It’s about ten thousand degrees outside, and I am physically worthless today, so my outdoor activities have consisted of nothing more than watering the plants on the porch and training the snap peas to grow on the trellis. Did you know, if you are really patient, you can actually see the little feelers gripping onto the thing you want them to grip onto? Well, you can, but you have to be really, really patient … like fifteen minutes worth of patient.

And as if to thumb their nose at me, those Better Boy tomatoes (I’d been calling them Best Boy, which is wrong) grew a couple of inches in the last 24 hours, and one of them now has blooms on it. I guess I have to let them live.

I’m beginning to consider that I need to think of things to do with a lot of tomatoes, because I am now beginning to suspect I am going to have a lot of tomatoes later this summer.

In other garden news, those two banana peppers are getting bigger! I didn’t even have to use the macro lens on the camera this time!

My plan this afternoon had been to go out and plant some flower seeds under the little tree in the front yard. I grabbed my garden tools and headed out there to do battle with the Bermuda Grass currently growing under said tree. Well, I chopped and chopped and chopped, and I tried to pull that grass up, but I got nowhere with it. I gave up. I hate Bermuda Grass, but it makes up about 50% of the grass in the yard, so we can’t exactly kill it all. Replacing all the sod in the front yard is not in the budget.

I then moved on to the end of the flowerbed that Lin had started removing the grass and weeds from. I cleaned it up some more and planted a whole bunch of old seeds there: sunflowers, marigolds, and two others whose names I can’t recall. These seeds are really old and past their use-by date. I have no idea if anything will actually come up. I’ll just water it and keep the weeds out, and we’ll see what happens. Something is bound to come up.

Then the stupid rabbits will probably eat it.

I might try again under that tree tomorrow, depending on how I feel. I’m all hormonal, crampy and unhappy, and chopping around, even the little I did, didn’t make that any better. In fact, my neck is killing me from the chopping and pulling. My back isn’t too happy either. But I really want something other than Bermuda Grass under that tree, and I have a bunch more seeds, both old and new, to use up. I want some more flowers in my yard!

Puttering in the yard was the only thing of note I did all day.

Tomorrow I’d like to putter in the yard some more and do an hour in the Box Room, now that the trash bin is empty again. I can finally throw more stuff away! Yippee!

This is a different plant from the one I posted the photo of the other day. This Sugar Snack tomato had no tomatoes at all on it yesterday morning, and by yesterday evening, it had tiny tomatoes popping out all over the place … and more blooms!

I have no idea how long it takes these cherry tomatoes to ripen. I have never grown cherry tomatoes before. All I know is I am so impatient to eat one!

Grow tiny tomatoes! Grow!

When I wasn’t being bothered by Annoying Boy yesterday afternoon, I spent a good long time sitting out on the porch watching my plants grow and reading. It was a beautiful day, and I didn’t want to miss the chance to welcome each tiny tomato as it popped into existence. You may think I am joking, but I am not. Over the course of an afternoon spent on my porch, I saw tiny tomatoes popping into existence.

I’d read a chapter of my book, and then take a break from the sitting still to hover over the plants like a doting mother. Every time I did that, I noticed a new tiny tomato on one of the plants. When I noticed the first one, I thought maybe I had just not noticed it before. By the time I saw a second new tomato that hadn’t been there earlier in the day, I’d already been staring at those plants for so long, there was no mistaking the fact I was seeing a new tomato where there had been no tomato just an hour before. It was crazy!

All three Sugar Snack plants have four or more little tomatoes on them, and more flowers popping out almost as I watch. Also, Mr. Stripey just gets more and more blooms every day too. While Mr. Stripey is large enough to be getting tomatoes, I do worry that I should have removed the blooms off the Sugar Snacks to let them get a little larger first. They are all still so small. It’s a little late now. I guess whatever happens … happens.

To be honest, I have been regretting getting all those extra plants. Or rather, I have been regretting getting all those plants from the place I got them. The quality of the seedlings was somewhat poor, but I hadn’t seen the TAMU jalepenos anywhere else, and every other place was totally out of any sort of cherry tomatoes. I really didn’t need any of them though, and I should have just stuck to the original plan to have the two Earthboxes with a couple of plants in them.

