It's a jungle out there

A tomato jungle, I mean. I am a novice tomato grower. Sure, I've had a few tomato plants now and then, but it hasn't been any more serious than taking home my Home Depot plant labeled "cherry tomato", sticking it in a pot, and letting it go. This year I attempted to know something about what I was doing, helped along in great measure by Megan the Tomato Queen.

An unanticipated consequence of my indecisive nature is the plentitude of plant life you see here. And that's only half of it. After a trip to the wonderful Swanson's nursery in the spring, and another to the Seattle Tilth sale, I ended up with 15 plants of 14 different varieties. Planted with lots of compost and organic fertilizer (a gift from the Tomato Queen), the result is plants that are taller than I am, which are also taking over the patio and the walk next to it. I had already invested so heavily in peonies, lilacs, blueberries, strawberries, pots and planters, soil, compost, lime, bark, and now 15 tomato plants, that I couldn't bring myself to break the bank on proper, sturdy supports. The plants were so small in the spring that I figured surely I could just use bamboo stakes and twine. Uh huh. Right-o. Be assured that next season I will be springing for a dozen or so of these towers.

But oh, look at what's starting to happen out there:

Where's the camera when you need it?

On one drive "downtown" in rural northern Wisconsin, we had to stop and watch a sight you don't ever see in Seattle: a deer walking calmly through someone's front yard, just feet away from the house. She stood in the driveway and started munching away on a hanging basket that when she started was overflowing with white petunias, but when she finished was just two scraggly little flowers and some stalks. When she tired of the petunias, she walked up on the front porch and started on the pot of marigolds. We started laughing about how pissed this lady is going to be when she gets home, and upon hearing us, the doe lifted her head, munching away with a big pom pom of marigold hanging out of the side of her mouth. Oh, to have had a camera.

When pirates attack

I keep thinking I should really write about one vacation before writing about the next, but what the hell. You'll get to hear about our May trip to Utah pretty soon.

We spent the 4th of July week in a little log cabin in the woods of northern Wisconsin. This is Bill's family cabin, which was lived in by his grandmother for about 40 years. It's on tens of acres of woods and river, and is a lovely place to spend a few relaxing days with the deer and the fireflies.

On this trip Bill brought a couple of his air rifles. I haven't written about this yet, but a relatively new hobby of his is competetive marksmanship with air rifles. These are fancy, souped-up pellet guns. Seeing as how we're well within the city limits, he doesn't haul these things out and shoot in the back yard. They're only pellet guns, but still. People don't generally appreciate their neighbors shooting stuff up, however responsible and safety-conscious they might be, and I don't blame them.

So the prospect of being out in the middle of nowhere, in the woods, with no neighbors anywhere, and several straight days of pure free time, seemed like the perfect opportunity to get in a little practice. Or a lot of practice.

But first, what to shoot at? A trip "downtown" to the five and dime (it's still called that -- how cute!) yielded a collection of little plastic pirates and some small balloons. Bill's dad cleaning out a few boxes from the attic added a few old Christmas decorations. Let the carnage begin!

You can see more photos here.

Sacré bleu!

The other morning I went out back with my cereal bowl to collect my bounty of succulent blueberries, only to find my three best-producing bushes had been picked clean in the night. Aaarrrrghhh!

I guess this is the year I learn about bird netting the hard, heart-breaking, go-hungry way. Will bird netting protect against squirrel or opossum raids?