I have chocolate mint and orange mint to grind and should get the lemon balm cut and drying. The lemon balm by itself should fill the dehydrator. I should pick a bunch of cherry tomatoes. We'll see if I get to it and I need to check some cucumbers. I have several mental notes for next year: no beans--I haven't found a variety yet Mom likes, not even the Blue Lake she suggested one year; tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers will be in their own five gallon buckets; all the mints will be in either the pockets of the soft shoe storage planter or in smaller pots on the wire shoe rack; the strawberries like that soft shoe rack so some will stay in there and in the top tiers of the tower planters.

There are stories which simply cry out for commentary and this is one. I think it proves that the Department of Homeland Security is simply a slush fund. Where is the capitalism the Repthuglicans treat as an 11th commandment? But then there are so many subsidies for the fossil fuel industry that a few billion to keep the moribund coal industry limping along isn't such a bad thing. It isn't like they have roads, bridges, sewer systems, polluted water that needs attention and money, is it?

Now this is a good idea. If companies want to put in robots to replace workers, they can do so but they should kick in to defray the expenses the state (which means the rest of us taxpayers) pony up to cover unemployment and other such costs.