Preview of Things to Come

The great day is still two months away but I am taking this week as vacation, although we are not going away. I've been taking my time doing things around the house and garden, as well as sleeping late in the mornings. Yesterday it was 10am before I got out of bed and today it was 9:15. I think I'm going to set the alarm for 7am tomorrow - otherwise I'll be sleeping my life away.



In the garden, I pulled up the last of the squash plants. Only the zucchini was still producing but the fruit was quite small. Very unlike zucchini's usual mode - baby to giant overnight.



Also started pulling up the Roma tomatoes. There are six plants and they take up most of the northwest 4x8 bed. I uprooted one and picked a large bowl of ripe and green fruit. I read an article in the Chronicle a few weeks ago about how to store green tomatoes and I plan to give it a try with these.

Just before coming in to start dinner, I picked these lovely ripe figs. We are having a bountiful crop this year and there are plenty for us, the neighbors, my co-workers and even the birds. Last year I put up bird tape but there is so much fruit this year that I didn't bother. I sure wish we could come to this kind of agreement with the squirrels who strip the almond tree every year.

Our weather has been lovely this week. Low eighties and very little wind. The humidity has been even lower than usual and our county is under a red flag warning. So far, though, we have had no wildfires, unlike Southern California where the news of fires and evacuations gets worse every day. After tomorrow the temps are expected to drop and be more like late October should be. So we are planning a trip to the Coast to take advantage of the fine weather, probably Carmel where Leo the Rat Terrier can get a good run.