Third Try at Tomatoes

Most of you know that I love home-grown tomatoes.  Just the best thing in the world - fresh, juicy, tasty and delicious.  What more could you ask?   Ventura has great weather for people, not so good for tomatoes which need heat.  Summer temps here are 65 to 75 degrees average and for a sweathog like me, it's wonderful.  I've tried for 8 years to grow tomatoes and, like our neighbors, never have a good crop.  Small tomatoes, few tomatoes.  The alternative is store bought ones that are picked green, turned red with propane gas and are hard, tasteless things.  If you could find anything resembling real ones, it would be at the weekly farmers markets and cost a fortune.  Nah, I'll build a greenhouse to grow them right.  So, in May, 2008, I did just that. 
Here's a photo of the beginnings:

At the end of our backyard, behind the garage is where I started.  I've never been good at exact measurements so I just planned in my head and measuring was kept at a minimum.  After a week of digging, some Internet ordered Greenhouse film and lots of trips to Lowes, it looked like this:

Then, in the next week, it all came together.  We have a large gopher population in the neighborhood so I had to dig the inside of the greenhouse down several feet and lay galvanized hardware cloth (coarse screening) to keep them out.  I dumped 27 bags of soil, peat moss, cow manure and mulch on top of the hardware cloth to fill up the planting area.  The inside growing area is about 6' by 6'.  Then, up went the roof and walls and door.  Finally, it was done:

It was now the middle of June, a month or so later than when I normally planted tomatoes but as you can see, inside the greenhouse, 5 plants are growing, along with several bell pepper plants.  The greenhouse worked well.  In a month, stuff was growing like crazy:

All 5 plants went crazy, growing to the roof and eventually fell over.  They smothered the bell pepper plants which I could never find again.  The tomato plants were continually loaded with big, red, juicy tomatoes.  Every weekend, I'd fill 4 or 5 plastic grocery bags - almost 20 pounds each. Wonderful tomatoes!  I shared them with neighbors and they agreed these were the best tomatoes in California, ever.  Finally, about the end of October, it was finished for the year. We had harvested hundreds of pounds of great tomatoes but the plants were starting to die.  I  ripped out what was left, cleaned the walls and waited for the coming year.  What a success!.

The following February - the 28th to be exact- I replanted the greenhouse in hopes that tomatoes would be on our table by May.  Here is the hopeful planting picture taken in April.  Only two plants this time and several bell peppers.

But it was not to be.  I had planted too early in the year and there was not enough sunlight to make the plants grow properly.  Yes, they grew tall and bushy thanks to fertilizer but were stunted or mutated by the lack of sun.  There were no tomatoes.  In June, I ripped everything out and started again.  As the summer progressed, we had heat wave after heat wave and the temperatue inside blew past 105 degrees daily, even with the door open and vents installed.  We were lucky to get 20 pounds for the entire season.  Such a disappointment.

I wanted to wait until the first of May this year before planting but was tempted by two 80 degree days this past weekend.  Against my better judgement, I started the 2010 growing season.  I hope things go better this time around. 

Mysterious Notes Appear.......

Remember, click on the photo for the uncropped larger version, then use your browsers 'back' arrow to return here

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From time to time, Nic, Trav or I would walk into the bathroom and notice that Charlene had taped a note to the bottom of the medicine cabinet mirror.  A quote from some author, something to enhance our lives or just something to think about.  This week, we walked in and found something weird that made no sense:

Some kind of medical studies stuff from her homework assignments.  We looked at it, baffled.  I guess it's some kind of study aid for an upcoming test.  Totally non-inspiring for us (and her, I'm sure).  It's one of those 'Whatever it Takes" to learn something for RN College.  Nic, Trav and I just kind of ignored it.  But, like a disease, a cancer, it's spreading.  A few days later, walking into the kitchen in the morning to make some coffee (at precisely 192 degrees), another of the same notes, this time stuck to the cabinet above the kitchen counter, right over the Bounty Towels:

So we confronted her and yes, it's a study aid for an upcoming test.  Things to check and what they mean.  Here's a straight-on view so you can read it:

Pretty gruesome trying to fix coffee, toast or a meal with all this blood work running past your eyeballs.  But, 'whatever it takes' to pass the test is what counts so we have learned to ignore it.  Even "The Cat" takes no interest as you can tell from the following photo:

Go, Charlene, Go!  Pass that test!  Take the notes down........

Top o' the Mornin' to ya!

As I was getting dressed this morning, I remembered that it was St. Patrick's Day and put on a green shirt.  I swear, it's the first time in over a decade that I've remembered to wear green on this day.  Always felt dumb throughout the day as everyone is wearing something green and I'm not.  Today was very different.  Very few people I encountered were wearing green.  Most wore Black! 
Something I should explain about the culture of Southern Califonia.  The people here wear black year round.  There is none of that, "fashion faux pas if you wear Black between Memorial Day and Labor Day" stuff out here.  In Southern California, any day of the year, the motto is, "I'm wearing Black 'till I find something Darker".  Go figure - this Midwestern Boy still doesn't fit in........

