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We are currently getting more tomatoes than we can eat. Today’s harvest was a bit more than normal, with so many of the larger tomatoes ripening. I pick them slightly under ripe and let them finish inside, if I leave them to ripen completely on the vine the bugs get to them:

That’s Fox Cherry, Arkansas Traveler, an unidentified larger red tomato, Yellow Pear tomatoes, and a Black Prince. They are all quite tasty. My favorite is the mild and sweet Arkansas Traveler, Zane likes the prolific Fox Cherry best.

This is the third season Lily participated in acting classes for the local community theater at the Bastrop Opera House. She loves being on stage, performing, singing, and making people laugh. The first season she was part of a beginner class that did a couple songs within a larger production. The second season she was in a very cute musical production, where she earned herself a solo in one of the performances. Naturally, after watching Lily perform for two seasons Derek decided he’d like to give acting a try. I signed both of them up for the spring classes/production.

Engela Edwards, the wonderful and kind director, choose a really cute script for this season: Peggy the Pint Sized Pirate, by by D. M. Bocaz-Larson. With pirates, sea monsters, mermaids and whales in it, the kids were thrilled. After a couple weeks of “auditions”, she selected the roles for the cast, with Lily in the coveted Sea Monster role, and Derek as the very silly pirate Sam the Smelly.

Immediately I began thinking about how I would make the Sea Monster costume. I had several ideas, but crucial, in my mind, was that the Sea Monster and Momma/Papa Sea Monster costumes should match in some fashion. I had tons of an icky olive green fabric leftover from old curtain swags, and I thought we could use those - I’d give some to the parent of the child playing the adult Sea Monster, and we’d both incorporate it into their costumes. Perfect.

I go to pick up the kids from rehearsal with the excess fabric, intending to drop it off with the child who’d been cast as the Papa Sea Monster. As I walk over to him, I over hear the conversation between he and Engela. “You know” she says to the boy “I really don’t think you’ll have enough time to do a costume change between your other role and the Papa Sea Monster part. I think you’re funnier as Bob the Brave, why don’t you stick with that one?”. The kid agreed and walked off. “So who’s going to play the adult Sea Monster?” I sputtered out. Ooops!

It’s four months later, and we had our last performance earlier this afternoon. The show was great, hilarious, all the kids did fantastic and had a good time doing it. I loved interacting with the kids and I especially enjoyed making the costumes, which in the end didn’t include that awful green fabric after all. Still, it’s highly unlikely that they’ll ever get me to do lines on stage again. I don’t really get stage fright or anything like that, but I just don’t love it the way the kids do. Next time I’ll be sticking to costumes and sets.

Here’s Derek as Sam the Smelly, on his pirate ship with his crew:

Lily the Sea Monster, about to sink another pirate ship:

Sam the Smelly hamming it up:

The Sea Monster talking to her Momma:

Momma Sea Monster contemplating pirate dinners:

Yesterday’s harvest, in front of the boy who loves cucumbers:

In the foreground is our weekly handful of Roma II Bush beans, left over from one of Lily’s early science fair experiments. They’ve been nice steady producers even in a less-than-ideal section of the garden bed.

The cucumber is an Yamato Extra Long, an Asian variety. It’s the second we picked and we haven’t eaten it yet, but the first was perfect, with thin skin and crisp flesh. The vines too are gorgeous, they’ve been covered with flowers for a few weeks now. I could easily see them planting them on an arbor as an ornamental:

This next beautiful flower is from a Black Champion eggplant, another Asian variety. I took the picture late last week, today there are more flowers opening and from this first flower the fruit is starting to swell:

In strictly ornamental flower news, I am completely in love with the Rose of Sharon in Derek’s bed and must plant more this fall. Notice how the flowers come in two different colors on the same plant!

Most of my focus has been on the tomatoes - keeping them supported, keeping them watered, trying to decide if I need to feed them or they’re getting too much nitrogen, trying to decide if I should prune them or not. There’s a wealth of information about how to care for tomatoes, with a lot of debate and disagreement. What I’m doing seems to be working so far - tonight we sampled our first four red ripe Fox Cherry tomatoes! Zane, Lily, our friend Joan and I each had one (Derek is not partial to tomatoes) and they were delectable! The vines are huge and covered in green fruit. This photo is to illustrate the support system I’m using at the recommendation of an idigger, I pounded in rebar for the 1/2 X 10 pvc piping, with twine strung across. I have to add more twine every few days to keep up with the growth:

The next photo is of one of my two Arkansas Traveler vines, it’s a variety that is supposed to hold up especially well in the southern heat.

