Good Tuesday, Everyone.  Much cooler today.  I don't think we got any rain with this system so I will have to look at the gardens to see what they might need.  I watered well yesterday so they might not need much.  I found buds on the hibiscus yesterday so it should bloom soon.  All of the plants I moved are doing well.

As I read this story I remembered that Brazil was supposed to host the next Soccer World Cup and the next Olympics.  Evidently more than a few Brazilians aren't too happy with the money their government is going to throw at both these events.  And the Olympic Committee has committed additional funds to assist Brazil's efforts to stage the games.

I have heard and seen some desperate students in my time in various universities and colleges.   This story takes those stories to a new low and gives them a high tech twist.

So "international cities" are turning into "elite citadels."  Anything surprising there? I remember reading about workers employed in Vale (Colorado) tourist and hospitality establishments who couldn't afford an apartment in Vale even when they had 4 or 6 roommates.  Others were camping in the national forest outside town.  That was 25 years ago.  Only a couple of years ago I read stories about employers in some of the high price enclaves in the Florida bussing low wage employes in from Miami each day.  The workers couldn't afford to live near where they worked.

Good Monday, All.  I finished off some transplanting yesterday--the peppermint, verbena, and firefly begonia.  I put them in individual pots not the big containers.  I told Mom this morning that the garden is filled and she should keep me away from any garden sections.  I finished cutting back the grapefruit mint and another seven trays of leaves are drying now.

I didn't see much worth commenting on yesterday.  Let's see what I find today.

Tom Englehardt has some very well targeted thoughts on the NSA revelations of the last couple of weeks and connects them to very disturbing trends.

Hmmmm!  NYU proposes an expansion which will cost them billions while graduating the most indebted classes of students in recent history.  And doing it with borrowed money.  I wonder what the University plans to do with the space beyond their nebulous notion of 'more space' for faculty and students.  The increased debt means that somebody is going to have to pay one way or another.  And you can bet that somebody is going to be students who have to pay for their "education" with borrowed money because grants and scholarships will be shorted to shift funds to building.

I heard a bit about this but it has largely disappeared from the news here.  They didn't specify what the unnecessary procedures were.  Why do I see a parallel between this story and the one about NYU's expansion plans?

Well, someone else has noticed that the talk of preventing climate change has ceased pretty much.  Instead, some have taken up the notion of adapting to what ever comes along.  When the discussion heated up about a decade ago (or when I noticed the talk) I wondered if it were already a bit late.  After all the concentration of CO2 was already 30ppm above what had been posited as the max for stable climate.  And that doesn't even consider the increase in methane and other more potent "greenhouse gasses."

 Good Sunday, everyone.  I have some new photos for you.  I yielded to temptation and picked up a new lemon verbena and a peppermint.  I wasn't going to put in peppermint because I already have three other mints but--well, you know how intentions go.  I decided to give lemon verbena another try.  The last two didn't make it through the winter indoors.  I will try this one under the grow light upstairs.  I still have to get these into larger pots.  The greenhouse is mostly for storage right now.  A month ago I had the first shelf full of seedlings.

The front two pots have stevia (left) and bee balm (right).  After two years of failure my stevia seeds sprouted well this year.  I guess persistence is sometimes rewarded.  Hope the same goes for the lemon verbena.  I have lettuce and spinach in the long planter in the back and two rosemary in pots behind on the right.

 My how things have grown.  Squash on the left, spearmint in the middle, and my surviving cucumbers on the right.  You can barely see tomatoes and peppers behind.  All of the peppers and tomatoes are growing rapidly.

 Grapefruit mint.  I have already cut a third of the plant and dried it.  Plan to cut more this week.

Sage (left) and lemon thyme (right).  Just after I cut them back.  The thyme roots easily so in the fall I will split it and put part inside in smaller pots.  The rest I will leave in the garden and see if it comes back in the spring.  The sage did come back after last winter.  I will protect it better this year (along with everything else I leave outside.)

 Chamomile in its new position and thriving.

 The yardlong beans have found the trellis and the kale is growing well, both the seedlings I started and the ones I bought.

Chocolate mint (back) and pyrethrum (front).   I cut a bit of the mint to fill the last tray of my dehydrator.  Will cut more this week.

Tomato in the white bucket and oregano in the pot on the rack between buckets.  The oregano is another winter survivor.  I haven't cut any of it yet.

Mohawk pepper (black pot) and patio tomato in the white bucket.  The tomato is the only one without any blossoms yet.

 This is borage in the other white bucket--one of several new plants this year.  We'll see how it turns out.

