Good Tuesday. Garden Update.

We have closed up here and put on the air conditioning.  We can take the temperatures--it hit 90 on the patio yesterday--but the humidity is brutal.  The thermometer on the patio was 70 when we woke up about 5am and the TV lists it as mid 70s in Chicago while the humidity is about 70%.  Miserably sticky.  The weather people call for hot and sticky with possible thunderstorms.  We resist putting on the air.  We feel better without it and, of course, not using it saves on our budget.  I have started bringing in our hummingbird feeder during the hottest part of the day.  We don't have any shaded area where we can hang it.  But when the feeder (and the solution inside) heats up the syrup is forced out and drips over my plants.  It does neither the birds nor the plants any good.

I have some tansy "tea" ready to use.  All I have to do is strain it and put it in the spray bottle.  I hope it discourages those blasted little beetles that are eating my strawberries and beans to bits.  I noticed that though the beetles land on the tansy they don't seem to eat it.  Next task--harvest some of the pyrethrum leaves and make a tea of that also.

I don't know how much I will get done.  I have herbs I can cut but we also have shopping to do today and I won't cut anything if the temperature is too high when we get back.

Almost two decades ago I remember reading about a sea change in the Japanese labor market which broke the tradition of permanent, full-time, employment with a single company for life--the salary man. They were about a decade or two behind us in that change.  First, we lost whole concept of working 30 or 40 years with one company and retiring with a gold watch and a bit of a pension.  Then the notion of a single career for life disappeared.  Now this seems to be the norm here.  And this is a very sad sign of the times.

This coupled with this should outrage everyone.  I also read that job cuts due to the sequestration in the military/industrial complex are starting to ramp up.  (sorry--can't find the link on that last.)  If we don't have money to spend on early education or the people making the things the military needs, we don't have it to waste on helicopters the Afghan army doesn't have the people trained to operate maintain.  Not to mention the rest of the waste involved in our operations there.  I say we can't get out of there too soon--and should never have been in there to the extent we were.

Question: do you really want to know?  Second question: is the test all that accurate?  Not really and I doubt it.  And I wouldn't want my insurance company to know either.

Whenever I think I have seen the absolute limit of political insanity/stupidity or whatever, something happens to make me realize that there is no limit to political insanity/stupidity or whatever.