Thursday--

Puttering in the gardens today,  I got everything planted though I still need to get the tomatoes properly staked.  We have been getting greens consistently.  The mustard and mizuno are producing prolifically.  I saw flowers budding on the peas.  As usual my gardens are stuffed.  I can'g put anything more out there.  We had nasty thunderstorms come through yesterday afternoon with some small hail but nothing was harmed.  We may get some more afternoon showers but, they promise us, nothing like what we have had over the last week.

Yves posted this interesting item on her Naked Capitalism blog.  Reading it I have to wonder if we have had a coherent foreign policy since the end of the Cold War or perhaps further back.  Have we been in the process of committing national suicide for the last half-century or so?

I have thought for some time that several of our Cold War treaty arrangements are past their "sell-by dates."  This is some confirmation that my thoughts on that aren't all that far off the mark and might be right on.  The whole point of Nato (and similar treaties) is collective defense--the notion that an attack on one is an attack on all.  Evidently, those closest to potential areas of conflict in eastern Europe aren't as sold on the idea any more.

Tuesday--

Supposed to be sunny and warm today.  Good--I want the gardens to dry out a bit.  I put the tumbler tomatoes back on the fence only to take them down as a new round of thunderstorms rolled through with high winds.  Luckily we didn't get the hail some areas reported.  We will stop at the garden shop during our shopping today so I can pick up replacements for the sweet potatoes that didn't make it along with a couple of other items.

Wednesday--

I am still getting some things straightened up from the weekend storms and I have the new plants to get in.  We found another of the hanging pocket-gardens and the replacement sweet potatoes as well as a chocolate mint.  Got the salad fixings for today's dinner at the farmer's market.  I did get a few things done after all our shopping but didn't have much energy left for links or comments.

Those of you who have visited regularly over the years know that we have slowly changed out diets and how we eat.  We have eliminated most of the prepared foods, most of the canned foods, and haven't had a coke (we never did like Pepsi much) in the house for years.  I was surprised at how many of the companies and food brands listed in this article we no longer use, or use very sparingly.

Sunday--

We are expecting nasty weather today.  I hope it won't be as bad as the weather people think it might be.  Please, Please, Please--no hail.  But I think I will take the tumbler tomatoes off the fence and put them on the patio till the storms (two of them) pass by.  On the bright side--if the systems produce the rain expected I won't have to water for a couple of days.  We are starting to enjoy the proceeds of the gardens.  I harvested some of the mustard greens and mizuno for our salads yesterday.

"--now he has a mind of metal and gears and he cares not for growing thing."  Saruman isn't the only one.

Monday--

Well, the weather was nearly as bad as expected.  Thankfully, no hail.  But a number of my plants are quite bedraggled and the rain pounded down two of my tomatoes.  I don't think they are broken and I may be able to straighten them and gently stake them.  I am very glad I took the tumblers off the fence.  I may have to wait till tomorrow when things, I hope, will have dried out.  A couple of days ago I took the second cutting from my peppermints and spearmints, and clipped back the lemon verbena to encourage branching.  I managed to collect three trays of spearmint and one each of the lemon verbena and peppermint.  All are dried, chopped and in jars on the shelf.  Looking at my strawberries I think I can start clipping leaves to dry for tea.

Truthout has a fantastic and humorous piece about the pathetic Republican field of contenders for that party's nomination.  Mom says we ought to watch the debates because they will be the best comedy around--when we aren't wishing we had a brick that would magically go through the TV and hit the ass mouthing inanities on the other end.

Saturday--

Yesterday was one strange day.  We went for a bit of a walk early and it was pleasantly cool.  Before noon the temperature had dropped and the wind had picked up,  As the clouds moved in my ambition evaporated so I got nothing done in the gardens.  I did rescue my oregano.  It was fine when I checked everything in the morning but the cold wind sucked the moisture out.  I watered it and brought it inside.  Also watered the two inside rosemaries.  I don't think we are going to get any rain before tomorrow so I will check everything outside and water where needed.  Right now our cable is out along with internet.  I hope it comes back real soon.

Why I generally ignore dietary guidelines.  And why I avoid most commercially processed foods.  As I noted yesterday I don't mind processed foods.  We process our own foods all the time.  I do mind many, if not most, of the additives.

Like eggs?  Get ready to pay more, if they are available at all.

Thursday--

Turned out nice and warm yesterday with warmer temps but bouts of rain.  I want to trim the lemon verbena to encourage it to branch out.  Did get all of the tumbler tomatoes on the fence trimmed a bit and added some soil to several of the pots.  They are all showing flower buds.  The Roselle tomatoes are finally starting to catch up to the others after lagging behind all year.  If the weather cooperates I should have a good harvest.

This was good for a chuckle this morning.  Well deserved recognition for the big guy.

Is anyone at all surprised by this development?  All you need to use anything as a weapon is what ever justification your little mind and minimal moral standards will allow.  Are you dealing with infidels?  They have no right to live so you can rape their women, torture them, starve them or cut off their water.  Are they savages?  Send them smallpox infected blankets.  Mutually Assured Destruction?  If we both die, I'm going to heaven and you're going to hell.  Sounds like a deal to me.

Friday--

Cooler today. Didn't get the trimming done but I will get it done today.  I need to check plants for moisture since we didn't get any rain yesterday and, probably, won't today.

