Tuesday--rainy, rainy Tuesday.

Won't be doing much outside today.  Thunderstorms rumbling through right now after a night of sometimes heavy rain.  Everything outside is doing well.  Glad I decided to get the smaller plants covered before this mess came in.  I saw a nice stand of cypress vine emerging.  My attempt to start them indoors was totally unsuccessful so I thought I would sow them in place.  That worked.  I think I saw some borage coming up as well.  I got two plants started neither of which looked all that good and I scattered some seeds out where I wanted plants.  If that succeeds I will simply let them and the cypress vine self sow in the fall.  That happened last fall with the hyssop which I will have to thin out when the rain stops and things dry out.  I am watching the morning news as I type this and they are showing flooding north and west of us.  Evidently areas north of us experienced some severe damage from straight line winds from the storms that came through Sunday night and some areas are still without power.

I wish Monsanto would meet the same kind of road block in this country.

The Rude Pundit is right on here.  The proportion of time the news programs spend on actual news and idiots like Sterling or Beyonce's sister beating up on Jay-z explains fully why I spend less and less time viewing news.  Take a look at the first sentence of this account of the mine collapse.  Of course, we have to remember that West Virginia is a wholly owned subsidiary of the coal industry.

I can't help but follow the inane coverage of the kidnapping of those Nigerian school girls but I have noticed how limited the coverage is.  For the last several years I have seen other stories--of poverty, of pollution from western oil companies that make the Exon Valdez look like a minor drip which has destroyed the economy of the Niger delta (and elsewhere), governmental corruption that makes sure those who suffer the worst of the effects of the pollution got the fewest of the economic benefits, and religious divisions exacerbated by all of the above.  This is the only story that puts some background on the story.  Don't care much for Boko Harum (and certainly won't excuse them) but there are plenty of scores waiting to be settled over there.