I thought things would slow down, but they haven’t. My list of ‘shoulds’ keeps getting longer. However, there some things that I absolutely MUST get done in the next two days. I’ve cut the potatoes to make lots more spud-buds with trailing eyes and they are starting to shrivel badly. I have to get them into the garden fast. But first I have to get out my trusty rototiller and grind up the weeds that have been flourishing becasue I’ve neglected the beds for too long. Damn, but this back to nature thing is a lot of work.

There’s a small forest of trees growing between the interlocking bricks on the front steps. Damn maple keys will root anywhere. I sprayed them on Sunday with weed killer but it must have been old becasue the plants are barely wilted. Back to stoop labour to pinch them out from the gaps in the stones. Bad for my back; bad for my nails. Arrrggghhhh. I must admit that my motivation is flagging – for everything. Tomorrow, tomorrow….what movie was that from? I’ll check on that tomorrow.

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Have you played with Google Labs’ Ngram Viewer? It’s an addicting tool that lets you search for words and ideas in a database of 5 million books from across centuries. Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel show us how it works, and a few of the surprising things we can learn from 500 billion words.