The Baboon Congress

Tomato-zilla 2

105 Comments

Today’s post is from Renee in ND

Well, as I promised, here are my photos of our tomatoes, plants and fruits. You can see that the plants are as tall as I am. They are ripening quickly, and I think I will be up really late the next few nights canning and making tomato sauce. So there, Sherrilee!

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We planted 16 tomato plants this year-far more than any couple with grown children who live hundreds
of miles away should ever plant. 8 Brandyboys and 8 San Marzano II’s. Husband likes to roast and then freeze the San Marzanos. Daughter has a particular tomato sauce that she likes me to make and freeze.

The two largest tomatoes in the photo each weigh over a pound. I have lots more, just as large, ripening as we speak. I am a quietly competitive person. I want to win, but I rarely admit it. I wrecked my right foot in a 2k run-walk several years ago because I was determined that I would reach the finish line before the heavily pregnant marathon runner. I had bad shoes and pushed myself and now I have a large bunion on my right foot that gives me twinges at times.

I want to grow the most and the biggest tomatoes. It was nice to see the variety of tomatoes that Sherrilee grew, though, and maybe I need to rethink my priorities. Maybe I need to grow unusual tomatoes. Hmm? We’ll see.

At what do you have to win?

105 thoughts on “Tomato-zilla 2”

  3. Well Renee – you just made my day. I made a quick tomato sauce last night because the bowl w/ the tomatoes was overflowing; while I was standing there stirring I thought “why in heaven’s name did I plant 6 tomato plants when it’s just the two of us?” Hearing that you have 16 makes me feel much better!

    I love to compete but growing up with my dad made me a very good loser. He never pulled any punches and if you weren’t good enough to win on your own, then you didn’t win. Never bothered him to beat a 4 year old at Candyland.

    Have a great day on the trail – I’m off to the fair!

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        2. The loudest, scariest lightning bolt happened last night within a few yards of the cottage. My two cats shot straight up in the air at least several feet, then darted for cover. I’ve never been anywhere near as close to a strike. At least it didn’t bring down my neighbor’s two trees! I have two more downed trees spanning the width of the property out back but I can still drive around them. The cost to have them removed is beyond me, so my plan (I always have one) is to leave them right where they fell and let my kids take care of it when I die. Kinda like the reverse mortage.

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    3. im looking forward to seeing how family of 6 ( oldest still at yellowstone) plus chicago grandparents fare at the fair
      kids will be great but inlaws are control freaks and should make it interesting

      illreport back
      im competitive about contrrol

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  4. I am competitive about nerdy things like (oy, I hate to admit this) related anecdote telling. I can’t even call it story telling because they sometimes wind up as shaggy dog tales…but the need to share just the right related anecdote and have it be seen as witty or charming or poignant sometimes borders on pathological. I am, however, willing to bend rules to let a four-year-old win at Candyland.

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    1. my sister lived in california for a couple of years and missed the thunderstorms something fierce. she loves thunder and lightning. i had be=never thought about it before that . i like it to. i love warm rain. try to get out and dance in it. it only happens once or twice a year

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  6. I must win the game Settlers of Catan. The group with whom I regularly play, have become so expert that each of the six people at the table would have won the game when their turn came. Vicious people!

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  12. Rise and Thunder Baboons!

    Nice looking tomatoes Renee. Generally I am not too competitive, with several exceptions. When it comes to cooking, I like to know my recipe/dish/meal wins the taste test. It must be my inner 4-Her (yes, I was a 4-Her. What a great program). Then there are the flowers and garden. If mine does not look like the best one on the street, I notice some harrumphing emerges within. Maybe this is Midwestern Older Woman competitiveness. I think my Grandma had a real case of this as well. And she always won those quiet, non-competitions. And we all still talk of her marvelous cooking.

    We are not attending the Fair this year–the. Are tears are finally gone, only to return to finish some small details. We are battling dust downstairs and hanging pictures.

    The paper reports GK goy a standing O last night. Maybe I will retire to thunderous applause, too. That’s competitive!

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    3. One of my Grandmas was a heavy duty competitor at the county fair. Her house was full of all kinds of things she had entered into competition and many of them had blue or red ribbons attached indicating they were prize winners.

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  13. If I have learned nothing else as a parent, it is that sometimes good enough is good enough.

    As usual, our garden is not as I hoped it would be, but we do have “enough” winter squash out there to bake and freeze and I have my fingers crossed that the jungle of volunteer tomatillos gets big enough to harvest and roast before frost. No idea where they came from, but accept them gratefully.

