Have A Tomato…

I was out taking photos of the garden for the good day/bad day squash report and was blown away by how much the tomato plants have grown with the last week of H.O.T. weather and lots of sunshine.  I figured if it was astounding to me you all might enjoy seeing the pictures that I took as well as the pictures my cousin took of me and the tomato plants.  So without further ado and little more comment than to say we planted 15 tomato plants of different varieties, here are the photos for your enjoyment…

Now for the photos my cousin took because you know how I enjoy giving you something to compare size-wise…

 

I used to be 5’9” tall.  When I had a bone study done a couple of years ago the nurse said I was 5’7'” so I figure that I’m still 5’7” because it took me 50 years to drop 2” and it’s only been a couple or three years since I was last measured.  That will give you an idea about these plants.

And yes, I am standing up and my arm is resting on one of my cousin’s home-made tomato cages.  You know it’s me because of the double chins… I think I’ll not tell anyone else how to use the zoom on this camera.

So while you may be envious of all these plants I look at them and know I’m gonna have to eat a bunch of bacon and tomato sandwiches and give a bunch of tomatoes away.  As we start getting ripe tomatoes I will crawl down and find the names of each of the plants and record them with photos for ‘posterity’ and share with you all my findings.

I Promised Mimosa And A Bad Hair Photo…

Not of me, of course, I never have a bad hair day since I started cutting it way short and falling into the bleach bottle.  I don’t much like my mousey brown hair… Makes me feel like a plain, OLD, Helen and I am fighting that feeling tooth and nail.

 

Mimosaaas are GORGEOUS…  I love the flowers and I especially love them when the tree grows out in the back forty because while being very beautiful when in bloom the nasty messiness come after the blooms but I’ll address that in a bit.  For now let’s enjoy the beauty part…

The blooms are so light and airy looking and they do have a sweet but light scent to them.

The small green bundles of b-b sized balls are the flowers to come yet so the trees are just getting into the full flowering phase.

This is an older mimosa that greets people as they drive up the drive.  Normally, at least in Oklahoma, 20-30 years is way old for mimosas because they are a more brittle tree and tend to break in our higher storm winds.  Plus a lot of folks think they are a nuisance tree and take them out if they are too close to the house or where they park their cars or trucks.  This tree is a venerable elder around in these parts.

Another photo from a different angle.  You can see how the trunk is bent towards the drive… That whole large limb was broken in a storm and was cut off but the wound healed and the tree hung in there and has continues to share it’s beauty each spring.

This tree is on the backside of the house.  I took this photo just to show how tall they can get when they survive the storms without getting broken.  The house as you can see from the previous photo is just a single story home with a normally pitched roof so that gives you a sight reference and we all know how I like to give you something to compare size-wise.  Part of the tree’s umbrella of branches that shade the back deck and side of the house.

I like the texture on the bark of the tree also.  This one is the one in the back of the house.  It is younger than the one along the drive and the bark is much smoother with the lighter spots all through it.

Now about the bad hair…

This is the little jenny that is in the pasture with the cows.  They are very good at protecting the cows and calves and will fight off and even kill coyotes and the occasional cougar that gets a yen for beef.  Yes we do have cougars in Oklahoma but they are smaller than the mountain lions that you generally see on the National Geographic Channel or in the movies. 

She is very sweet but also shy because she hasn’t been handled much.  So naturally I’ve been trying to make friends with her.

Here’s where the bad hair comes into the story.  Her hair looks like it’s been fried on the ends.  Every time I’m able to scratch her head and ears I want to get some really good conditioner and put on it.  Feel free to copy this photo and print it for when you think you are having a bad hair day.

  But it doesn’t seem to bother this little guy what her hair looks like.  He still tries to make whoopee whenever she doesn’t give him a good swift kick.  Although he is shorter than she is he still gives it the good old college try and we are hoping in about 10 months there will be a little one for me to photograph.

I think that just about covers everything for this post…  oh, wait. The messy part of  mimosas…

I’ll start small…

One of the chairs on the back deck…

More and more mess.

This deck was all swept and cleaned up three days before I took these photos…  but I much prefer to leave you with the ahhh in mimosahhhs so here is my favorite photo that I’ve taken with this batch of shots…

Have a great week, y’all.  I’ll be posting another farm report on the good day/bad day squash and other garden news  in the next day or two.

I Know, I Know…

I’m late on my good day/bad day squash report.  I went out of town last Friday and didn’t get back until yesterday evening.  Bro asked me to dig up a mess of potatoes so he could cook up green beans and potatoes to take to the church tomorrow because a friend of my cousin had passed away and the funeral will be tomorrow… so I got out this morning and headed out with my camera.

The first stop was to the former playhouse where we keep the garden tools.  I opened the door and I was immediately hit behind my ear by a wasp, a yellow jacket.  It still is feeling like someone hit me with a needle full of cayenne pepper but I got the wasp spray and got my revenge and because I needed to get potatoes and take photos I grabbed my cultivator and got down to business.

