We did get the promised rain beginning Wednesday night and continuing all day yesterday. Nothing to report in the remains of the gardens. What was doing well is still doing well while the impatiens and marigolds which are showing signs of distress with the cold nights are still hanging on.

I Baked bread yesterday--a nice lavender/macadamia nut loaf. I used other nuts because Mom doesn't like macadamias. So far the recipe has worked well with both walnuts and pecans. By the way this was a yeast bread not a quick bread. I am glad I decided to try to work it by hand rather than rely on the instructions for a bread machine, which I don't have, or the stand mixer, which is a pain to set up and take down. It takes up way too much space and is used so infrequently we don't leave it up all the time. Usually I don't even print out bread machine recipes.

I found this by a circuitous route involving a couple of different links. What a lovely Christmas present this would be for Amazon and Walmart: a large slice of the $53billion in the federal government procurement budget. And on a no-bid set up. And the wording is structured to make it look like openly competitive but only two companies can qualify to participate. Crony Capitalism at its best (for them not us.)

An interesting account of the heatwaves in San Francisco this season from an emergency room doctor. We live far from the California coast but it has been an odd year for us as well. In years past we kept our thermostat at 85 in the summer which was usually comfortable. Not this year. We lowered the setting to 78. I think we had far more humidity in the air than normal. And, so far, our usual practice of setting the heating thermostat to 68 has been uncomfortable also. We moved it up to 70. Nothing seems "normal" about this year which just continues a string of such years. I have almost forgotten what "normal" really looks/feels like.