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  14. I officially deplore competition and have too often tooted that horn. The nasty little secret is that I have a very carefully camouflaged competitive streak that reveals itself at unpredictable moments. Maybe I’m not so genial that I dislike competition. Maybe I just dislike losing, so I’m only competitive when I’m cocky about winning. We are such devious creatures.

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  15. This remonds me of an odd conversation I had earlier this summer with my sister-in-law. She asked about my garden and a inventoried what we had harvested so far concluding with, “so I guess we’re winning”.

    She wanted to know who we were competing with.

    Struck me as odd as I don’t think it is always necessary for someone else to lose for me to win. Especially where the garden is concerned. If food comes out of your yard and you don’t have to hand over money for it, you’re winning.

    I couldn’t see the point in explaining that.

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      3. did you put anything next to it to offer a relative size. i saw a woman take a picture of the largest pig but with no refference. i wonder how that works.
        big sugar beets with a can of coke next to them or a doll house couch would be good.

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        1. I did manage to capture the competing entrants, but as a Minnesota Lutheran, I would never presume to reach in there and put something beside it.

          It is really so far beyond the competition as to be scary. But one look and any devotee of the noble vegetable would tell you that baby was inedible.

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  17. I thought I was basically uncompetitive until I caught myself wondering when someone was going to tell me I was the best _____ (take your pick, teacher, daughter, dancer … Now I’m satisfied if someone just tells my they really liked the way I did something – but I see I’m still seeing approval from others for validation.

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  18. I used to be more competitive than i am these days. We have to be team players at work and those coworkers whose egos are too big are hard to work with (or impossible). I’ve had my share of those types over the past few years. I’m in a good place now. We leave our egos at home and we work well together. I’m really happy at work and have no desire to compete with my friends and coworkers.

    All of that said, I still enjoy praise and positive feedback. I’ve been receiving lots of that lately and it’s nice. They are as happy with me as I am with them and it feels so good. I think I’ll just let it be.

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  20. Morning–
    Wife is more competitive than I am… I just try not to get engaged in things that require competition! Haha– I’m a wuss!
    She and daughter yell and shout at the TV during the Vikings games…
    I sit quietly and go outside and — other years– wait for the black cloud to come out of the house, then I know the game is over and I can go back inside. haha–

    Wife is supposed to tandem skydive this afternoon… but might have a weather delay.

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      1. Some of us –OK, me– who love our feet planted on Terra Firma cannot even imagine wanting to do such a thing. I am still reeling from my 2004 glance at the Italian Alps beneath our airplane and the sick feeling that gave me.

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    2. It went well! Rained before her scheduled jump, was cloudy and a nice breeze so us waiting on the ground didn’t get too hot.
      She was secured to a great instructor and jumper.
      And after the couple seconds of craziness when you actually get out of the plane, the rest was really amazing she says.

      (I did it last year. There’s really nothing too it when you do a tandem jump; you’re just along for the ride. And the scariest bit is when they “push” you out of the plane… but that’s over before you know it and the rest is just floating back to the ground.
      It’s pretty cool.)

      And then we had lunch at Barneys Drive-in (by the lake in Waseca) and we saw two turtles!

      A good day.

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  21. Good morning. I’m not a very competitive minded person. At least that’s what I claim. I might be fooling myself and might be more competitive than I admit. I know, when it comes to sports, I do like to win even though I seem to lack the strong drive to win that you see among good athletes.

    When it comes to growing tomatoes I might be tempted to be a little competitive because I do have a fairly large collection of rare and heirloom tomatoes. I grew 5 kinds of tomatoes this year for a total of 18 plants. Like Renee, this is way more than enough for my own use. I have been taking a fairly large number of them to the local food shelf this summer.

    I always grow Stupice which is a very early producer of small tasty fruit. The heirloom Italian tomato that I now grow every year is a very productive and good flavored one named De Barao. There are some tomatoes in my collection that I grow only once every 3 or 4 years to renew the seed and one of those which I grew this year is a fairy large excellent yellow tomato from Azerbaijan. I am trying out some new varieties to fit my need for a large red tomato to use for canning. The one I tried this year is called Lake and and I don’t think I will grow it next year because it tends have some white areas in the fruit that I don’t like.

    I am also growing Reverend Marrow, another heirloom, for the first time this year as a storage tomato. I planted it late to have plenty of fruit that is still partly green at the end of the season. If this variety does as it should, the fruit will ripen very slowly during the fall and early winter inside the house providing ripe tomatoes to eat well into november.

