Friday--

Drowned my first 8 or so Japanese beetles.  I have a couple of formulas for homemade repellants and plan to mix one up to try out.  If that don't work I will try the other later.  I also want to look at some companion plants they don't like to encourage them to go elsewhere.  Time to get the little greenhouse and the shed cleaned up and straightened up now that the spring planting is done.  I have sage, peppermint and spearmint on my harvest to-do-list.  Perhaps some more trimming especially on the tomatoes so I can see what is happening with them.  I changed out the door wreaths hoping that the summer wreath would convince spring to move on and let summer in.  We are going to have more normal temps over the next couple of days.

I like much of Nimue Brown's writing.  Here she makes a lot of sense on what modern life is doing to us--and it isn't good.  I can remember when I did much of what she describes:  driving through dangerous weather to get to a job that really didn't pay be enough to risk life and limb, skimping on sleep and rest to work/study 18 to 20 hours a day until my body and/or mind simply shut down, eating whatever was handy that I didn't have to fix because I didn't have time.

For the last five months the Troika insisted that the Greeks pay up and ignored the Greek pleas to restructure their debt.  Now it appears that the IMF has been sitting on an in-house generated report which says what the Greeks have been saying all along:  further bailouts without restructuring would be worse than useless.  I hope the Syriza government plays it up and the Greek electorate vote no on their referendum.