There is yet another storm brewing off the Florida coast and threatening to make a swipe at the eastern coastal states. We still have about two months to go for the usual hurricane season and we're running out of names for them.

I wonder about the advisability of rebuilding New Orleans on its original site. There is a fight over the generosity of the government in authorizing billions of dollars to replace the nearly destroyed city to keep its cultural heritage alive. They propose to rebuild it right where two hurricanes have just wiped it out, only with much stronger levees.

Why are we rebuilding a city best known for its music and wild party life right where it can be blown away again? Even the Gulf Coast casinos are moving from offshore barges to safer onshore locations. It seems that mankind must have its entertainment folly no matter what the cost.

It rather reminds me of ancient Rome after its great fire, rebuilt better than ever after the poor people lost their homes and even their lives in a fiery slum clearance blamed on the Christians. Bring on the feasts and the entertainers for the well-to-do while we erect our civic improvement projects on land cleared by the catastrophe. Let the good times roll . . . until the next catastrophe, be it natural or man-made.

At least the global warming prophets of doom have noticed that the unusual activity of the sun may be warming the Earth and its oceans more significantly than they had previously considered. The sunspot activity and solar flares have also been reported with considerable alarm. It may even be more significant than the human activity blamed for global warming or the previously predicted coming ice age.

There have been inklings that natural events may be more powerful than mankind in affecting the planet's ecosystem. The occasional volcanic eruption has caused enough disruption to thumb the planet's nose at our attempts to poison the atmosphere with pollutants. Now the sun is acting up quite out of the control of the major oil companies or other major industries accused of reaping obscene profits while raping the environment.

All this disruption is fitting into the pattern of natural environmental catastrophes predicted to occur right before the Rapture of the Church and the seven years of the Tribulation. The great earthquakes and tsunamis and storms are not necessarily caused by overt acts of God. This world and its sun are aging and showing it.

Meanwhile, the annual cycle drags its feet in my garden. The weather swings between summertime heat and fall cooling. The cold fronts are gathering strength and pushing through the area, dropping temperatures noticeably for very brief periods before the heat returns. We could reach the high 80 degrees F today and only the high 70's tomorrow. The cooler days should be the norm this time of year, not the exception.

I planted some left-over warm weather vegetable seeds in the bare area of the heavily pruned garden, figuring that a long fall might give them time to ripen a crop. If we do return to normal temperatures, they could always add to the compost for the garden. It should be the end of spinach planting weather here.

The two compost tumblers, Rapunzel and Baby, have benefited from the warm weather. I've been tearing up old phone books to feed Rapunzel without shredding them into strips. They get digested fairly well even in chunks in the steamy warmth of its rich contents. Another shredder bit the dust from overwork and will have to be replaced, so Rapunzel's biological colonies are having to work a bit harder than usual.

I finished a third sweater and have almost finished a fourth. I've been chipping away at that organizer list and have it down to about a month of backlogs. I'm feeling better despite having more dental work to do, so I'm getting a bit more done each day.