Happy Birthday John!!

My "little" brother John has a birthday today!!  I wish he were on this coast - but he's in Cali - so here's to wishing him the best !

 

Breakfast at Le Peep

I had to go in to work for a meeting this morning - for an hour.  When I got home I decided I wanted waffles - but didn't want to make them - so I woke up the sleeping beauties.  We decided to go to Le Peep - they have an awesome breakfast menu and someday I want to go for lunch.  Curt and I had been there once before when the Angie was away at school.

This morning  I had the Belgian combo- 


(yes I love black pepper)

Curt had the truckers breakfast - which was pretty much the same thing with pancakes.

Angie got banana raisin french toast - and one of my sausages,



Apparently I woke up the two before they finished getting beautiful - they wouldn't let me take their pictures.

Definitely worth the ride.

Tomato... To-Mah-To ... part 2

My favorite heirloom - Mr Stripey grew about 4" this week and now has 2 blooms!



Cherokee purple - another amazing heirloom - grew 4" as well but no blooms yet.



The chocolate cherry is one of the Angie's favorite salad tomatoes



For the first time this year - I have the yellow pear - supposed to be the size of a cherry but pear shaped.  Most yellow tomatoes are lower acid (not that acid bothers me - but sometimes are better with more delicate pasta and seafood dishes) and should be cool tossed into a salad.



I also have an ace - pretty high yield round red tomato.



And sharing a window box with my cucumbers is a super sweet 100



Coming soon - peppers, eggplant & cukes!!

Tomato ... To-mah-to?

So after a week of HOT (as in 100+ degree heat indexes)  weather, I figure I'll do an update on the balcony garden.

Some EVIL critter - my best guess is a squirrel - dug one of my baskets and ended up cutting roots of my solar flare tomato!!  It was potted with soil left over from last year - and I wonder if said critter hid an acorn or something in the soil and went looking for it??  I did find a few acorns in the bag - since we live under an oak tree I thought they had fallen in..So fingers crossed.. but it does look pretty wilted.



My bush tomato has about a dozen tomatoes- none are showing any signs of wanting to ripen however.



Celebrity is a late fruiter - so just growing a bit - not much else to report on'



Lemon boy - also a late fruiter is just hangin' out



I bought the Sweet n Neat - because it claimed a profusion of bite sized tomatoes on a plant that maxed out at one foot tall.  They must be right because it is currently 8" tall and has a bunch of blooms



More tomorrow.

Sensational Haiku Wednesday

Welcome to “Sensational Haiku Wednesday!”

The basics: Haiku is simple! It is 3 non-rhyming lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively (a great way to use your fingers!)

Here are the rules:

Structure: While Haiku may be written by some in other styles, for THIS meme only 5-7-5 is acceptable. At least one of your haiku must be in this format.
Theme/Prompt: We have a new prompt each week, and your haiku needs to be related to it, if not include the actual word in it. Feel free to leave a word suggestion in a comment!
Linking: When you post your link, link to the blog post with your haiku, not to the main page of your blog.
Reciprocate: If you participate and post your link on my website, you must have a link back here on your post. It’s only fair.
Folks not complying with the above risk having their links removed. Don’t make me be all “Grrrr” and stuff, it makes me grumpy! Thanks for your cooperation!
P.S. This is a really busy time for me – I may not get around to everyone each week. Sorry about that, but unfortunately I need to attend to business before pleasure!

This week’s theme is: Postcard

Twitter and texting

Saying "hi" and " i miss you"

Are today's post cards? 

Hanging Gardens

So here is take 2 on this post.  I tried posting this with my phone and screwed it up somehow. 

This spring has felt like it has rained 3 out of 4 days.  For 3 different weeks it has rained everyday!  I work outside for 3/4 of my day, so trust me - it rained.  there was more than one day  when I did my rendition of the Swamp thing leaving puddles of water behind me as I walked into the building - I looked like I jumped in the pond!  And swam around long enough to really soak up some water - even with a raincoat on.

The rain and the accompanying cool weather has pretty much repressed a lot of the growth on my plants.  I have a bush tomato that actually fought through and has a bunch of tomatoes - but there hasn't been enough sun/heat to start ripening them.  But you want pictures right??



The two outside hanging pots have hot pepper plants in them - three in the near one - 2 in the far one.  The middle basket has an upside down tomato with basil from seed on top.  The planter on the rail has hers (they do well in the wet).  On the ground the closest pot is a rhubarb, then 2 tomatoes then in the long pot is a tomato and 2 kinds of cucumbers.



Here we have the bush tomato, three different eggplants, three sweet peppers in the long pot and a lemon tomato up close.



Here we have a sweet n neat tomato (supposedly it only grows a foot tall- I never grew this , or heard of it before) flanked by 2 hot peppers.



chocolate mint and 2 hot peppers



Two more upside down tomatoes with basil from seed up top and oregano in the foreground.



This tomato hangs above the bush tomato, but didn't make it into the picture - as you can see it is starting to bud.

This week coming up is supposed to hit the 90's by Wednesday.  There is no rain in the forecast.  So, while I will have to water more - I'm hoping for some good plant growth.