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| We've been eating tomatoes out of the garden now for 3
weeks. I keep thinking there's going to be a great tomato shortage
because there were so few that were ripe at first, but I have to admit
they're coming in faster and faster now. The Early Girl is giving us the
biggest (slightly larger than Roma size, if we're lucky. No, they're
*supposed* to be full size when they ripen), but the Golden Peach, oh,
that lucious plant, is outnumbering it right now. The Golden Peach is a
yellow (supposedly full-size, but again, these are slightly bigger than
cherry tomatos) tomato with a slightly fuzzy skin - I love picking a fully
ripe one and rubbing it on my cheeks. They're very cute. They get this
greenish cape around their stem which ripens into a rosy blush. They're a
clean, sunshiny yellow all the way through, and they taste like...they
taste like the sweetest, succulent and mild (but still tomato-ey) tomatoes
you've ever eaten. I love the Golden Peach plant. I would have an affair
with it if it was human and would let me. It gives me so much joy. The Green Zebra was planted a little later than the Golden Peach, but I keep expecting its fruit to be ripe too. It's hard to tell of course, because these are green striped tomatos (they never get red). I've been impatient, wanting to make salads with all three colors, but I've been picking too many of the green ones, well, green. I'm unsure on flavor. The Brandywine is going nuts. It has the largest fruit of any of them, but none of it is near ripe (it was our longest until maturity). About 2 weeks ago we put int three stakes and ran twine around all the tomato plants, to help hold them up (they have all outgrown those circular wire tomato cages), but the Brandywine is doing its best to pull this structure down. We're buying more stakes on Monday. Behind the tomato row is the lettuce row. We had 6 "salad bowl" (mixed greens) but only 2 Romaine (the other four wilted away). Yesterday I planted 6 new "red sails" plants to fill out the row; red colored leaves seem to have more tolerance for our unrelenting sun. I'm hoping to have lots of lettuce to go with all our tomatoes...I can't wait to start picking my dinner salads out of the garden when I come home. The bell peppers are slowly coming along. We've eaten one purple bell. There are three promising peppers on the yellow, and I put in another yellow plant (with one pepper started on it) in the spot where the corriander used to be. The red bell is disappointing us all. The jalapeno has one pepper on it. Peppers are so damn slow. Of course, the Thai Red Pepper is just producing like mad, just to prove me wrong. David is very pleased with that plant. We missed the birth of our butterfly. I found the chrysallis hanging empty on the purple basil yesterday. I have to admit, I kind of hoped it happend about the same time I finally "broke free" of David. I'm such a goofball like that. Oh, hell, if I was more subtle about it, it would make a great detail in a piece of fiction - something for the college kids to point out in class - look at this parallel! - and get brownie points for. Hm. I'm kinda tired of discussing the garden. I wanna bitch about boys for a minute. No, I love guys, I do. But they're just big kids, aren't they? I found out recently that Aron had melted part of my lawn chair by sitting in it over the furnace. This was months ago, but Sharon just now told me, laughing that I'd not noticed (I was pissed mainly that he didn't have the guts to tell me). The thing is, I'd told him several times not to do that - that it could melt. Since it was my chair, he would always move it away, but always with a muttering indicating I was being too fussy and I didn't know what I was talking about. He also leans back in chairs, another pet peeve of mine (especially since we really don't have enough chairs in the house). What is this random destructiveness that all boys have? Even David, who is so meticulously neat that he doesn't even have a boy stink (you know what I mean), likes to lean hard on my chair or put his tennis shoes on my new bed frame. At least David understands when I tell him I don't want to gum up my new bed with his dirty shoes, but I was surprised he did it in the first place. Another things boys do: flick lighters. This used to drive me nuts when I'd be hanging out with my pot-smoking buddies in college, mainly because it was always my lighter. You're already using more lighter fluid by smoking pot (you have to hold the flame over it longer) and there is always ALWAYS a shortage of "flame". Yet it was inevitable that during the course of the evening someone would pick up a lighter while talking and keep lighting it over and over again. Ooohh, drove me NUTS. I didn't have the guts then to say too much about it - didn't want to be a nag - and I bought a lot of lighters as a result. Nowadays, when a boy resorts to his restless, I'm-still-in-elementary-school behavoir, I just take a deep breath and use my substitute teacher voice, "Aron! I've told you NOT to rock back in that chair!" But it still makes me feel like a bitch. I hate having to nag, but I don't want to just watch as my stuff gets destroyed. Do any of you experience this (either gender)? Is it possible to train them? Do they grow out of it (late 30's maybe?)? Inquiring minds want to know. | ||
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