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For those of you that have been pining for spring, it appears that one might just have to exercise a bit of patience and wait a while. Fact of the matter is that as I’m penning the rest of "High lights" Tues. a.m., things are looking rather bright white around our Fair Valley of the Pecan. As of 7:30. a.m., we measured about half an inch off the tool box of Lady Z’s white Z-71 pickup. The area forecast has us listed for snow off and on during the rest of the day, possibly going on into the evening. Anyhow, we could use the moisture, but most folks are out feeding the livestock to give them a bit of energy for the frigid weather. One might suppose that a grubby Groundhog in Pennsylvania is more astute at forecasting the weather than the celebrated Al Gore!

I stopped by the Top Donut place on the west side of the square this morning and had trouble finding a parking spot as the courthouse is packed with jury, judges, and other folks that have to attend trials. I have no idea what is on the docket, but we did see a Fox news van from Ch. 7, Austin, circling the square. I don’t know if they were merely taking shots of the snow or there might be some high profile case at the Courthouse. Guess I’ll have to ask Flora, as that is usually the best source of info. around any Couthouse.

Quite a number of folks around our parts have been trying to get a jump on the gardening season, but have suffered several set-backs due to inclement weather. All the Cole crops are OK this early in the season, but one should be extremely judicial in putting out any of the tender crops for quite some time. I hear of several good gardeners that have already seeded Tomato plants in their greenhouses, but they had better put them in bigger buckets as they might be inside for a good while, yet. I hauled the Arons a

couple of loads of field sand up to the ol’ Tom King place in N. Algerita yesterday, and couldn’t get away without Mina showing off her produce planted in the greenhouse. She had just about anything one would want to put in a garden salad all over the whole place. It really made up a pretty collection of greens and herbs. If she’s lucky, she might get a Castor bean to come up in the sand and help keep some of the bugs away. Lots of folks are also picking up nursery plants for the yard, orchard, garden, & landscape this time of year. I visited with Ms. Womack up above De Leon a couple of times this past week and she indicated that the Nursery was running full blast trying to fill orders now. I know that several orchard owners around here always pick up trees & plants from Womack’s and have had good success with their seedlings. I reserved some Pecan graftwood from them, as Olan Tisdale will be making our annual Odyssey up that way in a month or so for trees, plants, and scion wood & wanted to make sure they had some of one of my favorite varieties on hand. Larry also keeps some good grape varieties on hand that have proven pretty well for this area, and a grape arbor can be a very handy thing to have around the garden, landscape or orchard.

We got to visit with Jerry Franklin, family, & friends in town this past weekend as they were in to try their hand at catching some Rattle snakes. They were all lodged at Burnham’s, so it was pretty easy to see them at the Donut shop each morning. I’m not sure if Tony was going along to help them, but one of the smaller nimrods informed me that they had sacked up eleven of the wiggly critters. I made it out to New Hope Sunday a.m. for the morning service with the citizens of Sloan community and got to visit with some friends & kin. Son, Will & I both enjoyed the service and sermon, but he doesn’t sing much better than his dear ol’ Dad. Kathy said that Chad was still sort of home-bound recovering from a minor surgical procedure & I got to visit with Max & Josephine, too. The Sloan area is also gifted with a good number of Med. Doctors now-days and that’s a blessing, what with the average age of many of the Community members. Sally still plays a pretty mean piano, but some of the congregation pick out some fairly draggy selections.

I’ll try to remember and list some of my favorite Grape varieties that Mr. Womack & I have found that do pretty good in our area for next week’s Column, but in the mean time, I’d say that the Mayor & yrs. truly will be trying to keep things going out around—————Harkeyville!!!!!!!!!!