February 13-17

Monday--

Half way through February already. I should move the mini-belle peppers and eggplants to larger pots. Those seedlings are almost too tall for the starting tray. I have seeds for sweet basil, lemon basil, lime basil, thyme and oregano to start also. The local Menards garden section already had its seed display out so I added those to my collection. I did some more cleaning in the plant/craft/storage room. I hope to clear enough space to set up my sewing machine again--that itch has been growing. The weather has been unusually warm lately--the kind of unusual that makes you wonder when Mother Nature will decide to smack you in the face and remind you it is still winter. In case you are wondering why in the name of whatever Divinity I am planting things now when the average last frost date is around May 15 in my area, all of the plants I recently started are staying inside. I will start the outside plants at the end of March.

Tuesday--

The Thai basil has I planted late last week has started to spout. I should start some of the herb seeds I got over the weekend and fill some more starting cups. The little heating mat is working very well in that small space to get the temperature for the seeds to a good germinating temperature.

I debated linking this. On the one hand I do believe out industrial society has altered the climate. On the other I don't think we can change how we live, even if we had the political will do do so--which we don't, soon enough to make much of a difference. I think I wrote on this blog somewhere in the past posts that, when I became aware of the idea of climate change some 20 or so years ago and most pundits claimed we had to keep the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere below 350 ppm, I looked up the historical levels of CO2 and discovered that we had passed that level around 1985. I have seen a number of articles about how we might adapt to warmer average global temperatures and even have seen a couple of hints by prominent politicians on that subject. However, However, once again it is too little, too late and there isn't any kind of consensus about what "we" might do or even if there is a "we" to do it. Whatever "it" might be.

Wednesday--

So the Flynn tweets about being the "sole scapegoat" in the affair of his conversations with the Russian ambassador were fake. A lot of people were fooled but, being of a suspicious mind, I wonder who was behind the phony Twitter account and what were their motives. Considering how events unfolded it seemed plausible that Flynn was scapegoated. It seemed plausible, though not necessarily likely, that he was stupid enough to have the discussions described with a foreign ambassador before his boss was actually president. After all said boss was acting as though he was president almost from election night when he, in fact, was not. But I have begun taking everything I read with a ton of salt not matter what source it comes from. And the question still lingers: who set up that fake twitter account back in January and for what purpose?

This isn't a good sign. I said above that by the time we recognized (or at least some of us recognized) that anthropogenic climate change was upon us it was too late to prevent it. Well, we have done the same with various types of pollution.

This sounds so very familiar--and the author does draw the parallel with Trump's election over here.

Thursday--

Not much happening today. I think I saw the first bit of a stevia plant breaking the surface and the last of the eggplant starts suddenly decided to sprout. The Thai basil is doing well but won't need to be moved for another couple of days. I got some more of the table cleared in the plant/craft/storage room so I am close to having an area for the sewing machine. I spent some time trying to figure out the crocodile crochet stitch and I think I have it figured.

Friday--

David Kaiser has an interesting post today with which I disagree in several parts. When George W. Bush was elected (even in his very unusual election by Supreme Court decision the first time) I was able to say he was my president and wish him well. His military adventurism forced me to amend that a bit by refusing to condone actions I mightily disagreed with though I could do nothing about. Trump, however, is something else again. He does not speak for me, act for me, or in any way represent me. He happens to be the president of the country I was born in, have lived in for all my 67 years, had at one time been proud to be a citizen of and to have served in my (inglorious) stint in the armed services. But he is not my president. Yes, a little less than half of voters voted for him but without the Electoral College he would have lost to the slightly larger half who voted for Clinton. So which half should defer to which? Kaiser talks about compromises which ended (sort of) the divisions of the Civil War but that required concessions by both sides. I have seen damned little compromise from Republicans over the last almost 20 years.

I agree with the author of this post and I am not at all surprised by the development. The militarization of our society continues.