My friend Mark had to stay in the hospital all week last week in the neurology ward.  He was hooked up by the head to monitors the whole time.  With an attractive hairnet to keep it all in place.  And he was intentionally sleep-deprived.  Torture!  We brought him some coffee to ease the sleepiness.  I don’t think it helped much.

The phone rang and he got up to answer it.  Naturally, I took advantage of the moment.  I was hopeful about getting his arse on teh intarwebs. Alas, it was not to be.
But now I know:  Boxers!

A branch full of nearly ripe peaches. We had a good haul this year.  There were lots more way up high.  I’m making another fresh peach pie tonight with the last of them.  I did one Saturday night for company and it was really, really good.  I’m not a baker but apparently you don’t need to be if the fruit is this good to begin with.

A perfect peach.

Perfect peach and the dogs.  Local color, don’t you know.

Oh, sweet jeebus, it’s the tomatoes from hell.

I bought tomato plants from KMart this year.  Hahaha, yeah, it sounds pretty stupid now that I type it out.  But they were supposed to be heirlooms and sweet cherry 100s and one other kind.

Instead, I got all of some sort of canning Roma variety.  By canning, I mean that you can run over them with a truck and they keep their shape.  Once they are rosy red, there’s not a drop of liquid left in them.  All flesh. Just Awful.  Worst eating tomatoes ever.  Plus, I’ve never seen tomatoes with a growth habit like this.  They took over my little raised bed box.  Smothered the eggplant, peppers, and green beans.  Pulled up their stakes and knocked over the tomato cages.  I finally gave one of the plants an old ladder to lean on.  I hope I get it back some day.

I have many times many bad little tomatoes to do something with.  I think I’ll make some experimental green tomato chow-chow relish.  The tomatoes are better green or orange than red.  It’s odd.  I guess if a person was going to make sauce they would work.
Except for the taste.

Last  but not least – I bought four little clearance garden torches from Pier One.  They’re so cute!   Too bad we have zero mosquitoes this year.   I’ll never need to light them.
West Nile was so bad around here that the county has made a concerted effort to get rid of the mosquitoes.  It worked.  But whatever they did quadrupled/gazupled the fly population.  It’s intense.  Worse than the dairy farm.  You just can’t fuck with mother nature and expect to get away with it.