Big Smiling Head

Well, I started my seeds fairly late in the season, plus it’s my first try at a potted plant porch garden, but there is a freakin’ tomato in development! Whoopee! There shall be at least one tomato enjoyed by me due to my mad porch gardening skills. Heck, there might even be a small handful, depending on how September 2011 pans out. This week is warm and sunny, so I will be looking out for more flowers turned to fruit. Also, my pepper plants are still hanging in there – no flowers, no shrub, but the leaves seem to be delicious based on the bites that are missing.

Summer has finally arrived with a rather sweltering heat-wave, and it seems like most plants and many cheerful local birds are loving it. The day starts early with the liquid (and endless) trill of young robins. At least that is my primary suspect. There are bald eagles nesting way above us in the hills, and some sort of mountain jay with a black crest and bright blue body, but robins are the most numerous bird in the area. In the last week or two I have started to notice Monarch butterflies making an appearance – there are many attractive flowers in our area and they have taken note. These butterflies seem more pale than the ones I remember from Northern California. Maybe I am misremembering? Or they get more golden with age? Or based on where they grew up? Pale here in Oregon, more burnished in California, perhaps. No matter the color, I enjoy seeing them flit about. We recently hung a few small hummingbird feeders up and filled them with red sugar water – they do not get as much play as I’d imagined, but most days we do see a little action. It’s especially great since the feeders are in some of the main house windows. When they come, even briefly, the whole house is usually involved. Well, maybe not the chicken. But certainly Kingston. I like summer days full of Monarch butterflies and angry, thirsty hummingbirds!

I started my seeds-to-garden a little bit late this year. Between a surprisingly long-lived, ice-bound spring and living in a new homestead, it seems I have waited a bit long to plant my want-to-become-a-garden seeds. After finally germinating (all 3 seeds in each of 2 pots), they did pretty well inside the house, soaking in the sun through the window, and a few weeks ago I finally transplanted them to larger buckets outside on the porch. Things went pretty smoothly with the transplanting (the seedlings were grown in peat pots that are meant to go into the final living arrangements to nourish the young plants), and life on the porch was looking like a win. Then the great heat-wave came crashing down upon us, and it seems 3 of the tomato seedlings just could not take the heat. All 3 had fallen over just at the point where they enter the ground. I wanted to blame the dog, or clumsy self, but now believe it may have been extreme heat prostration. Seems this breed does not care for the heat, and it looks like the 3 plantlets will probably die. Will keep you posted. Also, once the thriving tomato plants actually flower and fruit, I can report back on which breed of tomato I had success with. Next year I will definitely start more seeds, much earlier in the season. A larger plant would have made it through this first heat-wave, I am certain.