Tomatoes, Blueberries, Roses, Cats, Dogwoods, and Toilets

Please remember to click on the links in the Silence Is The Enemy post every day in June. It costs you nothing, and it generates revenue for an important cause.

I planted my garden yesterday, sort of. Three Chadwick's Cherry tomatoes started from seed and six six store-bought marigolds. I have about a dozen more tomatoes almost big enough to plant. I'll probably only plant three or so more over at my house, plant some at my mom's, and give some to my brother and my cousin. These are semi-perennial (well, technically, "hardy annual") tomatoes, in that they will come up again next year from seeds in fruit that falls to the ground this year, unless they are sterilized by cross-pollinating with a potato-leaf tomato like Brandywine.* (Which is why I needed to finally buy some new seed, after over a decade of harvesting tomatoes that grew from fallen seed.)

My main focus now is protecting my blueberries from birds. After investigating a bunch of possibilities, I may just staple bird netting to stakes to make "cages" around the bushes that don't actually come in contact with the bushes. I'll drape more netting over the top as a lid. If that doesn't work, I'll switch to the chicken wire idea and hope that the birds don't just use it as a convenient perch.

More photoblogging. Here are some pictures of my Royal Highness as it appeared on Monday. I was thinking of this as resembling a bouquet of roses the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. Then I realized it was closer in size to a Jeep. It's over six feet high, about ten feet along the east-west axis, and about eight feet along the north-south axis. And covered with roses.

Two of Bowie. First, here she is with one of her favorite toys - or maybe hoping to learn to fly:


And here she is in semi-transparent mode.


I met a friend in Tunkhannock today. We had plans for a hike, but the skies opened up shortly after we met. So we settled for shopping at a hardware store, eating a late lunch, and taking a short walk in the rain around town. While passing an abandoned building of unknown previous function, we spotted a flowering tree of some sort growing near it. My friend went over to investigate, and believes it is some sort of eight-petaled Dogwood. Dogwood flowers normally have four petals, I think, so this one is unusual. (But there are known varieties that do have eight or more petals, so maybe this is just one of those.) Perhaps the building was some sort of secret science facility, full of mutagenic radiation or chemicals?


And on the other side of the building...


...a great many discarded toilets.

I'm laid off tomorrow, and possibly the rest of the rotation. First time since I got bumped to night shift back in mid-March. I'll have to dust off the "how to file for unemployment" instructions. But I also have to call back after 9:00 tomorrow morning (and every morning for the next four) to see if I've been un-laid off for the day. What fun.

*This is really just a guess. But I had good luck with the Chadwick's Cherries reseeding themselves for over ten years, regardless of what other sorts of tomatoes we planted. Then one year I planted some Brandywine tomatoes, and from then on - pfft, no more Chadwick's Cherries.