Good morning, everyone. Not much going on here. The transplanting got done yesterday and everything seems to be adjusting quite nicely. We may get some rain today. It is cloudy now so I will wait and see if it clears off. The only thing I really need to do is pick one of the green slicing tomatoes to be fried later today. This is a strange year. Normally, we would have been waiting anxiously for the tomatoes to get large enough to be fried green. But, with the heat this year, our appetites just aren't there. The only reason we are having our seasonal favorite today is that while I was trimming the plants one of the green tomatoes fell off.

We have had a bit of trouble with our computers this week. Nothing that kept us off the internet but enough to be very irritating. We upgraded to Lion. After the upgrade Mom couldn't get into her bank account and had to go through the process of re-authenticating her machine. I had no problem on that front. And it totally screwed up her start up page and we had to reset that. Those are operations we don't have to do very often so we have to re-learn the process whenever something messes up those procedures. My problem was different. I used Appleworks for my word processing and spreadsheet work. Lion doesn't support Appleworks. Textedit (the word processing program that is part of the operating system package) is simply not adequate and can't translate my files into a useable form. So I had to get iWork and am now converting my files to that system. I have a lot of files. Apple, I am not a happy camper!

This Huffington Post article can be filed in the 'solve one problem and exacerbate another' file. The notion of biodegradable, plant-based plastic products has been pushed for a number of years. The answer, we have been told, to the depletion of a non-renewable resource and to the persistence of the plastic trash in our environment. Now a new study show that the biodegradable releases methane before regulations require landfills to begin to capture the gas produced.

Sorry, y'all. Fat finger struck again. I intended to save what I had done so I could take a break and do my transplants and eat breakfast. I published instead.

I agree with you, Kay, on the mess that is our (mis-)education system. I mentioned my sarcastic comment on the teaching of 'texting' instead of cursive. But my disenchantment with education at all levels goes much deeper. Ant that from a person who has multiple advanced degrees and once bought into the notion that the road to economic advancement was through education. To continue with the comparison I started yesterday. One hundred years ago my grandfather was qualified to teach elementary school classes--because he graduated from 8th grade. By the time I was graduated from 8th grade teachers had to have a bachelor's degree. Now the bachelor's is only a toe in the door. You had better plan to go on for a master's. One hundred years ago a young person without either wealth of his own or family to rely on could work for four or five years and be able to save enough to pay for his college education. When he graduated he had no loans hanging over his head but a world of opportunity thanks to that education. By the time I was in college (on the GI Bill, thank you very much Uncle Sam) many of my friends worked over the summer and earned enough to pay for their next year's classes and often enough to live frugally with at most a part time job during the school year. Now the new graduates usually come out with the degree in one hand and a hefty loan in the other. And, as I have noted before, the economic benefits (spread out over a working lifetime) don't justify the expenditure. The grandfathers and great-grandfathers of today's graduates were a scarce commodity in a world when less than half of the working population had a high school education. Now, graduates with a bachelor's degree are a dime a dozen. The world has changed but our cultural assumptions haven changed with it. The basic questions--education for what, at what price, and for whom--haven't been asked much less answered.

I wonder if our legislators will hear confirmation of this poll which shows very low approval ratings for them and for the Tea Party. Unfortunately it is rather far from the next election and people have a tendency to say we should throw the bums out but they rather like their own bums.

Here is an intriguing story about our wonderful bureaucracy. Two sisters who were born at home, were home schooled, and have no medical records are forced to spend a fortune suing the state to get birth certificates and then have to sue the U.S. government to get social security numbers.

Well, here it is--Friday again. The first Friday of August. Hope you all have a very nice day. We expect another in the low 80s which means no air conditioning needed again. Tomorrow and Sunday may be a different matter with the predictions for mid to high 80s. It really depends on the humidity. It is time to take out my sunflowers. I have a nice pot of yellow mums to put in their place. I also want to transplant a couple of pots of petunia from the bunches in the large containers that are either too crowded or in too shady a spot to be happy. I also have to start on another round of herb harvesting. I know, I know--I have been threatening that for the last week.

