I, for one, have been very happy in the cool damp days at the beginning of the week. It has been perfect planting weather. Needless to say, I’m still not caught up with my planting and appreciated the good conditions.

We’ve been noticing the inordinate amount of barn swallows. They seem very active on cloudy, foggy days. I hope they have good navigating skills because they make us nervous with their dive-bombing flight patterns. One has a nest in the garden shed at Heather Gardens. Violet and I enjoyed its comings and goings the other morning while shopping for customers.

We have seen plenty of nests of late on the job sites. One, with three tiny speckled eggs, was knee high in a Hyperion daylily. The Hyperion gets quite large with fragrant pale yellow blooms but I never suspected it of harboring the home of a feathered friend.

Also, we discovered another beautiful nest with four blue eggs inside a Little Princess Spirea. Since I know very little about the habits of various birds (I hate it when I don’t know everything), I cannot figure out why they choose to nest so close to the ground. I fear for the babies given skunks and raccoons.

When the day is hard and/or long sometimes even take-out seems a chore. This is the time for La Choza, the best and fastest. Literally two minutes to a hot, wonderful meal. I have always admired the flower box at the place. Seth has outdone himself this year. He found a ruined boat in the lagoon and fashioned a recycled planter. The sides are held together with old planks from the Alabama. Very cool.

Here it is two weeks before the Fourth of July and I am already overwhelmed by my pea crop. So far we’ve been eating them raw but I may have to start freezing some for next winter. The beets are really coming along, I planted some Lutz which get particularly large. They already are the size of tennis balls. If you’ve shopped for them recently they are very pricey so it pays to grow a few.

We laughed so loud at supper recently. A story on NPR was talking about how little most Americans know about the origins of their food. Seven per cent think chocolate milk comes from brown cows. Honestly, I could never think to make that up.

If you’ve taken a trip up-Island this week you couldn’t miss the heady aroma of multi-floral rose. It has insinuated itself all along the roadsides and far up into trees. Never do as I did years ago and plant it. You will rue the day. Soon the Cape Cod Rambler and the Dorothy Perkins will start blooming and behave exactly the same—all up in everything.

I wonder if it is possible for supply side conservatives to finally learn. Ever since Ronald Reagan, Republicans have pushed the idea that tax cuts will create more growth. Governor Sam Brownback got his way in Kansas. He and the Republican legislature passed the biggest tax cuts in recent history. The experiment has been disastrous. Finally the state legislature came to its senses and passed a progressive increase over the veto of the governor.

Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and the other powers-that-be nationally simply refuse to face reality. They are willing to deny people health care in order to cut taxes. The real irony is the white working class of rural Trump voters all buying this nonsense. I’m willing to bet many of them don’t pay taxes in the first place. People receive all sorts of government assistance. For example, Medicaid pays for Gramma’s nursing home in Mississippi, but somehow the urban poor are undeserving. What’s wrong with us?