I haven't kept up on the FDA's latest position on stevia (if you have, please leave a comment), so I don't know whether this super-sweet herb is now legal for import. Last I heard, the American Botanical Council was petitioning for recognition as a GRAS herb ("Generally Recognized as Safe"). You can listen to a fairly technical discussion of this issue with Mark Blumenthal (American Botanical Council). If you don't know what stevia is or how to grow it, you can read about it here. If you're interested in finding out why import has been banned in the U.S., go here. Short version: it's opposed by the sweetener industry. Of course.
Whatever the progress on the legal end of things, my stevia plant is growing happily--and yes, it is legal to grow stevia in your garden. I bought my plant from Carolee's Herb Farm when I was there in April, and it thrived, even during the drought. I harvested it this morning, and am drying it my dehydrator. I use it mostly for tea, although one of my favorite muffin recipes (Oatmeal Apple Pecan Muffins) includes stevia as a sweetener. With obesity and Type 2 diabetes looming as huge threats (thanks to our addiction to calorie-dense sweeteners), stevia could be part of the answer.
Cool and damp here. Many of our native perennials went into dormancy during the record heat and drought of last summer and have been deceived into thinking it's spring. The crepe myrtles are blooming, as is the trumpet vine and crossvine, the pyracanthus (which is bearing red berries at the same time). I've even seen some Bradford pears in bloom. The rain is pushing the fall garden into production: lots of peas and green beans right now. We're still in a serious rainfall deficit, over 27" over the past 24 months, but things are looking up as El Nino intensifies out in the Pacific. Reading more about climate change: this week, Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers. If you haven't read a good book on the subject, that's a place to start.
Hoping to finish The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree this week. Cancelled a couple of trips to Austin so I can focus on the book. Lots of little cleanup/fix-up details to attend to.
Reading note. 1986 marks the year that humans reached Earth's carrying capacity, and ever since we have been running the environmental equivalent of a deficit budget, which is sustained only by plundering our capital base. The plundering takes the form of overexploiting fisheries, overgrazing pasture until it becomes desert, destroying forests, and polluting our oceans and atmosphere, which in turn leads to the large number of environmental issues we face. In the end, though, the environmental budget is the only one that really counts.--Tim Flannery