    That’s what I have for this year.

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      1. No need to concede to me, Renee. I wasn’t trying for the title. However, I couldn’t resist bragging about my tomatoes.

        Some of my tomatoes have considerable leaf blight this year and some have very little. I think some of the heirlooms are resistant to leaf blight. I don’t know if any of them have been tested for leaf blight resistant and I don’t if the ones I am growing that look like they might be resistant are truly resistant. The yellow one from Azerbaijan and De Barao are the ones with very little blight.

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    2. This song will ever be a memory of the campaigns of Robert D. Ray, governor of Iowa for a very long time. Current governor, Branstad, worked for him, but I don’t think he must have been paying attention.

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  23. I’m pretty competitive, especially in sports I do. I used to compete in karate and usually got first. One time I came in second, but I felt I deserved first place. I asked my teacher who happened to be watching, and he agreed, so I felt vindicated. But I was still kind of pissed.

    It’s funny how women compete in karate vs men. Guys may chat while waiting, but women are all, “oh, good luck” and then “good job” or “you’re so good” when you’re finished. I’m a nice person, but I just want to say “bite me, lady, I’m competing here!”

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  25. During my growing up years, there was an intense football (soccer) rivalry between Denmark and next door neighbor, Sweden. Unfortunately – from a Danish perspective – it was a rather lopsided rivalry; the Swedes usually won. My dad used to say that the Danes were the world’s best losers – because they had more practice than anyone else. So that was the perspective I grew up with: you could have all the desire and drive in the world, but if you didn’t have what it took to win, well, there was always next year. Dad also used to say that the only thing worse than a sore loser is a gloating winner. It was really important to him that I learn to be gracious both in victory and defeat. I think that’s a life lesson that has stuck with me, and it applies to so much more than sports.

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  26. I am usually happy if I win a little more than I lose. Maybe 60-40. Backgammon, Mexican train dominoes, cribbage, canasta, other card games. If I lose too much it ceases to be fun, but if I win too much it can’t be very fun for the other players. So I don’t have to win. It’s just nice to win sometimes.

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    2. I play cribbage seldom enough that I have to learn it all over again each time I play. I’ve still managed, a time or two, to stumble into a victory, like a blind pig upon a truffle.

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  28. Both our children neck and neck for the title of loser child of the day. Daughter overslept and stood us up for breakfast and son and Dil are late meeting us for coffee. As the say back in western ND “Dos dem kits, anyway!”

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  30. i have seen pj refer to looking at stuff int he hopper for future blogs and i have been asked to ut stuff for potential guest blogs into that hopper. how do you do it?
    something to do with word press?

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    1. I think only Dale can see what’s in the hopper….. once you hit the Submit button, it’s off to cyberspace for our stuff!

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    2. In the upper left hand corner of the screen, hover over “My Site” and a drop down menu shows. Click on “Blog Posts.” Across the top will be a series of headings: Posts, Drafts, Pending, and if there’s a blog or two that have already been cleared by Dale for publishing, there’ll also be a “Scheduled.” There doesn’t appear to be any Scheduled at the moment.

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  32. Round 2 here as well.
    I do think The Dutchman may be my new favorite.

    s&h is indulging me, I think, but he did mention the first time he heard Walzing with Bears and heard about the suit all covered with hair, he pictured a suit not unlike Hagrid’s in Harry Potter, that is, an actual bear-like hair suit, not a regular suit covered in bear hair.

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    1. ok, he has retreated to his book.

      I guess mom being sappy is just too much at this point. Cut the Cake, Mike will be happy to know I always think of this as “that great birthday song.. what is it?”

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  33. I always say one of the reasons I do theater is to listen to music.
    Yesterday while working on lights, I loaded up the rebroadcast, cranked it up and when the music finished I went home.
    (Bonus, this theater just got a new sound system.)

    It was nice. Mary Ellen Carter has always been a favorite. Oh, plus Impressionist Two Step and Truckload of Art. (Actually, the whole Terry Allen album (yes, I have the ‘album’) containing Truckload of art is pretty good.

    But when that birthday song comes on… I too may have to step outside.
    🙂

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  34. I was reminded, as Dale and Mike talked about birthday songs, of one that was played for Daughter when she was, I believe, three. At the time her two favorite things were mud and dancing. Probably in that order. I foolishly said, whaddya got for dancing and mud. And this is what they played – so now this is what I think of when I think of as a birthday song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjnOj9O16_I

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