Welcome to summer, or so it feels. Once again we are on a roller coaster of spring weather. We had spring weather this week, mid-summer weather this weekend and back to spring weather next week. At least it’s not still snowing.

Keep an eye on your plants Saturday as the the heat will be severe and they may need to be watered a couple times. As far as planting the garden, I think we are out of the woods as far as frost goes. Now that the maple leaves are at least half way out, even if we get a cool night those leaves will help to hold down the heat so that frost won’t set in.

I have had broccoli and cabbage planted at the house for two weeks already but now the tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini are going in as well. With the price of diesel fuel over seven dollars a gallon now, I can only imagine what the price of vegetables will be this summer in the grocery stores.

The local farm markets will be even busier this year as buying local has never been more affordable compared to produce that has to be trucked in from New Jersey or other southern states. You have seen how the prices at the grocery stores have gone up already and this summer will be more of the same.

Without getting political, the price of oil affects every other item sold in this country, from the price of seeds and plants to milk, eggs, cereal and steak. The best deals right now on items other than perishable groceries are non-perishable products that you can buy at small stores and boutiques. Many of these places were closed during the pandemic and even though they are open again now, probably have not sold through all their pre-pandemic inventory. Smaller stores don’t have the computerized inventory systems that automatically increase prices based on national trends.

Like us, they only change prices when new product comes in and base the pricing off the new cost amount. So the smaller the store, chances are the better the deals right now. We had one of our salesman from a camping supply wholesaler in last week and he was telling us about a campground store that had taken a lot of product last year, fearing the shortages that we were seeing last year.

They had about twenty thousand dollars in inventory when they closed last October that is now worth just north of seventy thousand dollars this May based on the new cost for this inventory. Our salesman told us, they wished they would have bought more. But like anything else, what goes up usually comes down, even if it never goes down as far as you like or in the case of the stock market, goes down further than you like.

Which brings us back to the roller coaster that we have been on this spring. Despite the crazy weather, the gardens will grow, the flowers will bloom and the trees will fruit. The “No Mow May” campaign has caught on throughout the area and honeybee populations should be improving.

I had one beekeeper in last week that lost eleven of her fifteen beehives over the winter. She bought bees to fill five of those eleven hives and those bees combined with her four hives that survived have been thriving this spring and should be able to split by mid-June so that she will have all fifteen hives filled again by July with plenty of time to store enough honey to last the winter.

If you have a bee story to share, drop me a line at montfhg@aol.com or stop in and see me at the store. There should be enough flowers out by late May, so that you can mow your lawn by Memorial Day Weekend and you have to mow your lawn, there is no “No Mow June” campaign.