Hello, Everyone.  No 90s in the forecast for the next week.  Today we should be in the low 80s so we shut off the air and opened the doors and window.  We may not put the air on all week.  I just picked a handful of cherry tomatoes and another small batch of roma.  We didn't get any of the tomatoes in the half-bushel lots from our year-round farm market.  It was a disappointing trip up there.  We got nothing at all.  The tomatoes were almost over-ripe and I would have had to process all of them today.  Instead we got a nice bunch of roma at the local supermarket for 50 cents less per pound.  I will process them and what I got out of the garden today at a leisurely pace.  We also didn't get any eggs--that is one of the biggest surprises but when we thought about it we should have expected something like this.  They had a half empty cooler with Dutch Farms eggs instead of their usual brand.  I read that Rose Acre farms (part of the same company as Dutch Farms) had lost a couple hundred thousand laying hens with that heat wave.  I imagine all of the egg farms have had similar problems.  Even if they didn't lose birds the hens probably aren't laying as well as normal.  So far the egg prices aren't increasing that much.  Unlike the gasoline prices.  Over the last two weeks our prices have gone from the $3.50s to $3.99.

When I read this item I asked Mom if she had heard anything about a drought in Russia.  I haven't heard much but it is evidently worse than the few snippets I saw indicated.  My irritation with our non-news media has just increased yet again.  This morning I was watching the coverage of Hillary Clinton's Africa trip which focused entirely on her dancing at some reception in South Africa.  I would rather know what the business side of her trip is accomplishing and what are the issues she is discussing.  I am sure there is more going on than talks on AIDS.  You wouldn't know it from the broadcast news reports.

Shortly after reading the item above I found this one which highlights another problem brought on by this drought--water fights.  I have seen similar stories sporadically this year.  Several areas have seen contention between agriculture and the gas fracking companies.  Both use huge amounts of water.  Farmers on the lower Colorado and along the Rio Grand were upset when water regulators wouldn't release water from dams early.  Some cities are looking for new sources of water or seeking to stake a claim on water at some distance.  Las Vegas wanted to tap rivers in northern Nevada which had farmers there up in arms.

Hello, everyone, on what is predicted to be another hot day before we get something we haven't seen for at least two and a half months--a trio of 70 degree days.  I have everything watered in the gardens.  I think I am getting the upper hand on the squash bugs.  It will be a while because I found several little caches of eggs.  That means I will have more little bugs.  Yesterday was a productive day.  I put up about five pounds of the spicy freezer cucumbers--a kind of freezer pickle.  Took out the vine peach.  As I wrote yesterday they are not very palatable (at least not for me) so I saw no reason to keep the plant going.  I put in one of the double shepherd's hooks and moved the blueberries into that pot.  I won't be putting anything else in that pot.  Oh, well.  I intended to simplify the gardens anyway.  We are looking for a couple of nice bird feeders to put up.  The little hummingbird hasn't come back--at least not that we have seen.  But we'll leave it up because the bees love it.  It will keep them coming around until my plants recover from the heat and begin their next round of blooming.  I moved the orange mint and peppermint to replace the blueberries and had to cut back the runners the peppermint was sending to invade the spearmint pot next to it.  I will tackle the spearmint pots--split them and replant.  I looked at how I have the over-the-fence pot hangers placed and will have to make some changes next year when I have all of the shepherd's hooks in place.  That is one of the nice features of those small pot holders--they are easily moveable.  I thought about getting a couple of the larger pots that straddle the fence but, considering the winds that came with those nasty storms we have had, I am glad I didn't get them.  Those might have blown off damaging both my gardens and the fence.  Our landlords would not have been pleased.

