A beautiful Sunday

I let the marigolds run wild after the summer garden was finished, and the bees spent all day yesterday taking advantage of the late season blooms. Temperatures tonight are expected to drop below freezing, so it was probably their last chance to prepare for winter.

Yesterday was also my dear husband's birthday! We had a quiet day at home (the weather was glorious, like Indian Summer) with the dogs and Marco. I made all of Gregg's favorite foods, including banana pudding for dessert. I have plans to make him a pineapple upside-down cake too, but he requested that I wait until the banana pudding is finished. 

Just a quick update

My first week at the new job is done! It's going fine, but boy, the principal wasn't kidding when she said there was going to be a "steep learning curve"! The bookkeeping aspect of it is far more complicated than I expected, but I'm learning a lot and taking it a day at a time. And unlike last year, I get to learn in a pleasant, supportive environment where I don't have to fear making a mistake because a volatile, mentally disturbed bully is in charge. My new principal and assistant principal are both great--friendly and calm and professional--and I can tell I'm really going to love working with both of them. What a difference! 

In the absence of anything else of general interest to talk about at the moment (because bookkeeping is a lot of things, but entertaining isn't one of them) I'll share a couple of pictures from my garden this past week. It's a happy place at the moment. :)

Garden progress

My garden is coming along nicely. Two or three days of cool, rainy weather have done it more good than two weeks' worth of watering from the hose. There's just something special about rainwater!

My "living mulch" of marigolds is finally amounting to something:

"Marietta" is the variety name.

"Hillbilly Potato Leaf" will be the first slicing tomatoes we taste this year (probably). The plants are growing like gangbusters.

First fruit set honors go to the cherries, of course. Here are some tiny green "Mexican Midgets". I'm looking forward to having these in salads.

The cucumbers are coming along.

Four pepper plants are growing among the handful of carrots that managed to sprout. I never seem to have much luck with carrots.

Now that I'm finally harvesting lettuce, I made spots to plant two more peppers (both Datils) in the middle of the patch. The lettuce is a little late producing this year, but it's tender and delicious!

Under the weather, but happy

I've been home sick for the past two days. There seems to be some kind of stomach bug/cold/virus thing going around and lucky me, I caught it. I'm actually feeling much better today but given how upset my stomach was all day yesterday, I dared not go back to work yet. I barely made it to the bathroom in time a couple of times, and had I been at work it might have led to some terrible embarrassment.

I've been doing some of my work from home, though. Yesterday one of the assistant principals emailed me and said, "I hope you feel better..........STOP WORKING FROM HOME!" Haha. Had we been talking in person I would have told her that now that our evil principal has been fired, I don't mind keeping my work caught up from home. The guy they sent from the district office to get us through the rest of the month (as the interim principal) is beloved by the staff and students, and I don't mind the way I would have with the wicked witch! I wouldn't have lifted a finger from home for her. What a relief that she's gone; even though I won't be there next year I'm happy that the staff will no longer have to suffer under her. 

Next week I'll be spending a morning at my new school, training with the outgoing secretary. She's retiring after many years in the position, and she's told me through email how much I'm going to love it there! Everyone has been so very kind and encouraging and welcoming already, and I don't even officially start for two months! This may end up being the school I stay at until I retire, with any luck. I'm happy.

Speaking of happy and good news, I decided to weigh myself yesterday and check in on how my diet is going. I've lost 23 pounds since January! Slowly but surely, I'm getting there. By the time I start the new job in July I'll have to have some new clothes. Everything is starting to get loose on me, especially pants. I certainly won't complain about needing new clothes!

Now, as promised, here are some garden pictures. Have a great weekend, everyone!

The marigolds, tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers in the main bed are starting to grow!

My "Marvel of the Four Seasons" lettuce is looking good right now. 

This is the bed in front of the porch, where I've planted two cherry tomatoes and three pepper plants. Zinnias from last year are resprouting in there, too!

You can't tell in this picture, but our young fig tree is almost shoulder high. Still no sign of a fig yet, though.

The bananas on the side of the porch are growing like mad.

For the first time in all the years I've had it, it looks as if the pomegranate tree is going to produce fruit this year! It's taller than the roof and absolutely loaded with flowers and developing poms. Fingers crossed!

End of June garden notes

 The marigolds I started from seed to serve as a kind of living mulch have surpassed all my expectations. I never knew marigolds could grow so big and tall and lush. Butterflies seem to love the flowers; I saw another species yesterday and took some pictures.

Planting all these marigolds under and around my tomato plants instead of mulching really seems to have worked out. The only pests I've had to deal with were a few hornworms, which I caught early and picked off before they had a chance to do much damage. A close inspection of every plant every day really pays off. 

I've been weighing the tomatoes as we pick them and keeping a log of their productivity (and taste) for future reference. So far we've harvested 11 Celebrity tomatoes with a combined weight of just over 5 pounds. I knew they would likely be first, and that they would taste okay but without the richness of heirlooms and later varieties. I planted them for earliness and quantity, and so far I've been pleased with them. They still have lots of green unripe fruits coming along. One surprise is that we've already gotten 4 Brandywines totaling 2 pounds. These are the tomatoes I've been most excited about, and for good reason. The flavor is outstanding, rich and fruity and complex. We also tried the first two Red Beefsteak last night. The flavor was so-so, not as rich and complex as the Brandywines but it did have one advantage: thick meaty fruits without very many seeds. If it proves to be productive it might be a good choice for canning in the future. Speaking of canning tomatoes, I have one San Marzano tomato plant which has produced a few of its paste-type fruits, but the plant has been spindly and weak almost from the beginning. I took a cutting from it and have started another one to give it a fair shot, but if the smaller one proves to be as wispy and  unproductive as the first, I won't be growing it again. We're still waiting on ripe tomatoes from German Queen (lots of big beautiful fruits coming), Mr. Stripey (a few fruits are still ripening on it) and Bonnie's Centennial (loaded with big, almost-ripe tomatoes). I'll report back on how they taste later on. Oh, and one other plant is filling up with tomatoes. I bought it as a seedling and it was supposed to be a Husky Cherry Red, but was obviously mislabeled. The clusters of tomatoes on it are much bigger than cherries so I have no idea what it could be, but it is a sturdy, low growing bush. We shall see!

My cucumbers are barely producing anything. I'm not sure why, since there are lots of flowers and the bees love that area of the yard. They're planted beside the cantaloupes which have also been flowering like crazy. We have several small cantaloupes slowly ripening right now--I can't wait to taste one!

The jalapenos are doing really well. I'm leaving most of them unpicked for now so they'll have a chance to turn red. After that I'll be pickling some of them and maybe making salsa with the rest.

Also, some of you may remember that I potted up an ornamental pomegranate into a big concrete planter. Well, it's been blooming up a storm in the past week or two! Too bad the fruits are ornamental. I had lots of blossoms on my regular pomegranate this year, but they all fell out and didn't develop fruit. I'm not sure why--possibly they bloomed too early for pollinators to get at them. That's not the case with this ornamental, though. Not only do we see bees all around it, but yesterday we saw a  hummingbird sipping from one flower after another!

That's most of the news from the garden right now!