Saturday--

A bit of a slow Saturday so not much to comment on. Instead I spent some time looking for a suitable pair of pots for the lemon verbena plants. They were pot bound and needed transplanting. I had one inside in the "horticultural" corner of our multipurpose/storage room. The other I had to rummage out of my little greenhouse. I also rinsed out a gallon jug that once contained orange juice. I will convert it into a micro-greenhouse for the herb seeds I plan to start on filter paper. I hope that technique will give me better results than starting the herbs in potting mix. The tomatoes are all growing nicely and both pots of peppers have sprouted as have two of the lettuce varieties.

I am really pleased with how the little blueberry I have in a small pot inside has been doing. I had absolutely no luck putting blueberries in the outside containers. The first barely survived its first winter before turning yellow and dying. Problem: soil pH was way too high. The second didn't survive the winter freeze. The third also succumbed to chlorosis, yellowing because the pH was too high and I found no way to control the pH in the big containers. I have been watering this last bush with a bit of acidified water (one-third cup white vinegar per gallon water) and feeding with an acid balanced fertilizer. That seems to have done the trick. It has a lot of new growth. I am thinking how I should prune it--if I should prune it at all.

We have been limiting our TV news viewing for sometime. It has become an exercise in annoying frustration. Constant repetition of inconsequential "stories," constant hype of the controversy du jour without any enlightening information, sports and more sports and more sports (hyped of course). I found this little post this morning which reminds me of an saying in Heinlein's Time Enough For Love "In a government of the people and by the people, don't tell the people." Journalistic black holes, indeed. We are all mushrooms--kept in the dark and fed shit.

France, if this Guardian article is accurate, has finally done something sensible. They have passed laws that ban supermarkets from throwing edible food items in the trash mandating they be given to food banks and the supermarkets can't use bleach or other means to make food inedible.