Here we are at the last day of September. Only three more months left in this strange, strange year. The temperature was at 50F a bit ago so it will probably dip down into the 40s before the sun comes up. I didn't get any work done outside. We decided, on the spur of the moment, to do our grocery shopping yesterday instead of today. During the summer we generally do that on the days the farm market is open but as the season winds down we don't have as much to buy there because we have already put up as much as we can in the space we have. By the time we came home and put things away the wind was kicking up so I decided not to fight it and left the gardens and outside clean up for today--I hope. Baker Creek sent out their e-mail announcing their 2018 catalogs so I ordered it. I already have a list of seeds started for next year.

So Price has resigned as HHS secretary. I wonder which parasite the Parasite-In-Chief will nominate to replacement. I doubt very much that the money angle bothered #45 much. I suspect it was the embarrassment and the fact that Price was supposed to smooth the way for the ACA repeal but failed to get that job done. The real lessons: don't embarrass the boss and give him enough progress toward what he wants to allow him to claim a biggly victory.

Garden Myths has a good review of a product I once used when I first began trying to start plants from seed--the Jiffy pellets. Actually I should say "peat pellets" because I used other brands as well. I stopped using them for reasons mentioned: they aren't big enough for the larger plants and the mesh that holds the peat together to form the "pot" isn't biodegradable. I dug the mesh out of my beds for several years and threw them away--after emptying the peat into the soil. Last year I started using toilet paper core tubes as my starter pots and will expand my use of them next spring. They soften when wet, help the soil retain moisture, and they are biodegradable. I was parsimonious and cut the tubes in half to make two pots. I won't do that this year because the half size is too small. And I found the roots do make their was out of the pot.

The temperatures are supposed to be a bit cooler today. Right now it is a bit overcast but the chances for rain are low. My brother brought the mini-greenhouse he picked up for me his church's rummage sale so I need to clean up the shed to make room for the old one. I will do that until (if?) it gets too warm to work outside. I got my hens 'n' chicks re-potted. I wanted to separate them but a couple of clusters were so tight I was afraid I would irreparably damage them so I left them as a clump.

*********************************************************************************

I didn't work outside at all. The clouds didn't clear off till around noon and I didn't want to fight the wind.

I found this early this morning--another WTF moment from our dysfunctional political administration. Or, rather, from the idiot at the top. The real difference between the responses to the hurricanes in Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico is how dark and how poor the populations are. And I would bet, if I were a betting person, that the richer and whiter sections of Texas and Florida will get rebuilt sooner and more completely than the poorer and darker sections. The pattern was set by Katrina (and maybe long before.) Update: I guess the criticism got to #45. He suspended the Jones Act for Puerto Rico so they can get more fuel and supplies in sooner. It is a sad when it takes public shaming on the internet and other outlets to get him to do what is right.

Well, we have had a busy morning. First, I had to do some cleaning and rearranging in the shed to make room for the old mini-greenhouse which was going to be retired to simply storage shelves for pots. But when we tried to put it in place we found it simply wouldn't go there--the shelves were too deep and I would have no room to move or reach the stuff stored further back. Soooo--we rearranged things a bit outside and it will work there for the same purpose. The new mini-greenhouse is a smaller model which fits in the space the old one used to occupy and leaves more room to get around. I hope it won't get direct sun as the other one did which might prolong the live of the cover. I actually had to cut the plastic on the old one and rip it off the support bars. My next project (tomorrow) is to get into the shed and start getting it sorted out and rearranged. It is amazing what one accumulates. Some we got because we had an idea and we found a cheap way to try it out. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. I found a couple of items from the failed experiments. They will go out in next week's trash.

Mom's eye doctor's appointment today so nothing much else done. Her insurance gave us a surprise we are still trying to figure out.

However, that doesn't mean I am not reading blogs and such. Case in point: Margaret and Helen. Amen, Helen. I couldn't say it better. We have been wondering if this is another diversion from what the administration and the congress critters are trying to do to us.

George Friedman has an interesting post today also. Although he does make a good point when he says we should expect the computer industry to take more responsibility for safety as we operate our vehicles (personal computers) on the appropriate road (the internet), we should also remember that we expect the drivers (of cars and computers) to exercise due care. We do expect that the manufacturers of cars build them to function safely though our expectations have been tempered by over 100 years and legal developments--which the computer industry hasn't had. And even then we should remember the air bag failures and break failures and the gaming of the emissions tests all of which made news over the last decade. Nor are we surprised much when some criminal hijacks/steals a car to commit another crime. Or when some idiot gets drunk and wrecks havoc with his vehicle.

We expect another hot day today so I will water what needs watering outside and do nothing else. I will wait until Wednesday when it should be a few degrees cooler. The geraniums are reviving nicely now that they have more shade. I will definitely have to change how I use them next year--keep them in pots I can move in and out of the gardens as the light changes.

Found this piece that I thought hit an intellectual bullseye. We had become very disgruntled with the offerings on our cable service for more than a decade. Our favorite channels were Scifi and the History Channel. However, gradually, from about 2007 we simply stopped watching them--and most other channels available to us. I got over the fascination over the notion of "ancient aliens" back when von Daniken wrote Chariots of the Gods. It didn't take me long to notice he had no evidence. He did have some interesting phenomena but just because you can't explain how the ancients did it doesn't mean the didn't or couldn't. We have almost given up watching TV.

This has become a frequent story with #45's administration. Number 45 himself has run the Secret Service out of money with his frequent travel to his Florida and New Jersey golf clubs and his extended family's security needs. Frugality is something for others who don't have access to the public purse not for him or his appointees. How much longer can we afford these parasites?

Well, the autumnal equinox has arrived; welcome to fall. Our weather right now is more like August than the end of September. The last two days saw records set with temps of 92 and 94 in Chicago. We are expecting 90+ again today and for the next two days. The trees are developing their fall colors about a month early so it does look like fall. One blogger noted a day or two ago she was behind putting in her fall garden--as always because it is too hot in July and she is busy harvesting and preserving in August which is when the experts say to plant for the fall. The weather nowadays is so unpredictable your fall plants might bake or freeze before yielding anything.

According to Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By today is also Falls Prevention Day. She has some good points to make and some useful links. I have been really lucky in that regard. I have fallen twice here at home and once at work long before I retired. Though I no longer have cats which caused my first fall I am careful on the stairs where that fall took place. (In case you wondered, the cats lived out their very long cat lives still loved and cared for here. I just became more watchful of where they were and where my feet were.) We replaced the old door mat which caused my second fall after the rain made it really, really slick. The new one provides much surer footing and, again, I have become more careful about stepping out the door. In the last case I was in a rush, stubbed my foot on a curb and fell hard face first onto the sidewalk. The key there, which didn't come until after I retired, was to not rush and to not let others rush you. Any one of those could have done me serious injury and, worse, I didn't have any health insurance that would have covered those expenses. I simply couldn't afford it and none of my jobs offered it. Lesson from all that: be aware of where you are and of who and what is around you. That would have prevented all three falls.

I wasn't going to post anything today because I have an eye doctor's appointment in a little bit. However Infidel has a good one I can't resist linking because it hits what has become a blood-pressure raising, profanity-inducing explosion of anger here: intrusive internet ads.