are things complicated yet?

Moving Day! adellstevens.com

After six years of writing in this little Typepad space, I finally decided to buy some big girl internet pants and move to a new URL that's easier to remember (adellstevens.com, yo!). I also hired someone to redesign everything and because I don't have enough to do, I started an entirely new blog about marketing and advertising while I was at it.

(Three children and a new blog, I AM OFFICIALLY INSANE.)

Won't you come visit me? 

There won't be any more posts here, so make sure you're subscribed to the right feed (current Feedburner subscribers will be updated to the new site automatically, if you're subscribed to an old feed you'll need to re-subscribe to the new one to get new posts).

Or, if RSS isn't your thing, follow me on Twitter or friend me on Facebook. You'll get new post alerts there, too.

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Third Baby Planning: It's Complicated

Wow, oh WOW, guys. I don't know what to say after the outpouring of love and smiles you gave me on Twitter, Facebook and this website about Third Baby.

(Fifty-nine comments?! Holy crap! I didn't know there were that many of you READING on any kind of regular basis. Seriously, I have a feeling my mom checks in several times a day and is responsible for MANY page views. You sure know how to make a girl feel loved because yo, I realize commenting is a pain in the ass what with the actually clicking through and then writing something and filling out your info and doing the captcha crap and OMG just writing that was SO BORING THANK YOU FOR THE COMMENTS.)

Your excitement made ME more excited and it was a big week of internetty love and happiness in my inbox. I have the best readers and lurkers (nice to meet some of you!) and friends inside the computer. Thank you.

***

So! Three kids! We're, uh, going to be doing that! Okay, then! Here's where I'm at in this whole HOLY CRAP THREE SMALL PEOPLE situation coming at me this January:

1. I'm seeing the same awesome midwife and will deliver in the same hospital Charlotte was born.

2. Third Baby will sleep in the pack and play in our bedroom for the first several months, just like Charlotte did. Charlotte will be 20-months-old when Third Baby is born and I am HOPING to transition Charlotte to a Big Girl Bed when she's about 2-and-a-half, maybe a few months older than that even. (Claire moved at 2 years, 2 months and it was a bit soon for her, I think.) (Also, since Charlotte is A Climber, I do wonder if she will manage to climb out of her crib soon and force the issue.)

This is all in an effort to avoid buying a second crib. Because HELLS NO I am not buying a second crib just for one baby, just for a year and a half or so. I shall spend that money on something for ME. Third Baby, you are suffering the effects of Third Baby Syndrome already. NOTHING NEW FOR YOU!

So, Third Baby will be in our room, downstairs, because no way in hell am I going upstairs in the middle of the night (several times!) to feed a baby for months and months. No, absolutely not. There are three bedrooms upstairs. Charlotte and Claire stay put in their rooms. If Third Baby needs his/her own space to sleep in, before Charlotte moves to a Big Girl Bed, I am planning to just stick the pack and play in the spare bedroom with a baby monitor and leave the child in there with the treadmill and sewing machine until Charlotte moves out of the crib. At that point Third Baby will take over Charlotte's room (with the crib) and Charlotte and Claire will either:

a) Do bunk beds or two twin beds in Claire's room, so that I may maintain an entire bedroom for guests, treadmill, sewing projects, and/or storing things that have no other home in this house.

or

b) Claire will move to the guest bedroom, Charlotte to Claire's room, Third Baby to the crib in Charlotte's room and I will have no extra rooms upstairs, WOE.

You guys, having three children appears to be complicated.

(Or, I'm just good at MAKING it complicated.) (Very probable.)

3. If this baby is a girl, obvs we are ALL SET on clothes and pink things. I even have a name for a girl! If this baby is a boy we are SKA-REWED because we still don't have any boy names, four years after my first pregnancy. I like lots of boy names, objectively speaking, but when evaluating names for potential sons I always think, "Well, that's a nice name, but it's not for us."