Good Sunday, Everyone.  We got slammed by rain, wind and lightning yesterday evening.  I haven't seen rain like that except in news clips of hurricanes.  I could hardly see the houses across the streets front and back.  Widespread areas in Chicago have power outages thanks to downed trees.  Ours has had no trouble on that front.  All I could do about the gardens was hope, fervently, that they weren't damaged.  It looks like any damage was minor.  I didn't get the herbs ground so that is still on my mental to-do list.  I will slowly get some of the gardening tidying chores done that have been on hold with the heat.  We had to go out yesterday morning to pick up my new glasses and do our weekly grocery shopping.  We went out at 9am and it was already suffocatingly hot.  Whatever we had planned evaporated as the heat sapped our energy.
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Well, it is now Monday.  Our cable and internet went out yesterday for a couple of hours and I never got back to this.  After every one of the severe, sudden storms over the last month we have lost cable and internet the next day for between 2 and 6 hours.  Makes you think about how much we depend on such services.  We had a nice comfortable day yesterday.  Kuma was a happy cat and spent the day lounging on the patio.  It has been a long time since we have let him do that.  He is 17 and getting frail now.  He had a couple of bad days during one of our 80 degree stretches.  He seemed to have no energy at all and his movements were unsteady.  He recovered nicely after we brought him in, closed up and put on the air.  We were comfortable but he clearly wasn't.

Update on the gardens.  I cleared out dead leaves on several plants.  The heat really hit hard in spite of the watering.  I still have several to clean up including the vine peach.  In fact the vine peach vines are coming out totally.  We tried or rather I tried one and really didn't like it much.  I have read a number of contradictory reviews of it.  Those who like it like it a lot and those who don't really don't like it at all.  I am in the latter camp.  I thought it tasted like a cross between a not very tasty cucumber and a very tart apple.  I will put up one of the double shepherd's hooks and put the blueberry bushes in that container.  I harvested cherry and roma tomatoes, cucumbers, bullnose and spicy peppers, and lemon squash.  Really do have to get the cucumbers prepped and frozen.  I need to start the cabbages and kale this week.  On a related topic I have sampled the lemon balm ale I started last month.  It is actually pretty good.  However, I won't repeat the experiment because it took every bit of lemon balm I could harvest at that time.  If I don't get some dried over the fall I won't have much for tea this winter.  And lemon balm is not readily available in the stores.

Damn!!  I just cleaned up the butternut squash and found a nasty infestation of squash bugs.  Evidently, I let more than old growth get out of hand during the heat.  I sprayed them all with pyrethrin.  I resist using any pesticides  and then use the least toxic with the shortest breakdown time.  I will be watching carefully to see how the situation develops.

I saw this on the Chicago TV news we watch.  It doesn't surprise me that Wal-Mart would decide to sell GM sweet corn.  It is nice (sarcasm alert) that they say they have read the various studies which show that 1) it is not harmful when ingested, 2) is more productive than non-GM varieties, and 3) requires less chemicals.  All I can say is--they haven't read the studies I have which draw exactly the opposite conclusions.  About four years ago we stopped buying groceries at Wal-Mart and their decision on this issue simply ensures we won't start again any time soon.  Why did we stop, you wonder.  We didn't like the quality, the excess packaging and the prices were not enough below the closer supermarkets to justify the cost of the gas to go out there.

Good Saturday, Everyone.  Another hot day on tap--low 90s again.  But they say relief is on the way with low to mid 80s for the rest of the week.  Some visitors may be thinking that I haven't put up as many pictures of the gardens as I have in the past.  You're right.  My jungle looks rather stressed.  A couple of plants look like they are about to expire.  They droop in the afternoon but the next morning they show some life and they are trying to put out new shoots.  I have several caches of herbs already dried I need to get ground for use today.  No harvesting today.

The early morning TV news said that authorities in Oklahoma are looking for an arsonist in connection with the wildfires that have sprung up.  If an arsonist is responsible for this, I have a few suggestions for an appropriate punishment.  My inclinations when contemplating this kind of crime are positively Medieval.  This fire season is definitely straining resources.

This is amazing and not in a good way.  I remember reading, a year or so ago, a book about disappearing rivers around the world.  Even rivers one would think were way too big to go dry have had increasingly frequent periods when their flow drops to the point where stretches go dry.  About twenty years I was blown away reading about the Colorado River which no longer flows into the sea thanks to the dams that have been built.  I had just read the memoirs of an army wife in the late 1800s which described their steamboat trip up a long stretch of the Colorado to reach her husband's post.  Haven't been able to do that for a long time now.  Makes me wonder what is happening to the water table.