We are looking forward to feasting on those soon!

There’s a lot going on in my garden lately. I’ve been resisting posting about my massive tomatoes on purpose, waiting for one to actually ripen and get eaten before I document the full saga of their life on earth. Likewise with the impressive cucumber vines. Frankly, the garden isn’t producing much right now, but the future does look promising.

Currently I get about a handful of Roma II Bush beans every week from a few rather small but happy-looking plants. The Swiss Chard isn’t looking it’s finest, but I’m sure it will recover. As per usual herbs are doing well. I’ve got enough sage and mint to feed the whole neighborhood, the borage is blooming, and the parsley is still there although it’s looking a bit ragged. My summer standby, basil, would be coming along nicely, if it were not being eaten!

Basil is one of those plants you do not expect to find bugs on. That intensely wonderful basil flavor is, in theory, produced by the plant as a defense against predators. To make matters worse, these evil, nasty, spring-roll savaging, pesto-preventing, DESTROYERS are… cute!

I turned for advice to the brilliant gardeners at the idigmygarden.com forums, my latest favorite internet hangout. Apparently this enchanting little bugger is likely an eastern lubber grasshopper, and not a welcome pest in any garden. Alas, it is now my quest to hunt down and slay each little cutie in an effort to prevent total annihilation of my beloved garden. Not an easy task, but who ever said a hero’s life was easy? Tomorrow at dusk, I go to war…

Lily has a brand-new hairdo:

Derek just lost another tooth:

Carol, Zane, and the animals remain unchanged… for now…

She’s adorable,silly,and lots of fun…. But she a so much nonsense!

Here’s a cute picture to make you laugh!

So as you can see she has goten much cuter!

Our little doggy has grown!Apricot has sooooo many nicknames her latest is Monster! Here are some adorable pictures.

Ssoooooooooooo Cute!

I want to give her a treat!

So you can now see our cutie!

Things are going well in the gardens this spring. In the ornamental bed, the roses have exploded:

In the vegetable bed I harvested one patch of onions. They’re not big, but there are a lot of them! I have no idea how big they should get… these are considerably smaller than the 1015’s from the store. But they were in the ground 6 months and had grown mushy where the green joins the bulb, so it was time:

The harvest:

Behind the onions, here viewed from the other side, the mixed romaine patch is doing very well.

Here’s my trusty swiss chard and spinach patches. I’ve had both all winter long, I just trim what I need and they grow back. Between the spinach and lettuce we can have a side salad of greens from the garden every night :

The tomatoes seem to be coming along nicely, but I’m not going to be too optimistic yet, given my history with them. The one on the right, an Arkansas Traveler variety, has just put out a few flowers:

I severely thinned out the turnips yesterday in hope to get more than just greens from the ones that remain. Between the turnip greens, swiss chard, spinach and lettuce there’s no shortage of greens in the fridge! Now I just need more recipes that will entice the kids to eat the first two.

Behold, my biggest, tightest head yet. It’s a heirloom variety, Early Jersey Wakefield. I got one more head from another plant, also a few red cabbages that were even smaller (unknown variety). The caterpillers were just moving in when I harvested.

Pre-slaw. They were delicious!

More garden pictures soon… it’s doing great .

Every morning when I look out the dining room window, there he is. Staring fixedly at the window, or strutting about with his chest out. Not a a trace of shame.

Every afternoon when I get home after getting the kids from school, there he is again. He doesn’t even leave when I open the blinds anymore, and he only barely flinches when the dog started barking at him from the inside. He’ll casually saunter around a corner if I go outside to have a closer look. Only the dog outside can really scare him off, but as soon as we’re in he’ll be back.

Did I mention that there’s two of them? That’s right, not one, but two Peeping Toms have been spying on us! It’s like their competing for the same spot, because I’ve never seen them together.

I have to admit, one of them is really quite handsome, if a bit flashy.

Mug shots!

This guy has much brighter colors than the other, and a fabulous purple drape over his nose.

Zane thinks this one must be younger.

Apparently the crucial way to identify if they’re males is from the tuft of feathers that stick out on their chests.

There were a pair of girls running around the neighborhood for a bit too, but we haven’t seen them since the boys apparently adopted our yard as their “strut zone”. I’m not sure why both of them like to stare at the dining room window, we’re guessing it’s because they see their reflections.

Friday morning before school the kids walked around the house for a closer look at the flashy one, who’d been at the window all through breakfast. When it was time to go Derek said loudly “bye-eee!” and the Tom said back even louder “GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE!!!!!”. Hilarious!!