I told you earlier that the last of my original blueberries gave up the ghost after a game struggle.  I found a new one at our local farm market.  This one is a three-year-old plant.  The others were only a year old.  The opinion on line is split on whether blueberries self-pollinate.  Most say that they will but are more productive with two or more plants.  I will find out.  I got three last time because the plants were a very small variety and three would fill the area nicely.  This one is a northern highbush variety so it will get up to six feet.

Good Saturday to you all.  We got rain last night so I won't do much gardening today.  Just as well since I cut quite a bit of herbs yesterday.  I have several more I can do when the beds dry out again.  Got four strawberries into larger pots.  I think they will be happier now.  Several of the Quinault are putting out runners so I should have new plants soon.

I have used DuckDuckGo a few times.  It is a nice and efficient search engine.  And I did notice that it promises not to track your internet searches which is a nice plus.  Evidently a lot of others are also finding it since Prism was outed.  This article provided some information neither of us here knew: Google Crome and Firefox, which we have used often, have anonymous features for incognito browsing.

This little story rather proves the old biblical saying "the love of money is the root of all evil."

I heard about Roman concrete a couple of decades ago and evidently it is superior to modern forms of concrete.  Scientists are finally beginning to understand why is it so durable and they are also discovering that  less CO2is emitted in the production of it.

Good day to you all.  We have a cool but sunny Friday and the clear weather is supposed to stay till tomorrow night.  I got out early and harvested herbs (stevia, lemon thyme, chocolate mint and sage) all of which is drying now.  I hope to get the lemon verbena and peppermint into permanent pots later today.  I also need to move the sweet basil.  The bee balm and pineapple sage are vigorously crowding it out.  I will put it with the purple basil and lemon basil in front of one of the sets of tomatoes.  Most of the tomatoes are showing flower buds.  Looking forward to our first home grown tomatoes.

Not a surprise.  I not only don't trust our legislative bodies to do "the right thing" (and my definition of that is likely not the same as yours) but that they will do anything.  My dad used to tell ditherers to "shit or get off the pot."  My late ex-husband used to yell "do something even if it is wrong."  I can relate to that feeling of frustration.

And this is why I have not trust in our executive branch either.  This worries me on several levels.  First, the only input is coming from companies and trade groups who are probably writing much of it.  Consumer groups are frozen out.  Second, our legislators are also largely cut out of the process except to rubber stamp.  They don't even get draft copies.  Third, think about the 80+ people sickened by the pomegranate seeds from a foreign source included in a frozen berry mix.  The FDA would be powerless to inspect and ban such imports.  We have already refused to buy foreign sourced seafood because we are concerned about the pollution in some of the areas where they are raised.  But under the TPP the measures mandating country of origin labeling would be cancelled.  Our government is selling us down the river.

The Raw Story featured this warning to medical device makers and hospital system creators that they are vulnerable to cyber attack.  It is only the latest such warning.  Others involved power generating companies, banks, and various governments as well as social networking sites.  With all of the repeated warning I wonder if anyone is really thinking this through.  Our society is totally computerized.  Therefore all aspects of it are vulnerable to hacking from whatever source.  The problem is what to do about that vulnerability and who will bear the cost.

This is another reason why we don't shop at Walmart very often.  But they are simply following what the Darden Restaurants (Olive Garden, et al.) said they were going to do.  They got slammed by public opinion but I expect they simply have quietly gone to part-timers, if not the temps Walmart is bringing in.

I have heard that parts of the Keystone XL pipeline are being dug up and replaced.  Hasn't even gone into full use yet.  We have been repeatedly assured that such pipelines are safe.  Yesterday I saw an article concerning the testimony of a Canadian who was employed by (I forget which) Canadian oil company to oversee construction and compliance with safety and environmental regulations.  He presented documentary evidence for his charges that the Company put fierce pressure on him to pass procedures and construction that did not meet requirements or violated safety.  This story about a spill, that the company is minimizing as mostly water with a very small amount of oil mixed in, is exhibit number one for why I feel no oil company should be trusted to do what is right.

Good wet Thursday, Everyone.  Everything in the gardens survived pretty well--a bit bedraggled but intact.  I am glad I took all of the planters off the fence.  The weather people say reports of a possible tornado a little east of us is being investigated.  The damage may have been caused by the very strong straight line winds that came through.  We got about one and a third inches of rain last night.  At one point I saw a river in our street.  Thankfully we have very good storm drains here.

