Give Nature no Quarter

In spite of Al Gore's fantasies and those of the dirtbags who have scammed useless ethanol contracts out of the government, March hasn't been all that warm here in Miami. Maybe that explains the NEW BABY TOMATOES I FOUND ON MY PLANTS! Can it actually be? Will I harvest enough tomatoes to make an entire BLT this time?

This would be another plus to moving north. Halfway up the state, it's several degrees colder than it is here. At least it is in winter. That would probably enable me to grow tomatoes quasi-reliably.

I'm not sure about my Kentucky beefsteaks, but it looks like I have a real shot at five or six more Cherokee chocolates.

I'm gradually figuring things out. One piece of data: container gardening is not the way to go. The roots of the plants get hot, and the plants think the weather has gone crazy, and they drop their blossoms. Now that I think about it, if I sprayed religiously, I might be able to get some summer tomatoes, provided I planted them in the ground.

I whomped everything with copper fungicide and Sevin today. Seems like daconil is pretty pathetic compared to copper.

I'm really not afraid of pesticides, except when I give fruit to my birds (more sensitive to some chemicals than we are). The more I read about pesticides, the more I think this is one more thing hippies are wrong about. Their idiotic objections to DDT have resulted in millions of human deaths. The FDA and the chemical companies seem fairly paranoid about releasing harmful bug killers, and I have a reasonable degree of faith in the human body's ability to rid itself of poisons. Adding it all together, I come to the conclusion that organic food is stupid. Besides, the Nazis were big on organic food. True fact. Look it up.

It's funny how hippies love so many things associated with the Nazis. Volkswagen Beetles. BMWs. Vegetarianism. Excessive concern about animal rights. Eugenics. Government control of industry. Anti-Semitism.

Life in South Florida was nearly impossible before bug spray. Today we only survive by paying the government to send trucks around at night, misting our streets with malathion. I sort of admire the people who lived here before we had the ability to poison insects. But another part of me suspects that they were insane. I doubt a typical American who lives in a relatively bug-free area can understand what Florida is like without insecticide. If you want to find out, try this. Drive down US 1 and go over the Card Sound toll bridge. Make sure it's dark out. Find yourself a nice remote spot. And get out of the car for five minutes, without applying repellant. You'll never make it. I promise you, you'll be in the car in less than a minute, and the mosquitoes will join you before you can close the door. Then you have to drive seventy miles an hour with the windows open to get rid of them.

Like I always say, screw the environment. The world isn't a museum; it's okay to renovate and rearrange. The longer responsible human beings occupy and modify a place, the more pleasant and livable it becomes. Frankly, I don't care if we occasionally lose an obscure, arguably nonexistent subspecies of louse or cockroach. You can't really live in harmony with nature. It's nature or us. Nature wants to kill us, and so far, it has done a damn fine job. The proper object is to subdue nature and render it harmless without destroying it.

So I plan to dose my tomatoes until they glow.

I do hope I get some fruit this time. Work is regrettable under the best of circumstances. When it doesn't pay off, it's downright criminal.