TGIF, everyone. We have had nice cool weather for the last couple of days and it is supposed to continue until Sunday when the temps and humidity are both supposed to rise. They say the 90s aren't done with us yet and have predicted that for Monday and Tuesday. The gardens are doing nicely. I took the last of the eggplants and gypsy peppers. The eggplant has been dried already while the gypsies are going to wait till tomorrow when I will do them, and a few tomatoes and herbs. I had thought to do that today but I got started cleaning up and consolidating my collection of candle wax, cleaning out the candle holders, and topping off a couple of candles I had poured a while ago. I also needed to clean up and consolidate that area so I would have a place to put the cuttings I want to try to root. I also put some marigolds and mums in place of the eggplants and peppers I pulled. They will provide some nice color into the fall.

I often wonder what has happened to the business environment in this country. Toyota is in the middle of yet another recall. Toyota's reliability was once a bankable commodity. Then there is Johnson & Johnson with nine recalls in less than a year. I remember the Tylenol recall of a couple of months ago but in that one I was a bystander. We don't use Tylenol because it isn't really effective for us. But the recall of Acuvue contact lenses was a different matter. I checked that out very carefully because I wear Acuvue lenses--thankfully not the ones covered by the recall. As if the recall wasn't enough the FDA has warned a subsidiary of the company to stop marketing two medical products one of which has not yet been approved and the other which was being marketed for unapproved uses.

This MSNBC story is interesting in light of the recent egg recall (and other food recalls of the last few years) but confirms some of my gut instincts on the probable effect of the recalls on consumers' habits. Any changes in eating habits are likely to be transitory unless the individual consumer has been directly affected. I noticed a poll associated with the story which asks if the reader has changed his/her eating habits due to the scare. I can honestly say that I haven't. Our habits changed before the salmonella outbreak and for reasons other than safety. We found that we liked the locally raised, cage-free eggs we buy at one of our year-round farmers' markets better than those we got from the supermarket and were worth both the few cents more per dozen and the longer trip to get them. We stopped buying the packages of salad-ready lettuce mixes well before the e-coli scare. They just did not keep well and it is no bargain when half of the package goes bad before you can eat it. The recall simply confirmed us in a change we had already made. However, I rather expect that most people will go back to buying what ever they had been buying once the scare recedes. Emily Perkins and John Meo at the Norwich Bulletin have a humorous and personal take on the matter. It is a fun read.