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The produce has started flying - so far lettuce, onion, garlic, celery, broccoli, tomatoes and yellow squash.  Of course, there's more to come...

A stylin' "stache"

Been doing some fussy gardening chores. Or I should say "having them done".
My newest obsession is black bark. I love the way it looks and smells in the beds. It used to be shoes that gave me that special feeling ~ now its bark. Go figure.

I should have done 'before' and 'after' pics, but then you'd have seen the before, and that was the whole reason to get this done in the first place.



Doesn't look like much to you I imagine, but I can't stop staring and grinning all silly-like. No weeds, no errant fig tree going all crazy, no grasses, no sad "what is that plant anyway?" kind of stringy things.

And here is this wonderful bit of nature, which the hummingbirds and ants both love, equally. The pods are kind of cool ~ they hold seeds. In the winter when the plant goes bare, just the pods are left hanging there and its kind of bizarre looking.



I love the little solar lights too, and wait anxiously for it to get dark enough for them to come on. I know, you're thinking "Gee, she needs to get a life". But its so cool when you get up during the night for some reason, and have a look out the window, and there are all these cheery little lights smiling back at you.



I've been updating my CafePress shop, putting in art that I've had for a while, and don't know why I've never put on products before. I have a lot more I'd like to do, and will be fiddling with it when I have an 'in between' hour here and there when I need a break from knitting or other art.

I really love the way these tomatoes look (without the copyright notice, of course),



and also the way this bit of pen and inking looks on some pieces.



I forgot how much I like doing pen and ink work like that. Its slow, of course, like everything else I like to do. When will I find a 'fast' technique that I love?

So my mom spent a week in the hospital, but she didn't die. Yay, Mom! Now she's at the "spa" which is what we're calling the facility where she is staying for the next month because "rehab center" doesn't sound right. She's working with physical and occupational therapists every day to regain strength and mobility. The goal is to get her walking again. If ferocity and determination count for anything, she'll make it.

Whew!

I picked more than 50 tomatoes from my garden this morning, which means we'll be eating gazpacho all week. Has anyone tried to freeze gazpacho?

I received the ARC of the British version of CHAINS.

Here's the British cover.


This is the American version.

Opinions?

A world without tomatoes is like a string quartet without violins."  ~ Laurie Colwin

 
                       "Ripe Tomatoes" by Robert Duncan, oil on canvas.

Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes
What'd life be without homegrown tomatoes
There's only two things that money can't buy
That's true love and homegrown tomatoes.

I can't get this Guy Clark song out of my head. And ain't it the gosh darn truth?

There's nothing that says summer like homegrown tomatoes. Sure wish we had some.

Oh, we had buckets of them when we lived at our old house. Len had a nice sized vegetable garden, and almost every weekend during the summer, he'd go out and pick a few ruby red beefsteak beauties. He'd slice into one of those sun-warm, smooth, shiny globes to reveal chambers harboring gelatinous seeds. Then he'd let me have first pick of the slices for my sandwich -- sometimes just lightly toasted bread, mayo, a bed of thin cucumber and tomato slices, or if I was feeling the slightest bit frisky, I'd throw caution to the wind and grind on a BLT.

Ah, the rapture!

   

Now that we live in the woods, we don't get enough sun for a garden. Though we buy from roadside stands or farm markets, it's never quite the same as tomatoes freshly picked, minutes old, grown in your own patch of dirt. I don't think there's any other fruit? vegetable? fruit? whose taste and quality varies so greatly between the supermarket and homegrown versions.

A homegrown tomato, or as close as you can get to homegrown, is, dare I say it -- pure poetry.

Just listen to these names -- Purple Haze, Marmande, Juliet, San Marzano, Box Car Willie, Aunt Ruby's German Green. There's even Moneymaker and Mortgage Lifter.

Somewhere, almost everywhere in the world, there is a tomato for all seasons, sensibilities, climates, and culinary uses, to satisfy the most discerning of palates. Without the tomato, there would be no salsa, no Bloody Marys, no barbecue sauce, no ketchup, no gazpacho, no sauce, paste, or puree for pasta. It would mean the demise of Italian cuisine (kill me, already)! Worst of all, I shudder to think, can barely dare to say it, there would be no tomato soup (voted as the writer's favorite in my highly scientific poll). 

*Cue in gratuitious gasping and weeping*

Oh, where, on God's green earth, would I float my alphabets?

Precious pomodoro, forgive us our barbaric finger-pointing, and accept this small yet luminous token of our undying adoration. He is a poet from Chile, born on the continent of your origin.

ODE TO TOMATOES
by Pablo Neruda



The street
filled with tomatoes
midday,
summer,
light is 
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.

(Rest is here.)

If you wish to make amends and share your tomato love, check out the East Nashville Art Fest. They are sponsoring a Tomato Haiku Competition (deadline is Monday, August 4th). You are allowed to enter up to 5 haiku, so sip some sauce this weekend and start slicing up those metaphors.

See the world's largest tomato here.

Beautiful examples of tomato art here from the Carmel TomatoFest (scroll down).

To hear the song, "Homegrown Tomatoes," performed by two uber homegrown guitar pickin' scruffy singers, click here.

Today's Poetry Friday Roundup is at The Well Read Child.

  
             "The tomato: a uniter, not a divider -- bringing together
               fruits and vegetables."

   

“We got another questionnnnnnnnn!”

“Who is it for this time?”

“It’s for Alanna-sama.”

“Hey Hoshi, what’s up?”

“We got a question on my super-neat Jessie’s Letters page! It’s from ‘Letter writer person’ and they said Alanna-sama, it says in the story time and again, and even in your profile that you’re very confident. How did you become so confident?’”

“Heh. It helps when you’ve got that mace and whistle and you’re in charge of the whole band.”

“Well, I wasn’t always in charge. I had to try out for Second Drum Major. I got a lot of encouragement from my friends in band though. When I was a freshman, I was the only girl in the bass line, but the rest of the guys in my section were always rooting for me. . .”

“What’s the matter Alanna-sama?”

“She gets kind of emotional about the Drum Major tryouts. That was the year I was a freshman and I remember the day she did her parade routine.”

“My whole section showed up in full uniform with their instruments for my tryout. . . and they stood at attention along the route I did my parade routine on. It was the first and only time that the bass line has ever done that at a Drum Major tryout. It was the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me in band. I was so proud to be a sousaphone player that day. The day I got the call that I had been promoted to Second Drum Major, all seventeen of the other sousaphone players called me to congratulate me.”

“The bass line is a unique group.”

“They gave me a lot of encouragement and helped me even when I made mistakes. They taught me how to build confidence in others and that’s how I learned to take things one step at a time and not to let temporary failures depress me. By teaching confidence, I learned to be confident myself.”

“They helped her learn how to march a brass sousaphone in parades. That takes confidence by itself.”

“Word. Those things are like silly huge.”

“My section taught me I could accomplish whatever I decided I wanted to accomplish. That’s something we want everyone in the Tree Shores Band to learn.”

“We all want to learn to be as confident as you, Alanna-sama! If you have a question or a comment you can e-mail meeeeee at my Jessie’s Letters page and maybe I can get one of my best friends to help me answer your question! Ja!”