Friday.

We did have a nice day yesterday--mild temps, dry, and sunny.  Today, the weather people predict, won't be.  Thunderstorms by mid-afternoon and mid 80s.  We'll see what I get done in the gardens but I am feeling somewhat lazy today.  I have started dismantling parts of the gardens.  I have moved the tower I added to the gardens this spring into the house after pulling all the plants except the sage.  I had a devil of a time getting the wonderberry roots out and finally tossed the entire root ball--more roots than soil.  Those plants were too big for those spaces but I didn't expect them to get that big.  I am thinking about what herbs I am going to put in the spaces.  I hope they will survive the winter inside.  Sometimes I think I am doing these wind-down chores too early; then I notice how far the shadow of the house have expanded into the gardens.  I was shocked to see it is now almost at the bottom of the fence.  By equinox it will be at the top.  The outdoor gardening season is definitely ending.

Since today is the beginning of the Labor Day weekend I thought this was a good post to link.  All our national holidays have to varying extents been so commercialized that the original meaning has been lost.  Labor day is no different.  We no longer celebrate labor.  We celebrate consumption.  We don't really take pride in our productive skill because we don't, most of us, produce anything and have no skill in making anything.  Instead we flaunt our ability to consume heroically.  We don't really manufacture ( from manu factum, Latin for made by hand) any more; we construct by robot or other machines.  Raw materials go in at one end of the process and the final product comes out at the other with no human hands touching any part in between.  Happy Labor Day, All.  (SARCASM)

Huffington Post linked to a very short and uninformative AP article about recent airliner diversions because of unruly passengers.  Their comment contained more analysis that the AP piece did: a further sign of the devolution of American society.  We have said about the same here reading or seeing similar stories.  Courtesy toward and respect for others has become very scarce today.

Talk about ego!!  Rick Perry has plenty and wants us to take him seriously as a Presidential candidate.  This provides a good reason why we shouldn't.

Our first reaction on hearing about Burger King's merger with Tim Horton and the likelihood that the combined company would be headquartered in Canada so shaving a whopper off their tax bill:  if we still patronized that chain, we wouldn't ever again.  It sounds like some who are still patronizing Burger King are planning on not doing so anymore.  Good!!