It’s lucky for the potted tomatoes that the Sugar Snacks have attracted my attention with tomatoes, because all those plantings have been growing so little and looking so poorly, no matter what I do for them, I had begun considering taking them out of the pots and sticking them in the front flowerbed … to be left to their own survival devices. Then I could use those pots for something a little more productive, like the cucumbers I have yet to get started. I may still put some of those tomato plants out to pasture in the flowerbed, but they all earned another week or two of being doted on, thanks to the appearance of some tiny tomatoes.

The Best Boy plants are probably cheering on the Sugar Snacks wildly. I was very close to just ripping them out of their pots and tossing them two days ago. They refuse to grow, they continue to look awful, and I hold out little hope they will ever produce even one tomato. Since I didn’t buy them, they were extras others couldn’t use and were going to toss, I don’t have to feel guilt about abandoning them to the flowerbed or just throwing them away. I never wanted the Best Boys anyway, but it’s hard to say no to little old ladies when they want to give you something. But I am willing to give them a little more time now, thanks to the Sugar Snacks … and being too lazy to dig holes in the flowerbed and move plants. It’s hot as hell out there today.

So, aside from having an encounter with Annoying Boy, I had a blast all afternoon reading and watching my plants grow, and boy are they doing just that! I wish I could do that every afternoon, but alas, I don’t have that much leisure time. Somebody has to do the housework around here and feed the inhabitants. I do think I will plan my day tomorrow to allow for more time sitting on the porch watching plants grow and reading. It made for a wonderful day.

Where did that tomato come from? I stick my nose on those plants every day, sometimes more than once a day, and I would swear there was no tomato on that plant yesterday. What a pleasant surprise to start my dreary and potentially rainy day!

I think this is the Super 100 Cherry Tomato. I say I think that’s what it is, because I don’t know which is which anymore. When I re-potted them, I put the little plastic tabs back into the pots, and sometime between Sunday and yesterday, every last one of them has gone missing. I doubt it can be blamed on critters, because they might knock them out of the pots, but they don’t usually run off with them. I suspect a two-legged critter by the name of Annoying Boy. I’ll have to compare the unlabeled pots with the labeled ones and try to figure out which is which, I guess.

I guess adding the composted manure on Sunday, and the last few days of coffee grounds and leftover coffee have done that plant some good. I have been particularly focusing on that one, because it looked really bad on Sunday with yellow leaves that were starting to curl up and fall off, and generally just bad color to the whole plant. I thought it was on the way to an early death. This morning, it’s green and perky … and it has a tomato on it!

The photo makes it look huge. I assure you, it isn’t. Right now my precious first tomato is about the size of a dime. It better not fall off or get eaten. I would be so heartbroken. I can’t wait to eat my own tomatoes.

There are also three peppers that have set on the Banana Pepper plant. Woo hoo! I am so excited!

Also, I am somewhat pleased with the above photo, so I uploaded a larger version so you can see the detail. Considering how dark and windy it is outside, and the fact I can’t use a flash when using the macro settings, I was surprised by how well it turned out … and how you can see the dew on the little hairs. I love my camera.

I have to take my tomato happy self to Walgreens, and then I have to attempt to restore the kitchen to some kind of order. I have totally ignored the dishes for far too long, as I almost always do.

But I have a tomato and some peppers! On top of the ice dispenser on the fridge being repaired yesterday, this week is going pretty damn well so far. Just wish I felt better, but I guess I can’t have everything my way.

It’s another Sunday night, and I am, as usual, doing what I am always doing at this hour on a Sunday night … finishing the laundry. I’ll never learn to start it earlier. I might as well just accept the inevitable and get on with my late-night laundry doing.

Since I have to stay awake a bit longer to wait for the last load in the dryer to finish up, I have been reading about natural fertilizers. I know the plants that aren’t doing well need more nutrients. I don’t want to spend a bunch of money on an organic solution to the problem, and I really don’t want to spend any money on a chemical and non-organic solution to the problem. I was just about ready to break down and buy Miracle Grow tomorrow, but then I decided there had to be some household thing we have plenty of that would be natural and organic and work just as well. And … of course … there is.

Coffee grounds. More here.

Coffee grounds are an excellent fertilizing mulch, and apparently also good at repelling snails and slugs (even, joy of joys, possibly killing them). Well, we have the coffee grounds. Some of them get tossed on the compost heap, but admittedly, most of them just get thrown away. Not any more! Tomorrow, all used coffee grounds go out to my plants. Any leftover brewed coffee can be too, though there usually isn’t much of that around.

