Tomato time

One thing about home grown tomatoes - they're not as perfect as the perfectly colored, perfectly round tomatoes you see in the grocery, but are they ever good.  Three kinds here, Brandywine, Celebrity and Roma.  I see pasta in my future.

Tomato heaven

It's almost tomato avalanche season again.  Here are my two Brandywine plants:

They're in front of an 8 ft. fence, by the way.  Now THAT'S a tomato plant!

So close.......

That's the first of my Roma tomatoes, which I was watching in anticipation of spaghetti sauce to come, until today I found it on the ground with a large bite taken out of it. Rabbit, chipmunk or squirrel? Who knows - the only thing that matters is that it wasn't me enjoying this tomato!

Tomato land

Every year I plant tomatoes. And by August of every year, I am tying the vines on the fence, stabilizing the tomato cages with bamboo stakes and generally trying to keep the vines from toppling the flimsy tomato cages you normally find in the garden center. Well, not this year. I got myself some by-gosh TOMATO CAGES. They're lovely. Heavy gage wire, tall, collapsible for easy storage. They weren't as cheap as the round ones, but they are going to do the job. They're a little hard to see against the gray fence, but here's what I mean: They are just great. I installed them when I planted my tomatoes, herbs and the annual flower bed today. You can't see much because of the shadows but it's looking very spiffy:

How nice to get started on the summer chores. It was a beautiful day to work outside this afternoon, too. Back outside tomorrow to plant more stuff. I love it.

A little too bucolic for me

This is my neighbor's vegetable garden. These are my neighbor's chickens. FYI, I don't live in the country. I'm inside the city limits with a population of about 175,000, and nearly half a million in the metro area. He has rabbits, too. I'm not thrilled about this.

And as I was picking tomatoes I was stung twice on the forehead by a wasp. My day has not been good.

ADDENDUM: There is at least one rooster in the bunch that I didn't see before. He was crowing this morning. Oh, drat. And this is what the city says about it:

"It shall be unlawful for any person to keep or possess swine, goats, chickens or roosters within the City on property other than agriculturally zoned land, unless such animals are kept on a track of land containing five or more contiguous acres." This is happening on a 3/8 acre lot zoned single family residential.

The only question is, do I want to cause a stink about this? Stuff like this between neighbors is a minefield. I guess I'll listen to the rooster for a while. I don't think the old lady next door is going to be as restrained if she hears them, so this might be interesting. Hopefully, they'll get tired of the chickens soon. They've had the rabbits for years, though, and I can't for the life of me see why. They just sit in their pen and the children don't even pet them. Poor bunnies.

A gardener of extremes

From this: To this:

How's this for a tomato? After a plethora of golf ball size tomatoes from the "Early Girl" variety, my "Mr. Stripey" plant started producing these monsters. I included the drinking glass to illustrate scale. That tomato's almost 6" in diameter. One thing about heirloom tomatoes, they may not be pretty but they are delicious.

What it lacks in size it makes up in numbers

Our Early Girl variety tomato plant is amazing. The fruits are small, not much bigger than cherry tomatoes as you can see, but there's a lot of them. These were picked this morning, along with one Rutgers. I'm having trouble keeping up with the harvest. I mean, I like tomatoes and everything, but fourteen in one day?

Rushing it, just a little

Talk about your over-achieving garden plants! I picked these last night. There was another but a bunny got to it first. Admittedly, the variety is called "Early Girl" and I bought large plants, not those little slips in peat pots, but really! May 23rd? That must be a new record.

They are a bit small, but they are a lovely color and fully ripe. Don't know yet if they're good tomatoes or taste like tennis balls, like those in the grocery. We'll test them out in a salad tonight.

Flowers and tomatoes and herbs, oh my!

Just a few terrible pictures of my handiwork. Sorry, I took them through the sliding door so they're not very good.

The flower bed/tomato patch: Patio planters:

Here's a close-up of one:

That's not all, but it gives you an idea why I'm tired and pretty sore from crawling around on the ground yesterday.

Gardening - day one

Everything is planted except my manger baskets because I forgot to buy new coco fiber liners. The pots flanking the driveway were a nightmare. Roots from last year's ferns were so thick that I dumped the entire clump of dirt out on a tarp in one big pot-shaped mass and attacked it with a garden fork. I could only reuse about half the soil from each pot. The rest was more roots than dirt. That took far longer than I planned, and that's why I didn't get to the furniture today. Well, that and loosening the dirt in my flower beds. Gotta love that Garden Claw!

