Tomatoes: a Review

My whole life, everyone who cares has always asserted FORCEFULLY that homegrown tomatoes, vine-ripened and freshly harvested, are INFINITELY SUPERIOR to store tomatoes and that store tomatoes are trash. I have always agreed that store tomatoes are not awesome. Too...tomato-ey? Anyway, the other evening we harvested our first tomato from our garden and diced it up to put in a pasta salad. It was much lovelier to cut into than a store tomato, and we didn't harvest it until it was actually ripe. Those store tomatoes that say,"vine-ripened" are totally lying, since they're not ever actually ripe. Anyway, it was actually edible. I don't really like tomatoes, since they taste so tomato-ey and not as fruity. But this one from our garden was almost fruity and that nasty pungent tomato flavor was mellowed into a tastier, riper, and more-fruity taste. So, in the end, I agree that store tomatoes stink and home-grown and vine-ripened tomatoes are much, much better. But I'm still not to that tomato-activist point of saying that you can just go out and pick the tomato off the vine and eat it like an apple. THAT'S too much for now, but I did like our ripe garden tomato.

TV Show Review

So I don't really watch TV that much. Seth and I like to catch the occasional season of Survivor and I like the first few weeks of American Idol. Also we never miss The Office. But honestly, not that much tv. So my brother- and sister-in-law told me about this show: WipeOut. Just hearing them describe it, I was CRAZY to watch it. I LOVE stuff like that. And so I watched it, after missing it several weeks in a row. Can I just say, I LOVE THIS SHOW!!!

Bloopers and Practical Jokes was funny; Funniest Home Videos was funnier. People falling down is so hilarious, I can barely keep myself from laughing just thinking about it. So the premise of this show wipeout, is to put people on an impossible obstacle course and see how much they fall down. Then you take the winners from that and put them on harder impossible physical challenges. The Sweeper event puts contestants on poles and then just runs a pole around to sweep them off while they're trying to jump it. The first time I tuned in, there was a guy trying to get past the boxing-glove wall, where you have to cling to the wall and try to get by but with boxing-gloves punching out at you, all up and down, at random times. I almost peed my pants I was laughing so hard.

Then this last week they did the sort of "best of" show, which was great because there were just clips of wipe-out after wipe-out and each one would be more hilarious than the last. They have these big huge rubber balls and you have to try to jump on or run across them all, but of course they only had footage of one guy ever being able to do it. And he had to be the first one of the day, because after you fall in, you are all muddy and that gets on the big rubber balls and makes them slipperier.

In summary, this is a really great show. They have a lady-reporter down by the track and she doesn't even try to hide her laughter. Clearly this show is all about getting fabulous footage of people falling down, bonking off of huge rubber balls, getting boxed in the gut at random times, and in general being super-hilarious. Two thumbs up!!! tuesday nights on ABC

Holy Horticulture, Batman!

Here's my garden now. Those there, up front, are the tomato plants. I had to give up on raising my tomatoes from seed this year and just go buy these. Luckily they were on clearance or the price of each little plantling would have given me a stroke. THAT'S the last thing I need this summer, eh? Then there's a row of dud beans, then a row of half-duds and half-awesome beans. Then another row of tomatoes, of a different variety. Thanks, Dot and Jay for your cast-off tomato cages from last year. My dad laughed at how big they were when he saw them, but I feel that our little 'maters are doing them justice. Behind the second tomato-row are two rows of corn, with vigorous pole-beans climbing every stalk. And behind THAT you can see some extremely bushy beans. They are going crazy and this next couple weeks - hopefully - will see me canning some huge bean-harvests in my pressure cooker/canner. Thanks for that, Will and Jodi! You guys are great!

Then in this here picture you can see my poor sad little pea row, staked up with string and branch chunks right from our dead backyard trees. Then an enormous, bushy cucumber row. I plan to use that harvest to make little pickles, and maybe some big pickles. I got the gallon-size pickle chips from Sam's Club and the kids are kind of going crazy on them, so maybe I'll use my P-Chef crinkle cutter to do up some fancy old pickle chips. That's a big maybe. Anyway, beyond my little green garden stool you can see the king of the garden: my enormous, outrageous, novelty, competition-size pumpkin vines. Just vines, so far. With plenty of flowers. Every day that I can, I go out and poke around looking for a little gourd to appear but so far, it's just a bunch of flowers. Soon, little gourds, soon. You'll have to come soon in order to be ready and hilariously large by Fall. Then next to the big old pumpkin vines are some smaller but equally vigorous Butternut Squash vines. They have flowers too and no gourds. But it's just super-cool to have something growing so dang well in my garden, where nothing but rocks and debris were flourishing when we moved in.

Seriously, when we moved in, this was a nasty dump-hole. My mother-in-law came to help turn over the soil and get the garden ready, but first we had to move a box of busted-up mirror tiles, two of those concrete-based poles for mounting what? satellite dishes?, a long strip of galvanized flashing, lumber scraps, and literally TONS of landscaping rocks that were a couple inches deep under the deadish grass. I still have more of those to pick out for next year's optimistic, expanded garden. Plus all the stuff we un-buried while rock-picking, like lots of pennies, old batteries, matchbox cars, two bbq grates, some pavers, busted bricks, and more plywood scraps. And pens. Plenty of pens. And toys. Little mini toys.

So, thank goodness something good is happening in the garden, and hopefully lots of it will result in harvested vegetables. And none of the vegetables will be malignant!

My First Cancer Flowers

Eric came down and said, "There's a guy at the door with flowers." So within 18 hours of posting my new medical situation online, my brother and sister-in-law, Will and Jodi, had these flowers delivered to me. I was sobbing and sobbing for two reasons, one good and one not as good. First, because it was so unexpected and so dang awesome and so soon. But second, because Cancer Flowers! I have Cancer! so the children were lined up, one, two, three, asking what was wrong and was I ok. I had to calm it down and explain to them as nonchalantly and lovingly as possible, how sometimes the cells that we're made of go bad, and I had some bad ones in my neck , but not to worry, because the doctors are all over it, taking care of it and after a little while, there won't be anything to worry about, children!

Thanks, Jodi and Will! YOU guys are awesome!