8/03: Garden and Temperature

Here are two gourds (we think they are dipper gourds) growing in our front yard. They look a little different - odd speckles. Are they supposed to be the same? Maybe one is a birdhouse gourd. Guess time will tell.

All of our labels for the tomatoes faded in the sun. The above pot puzzles us. See how white the tomatoes are? They've been that color since they popped out of the flower, but are somewhat oblong. We took one off today and cut it. The middle had some green but the flesh was white-ish and thick like a paste tomato. What the heck are these? Could they possibly be Italian Ice cherry tomatoes?

This is just a few of our 19 tomatoes. Towards the middle you can see our first slicer that just started turning red a few days ago. Our mouths are watering! Where the bacon and lettuce?

Here's my boys (Doug on the left, Weslee on the right) in our little corn patch. Wanted to show how tall our "Early and Often" sweet corn was doing. Can barely see the shed in the background, and how about them beans!? To the far left is where the yellow squash are multiplying and behind Doug is the bed that grew the huge zucchini we picked today (see below).

This is a picture of most of our garden in the backyard. See the tires to the left and in the back - they have re-purposed garbage cans in them (tires prevent the wind from tipping over) and are growing peppers, beans, eggplant, okra and more. The tires against the fence have pumpkins, cantaloupe, honeydew and a sweet potato vine. The odd thing towards the top right is a blueberry plant with tulle on it (bird prevention). And the bed to the right has the soybeans and carrots. Yummy!

This is just one of the blackberry plants - Kiowa, I think. We had a tomato cage leftover so up it's climbing. Pretty good for year one, I'm thinking. I'm hoping this and the other 5 or 6 blackberry plants will bear this year but I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Patiently. Hoping.

Here's today's harvest: starting at the top: 2 cucumbers, a huge zucchini, 5 yellow pear tomatoes, 1 red jalapeno pepper, 3 orange paste tomatoes, 3 red paste tomatoes, and 4 yellow circle tomatoes that think MIGHT be Golden Mama paste tomatoes that just didn't grow quite right. Didn 't include the handful of green beans that Weslee picked, or the cherry tomatoes that are sitting in a baggie in the fridge (or the ones popped straight into our mouths!)

Our Denver Temperature:

Friday broke the record by hitting 104 degrees. Saturday we broke the 100 degree record by hitting 103 degrees. Today, at this moment, it's only (only???!) 97 degrees, which means we're on day 22 of over-90-degree days (previous record was 18 days in a row). And Denver is on track for the driest year on record, surpassing year 2002's record. Luckily the mountains got a lot of snow last winter or we'd be on water restrictions!

Our plants get very wilty if they don't get a deep drink of water by noon. If anyone doesn't believe in global warming, they should look at our weather patterns this year compared to 100 years ago. Very different. Vikki