And I filled the birdbath, so tell the birds, the pool is open!

Let the gardening commence!

Well, I'm on my way out to work in the yard. I've got flowers and vegetables to plant and patio furniture to wash and set up. Let me see, have I got everything?

Sunglasses? Check. Sunblock? Check. Box of Kleenex (it's pollen season)? Check. Towels for perspiration? Check. Cordless phone, thermos of water, extra key so I don't accidentally lock myself out? Check, check, check.

Gee, what a load. I'm only going 50 feet from the house, after all. Oh well, better to be prepared!

Outdoors

Here is what my mowing guy built in the back yard yesterday. He put in the landscape timbers around my birdbath flower bed earlier (you can't see them because they're covered by the last of the angelonia) and I laid out an addition on either side to hold tomato and pepper plants, herbs and flowers. The new beds are each seven feet long but only three feed wide, so I can reach the back to weed. It will be an improvement at watering time because the large pots I used to grow tomatoes before, while effective, dried out too fast.

One of my backyard neighbors had the mowing guy build garden beds in his back yard yesterday, too. It must be the nip in the air; everyone is already looking forward to next spring. I thought he had placed one in a rather funny location; it was too near the side fence and shaded by the small trees on the other side in his neighbor's yard. Well, this morning I heard chain saws and looked out to find two guys with a saw and a ladder reaching across the fence and chopping the trees down to a four foot tall bare trunk. I'm a little confused. His neighbor had been clearing out the scrubby trees in her back yard because their proximity to the house worried her. She also had taken out an old shed building which was next to these threes that were topped. I don't know if she struck a deal with the guy across the fence to help cut them down, or what. I hope she's not going to have a really big surprise when she gets home from church.

And, since I was joined by the dogs next door while I was outside, consummate escape artists that they are, here are some pictures of them too: This is Fritz, erstwhile alpha dog of the little pack. He's far too nervous to make a good leader, but hey, someone had to do it. He's only about 10 pounds and not exceedingly smart. He looks a little mean but he's not. I think he would have loved to be an ankle biter but he was too scared. We're great buddies now. Funny how dog biscuits can do that...

And this is Sparkle. She's a tiny thing, barely five pounds. Fritz is small but he towers over her. He also tries to boss her around but she does what she wants. She's the leading escape artist of the pair, finding places they can get under the fence. Sparkle is needy. That's actually an understatement. If you're outside with her and not paying attention to her, she barks at you as if to say "Look at me!" She's a complete mess but you can't help but love her.

Their owner tries to keep them home but they are so small they can slip out nearly anywhere. They come scampering over whenever they hear us outside, to get a cookie and a little pat. I think they are lonely since my neighbor died last year. They were his dogs exclusively and they took it very hard. So, I'm trying to give them a little affection. I can't resist a hard luck story.

First tomatoes of the year

Here they are, happily esconced on my kitchen windowsill, waiting to become a primary ingredient in tomorrow's BLT's for brunch.

The subconscious interior designer

I guess sometimes your subconscious has to jump in and save you.

When I went to Hancock's to buy the indoor/outdoor fabric for the patio chair seat covers, I was disappointed than there was nothing with black or gray to coordinate better with my wrought iron furniture. The piece I picked did have that lovely teal-y green stripe, which is one of my favorite colors, but I worried how it would look on the gray/black wrought iron. After they were finished, I was happy with them, both in color and in how the construction turned out. Today, as I stood looking out the sliding door onto the patio, something struck me. Beside me were my tab-top drapes, with the teal and beige and gold and brown checks:Beside the drapes is my beige reading chair with the teal throw:Then I look outside to the chair covers, with teal and beige and gold and brown stripe:And further out in the yard is my teal ceramic birdbath: Perfectly color coordinated, from inside to outside. Everything you see at the window, from the inside decor framing your view to the outside furniture and lawn accessories, matches. This is kind of neat, but definitely wasn't intentional.

Sort of like an idiot savant interior decorator.

The solution to the pinch-y chair

So here's what I did for the chairs that caught and tore your clothes:

It's a seat cover that ties at four corners. It's not padded. It does work well, makes the chair a little more comfortable, and, oh miracle, didn't cost much since the indoor/outdoor fabric was on sale for 50% off.

