Hoping it will be a nice day. The forecast predicts a temp that won't exceed 80 and not much chance of showers. I plan on some herb cutting and drying, and taking some cuttings to root out new plants--hopefully.

I have read quite a few articles and a couple of books on the effect Wal-mart has when it enters a community. Now I just read the first article on in a mainstream news source on the effect when it leaves. I did get some glimmering of what the might happen about seven or eight years ago(give or take year or two) when they closed out their fabric and crafts section. I visited a number of quilters' message boards and there were a lot of enraged quilters who had seen the company move in, run out the small shops, and decided to leave them high and dry by closing their fabric sections. The quilters had to go to mail order or drive ungodly distances. That was a pale foretaste of what has happened in towns and counties where Wal-mart opened with a promise of jobs and cheap goods, driven out the local small shops and now are leaving a big vacuum behind. We came to depend on this commercial system of which Wal-mart was a part for far too much. We depended on that systems for jobs to provide us with sufficient money to exchange for what we needed (from food to clothing, to social interaction) to daily survive. We never questioned our dependency.

I had read about China buying farm land in Africa while Saudi Arabia was doing the same and snatching up American farm land. China also made a splash with its acquisition of Smithfield Farms pork raising operation. This is the first I read about China buying chemical/seed agribusinesses. Question: what happens if (when?) China decides that they have to reserve all of the products of their agribusiness companies for themselves? Think Wal-mart closing and extrapolate.

I cut stevia, lemon mint, orange mint, sweet basil, spicy oregano, Thai basil, spearmint and peppermint. Several provided only half a tray of cuttings but the plants needed to be trimmed to remain compact in their spots. If we have good weather tomorrow I will concentrate on lemon balm, lime basil and peppermint.