Let It Rain

Rain today.  Rain yesterday, probably rain overnight and into tomorrow.  Too wet to even hike out to the garden, so we're staying inside and watching YouTube videos.  

Like this one:

Enjoy.

Life and Death on Video

On the one hand, this sounds very cool, indeed.

On the other hand, putting a $159.95 piece of equipment in the back yard is just asking for trouble.

  The Timelapse Garden Video Camera.
This is the camera that makes a timelapse video of your garden to show you the development of individual specimens or entire areas over a period of time. It can focus as close as 20" away to illustrate petal growth or, with its wide 54" field of view, it can capture perennials as they grow to conceal your spent spring bulb foliage. The camera takes a picture at one of six pre-determined intervals (five seconds to 24 hours) and combines them into a single 1280 x 1024 resolution AVI movie file for easy playback on a computer.

Details live here.

More stuff to worry about

We don't bother much with the political side of food and agriculture policy at the Garden Constant.  Generally, the seasons turn unimpeded by the diktats and ukases of government, although every now and then some decision made far away filters down to our level.

When that happens, it's awfully hard to figure out what is going on, since people line up on either side and project their apocalyptic fantasies regardless of what the proposed policy would actually do.  We've noticed this more and more since the change in the Mandate of Heaven, and we present an example in the form of a bill now before Congress.

Depending on who you ask, the Food Safety Modernization Act (HR 875) will either criminalize back yard gardening and organic farming, or will correct serious deficiencies in the safety of our nation's food supply.  We've read the bill, and as far as we can tell, some of what is being said in this video is true.  Some of it isn't.  Since most of what legislatures at all levels do eventually comes out as "take your money and run your life", we have to say, we're a little suspicious.   

On the other hand, the Mother Earth News doesn't seem terribly worried about the text of the bill, and neither does the Cornucopia Institute.  In fact, we noted the following comment on one of the forums at Seed Savers Exchange, which is where we get most of our seeds:

Originally Posted by paulf  
Help me out a little. I have gone through the bill several times and I don't seem to find anything related to seed banks being outlawed; or that seeds are considered food or that seeds are in any part of the bill.

paulf:  I see several parts I don't care for, but not all that much that threatens me or my garden or SSE for that matter. Help my non-legal mind find those parts. We can't fight against something we really don't understand. Give me the sections and the parts so I can read them.

WI LO M:  It's not there. 90% of what is claimed to be there isn't there. It's the Lord of the Flies factor combined with Chicken Little to become the Myth of the Week. It's about as dangerous to us as the Y2K thing was. But to be safe, get some tinfoil and make a hat. Then you'll be OK! 
   
Well, that's helpful.  We couldn't find those parts either, but we've had a bad feeling about the rule-making process ever since that business about Madalyn Murray O'Hair and the FCC.

It's an Uday and Qusay moment.