When I checked my blog stats this morning someone came to my blog by searching for “can you eat thyme flowers”.

Oh yes, you can.  And they are really tasty, lovely in salads.  Really beautiful decorating a plate.  Chive flowers are gorgeous too.  Pretty much, any herb you can eat, eat the flowers too.  Squash blossoms can be stuffed with goat cheese and baked.  Rose petals and rose water make a gorgeously scented cake with gorgeously scented frosting decorated with wonderfully beautiful petals.  Mmm.

Just make sure you don’t eat flowers that have been treated with pesticides.  Make sure they are actually edible.  Do a search on the web to find lists of edible flowers.  Anywho, below is the picture of my herb bed with the thyme blossoms and chive blossoms.

Last year my Dad, Jennifer and I took a trip to visit my sister Camy in Washington State. While there we visited Vancouver to see The Buchart Gardens. We took a ferry over and in the wait for the ferry to leave I was reading all the signs posted. The most hilarious is in the picture below, it was notice #2 that made me laugh.  Switchblades and Plums are prohibited. *

Apparently, handguns and apples are equally dangerous when you go to Canada. I wonder if you need a concealed carry license to put your potatoes in a grocery bag.

*I am aware that the prohibition is to prevent to transfer of parasites and plant diseases.  It’s just dang funny that the list is all one sentence, just commas.

Below is the text of the Declaration of Independence.  Read it, read it often.  Remember why we are who we are, don’t forget that liberty and life are precious and worth fighting for, that the freedom to pursue happiness is not a guarantor of actual happiness.  Don’t assume you know the founding fathers just because you saw some movie.  Read, read, read.  Learn to place historical events in the context of the times in which they occurred.  Above all, get familiar with the document below.  Get familiar with the Constitution.  Become acquainted with the Bill of Rights.  Read the notes from the Continental Congress. Go peruse the Magna Carta.  Seriously.  Learn about the democracies in Athens and Sparta, imperfect though they were.  Learn about why representational government developed.  Check out Roman republicanism, why the emperor gained power, why the Senate developed.  Then learn why freedom of speech is so completely vital to our continued liberty, our ability to freely practice our religion.  Learn about the ways politically correct speech infringes upon our very bedrock freedoms and liberties.  Then, after all of that, hold what we have dear, and close.

It is no mistake that, as a Christian, I am deeply attached to my Liberty, the liberty granted by men in the Declaration of Independence and codified by men in the Constitution.  God has granted me all that I am, salvation, life and eternal life.  In this world, before I die, I have to live amoung men in a world governed by men.  Yes, God governs all, but in this life we vote, make decisions and live in countries run by men.  I prefer to live in this Republic under a government that, imperfect though it is, is governed by the people, of the people and for the people.  I appreciate that I do not live under a tyrant like Mugabe or Kim Jong Il.

Below is the full text of the Declaration of Independence.  Enjoy!

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

I love that little skunk from Bambi.

Saturday I took more pictures of the garden.  YAY!

This is my herb bed.  This is my herb bed on plant crack!  The tall stuff in the back is oregano I’ve got to prune.  In front, with the dragon, is oregano-thyme, next to it is lemon-thyme, then winter savory and then English-thyme.  The coconut thyme is back there, it’s just still tiny and ashamed to show itself in the face of all these over-achievers.  The stuff with the pink flowers in the back next to the oregano is the cranesbill.  To the side of the lemon-thyme is tarragon.  Tarragon, meet the people.  People, meet tarragon.

Below are pictures of the tomato bed.  The one on the left is the bed when I first planted the lovely-to-be tomatoes.  The one on the right is the tomato bed after heat, water, compost and tomato food.

Ignore the weeds between the beds.  They don’t exist.  These aren’t the droids you’re looking for…  In the picture I took Saturday I really like the bed to the left, the herb bed with the dragon.  You can see how the thymes spill over the edge and get all dramatic looking.  And you can see the garlic chives hiding behind the too tall oregano.  Further back you can see the orange day lillies.  In the foreground you can see the leaves of my zucchini.  YAY for baby zucchini.

Here you can see the path that leads past the roses.  When the roses are blooming this is the most lovely path to take, it’s pretty, fragrant (in a good way) and cool.

You can see the honeysuckle on the forsythia bushes in the left front and the fire pokers in the back center.

Below are the Moss Roses.  You need to grow these, if you can find them.  They aren’t easy to get, thankfully my Mom planted them long ago.  That smell, the Lemon-Verbena and Lavender-Thyme.  Oh. My. Lanta.

