Aunt Cindy's Traveling Tomato Wagon

Tomato Wagon

Cindy has been carefully raising the tomatoes for this year's crop, sprouting the seeds and keeping the seedlings under grow lights in her office for most of the last month.  Later she moved them outside to "harden off" before they can be transplanted, and then she planted them before we left for Indiana.

However, as usual, all the seeds she planted actually sprouted, so she had to find good homes for the ones she didn't have room for.

So her little red wagon was pressed into service to deliver the plants to a couple of the neighbors who also love tomatoes.

Siletz, Cherokee Chocolate, Grape Riesenstraube, Brandwine, Early Girl, Champion and Boxcar Willie.

Who wouldn't love a tomato called Boxcar Willie?

Tomatoes

Tomatoes In The Ground

Before we left for vacation, Cindy planted the tomatoes she had carefully raised from seeds.  She had planned to plant them in one of the newer raised beds behind the garage; she likes to rotate the crops and last year she had planted green beans in that bed.

However, she had evidently forgotten that last year the gophers had undermined that bed and gnawed off the roots of the bean stalks.  She didn't discover that for a while because she was using a mylar mulch to increase the light to that bed, and the varmints had simply tunneled under the cover of it and chewed away at their leisure.

This year when she went to plant the tomatoes, sure enough, there was a gopher hole in that bed.

So she ended up digging all the dirt out of the bed, cutting hardware cloth to fit, and stapling it to the sides of the frame.

We're hoping that will keep the varmints out, or else we'll have no tomatoes this year.

Mylar Mulch

Flight Behavior

I've just finished reading Barbara Kingsolver's newest book, Flight Behavior.
Note:  If you're one of those tiresome people who don't like "spoilers", stop reading now because I'm going to discuss the book.

Monarch Butterfly

The central character in the book, Dellarobia Turnbow, discovers that Monarch butterflies have altered their pattern of overwintering in Mexico because of changing climatic conditions, and instead have descended upon a valley on her family's sheep-farming property in Tennessee.

Not just a few Monarchs, such as we get in our small butterfly garden in San Diego, but millions of them have come, clustering together like living flame to survive the winter and perpetuate the species if they can.  We have worked so hard to preserve the few Monarchs that have come to our yard; I can't imagine watching MILLIONS of them struggling to survive as a species.

It's a beautifully written book, delicately interweaving and balancing the disparate people who interact with the butterflies and each other, including the sheep farmers struggling to make a living, the ecotourists who come to marvel, the scientists who study the the Monarchs, the news media who seem willing to exploit any and all of them for a few minutes of air time, and Dellarobia herself, who is led to explore her own "flight behavior".

A difficult, enthralling, wonderful book.

Brava, Barbara Kingsolver.

          

Little White Flowers

White Mystery Flowers

These delicate white flowers have been popping up at several places around the garden this spring.

We have no idea what they are, or how they came to be here, but they're very pretty.  The leaves in this photo are those of a Nasturtium and don't belong to the white flowers, which have long, narrow, strap-like leaves.  The flower clusters are on long thin stalks.

Flowers With Partial Leaf

I'm starting to think this may be a member of the onion family; yesterday I noticed a thin membrane clinging to the base of a couple of the flower clusters, and it reminded me of the flowers on the Leeks and the Bunching Onions we've had the last couple of years.  The flowers of those plants are covered with a membrane before it splits open and the flowers emerge.

We knew what those plants were because Cindy had planted them and expected them to emerge where she had put them.

However, she didn't plant these, especially the one that's emerging in the middle of a path covered with decomposed granite (DG), because there's no dirt there and there is a layer of weed blocking fabric under the DG.

A gift from the gophers?  Some ground squirrel's pantry?  The secret stash of whichever varmint stole the False Sea Onion bulb last year?  

We'll probably never know.