Monday--May 29

Goodness--only today and two more days and we will be through May into June. Where has the year gone.

Not much gardening to do except a pull a weed or two. Some of the replacement cucumbers and sunflowers are sprouting. I think I will simply start those in the gardens directly when the containers get warm enough. I have some little peppers forming on the pepper plants so we might have fresh peppers soon. We are going to visit a nearby farm market Wednesday afternoon. I think this might be only the third year it has been operating but it is billed as a "farm" market meaning that everything on sale is produced by local small farmers. The others, including our own town market, includes not only local farm grown vegetables or meat but local crafts and some commercially produced items. Saturday is opening day for the town market. We will visit it also.

Tom Englehardt has a very good post on what #45 reveals about our world and how we got here. Spoiler alert: it isn't a good picture.

It looks like Europe is in the same boat we are as far as penicillin is concerned. This is a basic problem with global capitalism that we should have seen coming. The way to beat the competition trap is to consolidate And, when three of the four companies in the world are in China and don't adhere to U.S. or European production standards, you have a choice: endure the shortages or buy from substandard producers. Once companies get a certain, large size and there are few of them the old notion that some upstart will come in and provide the competition that will either kill them or make them change their ways is nonsensical. The new company will be undercut or bought out and the situation will go back to status quo ante.