The Gardener
by Donna Dean
May 27, 2008



Five flats of flowers,
All stacked in a tower,
Waiting for her hands
To pluck them from their stands.

Now hard at work,
Down in the dirt,
She toils all day,
Digging in the clay.

Her back is sore,
But there is more
To be planted today
In that hard old clay.

Her legs they shake
From the spade and rake.
Her muscles hurt
And her skin is burnt.

But she plants and plants,
While her two dogs dance,
Till the work is done
In the red hot sun.

To be out all day
In that hard old clay,
Planting lots of flowers,
Working hours and hours.

Then the flowers are all in
And she smiles with a grin,
As she looks around
At the plants in the ground.

All the tools put away,
At the end of the day,
She just heard them say
A frost is coming our way!

To nature
The saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea), a cactus, grows in the Sonoran desert of Arizona, California and Mexico, and can live up to 200 years. The stem is up to 90% water, and its ribs can expand to accommodate heavy rainfall. See pictures at:
http://www.nature.org/magazine/summer2008/features/art24743.html

Faithful reader responds to poem in his honor:
i did read that the other day
and i felt the urge to say
what an honor bestowed
where er i go-ed
pebble pebble, pebble pebble AWAY!

i would have replied sooner but had..... golf league last night


Charlotte, North Carolina was the only U.S. metropolitan area to record a first-quarter gain in housing prices among the 20 markets tracked by Standard & Poor's.
http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2008/05/26/daily4.html

Lake Erie fishing and regulation—commercial vs. sports
April 6, 2008: http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080406/COLUMNIST22/804060342
May 14, 2008: http://www.freetimes.com/stories/15/54/fishin-impossible
May 26, 2008: http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080526/NEWS17/805260332/-1/NEWS

The Exon-Florio National Security Test for Foreign InvestmentSource: Congressional Research Service (via OpenCRS)
The Exon-Florio provision grants the President the authority to block proposed or pending foreign acquisitions of “persons engaged in interstate commerce in the United States”that threaten to impair the national security. This provision came under intense scrutiny with the proposed acquisitions in 2006 of major operations in six major U.S. ports by Dubai Ports World and of Unocal by the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC). The debate that followed reignited longstanding differences among Members of Congress and between the Congress and the administration over the role foreign acquisitions play in U.S. national security.
Full Report (PDF; 158 KB) Permalink

Post-Derby Tragedy, 38% Support Banning Animal RacingSource: Gallup
Relatively few Americans advocate going so far as to accord animals the same legal rights as humans, although a large majority do favor affording animals some protection. A large majority also favor strict laws on treatment of farm animals. Substantial minorities of Americans go so far as to advocate an outright ban on horse and dog racing, and on the use of animals for medical testing and research. Permalink

Louisiana has six licensed vineyards and a law requiring small wineries to find their own distributors.
Pontchartrain Vineyards--north of New Orleans, across Lake Pontchartrain--is the only winery in the state producing table wines exclusively from traditional wine grapes. The others produce wine from Muscadine or other non-grape fruits. "I have a very simple goal: to turn out a really good local wine that people can enjoy with our really good local food," John Seago said.
"On no level of the state is there interest," he said. "It's very discouraging. I'm growing a few vines here, and in Texas they are growing an industry." Neighboring Texas has 158 commercial wineries and 3,700 acres of family owned vineyard land contributing to a $1 billion economic impact, according to the Texas Wine and Grape Growers Association.
Texas is now the fifth-largest wine producing state, behind California, Washington, New York and Oregon. There are wineries in all 50 states now.
Pontchartrain Vineyards produces nine wines, three whites, a rose, and five reds. One of the reds, the Rouge Militaire, is from grapes grown at the vineyard. The others are made from grapes Seago imports.
Pontchartrain Vineyards averages about 2,000 cases of wine per year, 12 bottles to a case. It has produced up to 2,900 cases. Pontchartrain products are available in south Louisiana supermarkets and restaurants in the area. They also sell through their Web site.
http://news.findlaw.com/ap/other/1110//05-27-2008/20080527015015_40.html

Good use of white space means easy reading, and that helpful space between lines of text is called leading (pronouncing LEDD-ing).
http://www.learnthat.com/define/view.asp?id=7644

Old Glory, by Jonathan Raban, is a travel classic without Himalayan ascents, exotic foods or dangerous encounters in distant lands. Instead, it's a meander through the middle of America, by a bookish man who loiters at shabby taverns in has-been towns. It brings alive an unsung world and reminds us that great travel doesn't require a passport, or even a plane ticket. The potential for weird and wonderful encounters is all around us.
Listen to entire piece at NPR.

May 28 is the birthday of the man who created James Bond, novelist Ian Fleming, (books by this author) born in London, England (1908). He wanted to be a diplomat, but he failed the Foreign Office examination and decided to go into journalism. He worked for the Reuters News Service in London, Moscow, and Berlin, and then during World War II, he served as the assistant to the British director of naval intelligence.
After the war, he bought a house in Jamaica, where he spent his time fishing and gambling and bird watching. He started to get bored, so he decided to try writing a novel about a secret agent. He named the agent James Bond after the author of a bird-watching book. The first Bond novel, Casino Royale (1953), sold about 7,000 copies, and Fleming followed it with four more that sold less and less well. He was disappointed that these books weren't making more money to help support the family, so for his next Bond story, he wrote the book specifically for the movies. He filled it with more psychopaths and beautiful women than usual. No one in the movie industry was interested at the time, but the novel From Russia, with Love (1957) became a huge international best seller.
The Writer’s Almanac
Incidentally, a “new” James Bond story Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks has been released.