Red light Thursday, Green light Tuesday, Dropped screws Wednesday......

We've all had one of those days where everything goes great or everything goes wrong.  In the last week, I've had three of those days.

Red Light Thursday.  These days always start out normal.  Wake up early, get ready for work, pack my lunch and have some toast.  Kiss Charlene goodbye, give goodbye hugs to Nic and Trav and head out to ol' Blue, my pickup.  That's when 'those' kind of days start.  Either gonna be good or gonna be bad.  Red Light Thursday was a bad one.  Start to finish, as I approached a traffic light, it turned red.  All day long.  It really didn't bother me as I'm used to 'LA' style traffic - 75 mph, stop, 5 mph, stop, 75 mph, stop.  After 10 years of this, I can take it in stride.  I'm not rushing to the airport to catch a flight or on the way to the hospital with a trauma emergency, it's just driving around for work.  But every light was red.  And then..... and then, people started pulling out in front of me on the side streets, on the freeways, everywhere.  And when I was working, I swear, everything I touched just got worse.  Seems like I should have stayed in bed.  I eventually made it home safely and it ceased being a bad day, unsafe day, frustrating day.  Red Light Thursday.  I'll remember that one for quite a while.

Green Light Tuesday.  The name says it all.  I think I hit every traffic signal green or turning green as I approached it.  Traffic?  Very light, no stop and go stuff, doing the speed limit.  Work?  A breeze!  Everything just went great!  Love to have more of those days.  Green Light Tuesday was a wonderful experience.

Today was Dropped Screws Wednesday.  I have a magnetizer in my tool bag that I use to keep my screwdrivers and cordless driver bits magnetized to hold screws whether I'm taking them out or putting them in and it's a lifesaver..... except today.  Maybe the magnetic North and South poles reversed today or something but I just dropped screws all day long.  Thank God screws fell onto the floor instead of inside the machines.  That's a real pain in the butt!  Sometimes I'll spend a good half-hour extra taking things apart to rescue a screw that can fall on a circuit board or into some gears.  Not a good thing and it's frustratingly time consuming.  But I fixed everything quickly, had a great attitude about it all and considered Dropped Screws Wednesday a pretty good day.  No, it was a very good day!

We all have up days and down days and I hope yours are bright, happy and Green Light Tuesdays!

Exchange of E-Mails on the last blog post

From my long lost Xeroid friend who first trained me at Xerox in 1970:

Kelly: Excuse me if I'm being dense, but Is that really YOU in that photo hugging the keyboard ? It looks like your hairy arms and hands, but your face looks 10 years older than the picture of you sitting on Santa's lap. What am I missing here ? Did you post a young picture with Santa, and I thought that's how you look now ? Set me straight here.


John
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Here's my reply:

John, you bastard! Yes, I'm old. Yes, I have thinning hair (there's even a hole in my haircut in the back). The Santa pic was from about 5 years ago and it was the 'prettiest' pic I could find without photoshopping a newer one - and, it's not a close-up. The red marks on my hands/arms are old-guy-skin that bruises easy and since 1) I'm still a clutz and 2) I just banged my arm between a finsiher and copier as I was 'mating' them in a tight spot on carpet. So, send me a pic of you, un-photoshopped........


But, I still love ya'....

....kelly

Goodbye Dear Friend

I lost an dear old friend tonight.  Known him for years, always there for me when I needed him.  Right from the start, we just 'clicked'.  Lately, he showed signs of failing health.  Not answering me correctly, not really sounding correctly.  I knew something was going down but I just couldn't bring myself to face it.  You know how it is when someone you've known for years suddenly has health issues and goes downhill rapidly.  And here it was, happening to me - my friend was dying right before my eyes.  He was dropping letters and numbers left and right - keys sticking now.  Yes, I'm talking about my decade-old orginal IBM AT keyboard.  The kind that made that great clicking sound when you pressed a key.  With the big 'Enter' key that couldn't miss.  Not like the new kids on the block with no sounds, no big 'Enter' key.  My friend is large and heavy - made to last for years.  Years have gone by, its time has come.  Yea, I've got 3 or 4 new style keyboards in the garage and I'll have to get one to replace my friend.   Charlene saw me hugging my friend goodbye and had to take a picture.  She wanted to know if I wanted to bury it in the backyard.  I thought about it but realized I'd have to ask Shaquille O'Neil for one of his size 27 shoe boxes to bury it.  Nah, my friend will retire to the electornic waste recycling center nearby that the State of Cowlifornia requires.  Goodbye my dear friend, you've served me well..........  Dan was beside me, agreed and said goodbye as well.  (That's him, or part of him in the pill container on the right).  Remember, if you click on the photo, you'll get the full size, un-shrunk version)