Saturday.

I have a dehydrator to empty today.  I harvested a large handful of green beans yesterday and decided to dry them.  I did try a fermented green bean recipe a bit ago but Mom didn't like them.  She doesn't like many fermented foods other than cucumber pickles or pickled beets.  I also picked stevia, peppermint, and spearmint.  I saw a nice bit of lemon balm I should pick so maybe that is a good job for today.

I watered the gardens heavily yesterday.  Everything is very dry.  It feels as though we didn't get all that rain just a bit ago.  And it is really beginning to look like fall.  Some of the trees have more than a hint of autumn color and some of the plants in the containers are starting to show their end of season color. My mind is going through the fall chores and which plants will need to come indoors and when. Overnight temps are running in the low to mid 60s so everything is good for now.  But soon enough that will change.

Sunday.

Quiet weekend so far.  Nothing much to comment on.  Didn't get the lemon balm yet.  On the list for today.

Sometimes Robert Reich comes up with good ideas.  Here is one.

Our own actions coming back to bite us in our collective ass--again.  Didn't we do that a generation ago in Afghanistan and didn't have the same result?

Friday.  My goodness, where has the week gone?  Like the year (and so many years past) the time has just blitzed past.

Didn't do too much yesterday in the gardens.  Picked some beautiful strawberries  which we ate in our  cereal.  Took a couple of our tomatoes but found a problem with two.  One had definite blossom end rot while the other showed "black heart" disease.  Both are caused by environmental factors or by low calcium.  It has been a cool summer with inconsistent rain.  My soil fertility meter reads on the low side of optimal but it doesn't really measure calcium.  Oh, well--something to think about for next season.  Also harvested a couple of ripe Lipstick peppers.

From Grist--a foreshadowing of times to come?

Thursday.

I am not a fan of the "internet of things."  I joke that I don't want too many machines around me "smarter" than I am.  My cable TV, phone (not a smart phone), e-reader and computer are about all I want.  I don't see the utility of having my appliances equipped with computer chips and connected via the intent.  Our grocery shopping is rather routine so we don't need our freezer and fridge telling us what we are low on or out of.  This piece reflects some of my thoughts on the subject.  Most commentators talk (or write) about "privacy" in terms of what governments (and law enforcement) can glean from our electronics but I am also very suspicious of business.  The one markets its surveillance as enhancing our safety; the other as enhancing our convenience and broadening our choices as consumers.  In truth, each is pursuing its own advantage.  Governments reduce us from citizens to cattle to be herded where they want us.  Business reduces us to "profit" points.  I refuse to be either.

Gene Logdson always has good points.  He makes me ask how much human (mal-)adaptive behavior is at the bottom of our myriad problems today.  He makes another good point on the limitations, mostly unacknowledged, of statistics and data.

Monday.

Wet out in the gardens this morning.  We had rain yesterday afternoon--at times very heavy.  It continued last night.  No complaints since the more water Mother Nature provides the less I have to.   I have nothing I absolutely need to do in the gardens.  The tomatoes are ripening but none are ready to pick.  Some of the bull nose peppers could be picked but can wait.  The other varieties aren't ready yet.  I have a couple of squash I will take later this week.

Tuesday.

Wet again in the gardens after overnight rain.  The news reports some areas of very heavy rain and flooding.  As one of the reporters remarked we needed the rain "just not all at once."

I love finding different ways to garden in small spaces.  This article describes "keyhole gardens."  Evidently they are popular in dry areas of Africa.  It conserves water and provides an easy way to apply compost to the garden.  If I had space...

Wednesday.

We had a busy day yesterday so I didn't spend a lot of time with my normal on line reading.  The farm market is in full swing and we are staging our buying for winter storage so that we aren't overwhelmed with work.  We have corn to clean up and get in the freezer this week.  We will start looking for tomatoes to make sauce and stewed tomatoes next week and maybe more corn.  Our meat stocks were somewhat low so we replenished the freezer a bit.  I was surprised the prices weren't as much higher than we paid last time.  Given the drought, last winter's surprise blizzard and the pig virus I had expected a much higher jump.  We had several other stops as well so we spent the entire morning running errands.  I go everything skimmed if not thoroughly read.  See what I find today.

Well, Well--Walgreens just announced they would not be moving their headquarters to Europe after all.  Senator Dick Durban in Illinois has attributed the decision to pushback from consumers.  Maybe.  We had expressed our displeasure at our local Walgreens and, from the reaction, others had done the same.  We are still going to explore our local drug stores.  We figure it is best to know what options we have before we need to exercise them.  And who says the company won't make a different decision in the futures (after the furor dies down.)

