Good morning, All.  Cool again and cloudy.  The weather people say we may get rain.  I will wait till this afternoon and decide then if I need to water anything.  Nothing much planned that absolutely has to be done today.  Some time this morning I will run the tomatoes I stewed up yesterday through the blender to make a smooth sauce and then freeze it.  We should get three pint freezer bags out of the batch.  I saw a bunch of peppers that I can take and freeze.  Things are definitely winding down.  Again someone (or Someone) flipped a switch and suddenly we went from high summer to early fall.  Most of the news anchors have been groaning over the change.  They much preferred the warmer weather.

Hi, Kay.  Yeah, I did have a productive day.  I usually do even if I often don't get everything I planned on doing done.  I read a little article a bit ago (not sure where or who wrote it) where the author noted that jobs may be scarce but there is always work.  I was never one of those people who thought that if they retired or for some other reason had to live without a job to go to they would shrivel up and die.  I could and always did find some work for my hands and mind.  I am amazed sometimes remembering how little money I made in most of the jobs I held and how much less satisfaction I got out of them.  Right now I can think with a great deal of satisfaction and pleasure of the plants I raised, the food I have harvested and preserved, and how much I will enjoy the fruits of my labor over the winter.  I haven't had a job for about four years now but I have engaged in satisfying work.

I did not watch the Repthuglican 'debate' last night.  From what I have heard so far I didn't miss anything. No new ideas and plenty of attacks.  I am debating about watching Obama tonight.  So far the leaks indicate more of nothing new.  These boys (and girls) of which ever party remind me of the heavily armed macho men in science fiction films who keep firing away with guns that have already failed to stop the monster.  They have nothing else in their arsenal so they simply keep blazing away hoping to get lucky with their brains clearly in neutral.

Red Tape Chronicles posted this article this morning.  I have read and seen stories for the last several years about 'freegans' and others who live by dumpster diving.  What amazes me about this kind of story isn't so much the ingenuity of the dumpster diver but the waste of our industrial food system.  The industrial system of production is hardwired to over produce.  But wasting food--that is simply criminal.

I found this rather superficial story on MSNBC.  All the authors have done is put some new numbers on the phenomenon of over priced American medicine.  To suggest that we pay more for medical care because we have become used to paying a lot for the services is just a little ridiculous.  That is not an explanation.  I notice that they don't mention that many (if not most) doctors come out of medical school with a $500k+ debt in addition to their diploma.  Nor the fact that medicine is dominated by high tech toys that simply beg to be used, and used, and used whether they are really helpful in any given situation or not.  I will let you fill in what ever other contributory factors you would like.

As you all probably have figured out I enjoy reading about the odd techniques people use in their gardens.  Here is one interesting way to make a self-watering living wall out of 2 liter soda bottles.