Good morning, All. Most of the news remains focused on Hurricane Irene. Our local news this morning noted that a local (Chicago) Guard unit had been activated to help in the aftermath. That is what the Guard should be used for--disasters here at home. Several bloggers noted that our wonderfully sensitive and caring Repthuglicans are insisting that any disaster relief be paid for with further cuts in the budget. (Sarcasm alert.)

I am back to reading (and maybe posting) after a session with the spearmint that is turning out to be more work than I had thought. I intended simply to cut it back and dry another batch but I found that all I had left was a bunch of bare, woody stems. So I cut it down entirely except for a few sprigs that were very low. I will cut a few of those out and transplant them to small pots to nurture over the winter. Otherwise, I will clean out the entire pot and wash it out for next season. I am not unhappy with the experiment--I hadn't grown spearmint for nearly two decades. I got three large cuttings from it and will enjoy it in my tea during the cold months. Next year I may put it on the fence and try to keep it smaller. And I just finished totally with the operations on the spearmint. I have two small cuttings with good root systems in small pots on a shelf of the mini-greenhouse. I also changed my usual procedure for cleaning out the pot. It was incredibly root bound. I could have chopped up the rootball but this is a very invasive plant and I decided to simply discard the rootball entirely. I really don't want to be pulling spearmint out of other plants because the roots (like the arms of a starfish) spawned new organisms from the pieces.

Joshua Brown at Reformed Broker has an excellent take on pundits of all stripes--not just the financial pundits.