We have a series of very warm days continuing. They started over the weekend with high 80s. Today is nearing 90F and a couple of more are in store. It will cool down, the weather people say, by Labor Day. By then we will be saying goodbye to August and hello to September.
We had an appointment yesterday so I didn't get much reading and no posting done. Right now the political news is largely the "same old-same old" and it is very old. I remember a comment someone (I can't remember who) made about the difference between "predicaments" and "problems." Problems have solutions but predicaments don't. Right now we have continuing predicaments--in Ukraine, in Gaza, in our relations with Russia and China, an economy which has tilted more towards the already obscenely wealthy. And we have contending parties on all of the various sides (there aren't simply two sides) which have made finding a consensus on what actions to take difficult.
I did make some progress on a crochet piece I started a week or so ago. I had to pull it all out and start again because I didn't get the original count right. I seemed to make good progress on it only to find that I miscounted somewhere along the way and had to take out all but the first three rows. I am thoroughly amazed and disgusted with my inability to count single digits consistently. I now count two or three times the next set of stitches and, when I have a long stretch of the same pattern, use safety pins to mark my stitches. Making progress on the last of a set of pillow cases was much easier.
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We had a very hard thunderstorm move through last night. Still too early to see if anything in the gardens was damaged. I have several summer plants that are pretty much done for the year. I will replace them with mums for the fall. And I am beginning a list of plants I won't plant next year for various reasons. Cosmos--I planted these simply because I had an empty large pot and Mom got a packet of free seeds in a charity pleading for donations. Bee balm/monarda--I want to find a different plant to feed bees. I have planted this one for several years but it is time for a different plant. Dahlia--in the last couple of years they have suffered from powdery mildew so it is time to consider more resistant plants. Mints--I used to plant mints to harvest for tea but kept putting them in to attract bees. Valerian--just time for a change.
Stray Thought: the Harris/Walz bus tour in southeastern Georgia revives a good strategy. I have long thought neither party has addressed the needs of people living in rural areas. Ever since, and before, Earl Butz (then Secretary of Agriculture) told farmers they had to "get big or get out" the only rural interests Washington politicians paid any attention to was industrial agriculture. Going out and meeting people in small towns is a good start.
Another Stray Thought: a passage in Liz Cheney's OATH AND HONOR ties into that first stray thought. She described talking to two of her Wyoming constituents who were both ranchers during the turmoil of December when the Electoral College was preparing to meet. Both mentioned as their first comment that Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts had a child-sex ring running in his basement. She disabused them and then went on to their other concerns over how and under what terms the Biden administration would administer the land and resources in Wyoming the federal government controls. The constituents voted Republican because they viewed Republican administrations as friendly toward their economic interests while the Democrats were more likely to push economic or environmental measures that would hit them very hard in the pocket book. I wonder how many Democrats actually went out to talk to such voters.
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