Maggie's Farm

I am putting mine in the ground today, after using my car as a greenhouse for a couple of weeks. I have 6 varieties this time. Always those Sweet Million cherry tomatoes, and always the classic Beefsteaks, even though they aren't ready around here until mid-late August. Still worth it for a few weeks of them. Some yellows. No plum tomatoes - the canned are fine with me if they are going to be cooked anyway.

Are yours in yet?

h/t, S,C&A:

Everybody is showing this one, so we might as well too. The old guy is shameless, isn't he? A good thing he prefers elephant-style to missionary style or her riders might be in a heap of trouble.

She is a cute lil' thing, if a bit on the heavy side. They both seem to be smiling, and that's what matters.

Here's how (h/t, Rug Rag):

VDH begins:

Oh, I know that President Obama’s approval ratings are still around 62%. But I also remember that George Bush’s at the end of 2001 got even higher — and stayed at or above 60% through most of 2002, explaining why he increased his congressional majority in the midterm elections.

Nevertheless, I think we are beginning — after less than four months — to see fissures in Obama’s Pentelic statuary. And the cracks will widen, because in about six areas he has taken on human nature itself, age-old logic, and common sense-opponents that even a Harvard Law degree and Chicago organizing are no match for.

Whole thing here.

h/t, Moonbattery

We have posted many times about the tragedy of the commons here. This handy concept goes far beyond the original meaning.

It is the most basic human nature to take care of your own. Unless you have a close, small, closed society with strong affinity and who are on the same page, people will rape the commons for their own purposes.

We posted the other day about plans to try to maintain the fisheries.

John Stossel discusses Eat the Tigers! Same point. Most people need a sense of ownership to really care about stewardship.

How good of a forecaster is James Hansen? (h/t, SDA)

Growing new neurons throughout life: Micro mRNA and neurogenesis. Dang brain is quite remarkable.

Current advances in neuroscience go under-reported because the press doesn't understand it any better than they understand any science or basic economics.

Journalists seem, to me, to be the ultimate "I was told there would be no math" people, who should never have been admitted to any college.

If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.

Mark Twain (h/t, Lib Leanings)

Charles on Pelosi (h/t, Flopping). As a reader said re another topic, Never bring a waffle to a gunfight.

I think we did a good job on this little corner. Nepeta (which won't be blooming for a while), some giant allium and regular allium in bloom right now, Wisteria overhead getting ready to bloom (pruned them so hard this winter they might be disappointing this Spring), low boxwood hedging and a thick row of those dwarf yellow lilies heading up on the right. I forget the name of those clumps of bulbs with the bell-like purple flowers, but they are pleasant.

NEVER get out of your car or off your tractor without putting the parking brake on. Never, ever, no matter where you are.

Make it a habit.

Somebody had to spruce up the ole driveway. Gwynnie put a much improved head on my body, but I think it makes me look a bit transexual or metrosexual or mixed frozen vegetable or whatever - sort of like that Boston trolley guy/gal. Which I am not, to the best of my knowledge.

These machines are fun to drive, and it makes the gravel look great until somebody drives on it.

Cody Ohl:

Poster via Theo:

 Vanderleun has some of Twain's Corn-Pone opinions

Mark Steyn's speech of the above title at Hillsdale College (h/t, Powerline). One quote:

Americans face a choice: They can rediscover the animating principles of the American idea—of limited government, a self-reliant citizenry, and the opportunities to exploit your talents to the fullest—or they can join most of the rest of the Western world in terminal decline. To rekindle the spark of liberty once it dies is very difficult. The inertia, the ennui, the fatalism is more pathetic than the demographic decline and fiscal profligacy of the social democratic state, because it's subtler and less tangible. But once in a while it swims into very sharp focus. Here is the writer Oscar van den Boogaard from an interview with the Belgian paper De Standaard. Mr. van den Boogaard, a Dutch gay "humanist" (which is pretty much the trifecta of Eurocool), was reflecting on the accelerating Islamification of the Continent and concluding that the jig was up for the Europe he loved. "I am not a warrior, but who is?" he shrugged. "I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it." In the famous Kubler-Ross five stages of grief, Mr. van den Boogard is past denial, anger, bargaining and depression, and has arrived at a kind of acceptance.

h/t, Theo

From Captain Capitalism: Why I got a vasectomy

h/t, Mr. Free Market

Lots of horses. London street scenes, 1903 (h/t, SDA via Uncle Eddie)

h/t, Ace: