Hoop-de-doo

Last week was a doozy. Had a couple of projects going strong and a proposal to write. Also working on a couple of side projects, including a little something for my soon-to-be niece. While I'm still working on the main part, here's a little extra thing I made just so I would have a gift at the shower.





If you're wondering why I made blue booties for a little girl, let me clarify. They're lavender. Not blue. And, well, I just didn't expect them to look so blue. But they're darn cute!

The other big project around here (which I can only claim partial credit for) is the Hoop House! I helped figure out how to build it, but John takes full credit for making it happen. So, the basic frame is done. John's working on some additional support and then we'll wrap the sucker with plastic and put a little door on it.



On the right, we have Brussels sprouts and broccoli and the unstoppable Swiss Chard.



On the left, the fall crops are coming up: carrots, beets, silverbeet. And the little box is our lettuce/arugula box. It's all growing very well.

Obama 52, McCain 43

The latest polls show that Obama has a 9-point lead over McCain.

According to ABC News, Obama is pulling ahead.

He's recovered to a 14-point lead over McCain in trust to handle the economy, and leads by 13 points specifically in trust to deal with the meltdown of major financial institutions.

Obama leads by more, 24 points, 57-33 percent, in better understanding the public's economic problems.

Tellingly, after trailing by 17 points, he's pulled even with McCain in trust to handle a major crisis. And Obama holds wide margins in vote preference among likely voters most concerned about the economy.

More economic worry, plus an Obama lead among those who express it, spells a lead for the Democrat: In a head-to-head-match-up he's now supported by 52 percent of likely voters vs. McCain's 43 percent, the first significant advantage for either candidate among likely voters in ABC/Post polls.

Just thought y'all might like to hear some good news. Unfortunately, that's all I've got.

I probably won't be posting for the rest of the week. I'm on deadline for a few projects and am enjoying every last bit of this beautiful weather. I'll be back next week with some garden photos.

Thanks, but no thanks

Thank you to Bob Herbert for writing about McCain's Health Care Plan in the Times today. I'll admit I haven't been focused on health care, despite all the hard-hitting campaign coverage we've seen.

But I have, over the last couple of days, recalled Bush's old plan to privatize Social Security. Remember that? All this hullabaloo with with financial markets has prompted me to make the sign of the cross, praise Jesus, make offerings to Shiva, and generally THANK THE UNIVERSE for allowing Bush's plan to flop like a fish in polluted water. Can you imagine the disaster we would be in now if we had allowed investment banks to "manage" Social Security? Oh Lord.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, hold on to your hats. There's a dumber horse in town.

McCain wants to privatize Health Care.

The whole idea of the McCain plan is to get families out of employer-paid health coverage and into the health insurance marketplace, where naked competition is supposed to take care of all ills. (We’re seeing in the Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch fiascos just how well the unfettered marketplace has been working.)

That's right. On the leading issue of the campaign that affects "working families", McCain has learned nothing, nada, zilch from the current economic mess we're in.

Read more about it here (and slightly less about it here).
And weep.

the common sense police

From NY Times:
"John McCain pointed to greed on Wall Street, and Barack Obama linked problems to lax regulation."

I think a good evaluation of a candidate's approach to an issue is whether it can explain both the cause of the problem and define a solution.

On the financial crisis....

Obama seems to believe that greed is to be expected. Given the opportunity, people (particularly highly competitive people in a culture that supports excess) will try to get more. The problem, as he sees it, is that nobody was paying attention to what these companies were doing, and they just kept pushing it a little bit further to see what they could get away with. His solution? Pay more attention; regulate.

For McCain, it's an issue of individuals (collectively) making the wrong moral choice. He sees the economy and the free market as fundamentally sound. He is a life-long deregulator. The problem, according to McCain, is a moral problem. If people were behaving, a deregulated, free-market economy would be fine. Framing issues in terms of morality might rally the people who would like to abolish greed from the human race, but it isn't very useful in writing policy. His solution? A moral shift? No. Apparently, the deregulator is advocating regulation.

Congratulations, Obama. You win the consistency game. Regulation (or lack of it) is a government problem, with a government solution. McCain, you lose. Greed is a moral problem, with no government solution.

While both candidates are advocating more or less the same solution (because it's, ahem, an obvious solution), extra loser points go to McCain for spending 26 years fighting regulation and then today deciding to support it. Extra-extra loser points for calling himself a reformer.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

And just as a side note, I don't understand how people can say things like "I strongly support free markets, but the government needs to step in". Isn't the definition of a free market one in which the government doesn't step in? I would like to see one "deregulator" stand behind that position. Bollocks to the rest of 'em.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

In more local news, Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich issued a statement today saying that he is "not a sociopath." Nor is he "cuckoo". Thanks for clearing that up, Rod.

this n that

Yoga. Remember yoga? I used to write about it all the time. Well, fear not, it's been here all along. My practice was thrown off a bit when my back went out and it's been a slow process of building up strength again. My back still feels funky at times and I'm being mindful not to push it too much. So, I've been doing a scaled back, simple practice.

This week, Johnny has joined me every day for morning practice. (Surya Namaskara A + B, then he does some closing poses and I continue on with some standing poses and a modified closing sequence. Today I did some backbends.) It is so nice to practice together. Just the two of us, moving in silence in the morning sunlight, taking care of ourselves and each other.

My students have come back from their summer vacations and the studio is hopping again. The design biz seems to be picking up as well. I'm submitting proposals for some nice projects and am very grateful that things seem to be falling into place a bit.

The garden is still chugging away. Some of the new seeds are sprouting and we're making plans for a small greenhouse (hoophouse) to prolong the season.

