To The Surbiton Manor Born

 So, yes, we had a little reminder about the perils of not having a prefrontal cortex. Some of the neighbor kids acted a bit thoughtlessly towards me and mine. This event had me consider the whole free garden idea- really, nobody was interested in it this year and it was producing a lot of cherry tomatoes that were either going to waste or just going into the growing pile of tomatoes that we need to use ourselves. I decided to clean up the garden and we'll be moving the dirt to a bed in the back and doing a different thing (probably clover) in the space where hope once stood. (sooooo dramatic- sorry) I am going to be heading back to work next week and so getting the bed cleared out is a perfectly acceptable job to do now before I get busy, and it suddenly gets frosty. Already long story short, I removed all the green cherry tomatoes as I yanked the remaining plants. I've made green tomato pie and crisp from larger tomatoes and it is a very fine thing, indeed, to do. I was hopef

The unfortunately named "Mexican Midget" tomatoes are producing magnificently. I've been a little neglectful of the blog as the summer has been full of travel. This has caused a little bit of neglect in the garden (but not too much), and some reflections on the environmental impact of travel. First off, the garden is doing pretty well this year.  The zucchini are a real standout. How do they grow from a nice, but slightly too small fruit into something that could potentially threaten Tokyo over the course of a night? Last week I took in the last of the snow peas (which produced for a surprisingly long time), and set some to dry into next year's seeds. The few cucumber plants that I did this year are starting to blossom. While the tiny salad tomatoes are producing heavily, the larger tomatoes have run into some serious blossom rot this year. Haven't harvested one yet. Maybe it is the draught and the uneven watering? Maybe it is a lack of nutrients in the soil? Ther