More garden dreams and other contrary thoughts.

Yeah!!! I have seedlings starting to peek out.  A couple of borage which are the fastest to germinate.  I plan to plant another bunch of seeds today.  The temperatures in the mid-40s yesterday took a large part of the snow down though there is a lot of snow to melt.  We should have mid-50s today.  That is very welcome.

I didn't read all of this article but the premise of the headline doesn't surprise me.  In our government of the people, by the people, and for the people the operative basic principle seems to be don't tell the people.  And that principle extends to all parts of our political and economic system.

Nor does this article surprise me although it seemed like we were hearing about more recalls there were actually fewer in terms of actual number of recalls.  But those recalls affected (or potentially affected) more people.  Several of the recalls were massive a large quantity of product.  How could a recall of millions or tens of millions of pounds of beef not affect a large numbers of consumers.  But then add the complexity of our food chain to the problem.  Take that recall of the beef from Rancho Feeding a couple of weeks ago.  That beef went to consumers directly and indirectly.  Think of the hot pocket varieties that were recalled because beef from Rancho was used in them.  And hot pockets weren't the only products using that beef.

Just took a break and planted several kinds of seeds: bee balm, cypress vine, black peony poppy, California poppy, lavender, Ms. Mars sunflower.  I still have 17 pots ready so I might put in some of the greens tomorrow.  I intend to keep them in pots separate from the gardens this year.

I always knew we had a "state religion" and, unlike those who espouse the notion that we are a  Christian nation, was able to identify it.

So, we had a "good" jobs report for last month.  That's nice.  But, perhaps, we should read this before we celebrate.

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Well, here it is.  One of my two least favorite days of the year.  Daylight savings starts and it will take a week for my system to fully adjust.  I really wish they would set the time and leave it.  I think it is a bit of an anachronism given our 24/7 society.

I remember when the pundits foresaw a "paperless" office.  We haven't got it yet and I for one am glad.  We have gone pretty much the way this author has.  Our bills come via e-mail and we pay them on line.  We have automatic deposits.  But the paper hasn't gone away--and won't.  I prefer physical books to my e-reader--they are easier on my eyes.  I like hard copies of needlework patterns and recipes.  They are easier to juggle with what ever I am working on.  And I don't have to worry about what would happen to all my electronically stored info if the power goes out for a day (or a week or two.)  Technology always has its advantages and its drawbacks.

I have seen several articles concerning exactly who the Kiev snipers were and what their affiliations may have been.  Some writers take for granted they were deployed by the Yanukovych government; others by the opposition to discredit the Yanukovych further.  The author of this notes that no one really knows.  I wish I could believe that our government knows and is backing the right horse here but I don't.

Another sunny day and we expect temps about 40F.  Yesterday was a bit busy because we had to replenish groceries and run more errands than usual.  We picked up another couple of bags of potting soil, 2 of bird seed, and 4 5-gal buckets.  Those last are going to replace the kitty litter buckets of about the same size that have spent four or five years outside as part of my container gardens.  They are fragile and brittle so it is time to get new ones.  Because we planned not to go out at all during the nearly two weeks of 0F and below we had an unusually large grocery list.  But everything is back up to normal levels now so we can go back to our usual pattern of weekly shopping trips.

Our experiment with the dried apples (crisp chips actually), bananas, and peaches did not turn out well.  Those were the most tasteless mess I have ever had the misfortune of trying.  So we got a bag each of frozen sliced apples and peaches to try instead.  We repackaged them into small snack sized baggies so we only take out a small amount for cereal.  See how well that works.

I heard on the morning news that "our" legislators voted to approve the $1 billion in loan guarantees Obama promised for Ukraine.  I put that word above in quotation marks because I don't claim any of them--not even those from my state.

Beautiful sunny day and expected to stay that way.  We should begin a warm up that includes a couple of days in the mid-40s.  Some of these mountains of snow should start shrinking as the accumulations won't keep up with the melting (I hope).  I won't be happy until I can see my container gardens and I won't be really happy until I can see some indication of what has survived out there.  I made up another 37 paper pots and totally used up the strips I had left over from last year.  But that should get me well started on starting seeds.

Now this is a perspective I can agree with.

And this one as well.  And we ask here where in our supposedly strained national budget is the money we have pledged to Ukraine going to come from.  As noted no one we know of has proposed this or voted on it.  I deeply resent being asked to support Ukrainian oligarch or Gazprom.  And let's not kid ourselves--that is where it will go.

Love this Automatic Earth post.  Oh, the amount of drivel we swallow each and every day!!  Trying to get that out of our mental diet is harder than getting the high fructose corn syrup and other such crap out of our bodily diets.

Political icebergs. Garden dreams.

As I have gotten older I have been less and less eager to get on any political bandwagon.  That is especially so when the political issue involves our relations with foreign countries.  The Ukraine is a case in point.  I always wonder what is embedded in the nine-thenths of that iceberg that is below the surface.  This blog on Automatic Earth today confirms my growing skepticism.  Golem XIV thinks the maneuvering as a sign of even more devious designs on the part of the U.S.--a way to limit Russia and keep the EU fragmented.  Nothing like acting against both allies and adversaries at the same time.

