Bounty

Slightly over-sunny shot of some of the things coming out of my garden these days: Anaheim peppers, yellow squash, alien spaceship squash (AKA patty pan), bell peppers, lemon cucumbers, and assorted tomatoes. Not pictured: about a zillion other tomatoes, eggplant.

I'm finally getting to the point where I need to start freezing or canning some of the tomatoes. It took a bit, because OH MAN I love tomatoes! I've been cooking a few to go with eggs in the morning, making tomato salads with nothing but tomato, a little sweet onion, salt and olive oil (LOTS of tomato salads), eating them plain, adding to sautéed vegetables at dinner. It's nice to finally have leftovers.

Tomato varieties definitely invited back to the party next year:

• Sungold cherry tomatoes (in fact, I might need two, because I never seem to have enough--these are incredibly sweet and firm and flavorful!)
• Cascade tomatoes, because they ripened before all else, have a nice compact bush, and have been crazy productive. Great salad tomatoes, these.

Tomato varieties which *may* come back:

• Heinz paste tomatoes. They've been really productive, and the tomatoes are nicely meaty (not very seeded or juicy), which should work well for sauce...but I haven't tried yet.
• Black Prince. These are cool looking, and really tasty...but they've also been very prone to cracking, which makes me sad.

Tomato variety to which I'll bid adieu:

• Yellow pear. I really wanted to love these, but compared to the Sungolds, they're mushy and bland. The Sungolds are kind of mind-blowing, so it's not really a fair competition, but so it goes.

I need to decide what to do with all those peppers, too! It might be a good time to buy a bunch of tomatillos (or use up some greenish tomatoes) and make me a big pot o' something resembling chili verde.

Scattered (UJTU)

1. How do people travel all the time and still manage a normal life? I went on one five day trip from June 27th to July 2nd, and I'm *still* all discombobulated. I'd originally hoped to finish the first draft of Mind Jinx (my current work in progress) by mid-July, but that's out the window. Haven't recovered my usual routines AT ALL. New estimate: end of summer at best. I'd also hoped to write a trip report, but I feel like I'm a bit past the window for that. May yet take a stab at it, however.

2. My garden has grown tremendously. I have strawberries, peas, carrots, lettuce, and am starting to get cherry tomatoes. The big tomatoes and summer squash are right behind, and I have a baby eggplant and baby delicata squash coming along nicely. Now if I can just manage to water faithfully.... Western Washington may have a reputation for rain, but it pretty much all hits in the winter and spring months. Around the 4th of July, a switch is tripped, and it's high desert here. Nice in that you can pretty much plan on weekend outdoor activities without worrying about wet, but it does mean you suddenly go from plants drowning to plants dying of thirst, and you have to develop new habits instantly.

Sweet potato vine, just for fun!

First full sized tomato (a Cascade) is changing color...

Bitty baby bell peppers

Summer squash coming along

Baby delicata squash

Eggplant! First time I've seen these growing....

Mmmm, sugar snap peas....

3. I'm in the middle of a major music muddle: for *years* I've intended to sit down and redo my music library by re-ripping all my old CDs and then re-adding any digital purchases from backup/cloud. I had a lot of gaps and strays and tracks that weren't titled consistently, and it was driving me crazy. I'm thinking about upgrading to a new computer sometime this year, and chances are it won't have a built in CD drive, so now seemed as good a time as any to tackle this project. I'm going to get it all tidied up and then back up to a decent external drive, so I have a clean starting point from here on out.

It's turning out to be even more daunting than I anticipated. I'd forgotten just how much music I've acquired over the years, not to mention Teaching Company courses and the like. But re-ripping has been an interesting walk down memory lane: I still like a lot of the same music I did way back when, but my buying and primary listening habits have fluctuated, and going back through the albums is like excavating layers of the last fifteen or twenty years of my life from sedimentary rock. Early classical period...flatpicking guitar period...folk rock...middle early classical...Irish. Etc. It's all pretty mixed, honestly, but every so often I come across an album that all but defined a given time in my life and which I've not listened to in a long while. Fascinating how a few notes can trigger a flood of half-forgotten memories.

How Does My Garden Grow?

This weekend friends with a truck helped me haul dirt and fill all my Smart Pots, so the garden is beginning to take real shape!

I have a few seedlings which may or may not survive transplanting (cucumbers and tomatoes), planted summer squash and delicata squash this weekend, and hope to get tomato plants, pepper plants, and onion starts in the next week. Sugar snap peas are already growing in the fake ceramic pot to the left in the top photo.

I've labeled the pots with index cards for now, with the descriptions written in bright blue, fade-proof Uni-ball Vision ink. Time will tell how the paper holds up to repeated watering and drying out. Hopefully it lasts long enough that the plants have grown enough I don't need ID--that's really all I ask.

And now...we wait!