Good Morning, All. Well, the expected thunderstorms stayed well south of us so I will have to water well this morning. I only watered the smallest of my containers yesterday. I expect to take 3 or 4 of the salsa tomatoes that are ripe. The plants are full of fruit so I hope for a good harvest and plenty of fresh salsa for immediate use and cooked salsa to freeze. I think I am getting the aphid problem under control. The combination of insecticidal soap and the pyrethrin based insecticide (the mildest treatments in the arsenal) seem to be doing the job. The peppers are all doing very well as are the eggplants. I anticipate good harvests from both. I have already frozen about 2 quart freezer bags of the yardlong beans and we had one meal of fresh beans stewed with tomatoes, onions, mushrooms and bacon. The rest of the tomatoes are just a bit behind the salsas but we took three of the larger green ones for frying. Our favorite little farmer's market opened two weeks ago. They have the best sweet corn around. It is more expensive than other markets but we have never been disappointed. We found one ear that was a the slight side but then noticed that they had given us 13 ears instead of 12. I think that is a bargain.

I found this USAToday article on my google alerts this morning. For almost two decades now the mainstream media has noted a decline in the faith of younger Americans that Social Security will be there for them. That is hardly new though, I gather, the levels of such skepticism are at record levels. What I find interesting is the attitude of current retirees: "A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds that a majority of retirees say they expect their current benefits to be cut, a dramatic increase in the number who hold that view." Given the number of stories I have seen lately which claim that the IMF is encouraging the US government to repudiate the bonds held by Social Security, I am not surprised the current recipients are beginning to wonder if it will continue to be there for them. I half expect that the thieves we have in government will bend more and more towards repudiating that debt because stiffing our own people is preferable to stiffing the foreign holders of our debt. And I would not be surprised if they followed that up with repudiation of Social Security though not, of course, of the taxes that support the system. Those will remain to pay for their damned wars and the companies that provide war services. Call me cynical, but given the conditions of this country over the last decade or two, I think cynicism is fully justified. (For a bit more information on this poll check out the Gallup site.)

I am back after a break to do my gardening and a few other chores. Looking at my poor, pathetic spinach I decided to call it a failed experiment and start over next year. They did fine until the heat of recent days but they bolted before they could develop any really good leaves to harvest. Mom spend the last couple of hours grinding three large beef roasts into hamburger. We will now have about 10 pounds of about 98% lean ground beef for a little over $2 per pound. However, she found almost 1 pound of gristle, coarse connective tissue and skin in the process. Almost 10% of what we bought was inedible waste. If we had bought those roasts for cooking as roasts we would have been very disappointed in them. We are spending some time looking at the small meat markets and farms in the area. They are much more expensive but we hope the quality will be much better. At least we hope that what we spend on meat will go into our bellies and not into the garbage.