The lead story for the Good Morning America news this morning is the huge sell off on the markets round the world. They all seem so surprised as did the CNBC talking heads yesterday. We look at this and wonder why they are so surprised. Everybody has suddenly realized that there are other concerns in this global economy besides the U.S. debt limit debacle. I think most of those people have a very short term memory, a very limited attention span, and a very effective set of blinders restricting their vision to one thing at a time. One of the reporters just made my point for me--there was nothing new to really drive the selling. We have known about the European sovereign debt problem. For those of us with a longer memory the term PIIGS once stood for Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain. All of this has been on the horizon for the last three years (or possibly longer.) Another commented that the notion going around that the U.S. is headed for either a double dip recession or an new recession leaves a lot of people wondering when the original recession ended. That is the beauty of statistic--the numbers can obscure as much (or more) than they reveal.

I read this Guardian article yesterday but didn't link to it then. Greek banks have experienced a 'silent' run. No long lines of desperate people struggling to get in and demand their deposits in cash. Instead just an increasing number of desperate individuals withdrawing their money hoping to find a safe place for it somewhere, anywhere. I was reminded of it this morning during the news segment I discussed above. One of the investors interviewed said he was withdrawing from the bond and stock markets, and putting his cash in the bank. At least it would be insured and he would get a minimal couple of percent interest for it. My thought--hope he isn't depending of the FDIC which depends on the 'full faith and credit of the United States.' Depending on how much a depositor has the full amount may not be covered. And if we have a serious depression will the government have either the wherewithal or the will to meet that commitment?

Good morning to you all. Yesterday was a very nice low 80 day with sun late in the day and a nice breeze. That should be the program for the next week and maybe longer. We were able to open the doors and upstairs window. No air conditioning!! My beans are finally deciding to bloom as is the sole surviving poppy and the Fresh Salsa tomatoes are starting to ripen. I pulled one of the lemon balm patches I had in a small pot sunk in one of the large containers. It wasn't happy given the shade the cucumbers and beans provided. I put it in a new pot in one of the fence hangers. It should revive nicely. I saw a couple of similarly unhappy petunias so they might find a new home later today. The Teddy Bear sunflowers are nearly spent so I have to think about taking them out and putting in something new. A trip to Home Depot is in order--for tomorrow, I think. Today I need to continue trimming and cleaning up a bit after the heat of the past month kept me limited to minimum maintenance.

While we are enjoying a break from the heat we are amazed by the continued heat in the south. My jaw dropped when the news reported that some people had to replace air conditioners which melted from the load. The highs aren't the only thing about the heat wave that is amazing--how long this phenomenon has lasted (33 days in a row in Dallas) is also mind boggling.

This item from MSNBC bring up a problem I have seen for the last 30 years. The issue has kicked into a higher gear thanks to the economic problems but has actually been in the background for a very long time. I remember newspaper accounts (back when I subscribed to and read newspapers) of a school district which didn't have enough money to repair the toilets and whose text books were more than 10 years out of date while another not far away had computer labs (at the beginning of the computer age) with one machine for each child. Needless to say the toilets in the second school district worked.

On another aspect of modern education--Sister and her partner invited Mom and me to lunch the other day. She filled us in on all of the family news. Her daughter lives in a relatively affluent town and has two young kids in school. The school district decreed that all students will be 'given' a laptop and their parents charged $250 per year per child for the computers and after 4 years they would it. That raised a stink because although the town is relatively affluent they do have a sizable number of people who are not all that affluent. So they changed the program only $150 per year per child and at the end of five years the parents could pay there remaining $250 on the cost of the machines to keep them. I had would have had a number of objections if I were a parent in the school district. No choice of brand, no choice of available programs, and no choice of whether giving a young child (including kindergarteners) a computer at all. And, adding to my disgust with the whole issue, the schools there are no longer teaching cursive writing. Instead they have instruction in 'texting.' Evidently my niece asked how the thought the kids would sign their names in the future and she was told that they won't have to because they can sign with and electronic 'x.' My comment: Oh, my what a long way we come. One hundred years ago illiterates signed with an x and now the modern illiterate signs with an x.

