It’s only 31 °F this morning but that’s not keeping me out of the garden. As far as I’m concerned, it’s Spring. It seems I’m not the only one either. I found this little friend squirming around the radish seedlings that I planted last weekend.

Everything in my spring garden is coming up nicely— lettuce, carrots, cabbage, spinach, radish. Even the garlic, which I thought I’d lose to the winter weather, is beginning to green up and add a few inches to the leaves.

Despite the crushing snow, I think those hoop houses worked out nicely.

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Hmm. I see that one of my photos is being used on answerbag.com.

Should I be proud of this or no?

http://www.answerbag.com/cleaning-colon

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NEA’s Read Across America is an annual reading motivation and awareness program that calls for every child in every community to celebrate reading on March 2, the birthday of beloved children’s author Dr. Seuss.

I spent a few minutes this morning celebrating with my youngest daughter, Ayn, and her classmates at her preschool by reading my favourite Dr. Suess book, Fox in Socks.

I always enjoy reading that to kids. The look on their faces when I read the line about the book being dangerous is always priceless. The school also hooked me up with a great hat like the Cat from Cat in the Hat. I’ve decided to wear it all day today and remind people that reading to children is one of the best activities we can engage in as adults if we want to create lifelong successful readers.

You can read more about the NEA’s program, Read Across America here: http://www.nea.org/readacross

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Are you in the market for some silver? If so, have I got a deal for you.

I listed a 100oz Pan American Silver Bar from the Northwest Territorial Mint on eBay this morning. The auction runs for five days or you can buy it now for $1,850.00.

Link to eBay auction

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Mid-February means it’s chittin’ time!

In a few short weeks, it will be time to plant potatoes and I’m giving my spuds a head start by chitting them.

By doing so, the potatoes will be able to produce buds before they’re planted, which should give me a heavier and earlier crop.

Chitting is a pretty simple process. Simply lay out the seed potatoes in a cool, light spot and let them sprout. If more than one set of eyes begins to sprout, pare them back to a single sprout.

The entire process takes about 4 - 6 weeks (yes Anitra, those potatoes are going to be in the window over the sink until March), at which point I’ll carefully transplant them into one of my raised beds in the back yard with a little bone meal.

...and there they will sit, for about 110 days (July) until harvest.

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On March 20th, I’ll discontinue the use of Google’s RSS feed service, Feedburner, for my blog.

If you’re using an RSS reader to read my posts, please update the feed URL today.

Current RSS feed address: http://feeds.feedburner.com/trippfenderson
New RSS feed address: http://tripp.fenderson.net/index.php/weblog/rss/

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EU finance ministers tell Greece, “NO VOTE FOR YOU!”

The council of EU finance ministers said Athens must comply with austerity demands by March 16 or lose control over its own tax and spend policies altogether. It if fails to do so, the EU will itself impose cuts under the draconian Article 126.9 of the Lisbon Treaty in what would amount to economic suzerainty.

While the symbolic move to suspend Greece of its voting rights at one meeting makes no practical difference, it marks a constitutional watershed and represents a crushing loss of sovereignty.

And of course, this is being led by the Germans who would probably prefer that the EU just kick Greece out now.

Some German officials have called for Greece to be denied a vote in all EU matter until it emerges from “receivership”.

+1 to the Telegraph’s International Business Editor, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, for using the word suzerainty in her article.

Full story: Greece loses EU voting power in blow to sovereignty

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