Saturday--May 13

Mid-May already!! I did some clean up among the plants and need to sit for a little while. The lemons and limes didn't make it. I may try again next year. The oranges are still hanging on and I hope they make it. The sweet basil and lime basil I had outside also didn't make it. The weather has been too much for them--the hot slewing to cold and the heavy rain. I will get more of those next weekend. I adjusted the planter in which I have lavender planted. One of the plants isn't looking happy. I placed the planter on wood slats to get it off the table surface and deep it out of water that pools there but I inadvertently covered the drain holes. I replaced the slats with two 2x4 pieces which elevates the pot and leaves the drains clear.

The second year we raised tomatoes we got very few. They were tasty but the cold spring didn't do them any good at all. I had thought of trying one of the very cold tolerant varieties Burpee carries but didn't. The next year it was hot and we had a bumper crop. That has been the pattern since. The rains we have had over the last few years have also been atypical. Usually we don't have as many monsoonal downpours as we have had. My Dragon's Egg cucumbers have all been pounded to death by the last couple of storms. I will start some more Monday.

On other topics--I found this New Yorker piece which is scarily right on the money. I wonder how much damage the Orange Horror, aided and abetted by a spineless and grasping legislature, will do to our Constitutional government by the time he is done. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised. Years ago Robert Heinlein had his protagonist, Johann Sebastian Bach Smith in I Will Fear No Evil, remark that the government of the U.S. had gone from a representative democracy to a broad democracy, to an oligarchy and more without ever changing its basic Constitution. We have witnessed part of that in my lifetime.

I have heard this song before--several times. The government has promised before to stop seizing tax refunds to pay debts long dead family members are said to owe. Each time the seizures come again soon after.