This stuff is hard to sew. You can't iron it, you can hardly pin it, and it's stiff as a board. Hope it wears as well as it appears it will. After making several of these, I was definitely done with handling this fabric.



I thought I'd show you a picture of my balloon flower, also called Chinese bellflower (scientific name platycodon grandiflorus), which is just starting to bloom. It's just the most alien looking little thing! Below the flowers you can see a developing bud, which as it matures looks exactly like a hot air balloon. They're kind of a pain to grow because the flower stalks get 3 feet tall and must be staked. This plant started out a white flower, but crossed itself with another blue one, I believe, and turned this light purple color. Never had that happen before.

Yellow Japanese Iris

These are the yellow irises that my sister-in-law gave me in March. The gentleman that lives across the street from my mother was digging and thinning an iris patch and knew that my sister-in-law loved gardening, so he gave her a heaping paper grocery bag of plants. She couldn't use all of them so she gave me five. I had just straightened out my side yard flower bed, so I planted them between the roses where they would get sun.

When she said yellow irises, I was thinking about the pale yellow bearded irises I had seen. I didn't know they were these vibrantly colored Japanese iris. The shade of yellow is quite spectactular, a bright lemon color. Here's a close up of a bloom showing the color to best advantage. I hope these multiply and spread, because they are quite showy.And here's a couple of pictures of the strange mushrooms which have sprouted near my oak tree during this wet weather. This one looks like something from an old B science fiction movie. And this one is the most beautiful orange color. Notice the nibble marks on the edge. I'm sure it would be poisonous to people, and now I'm worrying about the squirrels and chipmunks. No bodies have shown up yet, so hopefully they weren't harmed.

Heat, humidity, gnats - and brownies

I spend about 2 1/2 hours outside this morning, weeding and watering, and came in so tired my knees were shaking. It's in the mid-eighties with the humidity pegging the meter (ah, summer in the southeast - and it isn't even summer yet) and it's hard to describe how a temperature in the mid-eighties can be so oppressive.

By the time I finished I looked like someone dipped me in a bucket of water. No wind and high humidity so nothing ever evaporates and you get hotter and hotter. By next month it will be really ugly, and will stay that way until September.

Oh, and let's not forget the gnats. My lawn guy calls them the East Brainerd gnats, because he swears where he lives north of the city he doesn't have them. Don't stand around with your mouth open in my yard, or something will fly in. So you're walking around in sodden clothes, scratched up by the roses from trying to weed around them, lugging a heavy garden hose, surrounded by a flying cloud of devil-bugs. Oh, yeah, gardening's fun.

My husband asks why I do it. Well, I like to see flowers growing and I don't want the yard to look like an abandoned lot. Since the lawn guy mows, I get out of the worst of it, so I try to keep everything else in shape. And my latest landscaping additions look pretty heartening so far. The new bushes are putting out lots of growth, the new azaleas are blooming, and my tomato plants are setting fruit. I may be a little miserable out there while I'm working but once I come in and shower, everything looks a lot better.

Now to the brownies. My husband tore a recipe out of the newspaper yesterday: "Best-ever Brownies". With a name like that, they must know they're setting themselves up for a fall. Wait - it gets better - with: Nancy Reagan's Frosting. First off, nothing against the lady but Nancy Reagan is about a size minus 2 and probably never weighed more than 80 pounds in her life. You KNOW she doesn't eat frosting, much less cook it.

So, how were they? The brownies were appropriately fudge-y and rich, but a little thin. The recipe specified a 9 inch pan, but I think using an 8 inch pan would be better. The frosting is a cooked type and was very rich but a little grainy, and really more like a glaze. The recipe made twice as much as needed, so I put the rest in a Tupperware bowl in the refrigerator. I just checked, and I now have a chocolate brick. I have no idea how to make it smooth enough to use. I just checked the newspaper's website and the recipes aren't available. If they are added to the archives, I will post a link so you can try them too.

