Bought materials and made three independent outlets on the tractor watering boom.

Watered the farm using city water.

Katrina Bottled Water
I had some mental hardships when I watched our nation gathering all the bottled water to send to the Katrina victims.  While I admire the enthusiasm of our nation, I think our yuppie-ishness showed a bit.  Let's see - a 10 ounce bottle of water costs about $1.00 - bought in bulk, make that 50 cents.  At 128 ounces in a gallon, that comes to $6.40 a gallon.  On my home water bill, we paid $80 for 6,000 cubic feet which is 44,800 gallons.  That works out to $0.00178 per gallon.  In my view, we should have spent our money to fill tanker trucks with municipal water and brought along empty plastic one and five gallon jugs.  The victims could get water a gallon at a time rather than a bottle at a time.  If you think about it, this is how water is distributed in the poor nations of the world.  There's usually a single source of safe water and people bring their plastic jugs to fill them as needed.  I'm all for helping out victims of a disaster, but paying 3,500 times as much for a commodity item sounds like we were reacting with our hearts and not our heads.  Next time, I hope we can take a lesson from the poor nations of the world and get a valuable resource to the people in need at a reasonable cost.  One last thought - it's easy for us to criticize the government's actions relative to Katrina, but the bottled water response was private citizens and individual communities - for the same money spent, we could have made provided 3,500 times more water (and not had to deal with the cleanup of millions of empty water bottles).

Set up a sprinkler system for the outside hardening off and laydown area.  Moved the rosemary and lavender plants from the greenhouse to the outside laydown area.

Started preparing the greenhouse for the harvest and drying of sunflower seed heads.  In addition to clearing out plants from the greenhouse, I also add more shelving.  When used as a traditional greenhouse, my wire fence shelves are spaced 2 feet apart (2ft, 4ft, 6ft).  For seed head drying, I add shelves at 1ft, 3ft, 5ft, and 7ft.

I took off the greenhouse  sun shade fabric.

Started harvesting sunflower seed heads that were ready.

Cut more sunflower seed heads and arranged them in the greenhouse for drying.

Cut the rest of first growth sunflower seed heads for drying.

My "Worst Opening Line"
The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is a competition for the worst opening line for a novel.   Here is my entry:

Bubba's unplanned flatulence filled the honeymoon suite with a sulfurous stench - seeming to gain in strength in every direction, and although he originally planned to confess his indiscretion to his bride and seek her forgiveness, in the end he decided to ask her if SHE felt ok - or perhaps had stepped in something "sweet."

Watered the tomatoes and peppers using city water.

Bare Breasts And Network TV
I have tried in vain to determine just what the network TV policy is relative to showing a bare breast.  It seems than an x-ray of a breast is ok to show - so is a drawing or sketch of one.  It seems to be ok to show a photograph  that includes a bare breast - and of course statues and paintings which include bare breasts are ok too.   If you watch some of the material on the educational channels, it seems ok to show the bare breasts of natives out in some jungle.  And Hollywood fashions - well, everything from plunging necklines, cutout sides, and thin, filmy gauze dresses either show (or show off) breasts - but they're not entirely bare (yet).  So I must conclude that the network TV policy on bare breasts is to NOT show any of live women who are civilized enough to know their breasts are entirely bare.

Watered the peppers using city water.

Hopping Dinosaurs
I guess I have always seen a link between birds and dinosaurs.  Not so much from the feathers, but if you look at the bare legs of birds, you can see what seems to me to be the traces of reptilian scales.  With that in mind, birds seem to "walk" in two different ways. Some, especially the larger birds, walk one step at a time like you and I.  Some of the smaller birds, however, like sparrows and chickadees, hop around two feet at a time.  That makes me think that there must have been some dinosaurs that hopped around two feet at a time as well.  If the hopping dinosaurs were similar to present day birds, only the little ones would have been the "hoppers."   Being small, the little hoppers would probably not have left any fossil footprints for us to find.

Cut a couple jumbo sunflower seed heads that were ripe.

FINALLY got 1.0" of rain (Hoo-Ray!!)

Got another 1.25" of rain.  Based on the condition of the farm and being this late in the growing season, although the rain is most welcome - it's too late to make much difference in this year's crops.

Put out pumpkins on the Farm Stand.

Changed the spark plugs on Miss Daisy.

