Good morning to you all.  Can't tell what it is like outside yet.  It is still dark.  But they say we should have light rain with the temps rising to about 40F.  Still unseasonably warm.  What a difference a year makes.  Last year we were watching the weather to see if we would be snowed in on Christmas.  The snow that fell for Thanksgiving didn't melt away before spring.  I had piles of snow on the edges of the patio 4ft high.  We have had only two snow falls that covered the ground but each were less than an inch and disappeared quickly.  The forecasts don't show any significant snow for at least the next week.  We'll see what January brings.  Update: overcast and gloomy with a bit of fog.

No one should be surprised by these developments.  Of course, fingers are being pointed at Al Qaeda.  But Al Qaeda has become the whipping boy for everything nasty in the Middle East.

They keep telling us that the economy is improving and that the Great Recession ended some two-and-a-half years ago but I keep seeing stories like this one.

Found two stories on rising college costs this morning.  (Here and Here).  It is interesting that at a time when various government officials tout a college education as the way for young people to get ahead economically that same government is cutting the grant funding (forcing students to take out loans) and the colleges seem to be most interested in extracting more from their students (while the executives get fat pay and compensation packages.)  And given how many recent graduates can't find jobs and have moved back with their parents I guess I can be forgiven for questioning the real utility of shelling out so much money (especially when it is likely borrowed) for a degree.

Hi, Kay.  I agree on the weather--weird!!  And getting weirder.  I remarked just the other day, for the umpteenth time, that we have said the same thing for the last ten or so years.  Keep warm, my friend, and take things easy.

Glad you came back, Nicola.  Stevia attracted a lot of interest about three years ago--at least that is when I became aware of it.  Like you I looked it up and thought it intriguing.  At that time only one greenhouse carried seedlings so I bought some seeds which consistently failed me.  Thankfully the seedlings did very well.  One or two of the gardeners who blog have said that stevia has an aftertaste they found unpleasant.  I haven't found that at all.  We prefer it to sugar.  During the summer we brew our tea with a couple of sprigs of fresh stevia and I dry it through out the summer.  It is a tropical plant and way too tender to over winter here.  I do my gardening in containers because I only have my cement patio to work with.  I sometimes amaze myself with how much production I get out of those containers.

Hey, Lois, sorry to hear you are under the weather.  Hope that flu goes away soon.  Yeah, Kuma is a character and has become more so as he gets older (he turns 17 this spring) and since the two older cats passed.  Good you didn't get buried as some did elsewhere.  That was a nasty storm and I am very glad it didn't come our way.