Kinda Like a Blog

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Wow, I haven't updated this blog all year! In truth, the recovery from surgery has kept me from doing much that was noteworthy. But, thankfully, Randy has been a real gem and done everything needed around the house and gardens. He even tilled, planted and kept up the tomato garden. We had a good harvest, not a big harvest but a great variety of wonderful tasty heirloom tomatoes that has kept us happy. Alas, the tomato growing season in Houston is short because of the heat and it is coming to a close. We plant our tomatoes in February and the temperature at nights gets so high so quickly that by the mid-May that the plants stop setting fruit. So, the very end of May until the beginning of July is our entire season of harvest. We've enjoyed everything from small teardrop shaped "Yellow Pear" tomatoes, to big 3 pound fruit from the variety "Mexico". We always race the squirrels for our tomatoes. This year I felt so lucky to have those big fruit from the "Mexico" which grew close to the trunk and were almost completely hidden by the foliage. The "Mexico" fruit hid from the squirrels until the end of last week. Over the weekend, we had 4 big "Mexico" green tomatoes hiding under the foliage. Monday morning, the squirrels had partially eaten one while it was still on the vine so I cut it off and we 3 left. Tuesday morning, I cut another huge fruit which the squirrels had partially eaten and we had 2 left. Tuesday afternoon I walked to the garden as was greeted by this trophy sitting on the top of our fence.

Now there was one left. (Actually, when I look way up underneath the foliage I find one other small one hidden far up in the middle so technically there are two although it might be too hot for the small one to finish growing.) I left the trophy on the top of the fence, hoping it will keep the squirrels busy and they will leave the rest alone. So far, the squirrels have moved the trophy around on the fence, continued to eat it and have left the rest alone (at least they were all still there when I checked this morning.

Ah, well, one year the squirrels ate every single tomato that my seven plants produced so we do feel lucky to have harvested what they have let us have.