New Look for Pandapas, and the MOAB (mother of all bailouts)

Whew... crazy stuff is going on in the world. Major banks are failing, the gov't is now the owner of 1/2 the country's mortgages through Freddie and Fannie, the talking head politicians are still going strong with their campaign messages... etc. Things are so nutty the treasury secretary kneeled before the speaker of the house to beg for a bailout (anyone else find it odd that the Secretary of the Treasury is the ex CEO of Goldman Sachs... one of the banks that will benefit from the bailout?). So, instead of fixing problems that caused the economic mess (median income falling below the median home price, and lending ridiculous amounts of money to people who can't afford it), the govt is just doing the same thing, borrowing money they can't hope to pay back to dump down an unsustainable black hole of debt feeding the cancerous suburban sprawl. Reality always wins in the end unfortunately... the world is running out of oil to feed anymore suburban buildout, and in a country without any real industry left (50% of our GDP is fed from military spending, everything is made in china, etc), we're in for fall from superpower status. If the sh*t that's going on down south post hurricane over lines at gas stations is any indication, all the gun toting Joe Six Pack in this country isn't going to take all this lightly. Watching those morons bitch and moan on CNN over not having gas and ice for a couple weeks is enough to dash any hopes I had that the US will pull out of this mess peacefully.

Anyhow, out here things are still moving along. We're finished the majority of the harvest from the garden. No more tomatos, beans or cucumbers, we're back to the tastless store bought crap. The potatos are still in the ground, and we've picked about 1/2 the butternut squash (37 pounds so far from 2 plants... kickass). I've planted more cold-weather stuff in pots on the deck. Peas, carrots, beans, beets, lettuce. Hopefully I can get more out of that before the icy weather sets in.

Check out the butternut squash plants back in august:

I put in a second raised bed in the front yard.. filled it with homemade compost.. check out this stuff... Black Gold:

Now where the two raised beds are i'm hoping to build a super rednecky greenhouse so we can start plants even earlier in the spring. next year we're hoping to have a much larger and productive garden.

I've finished the 2nd to last ibucket for the FlatTires, just one more to go for Kaptain Krunch. In other news, mark your calendar for next weekend, Oct5th, RINEMBA funride, then for the weekend of oct 18th, the 5th annual RAMHADAB!!

Time to head to the dump with Flattires, then I'm going surfing. Yeee Ha. -40.