Good Monday, Everyone.  Sunny and clear but rather cool.  I pulled the cypress vines off the fence and put them in the mini-greenhouse for last night.  The news said our area went down to 33F.  The patio says 40.  Either way I have been watching everything closely.  So far everything is still standing and should recover.  The predicted temperature today is low 60s so I will leave everything alone till tomorrow when we expect 80s.  This spring reminds me of a description of spring in St. Louis in one of my favorite novels: the day between freezing your ass off and broiling to death.  We have gone between summer and late winter temperatures for the last two or three weeks.  Spring seems to be missing.

I would say Mother Nature is pissed.  Here is some evidence of that.  One of the newscasts a couple of months ago they showed a much milder occurrence and some piles of ice that formed on parts of Lake Michigan.

OK, I understand the argument but I disagree with it.  The notion that the buyer of a patented object has the right to resell it but not make copies is fine if you are dealing with a book, or a piece of recorded music.  Things that have no ability to reproduce themselves.  But a seed is designed by nature to copy itself but it doesn't do so with absolute reliability--not all of the parental traits are passed on and some mutate.  I find it absolutely ridiculous that Monsanto takes no responsibility for the fact that its patented plants can "accidentally" pollinate near-by non-Monsanto plants but wants to make sure that farmers can't buy second generation seed from Monsanto plants no matter from what source they might  obtain them.