Hello and welcome, Annie's Granny.  I agree the 'stay-out-of-the-supermarket-for-30-days' notion advocated by that article is a dilemma--on many levels.  Though I said we almost meet the rules for participation I did not mean to imply we are actually participating.  We're not.  I agree with you on the impact of consumer boycotts.  They may crap all over the innocent as well as the not-so-innocent.  I see a good example with a Chicago alderman's announced intention of blocking a new Chick-fil-a outlet in his ward and with the Mayor's statements that the company's values are not 'Chicago values.'  The owner of the existing restaurant got a few seconds on the news to proclaim that she is part of the city and her husband is a Chicago police officer.  Her business is part of the city's economy and provides jobs.  The issue of local economic impact, especially jobs, is also complex.  Our simple rule is to shop locally whenever possible.  But it isn't really all that simple in practice.  Our meat market is totally local.  They provide skilled jobs (butchers--real butchers) for local people and the profits stay in the community.  Our three grocery supermarkets are regional.  They provide more jobs in their meat department alone than the meat market does all together.  But they are lower skill and lower wage.  I have no idea of how many of the jobs are full time with benefits but what we have heard from the cashiers makes me suspect not many are such jobs.  And a large part of the profits go elsewhere--still in the region but elsewhere.  And then there is Wal-Mart and Target.  They provide a lot of jobs--more than the three grocery stores and meat market together.  But I always take the loud proclamations by the Wal-Mart spokesmen that their average wage is between $11 and $12 per hour with very large doses of salt because I know how averages work.  Put me and Bill Gates in a room and average our incomes and I am suddenly a billionaire.  NOT EVEN!!   And their profits go way outside our region.

On another level, I haven't so much left the big box stores and grocery supermarkets as they have left me.  I as amused by the author's observation that millennials and younger have broken the spell of name brands that hold baby boomers and older people in thrall.  Considering the reactions high end sneakers and such elicit I think that is an over broad.  And I know this boomer broke the spell a long time ago.  We changed our buying habits as manufacturers changed their products and those products no longer worked as efficiently or economically as they once did.  We switched to other products.  We shop at the supermarkets and big box stores but only for those items that still meet our needs as I mentioned yesterday.  We have another simple rule that governs our buying habits:  as long as the products we buy meet our needs or tastes good we will continue to buy it; when it doesn't we won't buy it again, at any price.

And welcome to you, too, Mary in Missouri.  We have also noticed that our farm markets are not as abundantly supplied as usual.  One of the vendors told us about a month ago that farmers growing green beans were having difficulty because the beans would mildew over night unless they had coolers to keep them in.  Not many do.  The sweet corn isn't as fully developed as it has been in previous years.    We have decided to forego corn on the cob this year.  I am debating whether to clear the beans out of their container or see if they will recover to produce some more.  I will probably leave them until the kale and cabbage I plan to start next week.  Oh, yes!! it has been a summer to remember.

Now for the too-cute-side of the heat wave.  Bless the kind human who provide this overheated little squirrel with a bowls of food and ice.

Hello, All, on this expected-to-be-hot Friday.  Another 90 possible.  I have watered almost everything--only have four more small pots on the fence to attend to.  Harvested some tomatoes--cherry and roma.  I saw a Mr. Stripey that is almost ready along with a couple of cucumbers, peppers and vine peaches.  I also cut some patchouli, stevia, pineapple sage and orange mint that are all drying now.

I haven't really seen much to comment on lately.  The news is either the latest (maybe) gaffe by whichever candidate; or, perhaps just the latest comment taken out of context.  Or the latest bit of trivia on the Drew Peterson trial.  Or the Olympics.  Or the latest meltdown over Chick-fil-a.  I really don't follow any by choice--I just can't get away from it.  Let's see what else I find today.

