Today’s harvest includes a collection of mutant tomatoes and that one lonely jalapeño, all of which will be consumed with tonight’s dinner. I grew it, and we will damn well eat it!

If it’s going to be that humid outside, it could just rain. At least rain makes things nice and cool, unlike the humidity. It’s really, really awful out there. I’m going to stay indoors until sunset … unless it does decide to rain. Then I’ll sit on the porch and enjoy it with a nice cup of coffee.

In other news, my tomato plants are all blooming like crazy. Hopefully some of these blooms will turn into actual tomatoes. The pepper plants I transplanted into the flowerbed are also covered in blooms, and there are now three cucumbers filling out. Also the lone tomato on Mr. Stripy is almost completely ripe, and I’ll be snipping it off tonight to let it finish up in the kitchen. It is, by far and away, the ugliest tomato ever, but I’m going to eat it anyway, provided it is edible.

Time to crank the air conditioning (bills be damned), do the dishes and take out the trash, and then … art.

The Trumpet Vine has been transplanted into a larger pot. It was well past time to do so. Not only was it in a rather small clay pot, and half the pot was filled with stones … for drainage. I don’t know where my mom learned how to plant things in pots, but she didn’t learn it from her gardening addicted father. Poor plant! It barely had any dirt at all!

It was all root-bound, and at first I didn’t even noticed there were any stones or the usual square of window screen she always puts in the bottom over the hole, because the plants roots had incorporated all of it. By the time I worked out all the stones and the screening, the root ball was half the size I thought it was. It’ll be happy in it’s new pot for quite a while, I think.

But then I did a stupid, stupid thing! I carried it over to the watering hose to give it a good soak, and when I picked it up to put it back on the porch, my big dumb foot was standing on the long vine that had been growing the last two months. It ripped right off! How stupid and clumsy! In the end, it was probably for the best anyway, since I did do a little damage to the roots and probably needed to get rid of a small branch. Still makes me angry though, because the vine was so nifty. Oh well, I’m sure it’ll grow another one eventually.

When I got back in I did some reading up on Trumpet Vines to see what sort of conditions they like. As it turns out, I have been treating it just right by keeping it on the porch in semi-shade and not watering it every day. Then I read all the negative commentary about this plant, and now knowing how invasive it can be, I am worried about it taking over the yard. I’d just let it die or give it away to someone who wants to deal with a plant that grows like crazy and destroys everything it grows on, but unfortunately, this plant has sentimental value.

My Trumpet Vine is a clipping from my mom’s Trumpet Vine, which is a clipping from the huge and ancient Trumpet Vine in my grandfather’s garden. He loved that vine dearly. We all did. Many a summer night was spent sitting on the back porch and watching the butterflies and humming birds enjoying the flowers. Every time I see a Trumpet Vine, I am immediately transported back to my childhood and my grandfather’s garden. Those were some strange and wonderful times.

The people that bought the house when he passed away wasted no time at all tearing out the vine (and my grandfather’s whole garden — and the 200 year old oak tree), and so my mom’s and mine are the only surviving remnants of a bygone time. They are sort of a memorial to Pap’O, and whenever I see mine, I feel like Pap’O is right there with me in the garden. So I can’t very well let it die or give it away. It wouldn’t feel right.

All the same, it seems like a very bad plant to plant anywhere it could grow freely and destroy things like trees, fences, and houses. I don’t know how Pap’O kept his in line, but I imagine pruning it daily was one of the things he did when he spent all those hours outside tending his plants. His was beautifully shaped, and I don’t remember it destroying or killing anything … or anyone ever complaining about it being a nuisance.

With my new knowledge about this plant, there isn’t really anywhere in the yard I dare plant it in the ground. We have too many trees and things for it to climb on and rip apart, and we already have invasive bamboo too. I don’t need another plant trying to take over the world with my yard as a starting point. Not even a beautiful plant with sentimental value. So now I think I’ll just keep moving it up into larger pots, and someday I’ll get it its very own large planter with a fancy trellis.

