Still dark outside but we could see a fresh layer of snow which, according to the weather people, fell on top of a layer of freezing rain.  Thankfully we aren't getting what the east coast is getting.  We did our grocery shopping yesterday during a lull between systems that gave us some welcome sunshine.  If the weather had been nasty we could easily have gone a week or more before we started running out of things and, with a bit of adjustment, we could have gone two weeks.  We are of an age when we refuse to go out in foul weather unless we have a real emergency and, being retired, we have no reason to go out.

Last Saturday we went out to the annual garden show here.  We missed last year's because of the extreme cold.  We didn't spend a lot of time there.  Most of what was on display were pretty but don't have the space for it.  If we could magically expand any two areas of our house, we would have a larger kitchen and a much large garden area.  Since we can't and we have a good location and great landlords, we live with what we have and make the most of it.

Talking about nasty weather, Yves Smith has an interesting take.  I was't surprised by the stories about masses of people jamming the stores out east to get stocked up for the storm.  I was surprised by the official response which, as Yves points out, makes being an idiot "illegal."  I remember fuming at idiotic customers who were out in not merely nasty but dangerous weather to get a particular pattern of party plates because that is what their precious darling wanted.  I remember being out in the same weather because the pay I would have lost would have been seriously painful and I wasn't willing to risk a job, however little it paid, by refusing to go out.  I am not a great fan of the "nanny" state.  You can't protect people from all of the adverse consequences of their choices, idiotic or otherwise.  But "protecting" people has become the go-to excuse for so many public actions whether people want that protection or not just as "job creation" has become the go-to excuse for anything business/industry wants to do whether the people most effected want it or not.  Sounds good until you look at the details.

Excellent little rant by John Beckett at Patheos.  Yes, life is complicated.  I am constantly amazed by our politicians, financial leaders and others who keep trying to control complex systems.  Reminds me of the interchanges in Jurassic Park where John Hammond tries to assure various people that everything will be fine "when we have control."  But he and his staff never gets control and everything they do simply make things worse.

I already planned to plant beans with sunflowers hoping that the beans would climb the sunflowers making trellises unnecessary.  I think I might have to plant one of the sunflowers with one of my cucumbers.