Also, crushed egg shells mixed with the dirt, at planting or worked in later, add calcium. This reputedly helps protect against Blossom End Rot on tomatoes and gives them a growing boost. Sprinkling the eggs shells around plants can help deter slugs, snails, and cutworms, who don’t want to crawl over them, as well as deterring those pesky neighborhood cats who want to pee and dig in flowerbeds. They don’t like stepping on them either, or so the rumor goes. Eggshells have all sorts of uses. Just so happens, I have a whole bunch of clean, dry, and crushed up eggshells I was hoarding for that canvas and then decided not to use. How convenient for me!

Tomatoes also seem to love milk, and it may combat powdery mildew.

And finally, here are some ideas for natural pesticides, which I am sure to be needing eventually as well.

Laundry is done. Time for folding it up and then … bed.

The plants I have in the three and five gallon pots aren’t doing well at all. I’m not sure what the problem is, but I just finished basically re-potting them with a mix of composted manure and the dirt they were in. When I go to the store this week, I guess I’ll try to find some organic fertilizer that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

I’m hoping the poor plants don’t react to the new dirt mixture the way my hands did. I now have bright red palms that feel really warm, and I am not sure why. I’ve never had any sort of strange reaction to any natural gardening product before, not even pure and natural cow poo, so this is a little weird.

All I can do now is hope they don’t die overnight and that maybe this will help them out a little in some way. They are developing good root structures, and they don’t have any bugs chewing on them, so I don’t have any idea what, other than a lack of nutrients, could be making the plants themselves not grow better.

Ugh. Now I have to go figure out what to make for dinner when I don’t feel like making anything at all. Hope we have some sandwich stuff, ’cause that’s about all I feel like making.

They say the cobbler’s children have no shoes. Engineer’s wives apparently don’t have well-built trellises for their snap beans either, not because the engineer is too busy designing and building trellises for other people, but because the engineer is too busy laughing at his wife’s feeble attempts to build something. It’s pretty common knowledge that I am an artist and not a builder, so I failed to be amused by his amusement.

An hour and a half of my life spent making a trellis, and the end result is, I must admit myself, hilariously feeble and must be the most ridiculous trellis on the planet. I think I even heard the snap beans laughing at me.

Go ahead. Laugh. Everyone else has … even me. It’s a pathetic excuse for a trellis, but it’s just going to have to do.

I haven’t seen a mantis out in the wild for so long I can’t remember the last time. But … today … right there on my banana pepper plant is a baby mantis! Hope he sticks around and eats all those nasty bugs that have been chewing on that plant when I am not looking.

He’s soooo tiny! Maybe 1/4 inch long. Here’s hoping he grows and grows and grows!

It’s been chilly all day. I can’t believe it’s only 70 degrees at 3 pm. Doesn’t Mother Nature know it’s almost May and it’s supposed to be getting hot in Texas?! My pepper flowers are never going to set and turn into peppers! Oh well. In the long run, another mild and wet summer would be great, and it would mean an extended growing season. All the same, I like my sunny days to be warmer than 70 degrees and so do my pepper plants.

In other news, there is no other news. I’m just sitting here trying to work up the will to finish the housework … the never-ending freaking housework.

I was very excited the other day when I posted the photo of the many blooms that had appeared on my cherry pepper plant. The last few days, every last one of those blooms have fallen off. Naturally, I panicked. Then I did some reading on line. I’m doing everything perfectly (and the plants are very happy plants). The weather, on the other hand, hasn’t been cooperating. It’s still getting too cool at night for the fruit to set.

For the best really, seeing as my pepper plants are still a little young and small. It would be better if they were a little more grown up before they started producing. Still, you know I am impatient. I want fresh veggies from my own garden!

Several of my tomato plants have flowers on them now. They too are a little small to be producing fruit, but I am going to let them do what they want to do. Nature usually knows best.

I just wish it hadn’t rained so much last night. I was trying to let all my containers dry out a little. I might have over-watered them this week. Growing things in containers is so different from growing things in the ground. This is sure to be a learning experience for me. Hopefully it will be a learning experience that results in fresh veggies!

I still don’t want to move my garden to the back yard, but I can’t figure out a way to convince Lin it needs to stay in the front. I think I’ll go sit on the porch and meditate on it a while. It’s such a gorgeous day today. I want to be outside!