Marlin posing under the Bougainvillea, for some reason.

Whether it is my age, or the love Sue and I have for living here in Hendersonville, or all of the wonderful hiking opportunities, time seems to be racing by faster than ever. It seems to be just yesterday that I was planning what to grow in 2022 - and here we are, most seeds saved, observations made, and most of the wonderful tomatoes but a fond memory.

This morning I made the rounds of the yard with my phone, snapping pictures of things that caught my eye. Most were flowers, with a few late planted dwarf tomatoes and colorful bell peppers, finally producing well in what was a rather odd growing season. The gallery below captures the flowers - you can click left or right to view all of the images. There are rubdeckia, buds on mum country girl, a selection of different salvias, sedum, a nice dahlia ,balloon flower (somehow still blooming) and more. The butterflies, bees and hummingbirds are all very happy with our flower gardens this year.

The bell pepper plants are finally doing what I had hoped, and you can see lots of colorful bells hidden in the foliage. The eggplants continue to thrive, as does Green Columnar basil. Even the 5 remaining Glory F2 dwarf tomato project plants have fruit that should give me at least one idea of size, color and flavor of each selection.

Please ask anything about any of the pictures in comments to this blog.

Koda and Marlin about to have a romp near the flower garden

As far as plans and projects - the planning will take place starting now, leading up to January. I will determine how many strawbales and container, how many and which tomatoes, eggplants and peppers, melons, cukes, beans and summer squash. I suspect it will be quite a different selection when compared to my first three gardens here.

With regard to projects - I’ve received a lot of seed requests, and hope to start filling them within the next few weeks. The dwarf tomato project will continue to wind down. The main project will be completing the book on the project, which will take up most of my time between now and next spring. The main challenge will be finding time in the mornings (when I write best) to do so - meaning more carefully scheduling our up to now highly impromptu morning hikes. I will also be continuing to publish Off The Vine articles (aiming to finish the reposting of the entire series by the end of the year), and blog posts on my tomato seed collection (which has now been resumed).

That should keep me out of trouble!