Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I harvested one ripe Paul Robeson tomato this afternoon, and cattitude used it and part of a farmer's market tomato (Carbon) to make tomato sandwiches, and it was good. This is a variety I discovered when we lived in Seattle, that I haven't seen in the farmers markets around here. The climate is fine, this is a Russian variety. (rareseeds.com tells me that the seeds were first introduced to the United States in the early 1990s.)

I have two more of these tomatoes ripening in a paper bag -- one that's sort of ripe but could use another day, and one green one that fell off the plant a few days ago -- and there are a couple more on the plant.

A few days ago, I tried ordering New Balance sneakers from Zappo's; they arrived the following day, but aren't even close to fitting.

So, this morning I went back to Marathon Sports, and asked if they had a record of the order I'd placed and cancelled in April, so I could save time. They looked it up using my phone number, and the employee said it was a Brooks Adrenalin size 8 and a half.

I told her at this point I don't care about color, and she brought me a pair in boring gray and white. I tried it on, it was a little snug, and she went and got the 8.5 wide. That fit, as far as I could tell in a few minutes in the store, so I bought it and came home. I asked about other colors, and while the company makes them, Marathon Sports doesn't carry those, so if I ordered through them it would be final sale. I said thanks anyway, I'd wait a few days and see how well they fit. If I do order another color, it will be through Zappo's, because they do allow returns and online shopping is more convenient than going to the store to order something for delivery.

On the way home, I stopped at the stationer in Harvard Square (Bob Slade), and discovered that they had sold out of the reusable shopping bags we like, and can't get more. So I bought a few pens and came home.

It's a hot day, but not unbearable for a short while, so I went into the garden and harvested enough lettuce for one last home-grown salad. There are about enough leaves left on the plants to put on a sandwich or two, but I wasn't expecting to still be harvesting lettuce on July 15. The cucumber plants have a few small fruit, and I'm hoping to be able to pick one in the next week or two. I thought I'd seen two tiny tomatoes on the cherry tomato plant a few days ago, but didn't see them yesterday.

I hope this means I overlooked something, and not that the squirrel is going to eat them all. As far as I can tell, neither the local squirrel(s) nor rabbits are interested in lettuce, and they don't seem to be interested in cucumbers, but the squirrel keeps biting off the flowers or just-forming fruit on the few strawberries that survived the winter.

Today I moved the other two tomato plants, and some of the cucumber vines. I'm feeling optimistic about one of the tomato plants, hopeful about the cucumbers, and figured there was no reason not to try moving the last tomato, even though it was significantly water-logged and clearly not in good shape.

( details of transplanting )

Even if all the plants I just moved die, that leaves several cucumber vines, and I am hopeful that I will get at least a few cucumbers.

I'm still recuperating/tired from this cough, and am typing this to remind myself that gardening uses energy even if it's not usually called "exercise" and doesn't use the muscles I'm doing ongoing PT-ish stuff for. I am pretty good at counting walks towards exercise, even if I was walking to get somewhere rather than for exercise or to enjoy a nice day.

I am feeling better, if not entirely well. In particular, I have my appetite back. To celebrate this, or something, adrian_turtle stopped by with a cheesecake this afternoon: it's from 7Ate9 Bakery and decorated in rainbow colors for Pride.

I have eaten one slice and will be freezing most of the rest. This was after having a reasonable lunch -- cucumber and smoked trout -- followed by some ice cream and then a slice of ham.

I also transplanted the two remaining tomato plants, one Yellow Brandywine and one hybrid cherry tomato, before Adrian showed up. I'm now somewhat tired, so clearly not altogether well.

For the record: on cattitude's advice, I called my doctor this morning to check in, since I was still coughing some. She assured me that this sort of cough can go on for weeks, and that I don't need to come in, or do anything else in particular, unless it gets worse. She also advised me to stop taking the cough syrup, so I have done so (after a dose first thing this morning, because I was coughing some). I don't seem to be coughing more now that the codeine has worn off, which is good.

I have also been easing back into my PT-ish exercises: just a few, both fewer kinds and fewer indivuidual exercises (one set instead of two or three).

cattitude made a phone call while sitting on the porch, and noticed that one of the cucumber seedlings has a flower.

I have planted them (two seedlings, sent in the same little plastic box) in nothing but compost: our next-door neighbor gave me more than I needed, last fall, and said to save it for spring. The neighbor can have one free sack of compost per week from the company she composts her food scraps through, and like me could do some planting but only if she wants to use containers.

And I'm not particularly tired from the several more trips up and down the stairs, which is cheering.

I transplanted ten more strawberry plants today, into another grow bag. That leaves a couple (from the original 25) that I'm abandoning. I didn't actually want 25 plants, but I found a good price on a flat of 25.

That wore me out some: even sitting on a plastic garden chair, moving the soil into the grow bag involved a lot of leaning forward. Tomorrow's plan is for a walk, and a phone chat with my mother in the afternoon.

I have ordered strawberry plants, for delivery and planting soon, so they will be established when next Spring's growing season starts.

This was suggested in an email from GrowJoy, and by the time I heard from them most varieties were sold out. What they have left, and I am getting, is flats of 25 strawberry plants (Chandler variety); that was $45, and the only other source I found was offering bundles of 3 at $19.95/bundle. So a bulk order made obvious sense.

I have also ordered strawberry grow bags, and more garden soil. The grow bags use vertical rather than horizontal space, so I'll have more room for tomatoes, or cucumbers, or whatever else seems like a good idea. (cattitude is thinking of growing herbs.)

I was stressing about this purchase: right now I seem to be comfortable with ongoing expenses (such as buying the groceries we want), but was stressing about this. Cattitude pointed out that when I'm stressed, in general, I will stress about money. That's a separate fact from the general uncertainty about money and prices the last few months.

In the present-tense garden, I picked a few more cherry tomatoes, and saw more cucumber flowers today than yesterday.

Addendum: Today's mail brought a general "we know we could have done better" letter from Burpee, with a coupon for $10 off a $25 purchase, good through next June. I have stuck it on the fridge.

Because hope is a virtue, I just ordered two more cucumber plants, which might produce cucumbers before the season ends, based on the nursery's information about "time to harvest."

I was looking at nursery websites to get an idea of when I'd want to order plants for next year, and saw "now shipping" on these, as well as on tomatoes that wouldn't have time to grow and ripen in this climate. I decided to spend the money and hope it works, rather than sit around thinking "but I could have" and even "well, since I didn't do it when I saw the option, it's too late now" over the next couple of weeks.

Shipping will be the week of August 10, so I have a few days to think about which container to put the plants in: there's one small container I'm not using (though the plant I tried there a couple of months ago failed), or I could put them in with the existing cucumber plants, which are close to done I think, or the cherry tomatoes.

I think I'm likely to get flowers if not fruit, and I was remarking a few weeks ago that cucumber is a fine ornamental with all those bright yellow flowers.

I just picked the first half dozen cherry tomatoes from my garden. Those will go nicely with steak and a salad of farmers market lettuce.

It looks like a few more will be ripe tomorrow or Saturday. There are also more cucumbers of varying sizes on those vines, but none seem to be ripe yet.

I harvested the first cucumber from my garden this morning, and we had it for lunch. It was good -- not astounding, but better than I've been getting from the supermarket.

Another day in the sun would have been good for it, but I was impatient. I'm going to give the next two more time to ripen, and hope for sunshine tomorrow or Sunday.