Oh Snap! (dragon)

The Snapdragons (Antirrhinum majus) are blooming in the LipsYard garden.

They love the sun on the front edge of the perennial bed and will bloom well into fall.

Along with our four colors, Snapdragons also come in lavender and orange.

Some varieties actually have flowers that "snap" open, thus the name.

"Oh Snap!" is what we say to the continual drumbeat of "Drill Now!" as an answer to high gas prices. This would be the energy policy of the Bush administration, and their agent for another term of "more of the same," John McCain.

Guest letter-writer Kimberly Johnson of Milwaukee says:

"Enough talk of drilling already

I am sick to death of reading the same shortsighted garbage about how we need to lift the tax on gasoline and drill the coast into invironmental catastrophe to knock a few cents off of gas prices.

Tax gas more, and use the revenue to fund new infrastructure for alternate plans. How dumb is this populace that when confronted with the end of oil, the only concern is if gas can be cheaper for six months rather than making a switch? That would be a lot cheaper than running the country into the ground when oil prices inevitably skyrocket as the oil wells run dry.

When you have 2 billion people in India and China (to whom, incidentally, we owe trillions of dollars for our national debt) who are using oil at an exponentially incrasing rate, it's not going to be too many years. Many people say 12 - about long enough to fix this mess if lawmakers decide not to be abysmally stupid.

Drive less, and you'll get the same savings as dropping the tax and avert a massive econimic and environmental crisis. Oh, that's right; you don't want to pay an extra 25 cents to drive to the mall to buy Chinese imports.

Please stop this moronic 'drill, drill, drill, drop the tax,' conservative tripe."

Amen sister!