Good morning to you all on this cool and wet Friday. More thunder storms rumbled through last night and we expect more later today and overnight. At least I won't have to water anything until Monday at the earliest. Everything out there is growing like the proverbial weeds. I will have to harvest most of my herbs. Several tomatoes need pruning. The squash need to be trained through the trellis which needs some low cross bars to attach the plants to. I may need to do the same with the melons. I can't believe the number of blossoms on the tomatoes and more of the peppers are blooming also. I guess I will definitely start those seeds as early next year as I did this year (late February.) (Update: We have sun!!)

Hey, Lois, I am glad you're back blogging again. I forgot all about the cookies and cache. I haven't had much of a problem with that for a long time.

I have been reading about this for a couple of months now. The drought that made such a spectacular appearance in Russia last year seems to have moved west. Add that to the report yesterday that the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture reported drastic reductions in the number of acres planted in corn, the projection of the number of acres of corn that will be harvested (actually more than the the reduced number of planted acres would suggest), and in the projected number of bushels to be harvested. CNN noted the story but most of the talking heads remarked on how 'bullish' the report was for the commodity market which saw the corn (and other commodity) prices bump up. 'Bullish' for investors but higher costs for the rest of us. Elaine at Elaine's Place had this link that illustrates some of the problem. Note the drought from Texas to Georgia/Florida. But also consider that the floods that hit several areas came at just the wrong time and the ground won't be dry enough to plant till it is too late to plant corn.

Karoli at Crooks & Lawyers has this little piece which reminds me of the conclusion: while the press focused on one 'dick' they were ignoring what another bunch of 'dicks' were doing; and that may have been the purpose behind spending so much time, ink, and hot air on such aninconsequential matter.

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalist answers the question I had yesterday about the real effect of the decision by the Treasury to delay the incentive payments to three too-big-to-fail banks over their abysmal performance with respect to the HAMP program. I thought it would amount something indistinguishable to nothing. I was right. Her comments are wonderfully, justifiably sarcastic.

Tom Philipot at Grist had this take on the dismal, depressing, (choose your adjective) employment numbers for May. That more than half of the jobs created last month resulted from McDonald's hiring push places the data onto an all new level of disheartening, dismaying, (choose your adjective) data.