Over the last few years I have become convinced that the U.S. government should find a way to cancel all student loans (guaranteed or otherwise, public or private) and cancel a loan programs.  Higher education in this country has become so corrupt that that is the only way I can see to reset it.  This story demonstrates the worst of the abuses.  Although the focus is on for-profit schools the problems pervade even the public institutions.  Students have been assured for the last 30 years (and perhaps a bit longer) that student loan debt was "good" debt, and that the degrees they earned would guarantee them good jobs with salaries that would both allow them to live a comfortable life and pay back the loans (with interest.)  Most of that was either a lie (there is no such thing as "good" debt; debt is debt) or an illusion that depended an economy the fragility of which was not readily apparent. Whatever the student loan program was to begin with it has become a scam and should be done away with.

Long but interesting post on Jacobin on the the various food movements advocating a return to some mythical golden era when we got "fresh, natural and unprocessed" foods.  Since mankind discovered fire and fermentation we have processed foods and, for the most part, it was a good thing.  It made foods more digestible, or preserved the nutritive value for a not very future season of scarcity, or neutralized toxic elements making the foods available for human consumption, or killed not-so-friendly bacteria that would have caused disability or death.  We don't have a bug about processing foods but we do have a bug about some of the chemical additives whose major purpose is to disguise the condition of the food (nitrogen added to packages of meat to make them seem fresher than they are), or to enable the sellers to keep the item on the shelf until some poor idiot buys it however long that may be, or that allow ersatz conglomerates of ingredients to masquerade as something they are not ("fruit bits" that have nothing of the fruit in them.)  Those I consider a sham and fraud.

David Kaiser has an interesting post which cuts to the core of any debate over glass ceilings and women in any position of power.  Women are no more a homogenous group than men and, more often than not, they absorb the values of their group rather than change those values.  Unless the corporate, or academic, or political culture changes the values won't change not matter how many women are in positions of power.

Tuesday--

Another chilly day today but plenty of sunshine.  I saw a couple of the beans popping above the soil so I need to tie the sunflowers to the stakes.  The herbs are thriving and I will need to take a new cutting on the peppermint and spearmint over the next couple of days.  We added some of the India mustard to our salads during the last warm up and I think we will gather enough for a cooked dish soon.  The sweet potato slips arrived yesterday.  I planted them but they looked rather pathetic.  I hope they revive and thrive but next year I will wait and buy at the local garden shops.

I have often wondered how many of the people our government charged with aiding terrorist groups have been helping groups our own government has been aiding.  Reading this piece from Britain I wonder even more.

Every year Tom Englehardt writes a "graduation" speech for the new graduates.  Here is this year's--it's a pip!.

Wednesday--

Should be another pretty day.  Have some little chores in the gardens today.  I picked up some stakes for some of the smaller plants and need to get them in.  We visited the local farmers' market on its first day of this season.  I found a gold-leaf lemon thyme which needs a permanent pot.  The sunflowers are growing rapidly and are big enough to tie up to the stakes.  I put those in so that the tall mature plants will have additional support in case of high winds.  Two of my lemon verbena plants need stakes to encourage them to grow straight.

We had a lot of errands Monday and Tuesday, and an unexpected one for today.  We remarked that the lawns looked abnormal dry considering the rain we got over the last couple of days last week and the weekend.  Looking up the stats we evidently got less than we thought.  The drought monitor lists us in a short term slightly dry phase.

I wouldn't have thought about this source of nitrogen pollution in the Rocky Mountains however it does make sense.  I have seen more stories about the pollution going the other way via run-off.  But the one source I notice the author doesn't mention:  feed lots.  I remember several just outside Ft. Collins that you could smell long before you saw them.

Another good reason to buy chicken from local farmers who aren't a part of the industrial meat production machine--as if we hadn't enough reasons already.  There is something incredibly evil about this kind of a system.

The above article noted that the chicken production industry abuses its "farmers" almost as badly as it does the chickens and that Congress has consistently yielded to the industry lobbyists to defund the provisions which would protect farmers from that abuse.  Evidently, according to this article, the negative publicity has increased and, hopefully, that impasse can be broken allowing the programs to get funding.

Now this is an elegant, simple and cheap solution to a health problem.

Well, here is another once All-American company I will not willingly do business with.  I put it in the same category as Walmart and Pilgrim's Pride.

Monday--

Chilly today--woke to mid-to-high 40s.  We don't expect those temps to warm up past the 50s.  They say we should dry out a bit.  Nothing planned for the gardens until the sweet potatoes come.  I have a couple of herbs that need clipping a bit.  I haven't yet walked through to see if anything had trouble with the low temps.  The one lemon verbena and the mandevilla are most likely to suffer from the cool temperatures.  We'll see.

I haven't had much to say about what I find on the news sites.  It seems like the same old crap repeated endlessly.  Let's see what I find today.

Well, well--the U.N. has noticed that the increasingly precarious nature of employment is a global problem.  Isn't globalization wonderful?  I wonder how many leaders in how many countries thought our more frequent and longer term unemployment followed by increasingly poorly paid temporary or part time work would not come home on them.  What goes around comes around--or so they say.

Another interesting trend--elderly jewel thieves and bank robbers.  The article claims the U.S. has, so for, escaped the trend.  Not for long if those gold-plated idiots get around to "reforming" Social Security.

Kunstler takes the New York Times to task for a recent editorial idiocy.

Are you feeling safe yet??