Iraq Foreign Policy - The Ultimate Tests
There's lots of hoopla going on about the trial of Saddam Hussein and the approaching Iraqi elections.  The USA rhetoric goes along with the notion that these are steps in Iraq becoming a self-directed democratic society.  I think the ultimate test of USA foreign policy will come if for some reason the Iraqi court finds Saddam Hussein innocent of his charges.  It's not that far fetched - while there may have been some terrible things happening in Iraq over the years, the challenge will be to prove in a court of law that Saddam was responsible for the bad stuff.  We didn't put President Bush on trial for the bad things that happened to prisoners in the Iraq jails - yes, Bush was the leader but the individuals doing the bad stuff have been held legally accountable.  Also, how many times in the USA have people, who were known to be guilty of one thing or another, been found innocent for one reason or another.  It happens.  If we accept such things happening on USA soil as a part of the democratic experience, shouldn't we allow for the same things to happen in Iraq as well?  You may have noticed in the title of this note I used the plural form of "Test."  The second test of the USA Iraq foreign policy would be IF Saddam Hussein was found innocent, would he be allowed to be elected as the leader of the country again?  Think about it - if he is found innocent of his charges, why should he NOT be allowed to run for office?  I'll be interested to see if the USA allows Iraq the freedom to really be "Free" or if the Iraqi freedom will be limited to what we think they should do.

Mistake Free Mentality
I worked in the nuclear power industry for over 25 years.  And while we could debate the merits of nuclear power, I think the Mistake Free culture is worth considering for everyday life.  The concept is not unique to nuclear power - fail-safe, and sub-safe programs have the same objectives.  The basis of these programs is the recognition that people have a tendency to make errors.  The challenge is to keep an error (something done wrong but yet to have adverse consequences) from becoming a mistake (something done wrong that has adverse consequences).  One outfall from these programs are things like checklists, labels, notes and the like.  An application might be something simple like "if it's important write it down (or record it)."   Then don't destroy the note (or erase the voice mail reminder) until the important thing is done.  Another aspect of these Mistake Free Programs is to learn from each adverse event - I used to conduct root cause investigations which was a fascinating look into human nature. 

In everyday life, if you forgot an important meeting - ask yourself "Why did I forget the meeting" [I didn't write it down]  Why didn't I write it down [I didn't have a pen and paper]  "Why didn't I have a pen and paper? [As a guy, if I carry paper in my pants pocket, it is destroyed in a short time]  "Why not cut small pieces of card stock and put them in a small ziplock bag and put them in your pocket? [Too much of a hassle]  So, you would rather to continue to forget important meetings the rest of your life?  [Maybe a couple small chunks of paper in a ziplock would not be all that bad]

Anyway, these programs suggest the best thing you can do is be proactive - anticipate what might go wrong in life and take preventive measures in advance.  When something bad happens, try to see if it was an isolated event (and not worth preventing in the future) - or if it's something you would like to see eliminated from your life.   Then think through what could be done so that the same thing isn't likely to happen again.  For me, a couple pieces of paper and a pen in a pocket has helped me countless times from forgetting to follow through on all sorts of things (including topics for these Web blogs that come to me when I'm out in the fields).

Got 1.1" of rain.

Got 0.3" of rain.

Got another 0.3" of rain.

Preventative and Preventive
As a writer, I pay special attention to words.  One word that I often see used incorrectly is "preventative."  I see it both in writing and hear it on TV.   The surprising thing to me is how many formally educated people use "preventative."  Most dictionaries don't even list "preventative."  Rather than trying to get all the people who are using the wrong word to change their ways, maybe it would be easier to add the word to the dictionary to make it "legal."

Moved the remaining 172 lavender plants to the East Meadow SW Field and planted them for winter holdover.

Mowed the drainage ditches on the farm so winter snow melt will drain properly.

We got 1.75" of rain.  For the month of September, we ended with 6.15" of rain.  That's a good number - but arriving in September, it's not especially useful to all the plants that didn't sprout or died in the dry weather of the summer.

Habitat For Humanity And Hammers
On the Today Show there was considerable coverage of Habitat For Humanity building frames for houses for Katrina victims.  Similar to my note earlier this month on Bottled Water, I think these building efforts are examples of where we aren't thinking too clearly.  If you have watched any of this footage - what takes the most time?   All the hammering - nail by nail by volunteers swinging hammers.  If you go by any housebuilding areas today, you will hear more nail guns than you will hear hammer whacking.  A couple nail guns could have replaced ALL the hammers.  The framing would be done in a fraction of the time and as a result, for the same human effort, even more framed houses could be shipped to the areas in need.  I think sometimes these efforts at aiding victims are designed around what would make the best theater show for media coverage rather than figuring out what could be done to most benefit the people in need.