2023, gardening, home, Uncategorized, Weather, work

Surprise!

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Two fairly major surprises happened here this week. One involved tomatoes. The other involved wind.

Before the first killing frost a couple of weeks ago, Husband and I picked about 80 lbs of green tomatoes. I had little faith they would ripen given their immaturity, but they did, thankfully not all at once. I just piled them in laundry baskets and cardboard boxes and set them in a warm room all covered up. I haven’t had good luck in the past ripening green tomatoes. As of yesterday we had only about 10 lbs left. Most went to the Food Pantry. I canned another five quarts of sauce with some. The remainders will get taken to work.

The other surprise was less pleasant. On Tuesday I drove home from work at a little before 5:00. I drive west and then north to get home. I live about 2 miles from my work. It was sunny with a dark cloud bank on the western horizon. It got quickly and increasingly darker as I drove west, and when I was halfway home I saw a huge wall of dust barreling towards me from the west, obscuring everything behind it. It was the very edge of a fast moving cold front. As I turned north to get to my house the wind and dust hit the van. Leaves were flying off the trees and swirling madly in small funnels. Small branches and grit hit the side of the van, and then it started to rain. The wind was clocked at 70 mph. The temperature dropped by 15°. I have never seen a cold front move in that quickly, nor have I ever been at the utter forefront of one.

What surprising things happened to you this week? How do you ripen green tomatoes?

37 thoughts on “Surprise!”

  1. Having never had 80 pounds of green tomatoes, I put mine in a paper bag and close the top thoroughly.

    The only surprise this week is how I am getting used to the new normal of the bathroom construction project. I can’t wait for it to be finished but it’s not quite as awful as I was thinking it would be.

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  2. The dog has been puzzled about what we see in tomatoes. He loved sneaking into the room we had the tomatoes and stealing one and then chewing on it, but would spit it out soon after and leave it on the floor. Humans are so weird, he probably thought.

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  3. I put my green tomatoes in a closed bag in the kitchen too. I have left some on the deck rail if the temps are going to stay above the 40s. There’s so much sun on my deck during the day and it really does get warm, so it’s a great place to ripen tomatoes. It’s almost too hot in July and August to garden. It’s like a solar cooker.

    I love watching a front come in. I don’t think I’ve ever been in a dust storm though. It might be exciting to watch if you were sheltered from flying debris and dust. That must have been something to see!

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  4. I don’t have quantities, so I usually just put them on a sunny kitchen windowsill. One year I tried making a green tomato pie, was it?, that didn’t turn out great, so now I just try and use them gradually.

    Had a nice surprise yesterday at an eye exam – no real change so I don’t need to have the other cataract removed yet.

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  5. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    1. My last uncle, Jim, age 91, decided to stop eating, drinking and take meds and entered hospice care. He decided that he is done on this earthly plane. This is not necessarily a surprise but it is significant and will be a source of final grief for me as i/we say good-bye to his generation of family.

    2. Phoebe got away from me in the back yard and decided to have a frolic within my sight but out of my reach. She explored some neighboring back yards, including down a retaining wall. The surprise: I was able to climb up and down the retaining wall to retrieve her. She gets spayed on Wednesday.

    3. In a show of sanity and desire for MIdeast peace a musician name Matthew Paul Miller posted this mass choir song on You tube. It is really pretty great and reassuring that the entire world has not gone mad. There are people who simply want to live their lives in peace.

    4. And the “Not a Surprise” Category. WP is just not working very well.

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    1. I certainly agree about WP. And World Peace. (Please.)

      Mass choirs always make me cry. Even joyous pieces. I don’t know why. There is something so moving about singing in a large group. The larger the group, the more I cry. Going to get a box of Kleenex now…

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  6. Our neighbor across the street is fanatical about keeping his lawn perfect. He and his wife spent last weekend removing every leaf from the lawn. After the wind on Tuesday you couldn’t see his lawn for the leaves that had blown in.

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  7. Our garden cleanup is this weekend, but we will leave the leaves to moulder and decay and collect snow in the flower beds. We only trim down the peonies, Iris, and daylilies in the fall, leaving the other perennials to catch snow and harbor pollinators eggs. It is beco.ing a challenge to find space to store the tomato cages. I canned so many tomatoes this year we may not need to grow any next year.

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  11. With colder weather, the mice are trying to get in. Caught one three weeks ago in one of the old style traps. Dead mouse. This morning…surprise…one of the traps was gone. I searched for about an hour but could not find the trapped mouse. After being out for a few hours, I came home and discovered Mighty Mouse. One foot was stuck but that thing was still quick despite dragging the trap. It received mercy. Released it outside near my bird feeders hundreds of feet away from the apartment. MM scrambled up a tree. Such excitement!

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  12. Husband got a flu shot and a Covid shot today. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised if he isn’t feeling well enough for garden cleanup this weekend.

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  13. I only have small quantities of tomatoes so I use the paper bag method go ripening them. A slightly different surprise:
    I have a small Christmas cactus that never bloomed for the first years I had it. It finally started to bloom at Christmas. For the last several years it has bloomed at Thanksgiving. Going by the shape of the leaves, it actually is a Thanksgiving cactus. Imagine my surprise when I looked closely at it today and saw six tiny buds. I guess it will now be a Halloween cactus. For the of you who know plants better than me, the cactus sits by a northwest facing window and gets a bit of water every 7 to 10 days year round. I stopped putting it in a dark space to force blooming a long time ago.

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  16. you deserve a good day clyde savor it.
    tomato’s ripening on the window sill. this year in a bunch of bowls on the counter. last of the grape tomato’s are wonderful
    favorite costumes were wolfman but it itched too much, motorcycle black leather with black helmet, boots and gloves black face screen tint. i walked through the kids halloween celebration with all the other parents dressed up like disney character’s and other familar choices. after the parade theough the length of the school and outdoors and back to the party room i took off my helmet to have some crackerjacks and resolved everyones curiosity about whi it was in the motorcycle outfit. fun

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