Good Morning, everyone. We have nice bright sun for the second day in a row and the temps are going to around 60. I have been busy getting my garden containers uncovered and rearranged, sweeping the patio, and getting some seeds started. I used the little peat plug greenhouse my sister gave us last fall. I have never used one of these things before so we will see how things do. I got my three varieties of tomato, four varieties of pepper started along with marigold, spinach, viola, stevia, lavender and portulaca. I hope those last two work out this year because they were a big flop last year. Those pretty well filled the greenhouse. I will start some lettuce and a couple of other items in my egg carton starters tomorrow.

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Well, it is now the 19th and the above was written on the 17th. I think I am going to have to put dates on these entries--definitely.

Our string of nice days is supposed to end later today with snow coming in over the weekend. I won't complain--after all, it is still March.

I have been busy cutting up some plastic juice and milk containers for use in the garden this year. I thought that providing some of the plants with their own mini-pots inside the large containers might protect them a bit from more vigorous and larger competitors. I have also thought that it might be a nifty way to take the garden vertical since all of the horizontal space we can comfortably use has been used. When I get it going I will take some pictures. I am postponing starting the remaining seeds until next week because I want to start getting the large containers ready. That will take some compost and considerable mixing of existing soils with the compost. Then I can plant some of the seeds in the small containers to sprout inside and later be transferred to the large containers.

I haven't done much needlework either. Again it is housekeeping that is getting in the way. I still have a long way to go to finish that task. I had some bags of plastic bags to turn into plarn. Rather than cut them up as soon as we got them I simply stored them and then had beaucoup bags to cut. Last year the static was so bad I couldn't get through one bag without fighting the strips to keep them out of the way. Strangely the static hasn't been as bad this year. That has been done and the strips are ready for use. But that barely scratches the surface of the things I have to get organized. It is getting done a little at at time.

I was surprised this morning that the news carried a story about the drought that has hit southwestern China. They noted that it is the worst drought in more than 60 years. It just took them better than 2 months to notice. The blogs and my google alerts has had coverage of this story for that long. Here is one of the latest ones.

I received an e-mail this morning that made me just a bit sick. I won't include it here because it is more than a bit offensive to me but it does present an attitude that I think has been all too evident during all of the hullabaloo over the health care reform legislation heading for a vote this weekend. It is supposed to be from a young physician to President Obama detailing why he is opposed to the measures. I say 'supposed' because I don't know if that physician actually exists or if he really wrote to Obama. All I can say is that if he exists and if those were his words, he is racist, selfish, and self-righetous. He claims he had to evaluate an obese black woman sporting a gold tooth, serious bling, 'expensive' tattoos, who smoked a pack a day of 'expensive' cigarettes and was on Medicaid. He resented the notion that he would have to pay for her Medicaid since she obviously didn't care enough about her health to forego some of that bling, tattoos, or cigarettes in order to pay for her own health insurance. This smacks all too much of the old Reaganite mantra about 'welfare queens' who were always black, obese, and whose many children all had different fathers. To my way of thinking the gold jewelry, gold tooth, and tattoos speak of a more prosperous past when she might have even paid for her own health insurance. That she is obese merely says that she is a part of the majority of people in this country and that is hardly a condition that occurs over night. As to her smoking--does that little 'doctor' know how many times the woman may have tried to stop smoking? Did he even bother to ask? Or did his racism, envy and resentment blind him to the possibility that his assumptions may have been totally wrong? That attitude is what I see all too often in the 'Tea Baggers,' the Republican opponents and others involved in this debate. It is the attitude that was apparent at one of the 'town hall' meetings last fall where hecklers shouted down a woman in a wheelchair whose insurance company had dropped her. "It's YOUR fault," they yelled. Really?? The sanctimony is overwhelmingly nauseous!