Now that I think about it, that’s probably a good idea anyway, seeing as I don’t ever want to lose the plant. If it’s in a pot of some sort, I can move it out of harm’s way during storms, and if we ever move, I can take it with me rather than just making a clipping from it.

Still peeved with myself for ripping off its one long vine though. I try to do something good and right, and of course, it gets screwed up somehow. Ugh.

When I saw the first of these plants pop up in the flowerbed where I had recently planted flower seeds, I thought they were some of the various old seeds I had tossed out there just to get rid of them. They were in the right area to be sprouts from my haphazard seeding, and I hadn’t ever seen anything like it in the yard before. But … seeing as I did not plant any seeds anywhere else in the yard and there are hundreds of these things popping up and covering about 20% of my front lawn, it isn’t something I planted.

I have already spent too long looking at photos of flowers and weeds and not finding anything to match it. Therefore, I toss it out to you, dear readers, in the hope someone will know what this plant is.

They are really somewhat pretty, but they do seem to be rather invasive and weed-like in nature. We have never had these in our yard before, and suddenly, they are everywhere! I have no idea where they came from. The ones in the flowerbed have been there about a month, but the ones in the yard seemed to spring up out of nowhere after that rain we had. Unless they are something worth saving, I’d really like to eradicate them so the St. Augustine grass can continue to thrive and drive out the Bermuda grass. These flowers are only growing where the St. Augustine is thickest and the yard the shadiest, and it’s also the part of the yard that tends to get the most watering due to my efforts to have the Redbud survive this awful summer.

So, any ideas about what these things are? Like I said, they are pretty, and if they wanted to grow in the flowerbed, that would be cool. But if they are some kind of totally invasive species I will never be able to confine to the flowerbed, then I most definitely want to kill them without mercy.

Two of the first three cucumbers didn’t take for whatever reason, but this one did! It’s already a few inches long, and it’s starting to look tasty. My grief over the other two not turning into plump cucumbers is mollified by the fact there are a whole bunch more female flowers about to burst open in the next few days. I have my fingers crossed we will eventually have so many cucumbers we start to hate them.

In other garden news, I had planned to snip the lonely tomato on Mr. Stripy today, in order to let him devote that energy to a new tomato or two. Alas, as I looked at the stupid slow-growing tomato this morning, it appears to finally be changing colors. I can’t very well snip it of now. It may be the only one of those tomatoes we get, and I’d really like to get a few seeds from it … when I am chopping it up for a salad. It’s a stunted little ugly thing, but it may very well end up being tasty. I guess we shall now find out since it’s finally decided it has been sitting there doing nothing and looking green this whole time.

Also, the peppers I stuck over in the front flowerbed are really taking off. Even the one that was almost completely cleared of leaves by that nasty worm is looking good and getting loads of new growth. I am now eyeballing the three pepper plants still in containers and considering clearing more space in the flowerbed for them too. Of course that would mean a lot of work. Between the squirrels continually planting pecans in it and the Bermuda grass sneaking under the railroad ties surrounding it, that flowerbed is a serious mess. It isn’t like we don’t clean it up all the time, but it’s an endless cycle. We rip everything out and a week later it looks just as awful again. Who knew pecan trees were such fast growers?! Damn squirrels.

Oh, and some of the mutant cherry tomatoes are beginning to ripen. Very soon we shall see what the inside structure looks like and whether or not they are as tasty as the non-mutant ones. I am so eager to see the insides of one of these things!

I guess that about sums up the latest news from my garden. I think I’ll fix myself a second cup of coffee and go sit on the porch and watch my plants grow for a while since the temperature is almost bearable this morning.

The salmonella tainted tomato investigation is still ongoing. They haven’t found the source of the bad tomatoes. They haven’t even found a tomato tainted with salmonella. They have continued to plug ahead with the idea that it was tomatoes making people sick, until recently. It seems that people are still getting sick from that very particular strain of salmonella, and since this has been ongoing for so long, there is no way it could possible be a fresh tomato. No matter how they are stored, tomatoes simply don’t last months. They are now ready to explore other options of what it might be that is making people sick. Now they are considering things commonly served with tomatoes. I’d say that’s a pretty broad range of things.

