Highs and Lows

Incredibly, our high temperature is predicted to drop from 90° on Wednesday to only 68° on Thursday. Highs over the weekend are expected to hover somewhere in the mid-70s. Now that's more like it.

The overnight lows will remain above 50° for the most part, so I think my outdoor container tropicals should be ok for now. (I just wish the mosquitos would kick off.)

In other news, yesterday was a disappointing class in my Master Gardener Training. Two men from this place came to talk about fruit & nut trees and raised bed gardening.

These two Okies shall remain nameless; by simply saying they were both idiots is being kind.

The Fruit & Nut guy's presentation was aimless and unfocused. He started off by saying that you really can't successfully grow peaches in Texas, then spent the next hour talking about growing them. Whenever someone would ask him a question, he would grip his head with both hands as if a migraine had suddenly befallen him. He reminded me of a shorter, more weasley-George W. Bush, if you can imagine such a creature. What a useless waste of time and space.

The Raised Bed guy was much more organized, but his message was flawed and impractical, especially to the average gardener. And his advice was downright insulting to the organic gardener.

Now, I'm all for raised beds, but this guy spent three hours demonstrating several eloborate set-ups calling for underground piped drip irrigation, black plastic covering, and way too much fertilizer. ("Look at the instructions on a box of Miracle Gro...It says 'Fertilize every week and gradually increase the amount with each application until the end of the growing season.' Those guys stole my idea!")

It was all about maximizing your crops, with no consideration of the environment. Take, take, take and give nothing back.

I guess I should have seen this coming, however; they were exhuberant over the fact that the Foundation (a family of rich oilmen looking for a tax credit, apparently) had awarded them with a brand new Suburban to travel in.

P.S. - Via further research, I've also found these guys were significant contributors -- to the tune of $7,000,000 -- to the ultra-rightwing Heritage Foundation. Does it strike anyone else as odd/suspicious that Noble - an organization supposedly formed to promote agriculture - would hand over so much money to a political organization, but could only find $25,000 to contribute to the Future Farmers of America?