First off, the potatoes…

You know me… I have to give you something for a size comparison so after I washed some of the dirt off they were ready for their photo op.  My Crocs are about the equivalent of a women’s size nine shoe.

  This shot I wanted to put in to show you how beautifully thin skinned these red potatoes are and all that was done was a light wash to get the dirt off.  Makes my mouth water just looking at these.

Now to the good day/bad day squash…

Good day squash is on the left and bad day squash is on the right.

From north looking to south now so you can see the littlest bad day squash and the bigger bad day squash on the left and the good day on the right.

This is the littlest bad day squash.  It’s hanging in there but it is way smaller than all the rest but I must tell you that even though it is tiny the leaves are looking healthy.

This is the bigger of the bad day squash.  You can see a couple of photos back how much bigger the good day squash is now.

Here is the first bloom on the good day squash.  The leaves are huge and the plants, the four good day squash that came up, are so healthy looking.  The broken stem there on the right was done when the storms came rolling through Monday night. 

Just a few more general garden shots now…

  The two rows in the middle, the left one is alternating okra and black eyed peas.  The right one is okra.  To the right of them are some squash and zucchini that were plants already when we planted them.  We’ve gotten several messes of yellow squash and while the zuchs were planted later and we haven’t gotten any off them yet there are a bunch of blooms and young zuchs going now.

We are going to be begging people to take tomatoes if they keep on like they are going.  We planted 15 plants of several varieties and the plants are full and big, almost growing together, and they have a bunch of blooms on them.

Here’s another shot where I tried to just shoot looking down between the rows.

Another view of the tomato jungle looking from north to the south.

This is the backyard garden. The plants in front are the broccoli, cabbage and cauliflower that are all on their way out.

Here is one of the cabbage that is still growing.  You kind of get the idea of size with Spud, the Jack Russell, standing there checking for mice.

This is the potato bed that I raided for potatoes earlier.  We also planted potatoes in the bigger front garden but we planted them about three weeks after we put these in and so these are the plants we’ve been raiding for the past week or two.

And to wind up this post I have to put in a picture of the yellow daylily that you can see at the back of the above photo.  It is one of the daylillies that I transported from the garden in Noble and I’m so glad to see them starting to bloom.

This is one of my favorites.  I love the clear buttery yellow and this daylily is just that… no golden yellow hues to it, just the very clean clear yellow.

This concludes the second good day/bad day squash report.  I’ll try not to be so long for the next post.  I had to put off the mimosa blooms and the bad hair post because I needed to show the good day/bad day squash report so I will try to get it posted in the next couple of days.

By the way, does anyone have a good home fix for wasp stings?  I still have this awful pain in my head…

Garden Stroll And More…

A couple of days ago I asked if you wanted to visit the garden with me… if you don’t want to do that you may want to go to the next blog on your reading list because I’ve been in the gardens with the camera.

Broccoli… I don’t have to worry about ‘W'.’ coming to dinner because we have grown some gorgeous and tasty broccoli this year.  Personally I could eat it just about every night, steamed with some butter… no sauce needed. 

Yeah I gotta get my boot in there for size and as you can see we have had a battle with squash bugs but this baby head of cauliflower grew into this…

When Bro, Cuz and me went to buy some plants this spring we got the broccoli, cauliflower and two kinds of cabbage, the green and the purple, at a farm store in Chandler, OK,  about 15 miles from where we lived.  I’ve been sooo excited with how they are all coming on because though I tried last summer where we lived we had rabbits that ate very well and I didn’t even get a taste.

My beautiful cauliflower looked big until I found these three squash hiding under the big squash leaves and, no, these are not the good day/bad day squash.  We were given 3 straight neck yellow squash plants and three crook neck yellow squash plants so these came on earlier than we expected. The green cabbages I planted in the back yard garden and have started forming the heads despite the chewed up leaves.

The purple cabbage I planted in the front garden along with half of the broccoli plants.  They, too, have started forming their heads and their leaves are chewed on but not quite as bad as the plants in the back garden.

I got down in the dirt to get this low down view of all the squash blossoms on one of the crooked neck squash plants.  See what I do to keep it real for all of you!

I love seeing how these bloom change into something that is so good to eat in so many ways.  But you all know how all the stages of growing just fascinate me.

OKRA!  Yes, Rick, you can tell your sweet bride that the good Lord willing and the weather is kind to us, no more hail please, there will be okra flying northwest along about August.

This row has okra and black eyed peas planted alternately.  The premise is the black eyed peas will climb along the okra stalks.  So I guess this will be my little experiment.

Since I have so much garden photos to show you and I don’t want to bore you to death I’ll close for now but I do want you to know that my cousin and I both use this old timey cultivator because we can get between the rows easily and break up the ground enough to try to keep ahead of the grass and weeds.  I will try to catch a photo or two of it actually in use.

Next post, besides more garden stuff, I’ll show you the mimosa trees in bloom and we will talk about a bad hair day…

Intrigued?