Tuesday--cool and sunny. Tomatoes, hibiscus, lavender, lemon verbena. Hodgepodge of comments.

Well, the rain that the weather people predicted didn't come and may not.  I got a spurt of energy and ambition yesterday so I cut back some of the tomatoes and the cucumber.  They were encroaching on other plants.  I sacrificed some blossoms and a couple of pea sized tomatoes but the branches needed to be lightened so they didn't break and damage the plant.  I still have another stand of tomatoes that need pruning.  The nice thing about reading gardening blogs is that my garden isn't so behind schedule as it feels.  Several in my planting zone have remarked that their tomatoes are just now ripening.  Since we have a reprieve on the rain I plant to move the hibiscus today.  My lavenders and lemon verbena are still looking poorly--not recovering from transplant very well.

The pundits and politicians keep telling us that the economy is recovering--more slowly than they would like but recovering.  Stories like this have my skepticism antennae quivering.  Haven't read anything about this phenomenon for a while but evidently it is not only still around but getting worse.

Robert Heinlein attributed a rather apt quip to his curmudgeonly hero Lazarus Long (in Time Enough For Love):  in a government of the people, for the people, and by the people--DON'T TELL THE PEOPLE.  That is a precept our government has been taking to heart even to the extent of not telling us who "we" are fighting.

So all it really takes for an Indiana charter school to get an A on its "report" card is to be owned by a big political (in this case GOP) donor.  I guess that is easier than making sure you students are mastering the material.

Health inspectors have zeroed in on packaged salad mix as the source of the cyclospora outbreak.  That doesn't really surprise me and I don't think they will be able to locate which component of the mix is the primary source or where it was grown.  We stopped buying in several years ago.  It had been implicated in several e-coli and salmonella outbreaks and we weren't happy with the quality.  It seemed to go bad very quickly.  Better to get the components, and cut them up and mix them ourselves.

The nannies, of course, vow to fight on.  I detest the various varieties of food police.

And who is protecting the less-than-wealthy Greeks?

Well, I could guess that the priorities involved in the Detroit bankruptcy were f*#ked up.  Not only do the bankruptcy plans call for paying banks and secured creditors about $0.75 on the dollar but retirees only $0.10 on their dollars but evidently the powers that be want to continue with construction of a new  almost half-a-billion-dollar stadium for the NHL Red Wings.  They want the (temporary) construction jobs because the unemployment rate is so bad.  Or maybe they hope the retirees will quietly die.

And legislators in Illinois, according to the local TV news, are going to court to nullify the Governor's order not to pay their salaries (and his own which he is voluntarily forgoing) until they deal with the pension mess.  After all why should they not be paid for not working.  Of course, they claim "its not about the money."  I call bullshit.  It is all about the money--their money.