Lavender.  In a clean glass.  Neat.

We have buckets of bees in the lavender all day.  Seriously, from the moment the sun slightly illuminates the back yard till just about dark, there are bees all over this plant.  You can see several if you look closely.  This lavender is right off the main patio, the bees are so drunk on lavender pollen they don’t even look at us humans.  Juicy will take a swing at the bees from time to time and they ignore his shots across the bow and get right back to the lavender.

Just look at this next picture any time your tummy feels bad.  That should help.

Chamomile.  Sigh.  Pretty pretty chamomile.

This is the most recently renovated bed in our yard.  It had been a collection of ivy, roots and trash that the people going to the park threw there.  Seriously, I won’t let anyone in my family drink Milwaukee’s Best, where do you think that can came from?

There is a canna to the left, an astilbe I’ve still got to plant, three ferns, a funky groundgover and a stump that I like.  The purpley plant is an oxalis.  The leaves will always be that really pretty purple and the flowers are a very light lilacey color.  To the right is a lovely huchera that I ended up planting in the backyard.  Behind it is a hardy begonia.  Yeah, is that cool or what?  Hardy begonia?  I had no idea.  The lawn here is more of a collection of moss and stuff because of the deep shade up here.

Lastly, my calla lillies.  I planted these about 22 years ago, they have continued to grow even though they are supposed to be tropical and die in this zone.  Yeah, whatever.  I love them.

Have a happy flowery day!

Earlier this year I posted a picture of my patio in mid-spring, this morning I took a photo from the same angle. Below is the picture from the spring:

I love the light, it’s an afternoon shot on a cool day. I love the way everything is so intensely green but immature. You can see the half moon bed at the back is full of daffodils.

Below is a picture from this morning, more late morning. See the lavender? The light is so completely different, not just because of the time of day, it’s the season.

I love how the park disappears in the summer only to reappear in the winter. The orange day lillies in the half moon bed will take over the world some day, I think. You can still see the seed pods on the iris stalks. They are so interesting to look at so I don’t cut them down. More pictures later.

It’s cool how bright the patio still is, isn’t it. Blindingly white. Like some people’s chicken legs after a long winter.

Ooops. Did I say that out loud?

Sorry.  Below is a side by side.

Just a couple of days ago this story popped up: giant volcanoes on the sea floor of the arctic.  It doesn’t take much thought to follow this discovery to: molten rock-hot gas spewing hole to the center of the earth = really frickin warm.  Ice over really frickin warm hole to the center of the earth = melty things happening.  Go figure, a natural phenomena that we have absolutely no control over erupts causing arctic ice to melt.  Poor polar bears.  But well, there it is.  Not my bad.

Then, today, this story appeared in the Independent.  Good googlie mooglie.  Do they not fact check at all? 

YAY! The highly restrictive gun ban in the District of Columbia has been lifted. Fantastic. Really. Having lived just outside of DC I’ve had a seat with a view to the “Murder Capital” of the nation.

This morning I heard Eleanor Holmes Norton saying that life would get more violent because criminals are better shots than legal gun owners and more people would die. I hate to be the one to tell you, dearie, criminals haven’t refrained from killing someone because they are NOT armed. They may, however, think twice about assaulting someone packing. And to be honest, the responsible gun owners I know spend time at the range, think through gun safety and don’t normally bring their weapons along on a trip to Burger King. (Unless they have a concealed carry permit, which is another subject.)

The squeals I hear about guns being easier to get are fallacious and ridiculous. There is no dearth of illegal guns in the District because the criminals, law breakers, break the law to obtain them. And will continue to do so. Law abiders will obtain their weapons legally, get legal training in their firearm and store them legally. Some won’t, but then legal drivers using legally purchased cars sometimes drive drunk and kill people.

More importantly, SCOTUS put the constitution above an unconstitutional law, good prevailed.  It is a bit worrisome how narrow the decision was, that it was 5 to 4.

I don’t even know how to begin this post, except to say “Oh. My. Lanta!” I can hardly believe the headline I saw yesterday, “ABCNEWS Asks: Are we living in the last century of our civilization?” As I read the story I quickly saw that this was a work of fear mongering at it’s worst. Not surprising as ABC is an entertainment company and not a group of scientists.

