June 4

I have five new plants to put in pots today. The market had the replacements for the rosemary and chives. I also found an interesting hibiscus. The beans are coming up which will need a trellis soon. It is supposed to be a bit cooler so I should be able get it up today. I need to get the dehydrator set up because several plants including several mints and the stevia needed cutting.

Reading a good article on the Indian train crash. Some of the numbers (beyond the dead and injured) are amazing. Twenty-two million riders per day. More than 40,000 miles of rail most built during the British colonial era. The article has more interesting tidbits. It is only amazing until you remember the most amazing bit of data behind the rest: India's population has recently surpassed China's. India, with 1.4billion  people, is the most populous nation on earth. They are trying to modernize the system but that is a lot of system to modernize.

An amusing post on BoingBoing about the "idle rich complaining about poor people." You know the song and dance: those poors simply don't want to work. I have heard that all my life. Usually the advice was to just take any job for any amount for whatever hours and (sometime in some distant future) you would work yourself into better situations. It never happened. It seemed to me that we were expected to work ourselves to death to make a living (a living we would never really live.) Then about 20 years ago I realized that wasn't really the case. We were working ourselves to death to not make a living. The epiphany came when I needed a new pair of jeans and realized I would have to work almost an entire week to afford it. And I realized that none of the jobs I worked at would ever allow me to live on my own in a basic apartment, own a car, and afford basic utilities. Even when I worked two jobs, and at one time three, that life was out of reach.

Well, we decided to go to the garden shop and get the two plants I needed to fill the last two spots in the gardens. I decided to get two medium to large sized flowering plants that could take heat and plenty of sun. I found two nice white diplodenias. I potted them immediately and got everything watered. The air temperature must only be in the low 80s because the temperature on the patio didn't go above 100. And the dehydrator is set up.