Monday, June 8, 2009

Pick a Peck

Week of May 31 through June 6

Our tomatoes have outgrown their cages, our beans are producing so many pods that they are bending from the weight and our peppers are growing so quickly that we have had to stake their stalks. Basically, we are too good at gardening. Mad fertilizing skillz such as ours should be respected.


Creatures of all shapes and sizes have been known to appreciate our gardening efforts, and now we have a new visitor to add to our list of admirers. Throughout the week, we noticed that the cats seemed unusually interested in our bean plants. The cats have been known to lay in the garden, and even occasionally use it as their own personal perfectly-manicured bathroom, but beyond seeing it as a big square of dirt in which to roll around, they haven't taken much interest in the garden goings-on. So, when Gidget continually chose to sit near the back corner of the garden and stare at the fence, and when we noticed that she was trampling our bean plants on her quests to investigate said back corner, we took an interest of our own. While watering one day, The Husband determined that our garden was now home to a gopher. He determined this by using his highly honed visual prowess to spot a gopher track and then a gopher hole. Plus, he had the internet. I said "Welcome gophers!" but The Husband had a different point of view. After I made my much practiced "Please-Hubby?" face The Husband opted for a humane bait that is supposed to make the gopher's hidey-hole stink to high heaven. I surely wouldn't want to live in a smelly house, so here's hoping that our gopher guest is equally offended by olfactory assualts.


We picked more tomatoes this week, and there are more on the vine that are almost ripe. We are diligently weighing each tomato as we pick it, and cataloging our data in our garden journal. We haven't been as industrious about photographing our crop. But an awesome, ripe homegrown tomato looks like an awesome, ripe homegrown tomato, right?


The adorable baby pepper I mentioned here, grew to be almost three inches long. And then it rained. A huge thunderstorm (so strong that we could feel the thunder) blew through our area this week and dropped three quarters of an inch of rain in under fifteen minutes. The little pepper couldn't take the deluge, and it snapped off at the stem. Our pepper plants are making up for lost time, though, and the fruit that survived the storm are now almost ready for harvest.


Around Our House Next Week: It's curtains for our blinds

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