We're getting some much needed rain today. It started last night, dousing the Fourth of July illegal fireworks that started in the neighborhood yesterday morning. No doubt they'll be merrily rattling throughout the week as weather permits.

The North Koreans set off their own fireworks, timing the launch of their experimental rockets for the liftoff of the latest space shuttle mission. They may have launched another one later. President Bush gave ample warning of their threat to humanity as part of the network of terror, and their sponsorship by China links that country to the threat as well.

Japan's government is greatly concerned and the United Nations is going to have a meeting about the crisis. Their prime minister, an Elvis Presley fan, went from visiting Graceland a few days ago to dealing with a possible provocation to World War III on his doorstep. It looks like the Biblical kings of the east of the Great Tribulation are warming up for a war.

At least the rain is helping with my water bill crisis here. I've been shredding newspapers for mulch to cover as much of the planted areas as I can. The tomatoes and peppers have a nice thick layer around them, and I'm working on the pumpkin patch. I planted some sugar pumpkins in the space beside the oak tree. The neighbors took out a storage shed that shaded it, so I'm hoping that there will be enough dappled morning sun with stronger afternoon sun for the pumpkins to set some fruit. It is a small fruited variety, making sweet, fine-grained pumpkins about eight inches across.

I have a few butternut and buttercup squash up and growing as well. They all get planted this late to ripen close to the fall frosts, so they'll keep about two or three months in a cool kitchen nook without refrigeration for winter pumpkin custards. I can plant some earlier with the tomatoes for a summer crop, but I usually have new crop sweet potatoes then from the store.

I object to paying jack-o-lantern prices for a pumpkin, and these little pumpkins are only stocked in limited quantities for decorations. It's a pity more people don't know how good they are compared to the stringy big pumpkins for carving. I look for them after Halloween passes and the prices drop to a reasonable level. My yard isn't big enough to grow many of their robust vines, but they can ramble over the oak tree's roots where nothing much else will grow.

My time in the garden is limited by the heat and ozone levels at present, but the carrot fall planting date is now in the red zone at the top of the list. I may just bump that down for a while. The garden soil is so warm that carrots won't germinate well outdoors. I would probably have to germinate some seed on a damp paper towel indoors and transplant the sprouted seeds to the garden and fuss over them for weeks to get carrots started now. I did try some carrots in the spring, but all the seedlings vanished. We probably haven't seen the last of the rats from the woods, even though the cats trimmed down from hunting whatever they could find in the beds.

The fall planting dates are creeping towards the top of the list, so I'm going to have to decide what seeds I need to get. I'm inclined to use up what I've got now given that I saved so many from last year. I hate to spend more when I'm not getting out to tend things very well, and most of the to-do entries are down at the bottom of the list for next year. I may get a few packets when the fall clearances start at the garden center.

I finished the scarf and started on a cotton dish towel in its place. I'm using a shaded cotton yarn with streaks of pink, aqua, and periwinkle spaced by snowy white. I like seeing the patterns that form as each color slips through my fingers and winds through a few stitches before fading to white again. It's a little quick victory to finish each patch, and I'm encouraged by frequent rewards when the stitch pattern is an easy, repetitive one. I'm two patterns behind in the current towel set, and there soon should be a new one for July posted on the about.com Knit and Chat site where I get them.

I've got three children's sweaters in the sweater box pile and another one about half done. The flannel arrived and my family noticed the long pieces being washed and dried, so they have fair warning that I'll be wrestling them into nightgowns soon. I have one last piece being dried which will need another wash and dry cycle, then they will be pre-shrunk and ready to fight with the cats over when draped over the big cutting table. The cats are as obsessively attracted to warm, freshly dried flannel as they are to quilting battings.

The Easy-To-Do program is helping with the backlog of disorganized tasks. I put the Days Left column on the main screen to see how far behind the overdue tasks were. I've only got the "Mulch paper" task slightly over a week behind now, thanks to all that mulching that should have been started about two months ago. It doesn't look that bad on the organizer even though I can clearly see the date in the entry. It looks awful in a red line with a big negative number at the end emphasizing how overdue it is. The rest are a day or two behind and mostly gardening tasks that got held while I made and spread mulch.

I fiddled with the Filter feature to see how the program sorted out tasks according to the classifications that can be assigned to each one. It might help to assign each project to its own category and break it down into steps to schedule, then use the filter to only show the steps to be done next.