Good Friday morning, Everyone. I haven't had much to say and, to be honest, my mind has been in neutral for the last few days. I am far more interested in my gardens than in politics and other such topics. The plants for the most part are doing very nicely. All of my tomatoes--the gift and those I started inside from seed--are blooming. All of the peppers I bought are also blooming well. I have some kind of insect (I hope) eating a couple of my broccoli and one of my peppers. I haven't found the beastie or it would have contributed its body to my compost bin. I am not one for using pesticides generally so I looked for one that would do a broad range of pests with the least toxic ingredients. I finally found some portulaca that looked good. The last time I went shopping I was very unhappy with the condition of the plants and so didn't buy. I also found some Ichiban eggplant. Since I decided to take the last two Tidy Cat tubs for planters and decided not to wait for next year to fill them, the new eggplant had homes immediately. Since my space is very limited I have two rules for what I put into them. The plants are something we really like or they are not available at the local markets. I have seen Ichiban eggplant for sale only a couple of times last summer. When I run out of the Fairy eggplant seeds (next year or the year after) I will find something else. My biggest problem is finding some interesting larger plants. We already have more than enough tomatoes and peppers. I didn't want any of the cucumber family because I had an absolutely miserable time with the powdery mildew last year and we haven't seen very many bees last year or this. Since that family of plants require bees for pollination that last is a bit of a problem.

Well, Joran van der Sloot has been arrested for the murder of a woman in Peru. Don't remember him? He was suspected of murdering an American student who was on Spring Break in the Caribbean a couple of years ago. I noticed that all of the news reports recall Natalie Holloway but not, so far, have given the Peruvian woman her name. Interesting, and more than a bit--self-centered?

I had another moment of mental whiplash this morning. I saw the headline on one HuffingtonPost story that proclaimed dismal jobs numbers--only 41,000 new jobs created in May. Then on the Google News listing the number was listed at 431000 jobs. WTF??? Well, it was easily resolved by a second look. The 41k jobs were private sector jobs created. The rest of the 431k were largely temporary census jobs. Yeah--dismal!!!