I have seen a number of articles over the last little while which loudly proclaim a "retirement crisis."  Usually they bash, to one extent or another, the baby boom generation.  Our benefits are too generous or people who don't really need Social Security are getting it (never mind we have paid our share and more into the funds) or we simply are too expensive to maintain.  Private companies over the last two decades have scuttled the pension plans their workers had counted on by converting them to 401k or other such plans or by dumping them onto the federal government.  Public pensions all over the country have been underfunded or funded by borrowing for the last two or three decades.  Unfortunately, I figure that a legal move is afoot that will defraud employees (public and private) of the deferred wages they thought was going to fund a comfortable retirement.  For a while now I have thought the we need to rethink the notion of retirement.  Evidently, Dennis Miller also thinks the same.

Supposedly the wide surveillance programs of the NSA have "prevented" "dozens" of terror plots.  Of course, because everything is top secret, they don't provide any proof.  We should just trust them that this is true.  Sorry, but my fund of trust has been seriously depleted.  Been lied to far too often.  As St. Ronnie once said "Trust, but verify."

Well, the Supreme Court finally made a common sense ruling on genetic patents.  Human genes, at least, cannot be patented.  Now if they would just bring common sense to bear on GMO patents and limit them.  It makes no sense to allow Monsanto, et al., to pollute the gene pool in perpetuity.

Good Wednesday, Everyone.  We are bracing for nasty weather they say could extend from the Rockies to well east of us.  It is chancy right now as to how bad (or not so bad) it might be.  We are very glad we aren't out in Colorado.  I picked up some kale seedlings, borage, peppermint, and (for a third try) lemon verbena yesterday.  I planted the borage and kale in the gardens last night.  I may not get the rest in before the weather comes in.  I will take the plants hanging on the fence and put them in more protected places.  I certainly don't want to lose the strawberries or my sole surviving cypress vine. I did get the grapefruit mint cut back a bit and the first of it in my dehydrator.  All seven trays are full of mint leaves with more ready to go in as soon as possible.  My little machine will only do seven trays at a time but it is rare I need more so I am not looking for anything larger.  I have several strawberries that I should put into larger containers but that will wait until this weather system passes.

Here is a story that simply bewilders me.  Why in the hell would anyone show this film to anyone much less a 6th grader.  Someone had their common sense surgically removed.  Or was born without it.

This, on the other hand, is totally understandable given that we have a surveillance state instead of the republic our founders gave us.  Combine 1984 with Brave New World and you have a road map for living in our world today.

Update: the first trays of mint are dried and ground.  The second set of seven trays is drying now.  We had bought a small food chopper/grinder that happened to be on sale.  We hoped we wouldn't have to bring out the big one for small amounts of herbs or veggies.  Well, it simply didn't work.  Thankfully, Mom is handy.  She took it apart, adjusted it a bit, put it back together and--omg--it worked.  I am not that handy.  I will give it a try with the next batch of mint.  I used the big one for the first.

I lived in northern Colorado for nearly 14 years (late 1970s to early 1990s).  I don't remember any wildfires during that time.  This is the second year in a row for some big ones.  I don't remember any serious droughts either.

The morning news featured a Consumer Reports story about those single serve coffee makers.  My niece got one over a year ago and seems to like it.  We got to try it out at a Thanksgiving dinner she hosted.  We quickly put it in the "nice--but" file.  Wouldn't really work for us.  We couldn't comment on the quality of coffee--we aren't connoisseurs by stretch of the imagination.  What did the report say, you ask?  As usual price is no indicator of quality.  Some of the most expensive were the slowest and least consistent.  A couple of the lower cost units were quieter, faster, and held a more consistent hot temperature.  None of them made a cup of coffee that passed the taste tester's standards.  We will stick with our under $20 Black and Decker drip unit.

I am always amazed at how little our news media informs us on what is going on in the rest of the world.  I saw a brief mention of this story on NHK (Japanese English Language) and the BBC.  And our media usually focus on national pride or religious antagonism or ethnic tensions not on resources.

Interestingly, there is more outrage over the broad net cast by NSA spying operations overseas than here.  This item from Bangkok is only one.  See yesterday's link to the Washington Post poll showing 56% of us don't see anything wrong with it.  The EU isn't exactly pleased either but I wonder how much of that is merely an attempt to convince their own citizens that someone is looking out for their interests and wellbeing.  While they bash us I wonder how much their own intelligence services have benefitted from the U.S. programs and how far they are pushing the surveillance envelope.  After all, London has more security cameras than anywhere else.

This hit the news big last night and this morning, and we can't avoid it because we live so close to Chicago.  They played a good part of Daley's advertising/announcement.  He went over a litany of problems Illinois faces but in all of the ad, though he clearly holds the incumbent governor responsible, he says nothing about how he would solve the problems.  Somehow, magically, changing the occupant of the governor's mansion will make the problems disappear.