Now this is interesting--a challenge to avoid the grocery supermarket for 30 days.  The participants can allow themselves $30 for items at the supermarket that can't be found elsewhere.  We are nearly there as it is.  All we buy regularly at the supermarket are diary products (except eggs which we get from our favorite year-round farm market), vinegar (we use a lot for cleaning), frozen vegetables and oatmeal/farina.  During the summer most of our veggies come from the farm markets.  Our meat comes from a small local butcher shop.  We have actively tried to eliminate most of the mass produced canned goods because of the quality (bad and getting worse) or the heavy doses of salt, sugar and preservatives.  I wonder how many more baby boomers have joined the movement away from one-stop shopping which doesn't meet our needs any more.

Hello, again, on this first Thursday of August which promises to be hot and dry (90s with no rain).  I am taking a bit of a rest.  I went into the gardens planning to harvest herbs for drying and watering everything and got diverted.  Checking the corn I decided it was as ready as it was going to get and cleared it out.  We got four small ears--that's all.  They are pretty little ears and we will enjoy them and since I did get to harvest some I don't consider it a failed experiment.  I just won't repeat it.  I was amazed at how dry that container was when I pulled the plants.  Even with almost daily watering.  Conclusion: you can grow corn in containers but the plants aren't happy and the yield isn't worth the space.  I also replaced a board I had supporting the blueberries on the edges of two large containers with a nice heavy wire rack.  The board was a stopgap until I found a permanent solution.  I knew it wouldn't last past this season.  And everything is also well fertilized.  I should have done that this time last month but got waylaid by the heat.  And I took the hose off the reel to tighten up the connection.  The small leak suddenly got too big to ignore.  Tomorrow I will tackle the herbs again and check the tomatoes and peppers.  As pitiful as my corn yield was I am grateful considering the fact that I am under no watering restrictions and something like half of the country is in some stage of drought.  Even if the rainfall next year (or sooner) goes back to 'normal'  I intend to think seriously about how to make my gardens more efficient with respect to water.  We just got our monthly report from our utility showing our water and electric usage with comparison to last year's consumption and our neighbors.  So far we are 7% below last year's use and 40% below our 'efficient' neighbors.  In spite of the heat.

I remember a a couple of times in this recession they aren't calling a recession when the empty headed economic pundits joyfully proclaimed the rise in temporary employment as a sign that employment, and the economy along with it, was improving.  They saw, and see, temp employment as a leading indicator of recovery on the theory that employers wanted to hire more workers but didn't want to commit fully in case the recovery was a bit further off than they thought.  Skeptical me wondered out loud if there was more to the story than the pundits thought.  I may have been right to be skeptical.  The strong possibility that temporary work (without health or retirement benefits) is becoming the 'new normal' for a larger part of the workforce makes Social Security and single-payer health care programs absolutely necessary.  Unless of course we want to go back to the 19th century model epitomized by the unredeemed Scrooge:  'If they (the poor) are like to die, let them get on with it and reduce the surplus population.'

To follow up a bit on the observations above or rather the implication that the pundits are somehow divorced from reality check this article out.  I love the following bit of the article:

To paraphrase Voltaire’s observation on doctors, Mr. Economy’s faith healers prescribe medicines of which they know little, to cure diseases of which they know less, in economic and financial systems of which they know nothing.

I have often thought that economics, like medicine, was more art (or witchdoctory) than science.

Good Wednesday to all out there.  I have had a busy morning already.  Our first pot of stewed tomatoes is on the stove spiced with fresh basil, onion, a handful of Marconi peppers (frozen from last year) and the one 'spicy' pepper we picked a couple days ago and decided was too hot for omelets.  It has a strong chili smell so I will label it for chili.  Should make three or four packages for freezing.  Just tasted it and it is definitely chili tomatoes.  I watered everything so I am now done for the day.  Tomorrow I will go back to collecting herbs for drying.  Mom found some really nice green peppers to do up as stuffed peppers that we will freeze.  She isn't ready to do up the chilies rellenos and the poblanos she saw were smaller than she would like.  Update: tomatoes are stewed, cooled and packaged.  I now have two and a half pounds of stewed tomatoes in the freezers getting frozen.  The half pound we put in the small freezer for immediate use in any casserole or other dish.  Others in the large freezer for chili this winter.