SAD

Dwight brought me
this heart shaped rock from
the Santa Fe River bed for one
of my birthdays we celebrated in New Mexico.
Ripe Silvery Fir Tree tomato on right
and Stupice along the top.

Dwight Sims

"There is a great comfort in growing your own food. You are close to the soil. You use the basic elements -- water, sunlight, earth, air, and plants -- for your work, your sustenance, and your pleasure. You nurture your garden from feedings to nature plants, tending, pruning, weeding. Year after year, you see cycles come and go, from sprouting to harvest to withering, to seeding again. You eat your plats to live. You don't mind and they don't mind. Some day, you will fall back to this earth, back into the sun-baked dirt, and you will become food for the plants. It's the way of all life, and all very agreeable."

                                Deng Ming-Dao, 365 Tao

Sad but what is happening is climate change in action.
Here in Cotati there has hardly been a summer with coolish temperatures abounding as in 2023. All of the tomato plants fruits are slow, very slow, to ripen no matter the variety nor location. The Silvery Fir Tree, touted to be early in ripening . . . not this year. In my humble opinion this is the tastiest ripe tomato. Next year I plan to plant more than the 4 planted this year. I was introduced to this variety in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life a book written by Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver and Steven L. Hopp. This book takes place in Virginia where the family dramatically change their lives by growing and/or eating only local food. 

I am wondering if the fruit on the tomato plants growing in the West most raised bed will ripen. I decided to plant them in this bed since it typically gets the most sunshine. So far I have not had very many ripe tomatoes to pick and eat. So as I plan my garden this winter I may decide to grow different varieties of tomatoes. Perhaps I will return to what I planted in 2022.

The tomatoes now growing, at PageRefuge are

    Cherry tomatoes:

 1. Amethyst Jewel

  2. Black Cherry      

 3. Blue “Boar” Berries

        4. Tim’s Taste of Paradise, a yellow cherry tomato 

     Earliest ripening tomato

         5. Stupice

      Early ripening

   6. Silvery Fir Tree

Don't you just love the leaves?

            Remaining 

        7. Blue Gold  

While these are "pretty" and tasty
this is the last season they will be
planted in one of the raised beds.

While this post was in process, my stepdaughter and her husband were immersed in Seattle's Bumbershoot 2023.

This year's Bumbershoot
was spear headed by Steven
who many did not recognize
with his long hair.

Leigh Sims
who owns her own business in Seattle
 and Steven Severin, 
"a mover and shaker" in Seattle

Meanwhile here in Cotati daily chores were tended to. However I frequently during the Labor Day weekend had many a frequent belly