Well, TGIF, everyone. Another week gone and August is half done. It is still hot with heat advisories and warnings still out for another day. The gardening is already done. Another handful of yard long beans which means the fifth quart freezer bag is almost full. I put a bunch of tomatoes in the dryer along with a bunch of peppers. And a nice mess of eggplant is waiting for Mom when she gets ready to freeze them. I was tempted to take a couple for drying but since much of what we have harvest already is in the freezer (minus what we have eaten) I thought I would let that go. As this season winds down my thoughts turn to next year. Peppers and tomatoes are the mainstay so planning means deciding where to put them and what to put in around them. If we try anything new we have to either eliminate something else or change the arrangement to include it. We will see what happens. So far nothing has ever worked out exactly as I imagined it.

The first thing I saw when I went to my Google start page was the HuffingtonPost link to thisCNBC article. A 'lost decade' for youth? That goes very nicely along with the 'lost decade' for the stock markets which are slightly below the level at which they started this year which was at the level they started out this decade. A couple of days ago one of the bloggers I follow described the situation of the last two 'lost' decades in Japan where large numbers of young people have checked out of the nation's economic life. For a description of the plight of young Japanese see Charles Hughes Smith at oftwominds.