In a few hours we are off to the airport to retrieve our daughter Sara (she who provided this new website for me to use) - first time we will have her here in a year and a half. We can't wait.
Deer. arggh - they are really good at eventually finding weaknesses in the motion detector sprinkler coverage. BrandyFred and Dwarf Beauty King were the two targets....some nibbles, but the plants will recover.
an interesting irony - the hardest tomatoes to germinate using my typical process is Mexico Midget. Yet - when the volunteer tomatoes appear, they all tend to be that variety, or Coyote - both tiny, their identity is confirmed when they ripen. Pics below of volunteers growing with weigela in a half whiskey barrel, and in the garden in a row which was amended by spent potting mix of many years. Not the foot prints - so, deer again (and argggh! again). This garden is not protected, and the deer successfully located not only volunteer tomatoes, but a few potatoes that I planted after they sprouted in our pantry.
We were visited yesterday by a fellow tomato enthusiast and talented gardener and speaker Brie Arthur. Check out my Facebook page for our first dive into Facebook Live video, and a few pics. It reminded me that although gardening can be quite solitary, spent in countless hours of work serenaded by just the birds, having an interested visitor to share results is absolutely energizing.
Below, find the first victim of our eggplant addiction, just a week or so away from capture. It is not surprising that this first eggplant is part of my work on dehybridizing the very early and productive hybrid Orient Express. I named this particular selection Skinny Twilight...it will soon be joined by its cousins, Twilight Lightning, and Midnight Lightning. A few seed companies are testing them this summer, so I hope that they appear in a few catalogs soon.
The sight below makes me happy! That's it....must get to work (and to the airport!) (psst - one more thought - as I've said before, authors benefit greatly from book reviews - mostly they help us to become better writers, better able to reach our audience with words that are meaningful. So if you have Epic Tomatoes or Growing Veggies in Straw Bales - go for it - no matter which etailer you got it from...and you can use Good Reads too!...thanks!)