Here is Saro in front of the Brussels Sprouts plants, displaying his utter impatience with their slow growth.



But the really exciting news is the shed. I didn't think I could be more excited about this thing. But look! It's become a barn! Johnny and I picked out the colors, and he painted it. I just adore it.



(Incidentally, I just learned that this is the time to clean out the shed. According to the Farmers Almanac, this task is best done during Virgo. And yes, you'll be reading all sorts of tips from the Almanac in posts to come.)


Here's Johnny, putting on the finishing touches. (Note the size of his paintbrush.)

The Day Job

When I'm not doing yoga or having adventures in farming, I work as a graphic designer. I've been spending some time lately updating my website. It's not live yet, but I'm posting a secret link here. This is just the portfolio page -- none of the other links are active. Feel free to leave a comment with your feedback.

Here's one of my recent projects: an invitation for an animal-assisted therapy organization. If you've been paying attention, you might recognize one of the dogs pictured here. Although he's not an actual therapy dog, he does someday aspire to such a calling.

Fall planting schedule

I haven't kept good records of planting, transplanting and harvest dates. So I'm going to start now.

Sept 5 - sowed seeds in outside bed: Dark Red Beets, Dragon Carrots, Five Color Silverbeet

Sept 4 - Kale and Spinach seeds started indoors (For the second time; I had a few sprouts, but the heat killed them, and then Saro munched on those that remained.).

St Valery carrots were sowed (sown?) outside sometime last week.

Farming plans thwarted

Johnny and I had a date this morning. 5:15 a.m. Meet out at the Vegetable Beds. Till the soil, plant the seeds and let the day's rain do its work. Oh what a harvest it will be: bright red Dragon Carrots, Dark Red Beets, and Five Color Silverbeet. Oh my.

Alas, it was not to be. We woke to rain. And it was dark at that time anyway. So John went off to work. I went back to bed. Our beautiful fall planting will have to wait till later in the day.

In other farm woes, when oh when will the brussels sprouts and broccoli be ready? The plants are huge and healthy and there are little sprouts and florets, but they are growing at a snails pace. The seedlings were transplanted around June 1. The seed packet says 58-90 days (broccoli) and 80-115 days (sprouts) from transplant. We're at 96 days now. Hmmpf.

Live Blah-gging

I had the idea to listen to what the Republicans have to say about things. It started with a yawn. Is anyone there? It sounds like an empty hall.

Then came Mitt with a forced-sounding speech in which he decried the mortgage crisis and then complained that there is too much regulation. He demanded a change from "liberal Washington." This, after eight years of a conservative President. Hmmm.

Huckabee yelped about the need to give Americans more control of their money, but didn't have a peep to say about giving women control of their bodies. And though I missed the story that preceded this, he did say: "John McCain helped me have a schooldesk."

Ah Guiliani. After lauding McCain's war experience, he laughed --laughed!-- at Obama's work as a community organizer. Apparently, McCain has been tested. He has passed the Ultimate Test. No, no, he hasn't figured out "the Google". That wasn't on the test.

Then it was back to the old playbook: lower taxes, less government. (Unless somebody wants to have a war. Then we'll have bigger government, less privacy and we'll spend like there's no tomorrow. But that's, um, different?)

Well, Rudy got the crowd good and riled up for Palin, that's for sure.

And here comes Miss Wasilla now...

And we're off to a nice, if dull, speech. She's very average, which, I guess is the point. People seem to like her. But she's not saying anything new.

It's hard to listen to a long, political speech if you don't agree with the speaker. Not because I don't agree, but because it's so political. I'm not learning a whole lot about Republicans from listening to all this ballyhoo. Except I kind of am.

Ho-Hum. Blah. Signing out...

Save Our Seeds

I've discovered a new hobby. As an extension of growing flowers and vegetables from seed, I've begun to save seeds from my plants. First, I figured out how to save sunflower seeds by watching the birds. After that, I experimented with a few other flowers in the garden and found that it's quite simple. Once the bloom dies, there is usually some sort of dried pod. Inside the pod, you'll find the seeds. It's pretty neat to grow things from seed. But it's even more amazing to grow things from seed that you saved from something you grew from seed.

This is, incidentally, how it was always done. Farmers saved seeds from their most beautiful or tasty plants and thus kept the best quality varieties alive. In more recent times, seeds apparently no longer belong to nature. They belong, all too frequently, to Monsanto or other large agricultural businesses. These companies invest lots of money into developing genetically modified seeds that suit their growing conditions. Most notably, Monsanto scientists have developed corn varieties that are resistant to pesticides. Not all pesticides, of course; Monsanto pesticides. These genetically modified seeds (hybrids) are patented, which means that it is illegal to save and replant them. And it's not just corn. I saw a hibiscus plant at Home Depot yesterday with a tag warning against reproduction.

I find this very sad and not at all an example of progress or modernism. There's been a lot of talk in this Presidential election about candidates not being owned by lobbyists and Big Business. I'd rather not be owned (or fed) by them either.

I am happy to be a member of and buy my seeds from Seed Savers Exchange and I was pleased to come across the Save Our Seeds pledge at urbanhomestead.org.


S.O.S Pledge

• I pledge to take back control over the most sacred form of plant life - seeds
• I will strive to save my own seeds, encourage self pollination and self seeding “volunteers”
• Refrain from purchasing seed varieties controlled by Monsanto
• Support local seed banks
• Purchase organic, heirloom or open pollinated from independent seed companies who’s mission are to save seed diversity

Share your pledge with the world with this nifty icon - feel free to “save as” and use! Also join other homegrown revolutionaries at our sister site FreedomGardens.org