Late Summer Miscellany

Besides just being curmudgeonly in general, I don't have anything to be specifically curmudgeonly about. I've been told, though (by 2 of my 3 readers) that I'm a bad blogger by not posting more often. It just seems silly to me to post even when I don't have anything to say.

I could be curmudgeonly about summer, I guess. I hate it. People complain about getting cabin fever in the winter -- well I get it in the summer. I just can't bring myself to get excited about anything if it means having to be outdoors. That's why my gardens always go to hell by late summer -- I start out great guns in the spring; but once it gets hot, forget about it.

Hannah loaned me a book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, which is all about a family's effort to eat only locally-produced food. It's really interesting, and less than 50 pages into it, I started feeling guilty. I can't really see us becoming farmers (or giving up our bananas, pineapples or seafood), but I have to say that I'm paying much more attention when I shop. Given a choice between a melon from Mexico, or a melon from Ashland, NE, I will choose the Ashland one. Here's pertinent quote:

If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 barrels of oil every week. That's not gallons, but barrels.

Pretty thought-provoking stuff. There must be some other people paying attention, too, because I've noticed that even the supermarket carries local produce and advertises it.

I have something else to post, but I'll do it in a separate entry, since my beloved brother told me to keep them short.