We may be a bit cynical here but we had a good many questions about the missionaries infected with Ebola.  Evidently we aren't the only ones with questions.  Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism (and other sites) has some we didn't even think of.

The mystery of the non-melting ice cream bar.  Can anyone really believe it does anyone good to put that crap down our gullets?

Sunday.

We were not impressed with shiso after we cooked it.  It may work well as a flavoring but doesn't as a stand-alone vegetable.  I dried what we didn't cook and will use it as part of tea mixes but I won't plant it again.  I will try something else next year.

I harvested spearmint and put it in a jar with vodka to make a syrup.  It joined the peppermint on my shelf to cure a bit.  I also harvested some hyssop, purple basil, and sweet basil to dry.  Saw some red developing on more tomatoes and on a couple of my peppers.

When I read the headline ("Heatwave taking a toll at fish farms") for this article I thought the story concerned India or Thailand, or Vietnam.  India, especially, has had high temperatures for some time as has a lot of Asia.  Well, I was wrong.  This heatwave is in Finland.

I wonder what the toxin is that is afflicting Toledo's water.  Evidently it is stable in boiling water and boiling will just concentrate it.  And this isn't the first time the algae in Lake Erie has caused a problem.  But most of the news stories don't identify the toxin itself.  Ah, the Daily Mail (UK) identifies the toxin as microcystin and it is a nasty item.

Saturday.

Harvested the shiso yesterday but we didn't fix it for supper.  We had a busy day and settled for grilled cheese sandwiches instead.  The shiso is in the fridge ready to be cooked up today.  I don't know how it will taste but the scent is intriguing--rather spicy, sort of a combination of cinnamon and licorice.  I don't think I will have to water anything.  We got a good rain yesterday.  About an inch over a 45 minute period of time.

I follow a fair number of crafting blogs.  I crochet, embroider, quilt among other activities and like to see what others do.  I won't try to duplicate the pieces pictured but they might give me ideas for my own projects.  This one is way up on the cute-o-meter.

I don't know which is worse in this story.  Is it the woman who thinks Nazi Germany's Final Solution for its undesirables (including but not limited to Jews) is a reasonable pattern for how to deal with illegal immigration on our southern border or the Minuteman asshole who "sympathizes" with her sentiments?  Excuse me while I take a vomit break.

And the dysfunctional and hypocritical House of (Non)-Representatives is just slightly less vomit worthy.

More from the Repthuglican comedy.  I guess they think people will forget who voted against the same measures when they were introduced not so long ago.  I would be more impressed if the Republican women Representatives defected as a group to the Democrats or went Independent.  As the old saying goes: talk is cheap.

The media and some of the blogosphere is going ape-sh#t over ebola and yeah it is a situation to watch.  But this concerns me far more.  It, along with other highly (often multiply) resistant germs, is already here; it is a man-made crisis thanks to over use and mis-use of antibiotics, and there is no cure.

Friday.  August 1.  Where did the time go?

So what am I reading today?  Well, let's start with this piece found on Yves Smith's Naked Capitalism.  I have read a lot on developing water problems world wide and I can agree with her observation that nearly all consider the issue in isolation--as though it had no connections to other issues.  Most of the articles dealing with water shortage and energy concern the demands fracking makes on scarce water supplies in drought areas, like parts of Texas.  But conventional power generation demands large amounts of water as well.  We live in a network of interconnected resources, peoples, processes and when one is stressed others will be also.  And those stresses will be spread through the entire mesh of relationships. 

You may remember I was disappointed with the stevia last year.  It just didn't have the potency I was used to.  This year is entirely different.  I love the stevia syrup I have produced this year and the dried stevia is very different.  How different?  Well, I found a small jar about one-third filled from last year.  I want iced tea for supper so I brewed a pot early and leave it in the fridge to cool.  I thought about using the older batch but took a good sniff and decided against that notion.  I smelled this year's batch and there is a clear difference.  I wasn't imagining things.  Mom also detected the difference.  She thought the old supply had lost something.  I think it never had it to begin with.  What a difference a year makes.

Sometimes I simply scratch my head in disbelief--as when reading this item.  A teacher of English for non-English speakers is fired for writing a blog post on homophones because his boss a) doesn't know what the word means and b) was (supposedly) afraid his school would be forever associated with gay sex.  The idiot probably can't distinguish between there, their, and they're either.