I’ve known about their lack of surety concerning the culprit being tomatoes for at least a couple of days. My feeling is that right this moment, any foodstuffs at the grocery store could be the thing that kills me. Maybe it’s avocados. Maybe it’s carrots. Maybe it’s lettuce … again. Maybe it’s even salad dressing. Who knows at this point? Doesn’t exactly put me in the mood to go grocery shopping, so we will be eating simply until we go to the market on Saturday. At least if anything from there makes me sick, I know who to throw up on and point the finger of blame at.

It’s not so easy to point the finger of blame at someone for a tainted tomato, or any vegetable, bought at a supermarket. If nothing else comes of this latest food mess, it might be that people have a better understanding of how those vegetables get to their market. I know I was surprised to find out about repacking. I wasn’t surprised to hear vegetables are shipped to warehouses and repacked by size, weight, ripeness, etc. I assumed that happened. No, what surprised me was finding out that tomatoes from Mexico are shipped to a state in the USA, repacked with that’s states produce, and then it is sold as a product of the USA. The opposite also apparently seems to be true, that tomatoes from a state in the USA can be shipped to Mexico, repacked with Mexican tomatoes, and then shipped back to the USA as a product of the USA.

In light of this revelation, it would seem those stickers on fruits and vegetables are totally meaningless. When I pick up a vegetable upon which a sticker says it is a product of the USA (or Mexico, Brazil, etc.), I expect it to actually be a product of that country. There are countries I don’t buy from, and there are products I don’t buy from certain countries. With the repacking system they have going on with tomatoes, who knows where any particular tomato comes from, and I have no doubt this process applies to many, many things in the produce department. Hell, it might even apply to everything in the store. How am I to know the tomatoes used in my American-made tomato sauce are actually grown in the USA? I don’t.

The last few years of food scares have really put me off food that isn’t grown by someone I have personally conversed with in a face-to-face situation. Unfortunately, that leads to two possible dietary realities: eat a completely seasonal diet or buy in bulk and can/freeze/dry/store foods to cover all seasons. We can’t afford to buy organic and local food in bulk, because it is rather expensive, and I would die during the winter months when most of the things available fresh are things I don’t especially like to eat. That forces me to buy some foods at the grocery store, and that leaves me with a nervous twitch running down my spine every time I do so. It’s not fair we have to think and worry that the foods being sold in the corner store might make us sick or kill us. It’s not fair at all.

I really do wish my garden had done better this year. Next year, I will be throwing myself entirely into gardening, and I will succeed. It feels like an absolute necessity to be producing as much of our own food as possible and buying what we can’t produce from our farmer friends. I’d like very much to never have to go to a grocery store again, except for things like coffee, tea, and Dr Pepper. I doubt that will ever happen, but it’s a nice dream of mine.

Here are some associated links about the ongoing investigation:

Unsolved Mysteries: Tainted Tomatoes or Not?

Tomato ‘repacking’ vexes salmonella trackers

Salmonella probe adds foods served with tomatoes

The dishes and vacuuming has been left wanting to be done, but all my gardening tasks are completed. All the plants seem happy. No one wilted after being transplanted or freaked out in any unhappy plant sort of way. Now all I can do is wait and see if any good comes of it.

Tomorrow I will probably be sacrificing that one lonely green tomato on Mr. Stripy. It’s been on there forever, it isn’t growing or ripening, and I’d rather the plant use it’s resources on something else. It just doesn’t look right, and I don’t want to waste my time or the plant’s energy creating something that is non-useful. Besides, it looks like a couple of the last batch of flowers set and there are more tomatoes coming. Perhaps flicking the flowers a few times a day with my fingers has paid off.

The two female cucumber flowers that bloomed yesterday now have much larger potential cucumbers behind them. I believe I have successfully played my part as a bee. Easy job with just the two flowers. There look to be a hundred or more flowers about to bloom soon. Looks like I will have a few busy afternoons of plant sex. Of all the plants, those cucumbers are the only thing thriving. Next year … more Boston Pickle Cucumbers in the garden.

All-in-all, a good day at Casa de Orb.