To The Surbiton Manor Born

 And made a very successful batch of ketchup.  Or catsup. The cats were up as I began the messiest of messy tasks, but they grew weary and abandoned me to my red nightmare. If you want to give up most of your morning while handling many containers of very threatening red stuff, make your own condiment!  I had planned to snap a photo of the process but where to even pause and do so? There was no respite once it began. So, all I have in what is left of the final result. Sorry. Terrible let down, really.  As for the artistry of the process, let my words be your eyes... Imagine- a colander heaping over with 5 pounds (about) of bright red tomatoes and three ripe plums. See the onion and garlic gently cooking in olive oil in the bottom of my bright red Dansk enameled pot? Gaze as the tomatoes get added once they have been coarsely chopped. They cook for 15 minutes until all the small cherry tomatoes have burst and the very full pot is bubbling -suddenly, in go the plums! They too, have been

Pretty Much Every Day This Week Bumper crop this year. The rain has diminished, but still enough to avoid watering. So the plants are taking care of themselves.  The raspberry patch, even after I cut it back from the neighbor's fence, is going to be massive next year. And to think, a few short years ago it was four canes. So far, we have been able to share or consume all of the garden's output, but we are right at the edge...So many tomatoes. Though this may be short lived. The tomato plants have had a lot of rot, despite my attempts to cut them back and treat them. We've lost several of them already, and I'm not sure how long those that remain will last.  We have a massive glut of jalapeno peppers. I've been pickling the banana peppers, but the jalapenos are...well, typically recipes only call for one or two. When you take in 10 in a day, it is sort of overwhelming. We did make a delicious tomato, onion, lime & jalapeno salsa yesterday.  We've had some of t