Use your fingers.  Count off a decade of ten consecutive numbers -- any ten consecutive numbers.  Notice what number finishes the decade.  Count off the next ten numbers, starting with the same finger.  Notice how the number beginning the second decade has the same last digit as the number beginning the first decade.  Notice how the number ending the second decade has the same last digit as the number ending the first decade. 

Moving from left to right, starting with the left pinkie:
First decade: 
13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22
Second decade:
23  24  25  26  27  28  29  30  31  32  ~~and so forth. 

The basic one to ten count:
 1     2     3    4    5    6     7     8    9  10
and the basic 11 to 20 count. 
11  12  13  14  15  16  17  18  19   20  ~~and so forth. 

Notice that Common Era annual numbering goes from 1 Before Common Era (1BCE) to 1Common Era (1CE) with no intervening Year Zero.  The count starts with ONE.  Ignore any religious theories.  At best , they are based on faulty data and besides, they're irrelevant.
The 21st century started  01 01 2001;  so did the first decade.  The first decade of the 21st century will end 31 12  2010, not tomorrow. 

We were lucky in the storm --we weren't two of the nearly 200K people who lost power last night.  We got at least four inches of rain locally.  The recently dug flower bed seems lighly compacted.  The weather for tomorrow is 70s and clear/cloudy.  With all that going right, I planted some cool tolerant --more than usual-- sweet peas.  It's late, for winter bloom a month ago is the recommended time, but with warm temps for the rest of the week, I hope the seeds will be encouraged. 

I must remember to spread snail death this afternoon/tomorrow morning.  I like SlugGo. 

It turns out I like the Sookie Stackhouse books and series, and I dislike the Valerie Nelson books and series.  I wonder if it's all Harris/Huff?  All HBO/CBC?  It's sure something.  And that's despite Valerie's series having a much cuter vampire.  Valerie's dialogue does suck, which matters a lot to me. 

3 October is the end of ALA Banned Books Month.  Read faster. 

The squirrels have started hiding nuts in my potted plants.  --I found an unshelled peanut in one of the iris pots.  Earlier this year I found an acorn.  Now, there are no oak trees around here.  Three falls ago, I took acorns from a Safeway parking lot (California Live Oak, I don't know which exactly) and put a double handful into a seed flat, and, after 6 weeks in the frige, put it outside (in about Feb.  I wanted to try an experiment in seedling root cutting, a very useful procedure in raising bonsai.  It didn't work --Oak cotyledons are basically the whole acorn, and the seedling is top heavy.  Since the procedure involves uprooting the seedling and truncating the tap root, the replanted baby oak just falls right over.  Waiting until the cotyledons dry and fall off means waiting until the root is too old.  It's already branched.  Rooting seedlings works well on pines and maples, just not oaks.  But I digress.)  Since I had the only acorns on the block, the squirrel had to steal one from the seed flat, carry it across the yard and replant it in the Masdevallia pot where I found it.  What was wrong with where it was?  If the squirrel dug it up, why didn't it eat it?  I'm just glad the squirrel took one of the duds.
This fall, I'm using old hanging basket frames as protection.  It looks silly --hell, it looks ugly-- but the plants can't take being dug up and replanted every other day.  The hoopskirt daffodils were already disturbed by the dirt eating dog. 

So earlier this summer I put the large pots of daffs and bulbous iris up in the storage shelves.  They had blossomed, grown, and then the foliage had dried and turned brown.  I thought I was done with them until next February.  Certainly, I was at least done with them until the rains, which might be as early as November?  or maybe even October?  Plants rarely go tamely along with the gardener's plans.  The bulbous iris and some of the daffs, the reed stem jonquils and the hoopskirt ones, are emerging from dormancy.  If I had a walk-in refrigerator, I would have kept them in there and mid-summer --all right, late summer-- sprouting would not have occurred.  I gave in.  I moved the pots out into the sun and, much to the interest of the dogs, watered them with diluted fish emulsion.  The sprouting iris look very vigorous, while the reed stem jonquils are more relaxed.  I had planned to divide jonquils, but I can't do that this late in their personal spring. 

The glads have a nasty fungus.  It's recommended by the paper's doctor to rip out current growth and bulbs and not replant for six months. 

It's not just that the rust is ugly and weakens the plant:  the ulcers may admit viruses --which can lead to breaks of color, like having one blue petal in a maroon flower.  Whatever I do, I won't burn them.  Spores can be dispersed rather than destroyed. 

I can do without glads. 

A more troubling thought is that the glad with the color break is growing where I used to have a dahlia that developed color streaks.  And while this is in a raised bed and I can --theoretically, not practically-- remove the soil and replace it. 

This problem calls for more tea. 

So a gladiola spike has many florets, arranged one above the other.  The flowers tend to face alternately left or right.  They're all on the same stalk, growing from a single bulb.  So why does a long time bulb ((although glads use up the old bulb growing the leaves and flowers, then the leaves feed the new bulb that grows --generally-- above the old, but it all happens in the same place, so the question identity/serial replacement is more or less moot))  --so why, as I was writing, this summer do the flowerets that dress left have one petal that is blue, with all the other petals on the stalk remaining the original dark maroon? 

Things to avoid.
What's wrong with this paragraph?

Ken'ishi's extended blade cast a ribbon of morning sunlight onto the ground at his feet.  He looked down the curved edge of his upturned blade at  the man who wanted to kill him.  Takenaga's eye narrowed as he studeied Ken'ishi's unusual stance and his unusual blade with its antique-style curvature.  Silver Crane's hilt felt good in his hands, like a part of him.  He braced his feet wide apart and dug his worn wooden sandals deeper into the dirt of the road, to ensure they would not slip.  His body faced to the side, and he gripped the hilt near his chin, looking over his left shoulder toward his enemy. ---opening paragraph, volume one:  Ronin Trilogy

After the third sentence, the Reader has no idea who he and his refers to. 

Smithsonian Magazine has an article on a lovely river park in Alabamah.  The river is the Cahaba, and it's known among native flower fans as the only place Cahaba Lilies are found.  The SM has pictures, and it's obvious from them that the plant in question is not a lily.  In fact, it is  Hymenocallis coronaria. Which, according to one of my enecyclopedia is a member of the Amaryllis family.  It's a beautiful plant, and if you have a clean, rapidly flowing, shallow river, easy to grow.  See pictures:  http://www.pbase.com/stoneraven/cahaba  and the current Smithsonian Magazine. 

Speaking of Amaryllis, the naked ladies (A. belladonna, not to be confused with Hippeastrum sps.) are sending up their annual flower stalks.  It's long after the leaves have vanished, and the stalks are there rising out of bare earth.  They're pretty enough, but space hogs and pink, so are not for me.  One appeared in my front yard --don't ask me how-- and when I got around to weeding it --they go dormant, between growing leaves, storeing up food, and blossoming, so I tended to forget them-- weeding it out, there were 9 or more softball sized bulbs.  I gave some to a friend, who said that though she never got around to planting them, they bloomed freely.  It's a pity they're pink.

As for the back yard --too high in unmown grass.  Garden proper has ripening tomatoes and over-run basil.  Dahlias are erratic, and I hope to weed a plot for them behind the tomatoes.  The neighbor's passion flower vine is fine.  We were disappointed to discover that for fruit, you need a pollinator and the right species.  On the other hand, passion flower is food for caterpillars of gulf fritillary butterfly, which may be found here and elsewhere.  If you want butterflies, you put up with caterpillars.