for mid-April to spend 3 weeks with my mom in Albuquerque, NM. Looking forward to seeing her, it's been a year and a half and I've missed her. Can't wait to see how she decorated her new house and meet her delinquent puppy.

Mother Nature is teasing us Valley folks with a week of 75 degree weather before she dumps more rain on us next weekend. It was simply beautiful here today. Had all the windows and screen doors open for most of the day. Hope this doesn't spell disaster for the orchards with trees budding earlier then normal followed by more rain storms.

In case you haven't heard, Google has silently introduced a new thing called Orkut. It's a combination message board and popularity contest for expanding one's social and business networks. If you'd like an invitation to look around(it's by invitation only), let me know and I'll send one. So far it is getting mixed reviews. People say it is much better then similar sites like it and others are sending up red flags about privacy issues