Good morning again to you all.  Oh, it was soooo beautiful yesterday.  High temperature in the low 80s.  The weather people say it is the third earliest 80 on record.  Today won't get that high and a 'back door' front is supposed to come in off the lake to reduced the temperatures this afternoon.  Well, yesterday I got the strawberries (Sequoia variety) planted in their permanent home.  They look good this morning.  I have a problem with Kuma because he likes strawberry leaves as much as he likes blueberry and bean leaves.  Need to get something to keep him away from them.  Also transplanted the blueberry plants.  The roots had not grown much out of the form of the container they were shipped in but I did see a number of pretty bright green leaf buds on them--the iridescent green I often seen on trees in the spring just before they leaf out.  On the schedule today--fill the newspaper pots I made up last night and some other containers with potting soil and start some more seeds.  I also need to clean up the lemon balm and mums to get them ready for transplanting.  But before I transplant I have to get another container filled with reconditioned soil.  The mixing is a tiring process so I will see what I can get done.  Slow and steady as they say.

I am disgusted this morning with our local news.  Disgraced, impeached, and convicted ex-governor of Illinois Rod Blogojevich leaves for prison today and the media thinks it is a story worth absolutely unbelievable coverage.  They covered his 'news' conference in front his home starting with the 5pm news segment and continued it into the national news.  Now this morning they have dedicated most of the last hour to his progress from home to the airport.

I have seen stories on this topic frequently over the last couple of yeas.  On the one hand, I almost can't believe the level of waste cited.  When I read that the average American throws away 33 pounds of food each month I wondered who was taking up the slack for Mom and me.  But then I recalled the various recalls over the last year and the over all figures for wasted food don't surprise me.  The industrial food production system (from farm to factory to supermarket) is really geared to producing as much as possible whether people will buy it or not.  Over the decades the processors have added one chemical after another to extend shelf life to lengthen the time for people to buy the product before it expires.  I noticed that Dupont is working with Kenyan farmers to lengthen the shelf life of their milk so they can get it the 20km to market before it spoils.  How about using the milk locally??

Glad you stopped by, Annie's Granny.  We love tomatoes and pictures of early ones make us all the more eager for our to pop up.  I just started our tomatoes Monday or Tuesday of this week so, like your starts, they aren't up yet.  Your picture reminds me of what started us growing our own.  My sister gave Mom a potted tomato for Mother's Day about 5 years ago.  It was already blooming and had a couple of tiny green tomatoes already growing on it.  We were so disappointed with both the taste and price of tomatoes that we hadn't had any fresh for a couple of years.  Those tomatoes were a delight and a reminder of what we had missed.  I have grown several plants each year since.