Fred and Valerie

Surprisingly, our lawn is starting to come back to life. We had a fungus attack the lawn and turn a good portion of it red/brown. I had to spread a fungus killer, but one of the unfortunate side-effects of the fungus killer is that it also kills the grass. It’s been a while since the fungus killing took place and the grass is coming back in patches. I’m hoping a good portion of it is back before we overseed the lawn in the fall.

The garden is doing amazingly well. All the Stella d’Oro Daylilies are doing well and looking healthy. Each of the Garden Phlox has had a bloom and is looking good, though one of them seems to have had a root of something else tied in with it when I got it from my friend. I’ll have to talk with her to find out what it is and if I need to get rid of it. The Amsonia is doing surprisingly well. I was told it would be the hardest to keep alive of all the plants I got. It’s not looking hearty yet, but it has new growth and is generally looking good. The last of the plants, the Spider Wart, is doing exceptionally well. All of the plantings are green and looking hearty and healthy. They’ve also filled out quite nicely; even the smallest of the bunch.

As for our herbs, they’re all growing very well. The Basil is doing the best, by far, and this is likely attributed to the massive heat wave we’ve had lately. I trimmed off the flower growth that started coming in this week in an attempt to let herb focus on filling out more. The clippings smelled amazing and were very potent. Just bringing it into the kitchen made the entire room smell strongly of Basil. The Rosemary and Oregano aren’t as amazing as the Basil, but they’re still doing quite well.

Lastly, the tomatoes are blooming like crazy now. From front to back, the plants have 5, 7, 6, and 5 fruits each. The largest of the fruits is about 2-3 inches in diameter, while the smallest I was able to see was about 1/4-inch in diameter. There are quite a few more flowers on each of the plants, so I’m expecting even more fruits to appear in the coming week. Here’s hoping the bunnies have moved on to greener pastures.

We had to do some grocery shopping tonight. What ensued was pretty funny.

We first stopped at Wal-Mart, which is almost always a humorous endeavor. After finishing our shopping, we packed up the car and we’re headed on our way when we saw two women bent over putting stuff in their car. One was bent over into the back seat and the other was bent over into the front seat. It was an, um, interesting sight. It got even more “interesting” when the women at the front seat bent over more and we could just about read the size of her underwear.

After laughing ourselves through the Wal-Mart parking lot, we made our way to Martin’s to pick up some Chinese food ingredients. We decided to get some gas on the way out and stopped at Martin’s gas pumps. When I stepped out of the car, I couldn’t believe what I saw. At the pump next to ours, a kid was peeing into the wheel well of his family’s van. We’re not talking about a small child here. We’re talking about a kid who should either be able to “hold it” or at least make it into Martin’s to use thier restrooms. Instead, he emptied his tank while his mother filled up the van’s tank.

As if this weren’t enough hilarity for one evening, we still had to stop at Food Lion to pick up some General Tso’s Chicken seasoning for dinner (Wal-Mart and Martin’s didin’t have any in stock). We bought our General Tso’s and Fried Rice seasoning packets and got one of those checkout coupons where the grocery store tries to give you some incentive to come back and purchase similar/related items. Imagine our surprise when, after purchasing ingredients for Chinese food, we got a checkout coupon for cat food. Now that’s just messed up. Funny, but messed up.

Those crazy tomatoes were getting out of control and wandering the neighborhood, so I finally broke down and bought cages for them. I put the cages in place and we now have caged, under control, tomatoes.

If only the story were really that exciting…

Unfortunately, we lost one of the tomato buds in the whole installation process, so we now only have three tomatoes blooming, though it looks like more are on the way.

Our tomatoes have buds! Or whatever you call the little tiny beginnings of a tomato. Each of the four stalks has a bud that’s about 3/4-inch in diameter. I took pictures and should have them posted soon posted one of the few that was in focus below. It’s actually quite exciting to have tomatoes this soon as we weren’t expecting them for a few months or so. Valerie already has a recipe for making tomato sauce out of fresh tomatoes, so here’s hoping they get big quick!

As for the rest of the garden, a few of the Stella d’Oro Daylilies have new blooms on them and one of the Oreganos has grown like crazy. The Oregano in question now has a piece that’s about 8 inches tall.