Good Sunday to everyone visiting here.  Cool yet again but I hope we will get more sun than we had yesterday.  So far everything outside is hanging on.  My goodness what weather we are having and not just here.  I have read about temperatures throughout India that range between 112F and 120F.  Yikes!!  Then snow cancelled a major bicycle road race in Italy and they have had snow from Spain through parts of France into Italy.  Parts of the U.S. from New York through Main have had either snow or flooding rains and massive rain resulting in floods in Texas.  Please don't crow about the "end of the drought."  All it would take to bring it back is a month of high temperatures and no rain.

Hi, Kay.  I don't know when 'supersizing' meals became the norm but I do remember when I began rejecting such meals and the reactions I got.  The first time I said "no, thank you" to the girl at McDonalds who asked if I wanted the to "Supersize" the meal she was shocked and insisted that it was the better deal for my money.  She seemed disgusted when I informed her that it was no deal if I threw half of it away because I didn't want all that food.  I got a similar reaction when another clerk at another McDonalds (a decade later) offered me a two-for-one deal on the apple "pies."  I told her flat out that I only wanted to eat one and they only taste good hot and didn't reheat well.  I don't remember when we started bringing home half of the meals we get in our restaurants.  They make a second meal for us next day.  We usually choose the kinds of meals that reheat well.  But then we have also noticed that some of the sit-down restaurants have cut the size of their meals--a reaction to the economic downturn, I think.

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Good Monday and Happy Memorial Day, Everyone.  Rain today and we have temperature is ten degrees warmer than yesterday.  I am glad of the rain because the upper parts of some of my containers were drying out.  I planned to water today if we didn't get any rain and I did water the tansy.  It is a big plant and sucked up the moisture in its pot very quickly.  I will have to watch it over the summer.  I dug up the two blueberry bushes that looked thoroughly dead and found the only living roots belonged to weeds in the root balls.  I pulled them.  The third is showing a couple of new shoots so I will transplant it to a smaller pot and try to nurse it along.  The winter was particularly nasty for the blueberries, German thyme, and lavender.  I put in lemon thyme and new lavender which are doing well.

So, the New York Times has taken notice of a phenomenon I have read about for the last couple years: the varieties of vegetables we consume have had the nutrients bred out of them.  This chart illustrates the case.

I do like gadgets--not necessarily to own.  These are in the "cute--but" file.  I can, usually, keep up with my inside plants' needs without high tech toys. The highest tech I have are the moisture meter and the combined pH/fertility meter.  And most forms of self'-watering planters are more trouble than they are worth.  My opinion--others may find them useful.

And another in the "overblown medical/science fears" file.  I remember the hysteria over 'crack babies.' How many other so-called medical crusades are similarly overblown?