This and that

Tanya blogged about a home-built ironing board her husband made for her here and it got me to thinking about ironing boards. First, they are getting pretty expensive. Tanya said that a good ironing board costs the equivalent of $130 in Japan. Amazing! Bed Bath and Beyond sells a good Rowenta board for $99, and even that still seems too much. I have a 18 inch wide ironing board my mom bought me for Christmas several year ago at Walmart. If she paid more than $35, I would be very surprised. So, why are they so much now? Does nobody iron anymore? Is permanent press and casual clothing the death knell for ironing? As long as there are quilters, there will be ironing boards sold, I guess. This is mine. As you can see, it sort of takes up the room in the kitchen where I sew, so I usually use my tabletop board, and save this one for pressing borders and full quilt tops. Secondly, I want to recruit the help of gardening quilters to identify this plant. A landscaper told me it was an amaryllis but didn't know the variety. Maybe he was right, maybe not, but I would surely like to know what kind it is. As you can see, the stalk has 5 or 6 blooms that develop sequentially, each lagging the previous by a few days. The blooms are 4 to 4.5 inches wide.

Can anyone tell me what variety this is? Or, maybe I'm wrong and it's not an amaryllis at all!

Back yard idyll

Between the rain storms I have been able to enjoy the back yard only sporadically, so I took a minute to do a few outdoor chores before it rains on me again. There were branches to put on the curb for pickup and roses to deadhead. The branch pickup is an especially nice benefit of living inside city limits. If you have any trees or bushes at all, there is always something to dispose of, and having one day a month where any lawn waste put at the curb will be whisked away is a big help.

This is my favorite corner of the back yard. There is a small peony which has unfortunately been beaten up by the rainstorms, three Gumpo azaleas just starting to bloom, a lantern, a bird feeder, a birdbath and a lovely mature crape myrtle that blooms the most gorgeous hot pink in July. There was a robin enjoying this corner earlier too. He took a bath and had a bite to eat. Scaevola is one of the most dependable hanging plants I use here. It seems to love the heat, the hotter the better, and as long as you water regularly it will bloom through October. I like the purple variety especially.

Here is an amarylis starting to bud. I have no idea what variety they are- they were here when I moved in. The bloom is large and slightly varigated pink clustered five or six on the stem. I've never even had to dig them up. They winter over in the ground here very happily.

And here are my red old-fashioned roses among the reworked fence border in the side yard. I have been waiting for them to bloom with anticipation. These are another flower I inherited, and I have no idea what variety they are. They are vigorous climbers and would scamper up a trellis (or even the fence) if I didn't keep them in line. The blooms are rather flat when opened fully and have yellow stamens. The japanese beetles don't seem to like them nearly as much as the white rosebush in the back yard, which is almost identical except for color but gets bugs and diseases much more readily.

And finally, a peek at things to come. . .

the tomatoes are beginning to set fruit. Yum!

Invasion of the little furry striped things

Remember these guys? The ones that lived under my house and chewed up my phone wires and wrecked havoc?

I managed to close up the rusted-out foundation vents with hardware cloth, and assumed that after they were denied access to the "Chipmunk Hilton", they would go somewhere else to make their little burrows and live their little furry lives.

Au contraire.

They aren't living under my house anymore, but they sure didn't leave and there seem to be more of them than ever! The cat and I have been watching the patio for the last 30 minutes and have seen at least a dozen of them, zipping around, digging in the flower pots, climbing the nandinas, poking around in the mulch border under the azaleas, scavenging the yard for dropped birdseed.

Were there always this many, and they spent most of the time in the crawlspace so they weren't seen? Or have they come outside, blinked, said "This isn't so bad" and proceeded to make new burrows and invite all their friends? Either way, the colony definitely has expanded.

This is all because I like to feed the birds. There's not a critter in critter-dom that's going to turn down a sunflower seed. I have fought these little vermin for years. I had to buy metal cans to store the birdseed and tie the lids on with bungee cords because they raided the stash. I have a two door resin cabinet that sits on the patio next to the chimney. It holds my gardening tools and supplies and was also my storage for birdseed, until they chewed a hole in the door! (Luckily, it's a hollow core door and they only chewed the outside surface. I would hate to have to put Bondo patches on the patio accessories because the little varmints can't keep their teeth to themselves.)

Yesterday I went out to the patio to water the flats of unplanted annuals and heard a "scritch scritch scritch" which seemed to come from the bottom of the cabinet. My first thought was that I had accidentally trapped one inside when I got the watering can. I even opened the doors and poked around inside with a bamboo stake, among the bags of fertilizer and tools, to make sure. Nobody ran out. The cabinet sits on a couple of scraps of 2x4 to keep it off the concrete. I decided they're under there in that little gap. Oh, great, now they're trying to chew out the bottom of the cabinet too.

I wonder if I could rent the little rat dogs next door to scare them off?