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I have the first tray of seeds started.  Here's what I have so far: tomatoes (Martino's Roma, Amish paste, Patio Princess), Peppers (lipstick, albino bullnose, corno di toro rosso), shiso, epazote, borage, hibiscus, summer savory, chamomile, wonderberry, and lemon basil.  I used borage and hibiscus seeds I harvested last fall.  I don't know how the hibiscus will do since the mother plant is a hybrid.  My gardens are still under small mountains of snow.  And we are getting more light snow right now.

I thought, when our idiot politicians (including Obama) started mouthing threats of economic sanctions, the whole issue would come to either a fizzle or a disaster--for us more than Russia.  This blog indicates exactly why.  Isn't globalization wonderful?  And if you think the Ukraine is the only place in the former Soviet Union where Russia is active, please consider Moldova.

Good morning on this snowy Sunday.  We got about 4 inches with another forecast.  We got the car and the patio cleared first thing this morning and I can see the shovelers with the landscaping company out.  They will have the outside walkways and the street cleared quickly.  We saw the latest massive multi-car pile up--outside Denver this time.  I can't remember seeing so many in any season before.  The pictures from California are mind blowing.

For a bit of philosophical contrariness enjoy this post form Druid Life.  We used to say that giving a man a fish and he eats for a day but teach him to fish and he eats forever (at least as long as there are fish to catch).  I remember a few months ago Vice President Biden used the same phrase in praising a job training program.  I wondered, though, how long the "skills" the program would be teaching would be in demand (long enough for the students to graduate and get a job?) and exchangeable for money which would be exchangeable for the food the worker needed to live.  So in our modern world we do abstract work (often for people far removed and unknown to us) to create final products (broadly speaking) we don't see and have no ownership of for another abstract substance (money) we have to exchange for the tangible goods we can no longer make ourselves and don't even understand the making of.  How much more abstract can our existence be.

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Monday now.  Didn't have much to say yesterday.  I did get the potting area and my first tray of paper pots filled.  Also trimmed dead branches off of my rosemary.  It looks so much happier upstairs with a lot of new growth.

So much of the news has been about the Oscars.  I didn't watch and I didn't see any of the films up for the award.  Actually I haven't seen any Oscar nominee since Return of the King such a long time ago.

The other major story has been the Ukraine.  It isn't that I am uninterested in it.  Rather I am irritated with the coverage which has been simplistic and bombastic and largely uninformative.  I did have one flash of irritation when a Ukrainian-American insisted (in an interview) that the U.S. must keep the peace around the world.  Hell, NO!!  It is well past time to let go of the illusion of superpower status.  The talking political idiots are talking about "isolating" Russia and I ask: how much can the EU isolate a country that controls much of their gas and oil supplies?  James Howard Kunstler has a few cogent remarks on the situation here and here.

The Agonist has this to which I can only say AMEN!!!!  We have become more and more irritated by the infotainment industry which dominates our (s)news.

Miscellaneous contrariness on a dismal Saturday. And welcome to March.

I noticed a tiny TV news snippet about demonstrators in Mexico demanding the release of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the jailed lord of the Sinaloa cartel.  Here is a Washington Daily News piece on the demonstrations.  They see Guzman as a "defender and protector of the people" who supports the poor.  The TV news readers noted that his organization provided jobs.  Hmmm??  A Mexican drug lord vs our 1%?  I suspect that the former might deserve the title of "job creator" more than the later.

I think this might be a good idea if they provided a clear definition of "terrorist."  That, however, is a might big if given how the word has been applied (in this country and else where) to mean anyone who disagrees with the powers that be and their good buddies.  The major proponents of the Keystone XL pipeline have referred to peaceful demonstrators (often landowners who object to the seizure of their land) as "terrorists."  The ex-president of the Ukraine referred to the demonstrators (peaceful before the security forces attacked them) as "terrorists." Nicolas Maduro, besieged president of Venezuela, refers to all opponents as "terrorists." The list goes on.

A long but very interesting article in the Economist that could be titled "Democracy and its Discontents."  I have long wished our politicians would stop invoking "freedom and democracy" every time they want to interfere in other countries.  All too often the recipients of our "generosity" get neither.

And consider this blog from David Kaiser.  I always thought the notion that the dissolution of the Soviet Union marked the beginning of a Golden Age when Western values in government, society, and commerce would rule forever was so much bullshit.

This is not in any way unexpected.  Evidently Vladimir Putin has decided that whatever "costs" the U.S. and the E.U. can extract are well worth the effort.  The question is now how far he will push things.  Will he simply stop at annexing the Crimea or will he go on to try for all of Ukraine?

So, how vulnerable to cyber attack are energy and how effective are their defenses?  Lloyds of London, evidently, is refusing to issue policies.  What does that tell you?

And then there are the increasing number of internet capable appliances that the manufacturers have been pushing at consumers.  The implications of which few think about.

Oh, yes, language does matter!!