As planned, I was down in the garden early this morning. I waited until it was light enough to see what I was doing and I’m glad I did. The tomatoes have gone so crazy, it was hard to walk through the alleyways so I started cutting the excess tomato growth with a pair of scissors. The main alleyway is covered with landscape fabric (which is coming up this year) and I noticed what I thought was a lump in the fabric. I looked closer and saw it was a curled-up black snake. Luckily I saw it and not Wally. I got a tomato stake and shooed him out of the way, hoping he’d go out of the garden. I kept working away and when I got on the opposite side of the bed where I originally saw the snake, I found him again. This time I picked him up and carried him out of the garden.
I only worked down there for about an hour before I decided to take a break. I’m late for milking and the goats are complaining. They can wait for a few more minutes while I rest a bit. I came out of the garden with a three gallon bucket full of tomatoes and another three gallon bucket full of eggplants. I know what I’m going to do with the tomatoes (can the ripe ones, make green tomato relish out of the green ones), not so sure what I’m going to do with all the eggplant. I’d like to bread, fry them and freeze them for winter meals. The compost pile is full of tomato clippings, a boatload of rotten and green tomatoes. The chickens will have a ball with that. It makes me mad to think of all the tomatoes I wasted because I can’t manage to properly plant and stake tomatoes. Next year, I’ll only plant a couple of eggplant plants and get the green peppers in sooner. As I understand it, when it gets this hot, they won’t produce fruit and we only got a few peppers off about nine plants. I still have the purple podded pole beans to harvest and put up.
I’ll have to see if I have the energy to get back down there after I milk and do some more cleaning up. I had another bad night of sleep … too much on my mind.
I best get out to milk.
Until later …