09/19/09: Your Horoscope

Born today, you are endowed with a wide variety of gifts and talents. Already winning over hospital staff and passers-by, you are destined to charm your way through life using an easy smile and alluring charisma, which will be especially effective on lady-folk. You will sleep soundly, rarely cry, and learn to read Shakespeare by age 3, although you'll prefer Vonnegut. While your musical and athletic abilities will open up many avenues for excellence, your knack for difficult trigonometric equations will lead to the development of a groundbreaking theorem (age 8) and subsequent energy-producing formula (age 9) that will change human existence as we know it for the better. Having earned billions in revenue, you will support your parents' early retirement, world travels, and wacky projects, while you become a well-known philanthropist and entertainer. You will make things better for those around you, and will never be the subject of unreasonable expectations from your parents.

(More pictures here)

Garden on Autopilot

Fall is just about here but the grounds around the house are still brimming with activity. The tomato plants, haggard though they may seem, are still making plenty of fruit. Our sad, stunted cucumber plants still eek out a pitiful offering every couple of weeks even though the stems are dry and shriveled. Some random squash is crawling along by the cellar door, even though we didn't plant squash there this year. Because of all the weeds there I didn't notice it until it had several orange blossoms. Long periods of rain followed by weeks of humidity have created a menagerie of mushrooms on the lawn, including one as big as a human head on one of the oak trees. Miscellaneous annuals, from seeds of years past, have sprung up here and there, including inside one of the upside down tomato buckets. I mowed most of them, but one neat purple flower grew up between the rocks on the side of the driveway. Go nature!