Good day to you all on this rainy Monday.  We had thunder, lightning, and intermittently heavy rain all night.  Some of my plants have been beaten down.  Hopefully, they will bounce back.  It looks like I will be doing inside things today.  Before the rain moved in yesterday I got two more tomatoes transplanted and the last two containers dug up and the pearlite mixed in.  They are ready for planting when everything dries out.  Well, I did say that we needed the rain.

The elections in Greece and France have shaken up the political and financial worlds.  The new French leader wants to renegotiate the so-called 'fiscal responsibility treaty' to include provisions for growth.  So far, that has gone over like the proverbial lead balloon with the Germans who have insisted on austerity.  The Greek election drastically reduced the power of the two major parties which together control about 30% of the seats in parliament.  The leader of the party which took second place in the polling has already refused to enter into any government which plans to reaffirm the austerity measures and demands that the bailout deals be renegotiated.  This will be interesting.  Of course, Germany and the EU are insisting that Greece adhere to the austerity agreements.

I find this article interesting because the prevalence of asthma and allergies has been a topic of discussion here often enough over the last few years.  I remember having allergies when I was a kid but, after a few years of getting shots or taking pills, I spent the summer on my grandparents' farm without the medication because the medical jackass we had refused to give me a prescription to cover that time.  Lo and behold, I was just fine without it.  Haven't taken it since.  As Mom and I have watched the health news over the last few years, we have often wondered if our collective focus in this society on not just cleanliness but antiseptic conditions hasn't resulted in the rise in allergy and asthma.