the tale of the tomatoes

[fflo]

So, the other night I threw up a little rudimentary chicken wire fencing to try to keep (what I'm guessing was) my friendly neighborhood woodchuck from munching on my tomatoes some more. Alas, I was pretty sure it would be an uphill battle for Kellogg's Breakfast and Pruden's Purple, and both the Pineapple and the Brandywine seemed sure goners. The hearty, sky-rocketing Cosmonaut Volkov lost all his top leaves, but seemed to stand a good chance of survival. As of last night, though, they all seemed to have a chance---even Brandywine, which looks to be spurting leaves off its main stalk outta nowhere, despite having had only one lonesome leaf left on the plant after the creature's bellying up to the salad bar (as Beth called it). All still thumbs up for Better Boy, the only one in the cluster the varmint skipped, and Aunt Lillian's Yellow Heirloom (though that one's still small, and its leaves are a little yellow), and Ethel Watkins' Best, and Sainte Lucie, and Costoluto Genovese. Glad there's some sun out there today.

It's a long season for a rank amateur, though. Perhaps by August I'll be glad I got carried away in planting, if only ten or twenty percent of these life forms make it to fruit-bearing. Next up is shoring up the fencing, with some provision for ingress/egress. Then maybe bolster the mulching---I ran out of my recycled straw, but might can round up a little more from the spring grass project. Them daggoned mosquitoes have really been messing with my getting anything done out there in the evenings---I still have half the berry patch to clear of little trees, dead cane, and thistles. Not to mention a dozen other mere maintenance projects.


Fighting off a headache today. First one of these queasy, sound-/light-/motion-hating ones I've had in a helluva long time. My eyeballs are sore.

Comments

[vjsmom.livejournal.com]

So sorry about the headache.

If all your plants survive, you'll have to can some (or perhaps open your own little tomato stand and sell some to passers-by Ha ha ha. That comment just shows that I spent way too much time with BP!)

I'm all crampy. One of my coworkers gave me some Midol, though, and I fell a little better.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

So far I've resisted taking drugs, but I may cave. I'm holding my own. Helps that it's pretty deserted in this place---only 2 of the 6 other desks in the room have occupants at this point.

Good luck with the cramps.

That BP never stops talking about money for long, I guess!

[onstar.livejournal.com]

Yay for tomatoes! I just bought cocoa bean mulch, soybean meal fertilizer(let me know if you need any-I had to buy a huge bag), and some really cool twisty corkscrew things for the tomatoes to grow up at Downtown Home & Garden today. With luck, I will have it all planted by tonite!!

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Excellent! I've never heard of cocoa bean mulching, but that's a cool idea.

Where are you putting this tomato patch, anyway?

[(Anonymous)]

Cocoa bean mulch smells wonderful, blocks weeds, is organic, and breaks down to enrich the soil. The bad thing is that some dogs will eat it and get sick. Unfortunately the dog on the other side of my backyard fence is one of those (his owner is a vet so I believe her when she says he was getting at it under the fence) so I'm not able to use it in the garden by the fence until he moves (his house is for sale now but I don't think he's working at it since it has been on the market several months). I haven't seen anything about cocoa mulch being dangerous to wildlife.

I still use cocoa mulch in the deck flowerbox. It smells like a garden of brownies.

--Beth

[fflo.livejournal.com]

so tempting for the smell! but if I'm going to borrow Zach for groundhog deterrence, don't want to take the chance. (he seems to eat pretty much anything.)

hey, if you had an lj account, you could get an e-mail telling you i'd responded to you here.

[onstar.livejournal.com]

Looks like Beth did a good job explaining the cocoa bean thing. As a kid, I went to Hershey, PA, and all of the flowerbeds in the town were filled with this stuff. It really lent to the vibe of the place, but of course there must be quite a few cocoa bean shells hanging around there to be used in some way or another. I'm putting the tomatoes in where the patch of weeds interspersed with wildflowers are by the front door. With the corkscrew thingies I got for support, it will look a bit like a sculpture garden:) Mulching is done in about half of the bed-ran out of newspaper, and waiting for the wildflowers to die off in the other part of the bed before ripping them out:)

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Fighting off a headache today. First one of these queasy, sound-/light-/motion-hating ones I've had in a helluva long time. My eyeballs are sore.

I hate migranes. I understand avoiding drugs, I used to use an awful lot of ibuprophen, but I build up a tolerance, tot he point where I was taking so much my stomach perpetually felt like it was full of rocks. Fortunately, I don't get them much anymore. I suspect it was the CPAP that made the difference.

So, the other night I threw up

Brain parses it as a post about being sick...

So, the other night I threw up a little rudimentary chicken

Brain re-parses it as post about really bad food.

So, the other night I threw up a little rudimentary chicken wire fencing

Brain says "Man, that must have been really hard on your throat!"

So, the other night I threw up a little rudimentary chicken wire fencing to try to keep (what I'm guessing was) my friendly neighborhood woodchuck from munching on my tomatoes some more.

Brain always gets hung up on preposterous images and refuses to shift gears to mundane life that someone is really talking about, by saying "Man, I never vomit anything useful like fencing--I just get smelly half-digested food. I am so jealous." So now I'm imagining this tasteless superhero, Barfman, who, when he's in a fix, can just vomit up whatever he needs.

God, I am so, like, immature.

Good luck with your garden!

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Write up Barfman no. 1. Really. I'm tellin' ya. There's an audience for him.

[sprig5.livejournal.com]

Yup-- sounds like a migraine. I still get 'em, but not as often as before. Imitrex can help for a true migraine.

ЖИВЕО КОСМОНАУТ ВОЛКОВ!

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

да здравствује! or something.

a guy from ukraine once told me that Даздраперма (an abbreviation of the exclamation in the honor of May 1, THEIR labor day, long live the 1st of may!) was a legitimate name for women there.

Re: ЖИВЕО КОСМОНАУТ ВОЛКОВ!

[fflo.livejournal.com]

zhiveo? is that like the toast word? here's to him, anyway!

da zdravstvuje. hmmm.

dazdrap(l?)erma? sounds vaguely feminine. you may call me "May Arbor Day Prevail for Centuries Nichols", if you'd like.

Re: ЖИВЕО КОСМОНАУТ ВОЛКОВ!

[shmizla.livejournal.com]

it is! zivela ti! (long live you, fem) zhiveo! (long live you, masc) zhiveli (mi)! (long live we!) etc. grammatically a mess, but it works!

Yuck!

[kohkae.livejournal.com]

I hate plain old raw tomatoes, and yes I have had homegrown straight from the garden ones. Don't mind them cooked in any form though, or the flavor covered up in a good salsa. Nothing ruins a sandwich like a big slab of a tomato. But, I have grown them with great success and giving them away to friends and strangers made me very popular at least temporarily.