Re: [gardeners] Dante in Georgia

penny x stamm (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Sun, 28 Jun 1998 23:51:05 -0400 

Hello, Myra -- I don't know why I am complaining about 95* 
when you've got 100*.... or is it allee saimee..? My grandson's
moved to Spartanburg. He wanted to get away from the snow.
Me, I'd rather freeze than boil.

Today was the first day I could bear to be outside by lunch-
time. And what was waiting for me..? My one cherry tomato 
plant had shot from yesterday's 10 inches up to 20 inches
in one night. Not an error, not a daydream, it really happened. 
Water and sunshine and heat did it. So the poor thing 
collapsed sideways, flat on the ground. Never grew a cherry 
tomato plant before, so I did not dream of staking it, tsk, tsk. 
It's planted with a solid plastic ring around it 1.5 inches higher
than the soil level, to keep out the cutworm or whatever likes 
to attack it, so that's not the problem. 

I have a chrysthanthenum growing which is 2 ft tall and also
2 ft across, a perfect, thick mound like a globe arborvitae. 
That's what I had envisioned the cherry tomato as being when
it matured ...  I guess I must have seen a young child's drawing
of a cherry tomato plant somewhere along the line. Live and
learn. 

I shall break off the lower leaves tomorrow morning, and replant 
it many inches deeper, fully staked. Waste not, want not.

But that's not all:  this morning was the target moment for my 
harvesting a fabulous crop of raspberies. And it was with total
dismay that I discovered that the birds had beaten me to it, 
at dawn. Not one cotton-pickin' ripe raspberry in the entire
patch was spared. Not even o-n-e..!  I told my hubby we'll have
to put bird netting over them, but this would be the first time in
45 years that it was necessary, so his response was: let 'em
die. Abandon them. Forget 'em. Leave them be. I answered, you
mean KILL them? Pull them out? Grandpa's Indian Summer 
raspberries? [2 crops a year]  RIGHT, he shouted. OK, I said,
Out they come. . . Don't you DARE! he said. Just let them go.
Takes too much time to dig up the patch. 

Well, you can imagine my reaction to that one. Point blank, either 
I will cover them with netting, or else I will Roundup them, take 
your choice. 

Of course, the bizarre thing is to see the heads of lettuce which 
the rabbits gnawed right down to the core. They have ALL 
produced complete sets of new leaves..... Jimmie said why don't
we surround them with marogolds, the way his dear cousin told
him to do, and I reminded him that we had tried that in the past,
and it had done no good. It couldn't hurt, could it, said he? So I
went out and bought him a flat of nice yellow marigolds, and said,
"Here! Now YOU plant them. I'm busy chopping down the 
raspberry patch!" 

Anybody know how to make a Micky Finn...???

Penny, NY zone 6
   

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