This story is an example of the application of questionable science by minds clouded by religion. Yes, religion. Man made global warming has become a religion. Anything that stands in the way of fulfilling the prophecies, directives and goals is willingly sacrificed to see the earth worshiped properly. You don’t believe me? Go buy a gallon of gas. The cost of a gallon is now about $4.25, for no flipping reason. And no, it isn’t because the gas companies are greedy. It’s partly because the market has driven the cost per barrel so high, speculators wreaking havoc. But notice what else is in your gas, ethanol. It’s there by order of the government. It shouldn’t be. Ethanol is corn, the edible stuff, turned into fuel. Did you notice that the cost of corn has skyrocketed? And that every other foodstuff has also become more costly? That’s because we are burning our food instead of eating it. That makes no sense.

I do not believe that anthropogenic global warming is real. At all. I do not believe it because the science just isn’t there and because the climate of the earth changes regularly. It has done so since the foundation of the earth. It always has and it always will, with or without us. I am not alone.

John Coleman, the founder of the Weather Channel sees things the way I do, as do many, many others. The sun is the source of much of the earth’s energy and heat, sunspots intensify that. Lately, the sun has been quiet. Really quiet. Back during the little ice age there was a 50 year period of low to no sunspot activity called the Maunder Minimum.

In the midwest are floods, tornadoes and destruction. I have heard the floods called 300 year floods, meaning this kind of flood only happens every three hundred years. So really, it’s not unprecedented, just unusual. Just follow the logic, if this sort of flooding happens every 300 years or so, that means that it’s got a cycle, a regular cycle, just a rather longer one that we humans tend to see because we don’t see 300 year floods everyday. (Thank God)

Do a search on “…caused by Global Warming…”, you will find everything from cyclones to shark attacks. Come on, people. That’s just crazy talk.

Here is how I see it, the climate changes regularly in long cycles that often span several lifetimes of men. Before you go blaming hurricanes and floods on global warming, go get some perspective. Nearly everything has happened before, and will happen again. We don’t need to toss virgins into the volcano to stop something that isn’t happening in the first place.

The 600 Things Blamed on Global Warming - This is a fabulously funny list of ridiculousness.

The International Herald Tribune has a story about Hugo Chavez grab for intellectual control of his citizens.  He is steadily turning his country into the kind of horrid place that Cuba, China, Cambodia, Romania and the Soviet Union was/are, where people are forced to turn in their neighbors, family, parents and children for “anti-government” sentiment. 

Separation of powers, the three separate branches of government - legislative, executive and judicial - all necessary to a free and open society.  (Which we have.)  Socialists can not have a free and open society, they can not effectively meddle in private lives if the meddled can protest and be heard. 

One part of the new law, which explicitly requires judges and prosecutors to cooperate with the intelligence services, has generated substantial concern among legal experts and rights groups, which were already alarmed by the deterioration of judicial independence under Chávez.

While the language of this passage of the law, and several others, is vague, legal experts say the idea is clear: justice officials, including judges, are required to actively collaborate with the intelligence services rather than serve as a check on them.

“This is a government that simply doesn’t believe in the separation of powers,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director for Human Rights Watch, the New York-based rights organization. “Here you have the president legislating by decree that the country’s judges must serve as spies for the government.”

That’s just scary, thank you very much. 

Read the whole article.

And then there’s this bit from Russia. 

On a talk show last autumn, a prominent political analyst named Mikhail Delyagin offered some tart words about Vladimir Putin. When the program was televised, Delyagin was not.

His remarks were cut and he was digitally erased from the show, like a disgraced comrade airbrushed from an old Soviet photo. (The technicians may have worked a bit hastily; they left his disembodied legs in one shot.)On a talk show last autumn, a prominent political analyst named Mikhail Delyagin offered some tart words about Vladimir Putin. When the program was televised, Delyagin was not.

His remarks were cut and he was digitally erased from the show, like a disgraced comrade airbrushed from an old Soviet photo. (The technicians may have worked a bit hastily; they left his disembodied legs in one shot.)

Now, he stops short of Stalin’s methods, first the death then the altered photos.  The altered photos are quite enough, especially when it erases dissent.

Yes, children, I despise communism and socialism.  Have a lovely day.

Susan Sarandon has threatened to leave the country if John McCain is elected.  Is this announcement somehow supposed to make me change my mind?  Do I even care?  If I remember correctly, Alec Baldwin once threatened to leave the country if George Bush won.  Fat lot of good it did me to vote for Bush, Alec’s still here.  Dang it, if these celebrities who make these ridiculous threats don’t ever carry them out, how are we, the little people, ever going to learn?

Whatever, I’ll wave at them from the tarmac.  Heck, I’ll pack their china.  Please, just go, already.  Bye.