It's tomato time--FINALLY!

Woo-hoo!


These tomatoes have been on the vine for two months, and they finally were ripe today. I ate 'em before I got in the house--YUM!

We had another toad-strangler storm this morning, but I don't think it was as bad here as was predicted. By 830 this morning it was so dark outside that it looked like the middle of the night, but darker. The power went out for a few seconds, but other than that, it was just a lot of rain (about an inch), no high winds or hail as was predicted. And now it's lovely and sunny, the humidity has dropped, and it's quite nice outside.

I also have eggplants on the vine:


See how bad the foliage looks? I had aphids on these plants just awful, and I finally just gave up trying to get rid of them. Then something else started eating all my plants, not just these, and I just didn't have the strength to fight any longer. So right now a lot of the garden looks rather--chewed, I guess you could say.

Tour de Fleece 2007 is in full swing--I finally finished plying the yarn that I was working on last May:


The skein on top was finished last year sometime, and the bottom one is the new one. They actually came out about the same, except there was more yarn in the first skein. Here's a closeup:


I'm so happy to have finished something, I can't tell you.

Here's the current project, an 80/20 blend of wool and silk called "Chinese Red:"


I have two ounces of this and two ounces of pure silk dyed the same color. I plan to ply them together--I've been assured this actually works. The blend has been very nice to spin, but I'm not getting much more than my designated 30 minutes every day, so I hope to get a little more time in over the weekend.

We have baby pooties in the neighborhood:



A black and white stray has had kittens, and these two like to hang around the maintenance shed next to my building. They come up to the balcony and jump across to the roof. They're adorable, but we need to get the Animal Shelter out here to at least spay them so we aren't overrun with pooties--although they might keep the raccoons away.

Unfortunately for me, they like to use my garden as a litter box, so I have a lot of bird mesh over everything to keep them out--makes for a lovely garden! I also tried putting some red pepper flakes around some of my plants. I found these plants called "Cat Scat"--they have a faint odor kinda like skunk, but they're not bad enough to be really offputting (they also have them for dogs and rabbits). Knock on wood, so far, so good, it seems to be working.

More change for me--my sweet little downstairs neighbor has been in the hospital for over a month; actually, she came home today. She's moving to Amarillo this weekend to live with her niece. She's 92 years old and has lived in this complex for 15 years. I've been worried about her for a while (it scares me to death to see her driving around the neighborhood), but her niece seems very nice and is happy to be able to take care of her. So one more good neighbor gone. Sigh . . . .

And tomorrow is Friday the 13th--I'm not sure I'm ready for that.