I saw this mishigas coming three years ago when the layoffs started to soar and a lot of states borrowed from the U.S. treasury to cover their increased costs. I wondered at the time what would happen when those bills came due. I guess we are going to find out. Don't you just love the states cutting the original 26 weeks of benefits back to as little as 20? At a time when the average time between losing one job and finding an new one is somewhere north of 45 weeks? I think that our leaders have failed to imagine exactly how deep and prolonged this 'recession' would be. Or how long (as in how many years not weeks or months) it will take to reduce the unemployment rate.

Good morning, everyone. It is cooler though still humid. The weather people say the humidity should drop over the day. I won't do any gardening until the clouds dissipate. We had rain overnight with some winds and lightning. Unfortunately, the rain wasn't enough to do the gardens any real good. I will have to water anyway.

Here is an interesting little piece from the Guardian (which I found checking out this item on Natural news.) I have been skeptical about scientific papers and the reporting on them for some time. Too often we get a big splash for preliminary studies and nothing for the later studies which qualify or even totally discredit the initial results. The tobacco industry had their bought researchers construct studies designed to discredit all of the studies which showed connections between smoking and disease. The drug industry it seems has taken the fraud to another level by simply writing the studies themselves and paying scientists to allow the papers to be published under their more respectable names. Bottom line: you have to carefully consider any information even from supposedly reputable sources.

I really like this story from Natural News (citing the Minnesota Star Tribune). A couple years ago I read stories about Monsanto (primarily) suing neighboring farmers, many of whom were seed savers, for infringing on their patents for GMO crops when the farmers' crops showed genetic contamination from the GMO crops. Now organic farmers can sue for trespass when the neighbors' chemical applications and Monsanto's crops pollinate their crops. Good!

Now this is curious. I don't necessarily endorse the study. Statistics are always slippery and malleable. But I do know that Repthuglican politicians seem to drive me crazy--in or out of the White House.

Good morning, again, everyone. Warm and muggy today going to hot and muggy. But we have the promise of 80s for the next week. I really need to get out in the gardens because I have a lot of trimming to do. Also the cherry tomato is showing signs of heat stress and early blight. I am thankful that the Roma next to it looks fine. For the most part, Lois, the gardens are looking very good considering 19 days of 90+ and not enough rain to hardly wet the ground. The really drenching and flooding rains fell north and west of here. And when we did get a goodly bid it was in one fell swoop, like that 4 inches in two hours a bit over a week ago. But I will say this year's garden is the best I have had since I started keeping more than a could of scrawny plants on that cement slab. I need to dead head the marigolds--another job I have put off because of the heat. Mom and I have complained constantly this summer that we simply don't tolerate the heat well any more and remembering times that don't really seem that long ago when this summer would not have phased us at all. I guess we can be thankful that we aren't living in Texas and other parts that are still directly under that heat dome.

Sorry, Snowbrush, that your original comments didn't make it on. Hope you visit and try again.

I agree, Kay. I have come to tune out certain people because 1) their sanctimony puts my back up something fierce, 2) they trot out the same old arguments without anything new and the same old unproven assumptions, and 3) with the same old claims that they have the royal road to jobs and economic growth but without any scrutiny to see if the claims have any logical structure. The only question is which group of Americans they think they can safely kick under the bus this time.

Helen at Margaret and Helen has the perfect take on our current political situation. Can't say it better myself.

Good morning to you all on this first day of August. We expect highs in the low 90s with enough humidity to push the heat index into the low 100s. I did not get the lemon balm done yesterday. That energy you noticed, Kay? Well as the old saying goes my get up and go got up and went. I did manage to get the watering done, fertilized the large containers and put a little cheese cloth hammock under the largest melon to take the stress off the stem. That one should start turning red soon. I found several new cucumbers developing so the work the bees have been doing is having good results.

I haven't had much to say about the political mess and don't have much to say even though the pundits and politicians are so optimistic about the deal the leaders have worked out. It hasn't been voted on yet. And the 'solution' to the debt limit 'crisis' doesn't even begin to address some of the larger issues facing our political/economic condition. Read this item if you are at all optimistic just because the politicians have forged an at-best temporary solution.