08-05-2025 — Real Tomatoes

Howdy all. OMG, the Air Quality Index, when I got up, was supposedly 139. That’s like not good for creatures with lungs. The smoke and ashes from the Canadian wild fires in the middle of the country, were blowing over Lake Erie from both the west (where they are) and the east. And I had to go out to water gardens and flowers that were bone dry. I was only out for maybe 20 minutes, 3 times, as I moved the sprinklers, pulled some weed, and added water to the self watering flower pots. I could taste burnt ashes.

I have pretty much given up on the lawn for the year, and I really don’t care if the cucumber plants dry up and die (but they look good and had 6 big cukes I pulled). As for the bean plants, they look horrible. There might be a serving of beans on them, but I can do without them. The poor melon plants look miserable. A couple of dried up fruit the size of a large grape, and many yellow leaves. There might be carrots ready, but I didn’t check. The few pepper plants were not doing too bad. I may get 5-6 peppers in an month. I watered them well.

What I wanted to make sure they got watered, were the tomato plants. First “real” tomato harvest.  Lots of those purplish ones.   Three nice baseball yellow tomatoes (my favorite). One green that I knocked down.  And plenty of cherry tomatoes for omelettes and salads.

I cut up one of the yellow tomatoes tonight for on sandwiches. They are so gooood. They are sweeter than reds, and meatier, and have a slightly less acidic bite to them. Those purple topped tomatoes are okay, just not great.

And the cherry Tom tomatoes are just as prolific as they were last year. From the 3-4 plants I will get many quarts. Today was the first full quart, if you count the purples with the cherry tomatoes. I probably could have picked enough cherry ones to do the quart, but, I wanted to get inside where breathing is a little easier so I can continue to Enjoy Life.