The long weekend is over. The weather was up and down, but business at the nursery was steady all the way through. It was nice to visit with several weblog readers. My apologies for the lack of posts for you regulars, but my mind is mush.

As the season progresses, things get more stressful because we are running out of stuff and constantly have to tell people that we are out of something they drove sixty miles to get.

It has either been balmy warm or chilly cold this May. Very little in between. The fluctuations happen quickly. Today was really very nice, although some low-lying areas had frost last night. At least one gardener lost his tomatoes. Young melons, pumpkins and squash are at risk of keeling over in the cool weather whether it freezes or not.

It was very nice to have a little rain settle down the dust before the winds returned.

Here is yet another high-ranking military officer against the use of torture. His letter is brief but eloquent.

Gen. Petreaus is against torture. Most of the generals are against it. It degrades the torturer. It yields misleading intelligence. It ruins our status abroad. It threatens those soldiers who are captured, both in this conflict and in future conflicts. And, above all, it is indecent.

Inevitably, we goof up some orders in the spring. We take in a pot to fill for somebody, and it breaks. We agree to set something aside and then it disappears. We tell somebody we have something, they drive fifty miles, and then we don't have it. Such goof ups drive me nuts, but we have been minimizing them in the last few years.

However, yesterday was the exception. I committed two of the worst sort of goof ups: Those having to due with the recently deceased.

Thanks to weblog reader Irene for correcting the spelling of the German delicacy which I used in my column.

Then, I got an email today from Karen of Karen's Kuchens out of Cavalier, North Dakota. She bakes kuchens and sells them over the internet. Let's give her a little business!

Furthermore, Karen is originally from Ashley, North Dakota, which is my mother's home town. Her recipes are likely of the same provenance as those my grandmother used.

Tuesday went much better than Monday. The credit card machine was replaced. The lost transactions were found somewhere on some machine. I got my bureacratic bungling taken care of by 11 o'clock. And the rest of the day was spent battling the tremendous south wind.

Tonight, we are getting some badly needed rain. There is a pleasant amount of thunder and lightning. I hope we get over an inch. We are dry.

I never thought I would see John Ashcroft as a hero, but with the present bunch of cowboys in charge, anything is possible.