VIDEO HERE I COME

I had asked for a Zoom H2 audio recorder for my birthday but my son Jon, in the media equipment business, did me one better. I just had to wait a bit. The weekend of Mothers Day he delivered my belated 61st birthday gift and the EYEBALL 2.0 web-cam(by Blue Microphones, his employer) the latter being what I had requested he acquire for me to give to his mother for her birthday 1 1/2months earlier. Apparently the guys he was dealing with were not exactly responsive, hence the delay. He supposedly got a "wicked cheap" deal on both of them. 

This Zoom Q3 will record high quality audio with it's 2 high quality microphones or video (640 x 480) with CD quality sound. Now I can capture and share video of my soon to arrive (late Sept) 1st grandson.  

I have yet to use it other than the quickie test we did on Mothers Day. Concerts and gardening have kind of gotten in the way of that since. Sadly, the installation of Jeanne's web-cam fell to the same fate so far.

HOW NEAR THE END OF IT ALL ARE WE?

I have referred to what is has happened and is happening

at the Deep Water Horizon Oil platform site as completely 

predictable. The kicker is that predictable is incorrect. 

IT WAS PREDICTED and IGNORED just like the economic 

meltdown in 2008. Mega-corporation controlled markets 

WILL DO EXACTLY THIS if left to answer to no-one for 

their actions. At present, the bailed out bad actors 

continue to play profitable games with the same bad 

assets in the same ways that precipitated the 2008 

meltdown. Will now obviously dangerous off-shore oil 

drilling go the same way? If the response of 

theoretically “Democratic” governments across 

the world is any indication, these economic 

self proclaimed Gods will be left to reek 

their havoc on human civilization completely unchecked. 

At some point in the recent past (in total human 

history terms) corporations operated within 

sovereign nations “at the convenience” of each 

nation's government. The circumstances and 

responses surrounding the cataclysms mentioned strongly 

suggest that is no longer the case. 

It would appear that these individual corporations have 

gotten so big that they form an international economic 

oligarchy, powerful enough to dictate terms of all it's 

relationships with the governments of all supposedly 

sovereign nations on the globe. The United States of 

America, it would appear, is no exception. My only 

confusion on the matter is the extent of progression 

to totality of this change in human society. 

This deification of the corporate oligarchy, 

once complete, will facilitate the total destruction 

of human civilization. These recent 2 events are 

but a foretaste of the consequences of 

concentrating so much power in so few now obviously 

fallible human hands.

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6490348n&tag=contentBody;housing

WHAT TO DO...WHAT TO DO??

This seems to happen EVERY year. Just when motivation and need meet in the garden, along comes THE FLOOD. Of course the FLOOD will only stay a few days after the end of the series of rain storms WE HOPE. Almost all of the tasks noted in the picture above are both in addition to and must precede ACTUALLY PLANTING VEGGIES!

I think our residential development was designed either to allow for alleys that were never installed  or to drain all of the lots to the common back of the lot area and away from there. A lot of the homeowners have since thwarted the latter with structures and landscaping.

CHARLIE AND THE REALLY FUN GI

These are my 2 main lawn scourges, Creeping Charlie and Powdery Mildew.

Charlie:
 It's been my nemesis for many years now. Lots of Borax solution did almost nothing. Charlie was the dominant green in my back yard last year when I finally gave up on "organic" means of it's control and used Scots Turf builder +2 which did the job. Some small amount has grown back from the years of seed it deposited. I'll try pulling it up wherever I see it unless it gets out of hand. Then It'll be back to the Scots. 
Powdery Mildew: 
This occurs only in the front lawn where there's lots more shade and the soil has had tons of tree debris mowed down into it.
I've read about milk as a treatment and baking soda as a preventative. Both are used in water sprayed on. The milk in a 1 to 10 mix and the baking soda, 1 tbsp to a gallon. I plan to try a combination of both. Wish me luck.

CREAM IN YOUR COFFEE....PLANT?

The perfect design for pouring creamer into a coffee cup is also just about the perfect design for pouring water into a planting  pot! 

Saving the environment is on everyone's mind these days. The Public Service spots all emphasize "Reduce Reuse, Recycle". The coffee creamer makers have given the home gardeners of the world a great opportunity to do just that with their liquid creamer containers.. The 32oz size is shown above but I use the smaller size to wet-down the newly seeded 6-packs before placing them in the trays of my plant starting rack. It's just a bit easier to manage than the 32oz bottle while holding the 6-pack in the other hand.

TO Bcc: OR NOT TO Bcc:, IS THAT THE QUESTION?

A friend and fellow choral singer mentioned something last night related to identity security that I hadn't yet thought about. We've both been involved with a particular choir and he expressed concern about the fact that a publicity e-mail he received recently promoting their upcoming concert had all recipients' e-mail addresses in the "To:" line. He stated he felt it was just not at all considerate nor smart to share everyone's address with everyone else on the e-mail list. He said the only considerate thing to do in this circumstance is to address to the list using the "Bcc:" line of the address area of the message. BCC, or Bcc is an acronym for "Blind Carbon Copy" which as the term suggests hides each recipient's address from all other recipients. If we're both on the publicity e-mail list for an organization and they send their mass e-mailing of an announcement using the Bcc: addressing option for us, I won't see your address on the message and you won't see mine on your copy of the message. Thereby both of us would be protected from having our addresses shared with people we neither know nor have any reason to trust. 

I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT

Henceforth, unless I KNOW recipients already have each-others e-mail addresses I will endeavor to always address multiple recipients via the Bcc: line of e-mail messages I generate.

http://email.about.com/od/emailmanagementtips/qt/How_to_Send_an_Email_to_Undisclosed_Recipients.htm

THE WEED WHO WOULD BE KING

Though it looks somewhat benign, this baby Creeping Charlie plant could completely take over the lawn in less than 2 years! This is just a baby from seed. It'll grow leaves 3-4 times this size. I've been battling this little monster in my back yard for 5-6 years. I've applied properly diluted Borax countless times, attempting to keep my warfare "organic", per the instructions found on the University Of Minnesota Ag. Dept. site for eliminating this scourge. The leaves would go brown at the edges within a week after application but not many plants actually died. Late last summer I gave up on "Organic" methods and went "heavy chemistry" on it. I applied Scotts +2. It worked.
"Well, what are we looking at here then" you may ask. Again, it's just a baby from seed.  Besides spreading like wildfire via BOTH root and surface runners this garbage plant also  blooms and sets seeds it drops to the ground. The flowers are deceptively lovely little "trumpet like" purple things. Lawns that are fully infested with this weed are looking a pretty blue-purple right now. Thus is the devious nature of the would be KING CHARLES.

http://www.extension.umn.edu/info-u/plants/BG522.html