I just can't believe.....

I really don't know what to say. I cannot believe what our government has done. I just can't. She writes pretty much whats going through my mind at the moment.

Molly Ivins on the torture bill

We are in such very very dangerous territory right now.

A few choice moments from the deliberations:

• Trent Lott says that Habeus Corpus is only something lawyers worry about. Yes, the basic foundation of a free society, the Great Writ, that dates back to the Magna Carta, is something that only lawyers worry about. You really shoudln't worry about the suspension of your right to a trial, unless you are a lawyer.
  
  Then he goes on to show shock that people would ban the use of dogs to torture! Dogs! Have you never walked past a house and been barked at? What is so bad about dogs?
  
• An Oklahoma Senator says that terrorists don't abide by the Geneva Conventions, so we shouldn't either. Great logic. I guess it would have been okay to intern Germans and gas and burn them too, y'know, since the Nazis were doing it to the Jews.
  
  I don't seem to recall where in the Constitution that rights only apply to good people. Bad people apparently don't have rights. It has nothing to do with being a human being. It's just if you are bad, or really, just seem bad (cause you don't get a trial), you have no rights.
  Torture=Terrorism. Our country just became a country that condones torture. The Democrats are spineless and the Republicans are simply pure evil. How can people that always claim the moral high ground justify this? Where are all the conservative Christians? Where is the opposition? There is none.

They eat chickens, don't they?

So it seems that word is out about the chickens. We have lived in our house for four years. I have never seen evidence of anything other than groundhogs, rabbits, hawks, and owls. Once we saw a really dilapidated coyote walk along the tree line in the winter, but never again. Yesterday, there was a huge raccoon that had been hit and killed either just coming or just going from our property. And there have been two possums killed; one in the road and one in the field behind us, I guess from the combine taking down the barley earlier (it had no legs). And my farmer neighbor reported seeing several foxes. Will a raccoon or a possum eat a chicken or are they just after eggs? The dogs freak out and sniff all around the fenced in chicken yard every morning and I check for evidence of tampering along all the chicken wire or digging, but so far nothing. I kind of think I need to worry about raccoons, although I was thrilled to see evidence of them. How do you deter a raccoon? Once the corn is down though, I think these visits will dwindle. There will be simply too much open space (100s of acres of bare field) for them to safely cross to get to our property. It will be interesting to see what is moving around out there after the first snow fall.....all the little tracks.

Things I picked yesterday:

A heart shaped apple.












A bunch of orange zinnias. Definitely worth the price of packet of seeds. Sprinkled in the garden and never bothered with again. Still blooming their hearts out.











And four eggs. I wonder what accounts for the slight variation in color? And who lays what? Occasionally there is a speckled one in there. My favorits is the second one on the left. I sold my first dozen yesterday. Woohoo!

A pleasant suprise

In addition to reading the Sunday New York Times, I also read bits and pieces of my local Lancaster County newspaper. There is one liberal columnist I like (Gil Smart) and you can always count on entertaining letters to the editor. One of my recent favorites called for the internment of all the Amish cause their kids keep dying in farming accidents and their buggies get hit on the road. The person was serious. I think she also called them filthy. Anyway, imagine my suprise, when passing over the religious pages, and I saw this op-ed piece. I read it and was shocked at the content. This is gonna get a lot of letters, I thought, already looking forward to the crackpot responses from some group of Evangelicals supporting a war with Iran. Anyway, at the bottom was the web address for street prophets, a non-denominational, non-partisan site which I occasionally run across on Daily Kos. So this Pastor Dan person, one of the founding members of Street Prophets, is in my community and writes for my paper. Cool. Although this was his last column as he is relocation to another state. Hopefully they replace him with someone just as sensible.

So I'm paying for torture

Well I'm glad that the renegade Republicans could sit down with Dear Leader and come to a compromise on torture. A compromise on torture. A COMPROMISE ON TORTURE. Here is a great article - Molly Ivins on Torture. My tax dollars are going to pay to inflict pain on someone using a process that has been proven repeatedly to not work. People will say or do anything to stop being tortured. I made a call today to request a copy of my birth certificate. I had one but I don't know where it is. I need it to get a passport. Soon. This country is scaring me more every day. A slowly tightening leash. Did you know that in the torture bill there was a great little provision to make it easier for Bush to declare Martial Law? And also make it easier for him to command control of the National Guard to police the American People. Before Katrina, there was a little thing called Posse Comitatus which said that no branch of the military could be used against the American People within the United States. That got tossed aside, but it was still up to the Governor of each state to decide when and where the Guard would be necessary, most likely used in a disaster. This little torture bill makes it easier for Bush to override the states and use them where he wants them. A slowly tightening leash. The first people to leave countries sliding into Totalitarianism are the scientists, writers, artists.....the people that observe for a living. They see the repeated patterns of behaovior long before anyone else. I want my papers to be in order. I'll wait and see how the November elections turn out. But if there are "widespread irregularities" again, I'm gonna have to make some other plans. Something is really, really wrong when we're compromising on torture.

