Tomatoes, Tomatoes

Last spring was uncommonly dry and we had a drought lasting well into September. It killed more roses, an old apple tree and some bushes as well as perennials we could not get to, to water.  The drip system only covers the vegetable gardens.  We subsist on very fine well water, but we always worry about the well going dry.

This spring has obligingly alternated light rain with sun and everything that we’ve planting so far [except chervil and borage] has been growing fast and well.  The broccoli, the red cabbage, Brussels sprouts are all happy and of a decent size already. We have been eating salads from the garden and bok choi in stir frys for two weeks.  The hundreds of daffodils are still in bloom and the later tulips. Also blue anemones and Spanish bluebells that have spread into the woods.  Decades also I planted three of them.  We know have at least fifty.

We believe we’re done with frosts at last on our hill, so I planted pumpkins in the lower garden last weekend. This week I put in six six-packs of paste tomatoes in my garden.  Woody planted the sun gold cherry tomatoes we started. Then I helped Woody plant five main crop tomatoes in his main garden. Tomorrow, we have to put in the last five kinds. I also planted cosmos in one of the three narrow raised beds that Woody made for me last fall to attract and feed pollinators, mostly bees, but there are some for butterflies and a e for hummingbirds.  I put in a bunch of perennials – including, salvia, false indigo and baptisia.   The cosmos and calendula I started from seed. 

I put out my summer savory in two places, the herb garden and a long pot.  If we get done with the tomatoes in time tomorrow after I do the house laundry, I hope to pant hot peppers in my garden.  I’m trying a new type since last year, for the first time ever, I had an almost complete crop failure.

I made good progress on revising my novel but now I have to stop for a while.  I have an hour and a half radio program this week Thursday from 7:00 to 8:30 and I am still working on my reading.  I am feeling a bit overwhelmed. Tuesday, I have to start working on the manuscript that have come in so far from poets in my intensive poetry workshop.  I spend a day on each manuscript, reading rereading and annotating.  that with work done here makes the basis for our conferences.

Everything in the greenhouse is shouting to go out.  

I am stressed about all the dental work, both the time it uses up, the pain and the sore back I get from all that time in dental chairs, the high cost, everything. I have really been upset about it.  Nothing I can do, so I should just try to let it go, but so far, no luck.  I had a very bad reaction to the antibiotic I as given for the root canals.

 We had the floor replaced in the upstairs bathroom last week.  Willow was really upset by what she saw as an invasion.  she has only recovered the last few days.