So soon?

I'm wearing a sweater today. The heat was on in the car this morning. The down comforter is on the bed. Last night the bedroom windows had to be shut. It just can't, can't be fall already.

The corn around us will come down soon and the neighborhood barn social is coming the middle of October. One of the things that I hate about getting older is the sense of the passing of time. It just seems like it gets faster and faster. It isn't fair. Pretty soon it will be dark when I go to work and dark when I get home . And winter will seem to drag on forever.

I will probably switch the house over to fall this weekend. Take down the summer wreaths and put up the fall ones. Put out a few pumpkins and probably buy some mums for the porch. I need to order bulbs too. More Pheasant's eye narcissus, many more winter Aconite, and some more tulips, maybe orange ones this year, with some pale purple grape hyacinth. The flower to the right is a fall blooming crocus which I highly recommend. The foliage comes up early in the spring and the flowers come in September. A former owner of our house planted an entire line of them along the garage wall at the front of the house. I probably need to separate them. Its thrilling to see Crocus in September. I'm not sure if these are the variety that Saffron comes from or not. They probably are as at least one former owner was very into herbs and such.

I will spend the entire weekend outside. I wish I could save up all the warmth and sunshine. It will be gone before I know it.

Beautiful

So if you been following the Maher Arar case from Canada, you know that he was a Canadian citizen that was making a return trip from Tunisia, landed in the United States and was mistakenly identified as having connections to Al Queda. Only we didn't know about the mistaken part until after we had put him on a secret CIA flight to Syria and tortured him for an entire year. We. Us. Our country tortured this man. For an entire year. I know, I know, harmless fraternity prank, 9/11, 9/11 terra, terra. Well, as a result of this little VIOLATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, we have now been identified by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) as a country with a questionable human rights record and they WILL NO LONGER SHARE INTELLIGENCE WITH US. Think this makes us safer? Our long time ally, friend to the north is treating us like a third-world, backwater country because we are allowing the lunatic Bush to continue to govern us. When will it end?

So here is my wish. The Democrats at least get control of either the Senate or the House and start proceedings to bring charges against Bushco. Actually, I would like to see the whole bunch of them tried at the Hague for crimes against Humanity. All of them. The damage that they have done to this country will last for generations, and it was all done for money. Absolutely sickening.

I promise frolicking dogs soon...

but for now.....adorable chicken butts. I think they missed me. They told me they did anyway.

No frost on my pumpkins

Know why?

They all rotted or were eaten while we were away. Tons of rain coupled with an army of squash beetles served to destroy all of my pumpkins, gourds, and squash. ONE sweet dumpling that I had picked earlier and put in the garage survived.




This was last year:
Plus, I had a ton to give away to friends. Now I have none. Stupid bugs. No Cinderellas, no Marina de Chioggia, no Musquee de Provence, no sweet dumplings, no acorn, no Jack be Little, no funky mixed gourds....not even a suprise gourd (from seeds that came up by themselves)! Nothing. I am pumpkin poor.






These are pretty though:

I'm back and thoroughly rested!

I've missed you all very much. Two weeks is a long time! I need to buy a lap top. The house had free internet, so it would have been nice. I feel so behind. I don't have tons of photos to share. We've been going to the Outer Banks for so many years that there are drawer-fulls of photos of sunsets and other scenery and many, many pictures of dogs in the water. Some cool things I wish I had a picture of though:

• a cottonmouth in Buxton Woods Maritime Forest Preserve that my husband almost stepped on.
• the super green tree frogs that lived in our outside shower
• the whale rid bone that we found on the beach after Florence blew through
• the piece of a shipwreck that we found on the beach after Florence blew through (it would have made a fabulous table top, too bad it weighed so much and two of us couldn't budge it. Plus I think it is illegal to remove them on National Park Service Lands).
• The many, many free-roaming dogs that lived in our vicinity. Morning walk time was always fun.
• Lots of terrapins.
• A couple stingrays
• Pelicans flying by just a few feet above our heads

I read lots and kayaked lots and swam with dogs lots and just had a really good time. Glad to be back though.