Such as, I might very much like the name Blabbity-Blah. I might like it a lot and KNOW kids with that name that I like quite a bit! Good name! But, that is not my child's name. I like the name, but it's just not....right for us. Does this make sense? In a non-judgey, non-insulting way?

4. I am (not so secretly) hoping this is a girl. Besides having The Perfect Girl Name all set up, I just think three girls would be so much fun! I feel like I'm supposed to want a boy, since we don't have one, but...I just kind of want another girl! I do! I have a preference, for the first time!

But then I think about a boy and I think OH, that would be FUN and DIFFERENT and boys have such special relationships with their mothers and...gahhhhh, nope I kind of want three girls.

(Obviously, this means it will be a boy and I will just have to eat my words and wonder why on earth I ever wanted a girl when I have such an awesome BOY.) (We'll find out at the end of August.) (Which seems FOREVER from now.)

The Last First Trimester

The thing about Third Baby is we were on the fence. We were happily on the fence, but still there. Third Baby fence-sitters, we were. 

We talked about Third Baby often. The consensus was we would LIKE to have Third Baby, we were just not particular on WHEN. We did not want to go back to the RE. The infertility insurance vanished with my job and we weren't feeling baby-wanty-pain yet, in regards to Third Baby. After all, Charlotte only JUST turned one year old. No, Third Baby would have to be a straight-up miracle baby, or we were going to have to reallllllly want Third Baby, and be several years from now, to put ourselves (and our finances) through that a third time.

We were honest with ourselves. We knew our chances for having a miracle Third (free!) Baby were slim. Over the years it's been proven fairly unlikely we'd score a third kid on our own. Yes, we thought, this Third Baby is a very improbable thing, but it's fun to talk about and think about as something that might happen to us, if we got very lucky. 

But, it's foolish to think it might actually happen to us. After all, we're not that lucky.

We trained our brains to be happy with two (and we are!) because a third child seemed SO FAR beyond a reasonable thing for a couple like us to want. (A twin pregnancy turned singleton with Claire, an exceedingly low beta that practically guaranteed an unviable pregnancy with Charlotte [she turned out to be a persistent little person], plus 19 failed cycles, very large needles, and big piles of cash.) We are lucky to have two. 

I gave the baby stuff away. I sent all of my maternity clothes to Seattle. I gave my baby name book to my brother. I got weepy over the end of Charlotte's babyhood, thinking she was very probably my last baby. I told everyone who asked that it would be years before another kid, if we even DID have a third kid, which wasn't very likely.

(You see where this is going, yes?)

Then I found myself pregnant, almost exactly one year after Charlotte was born. Third Baby will be here in January, a mere 20 months after Charlotte arrived. 

(Now we're a horrible, wonderful, infertility cliche. Maybe if you just relax! and all that. Oh, if only my past self could see me now.)

We're thrilled. Even though we really wanted a third kid some day, it was still a surprise that took a little getting used to, because it was just SO unexpected. We never allowed ourselves the luxury of dreaming the three-child dream. (I imagine this is what lottery winners feel like: they knew there was a chance to win, but a very small chance and expectations were set accordingly.) (FIVE! HOLY CRAP FIVE PEOPLE IN THIS FAMILY.) Jarring as it was, it has been so freeing to have the decision of when made for us. No more wringing of hands about whether to see the RE, no more injections or blood tests, no more hot tears of frustration. 

Practically, if we're going to have three kids anyway, it feels somewhat sensible to be getting the diaper years behind us and getting onto the older kid, everyone-speaks-english and dresses themselves years. (Well, that's what we told ourselves when we figured out we'd have three kids in four years.) (Those cloth diapers are starting to look like a mighty, mighty fine investment right about now.) (THREE CHILDREN, ARE WE INSANE?)

I have moments of fear. I'm so frightened someone will get hurt this time. Have I been really lucky to have two healthy pregnancies and two relatively simple deliveries? Is this asking for trouble? I'm super intimidated at the idea of parenting three young kids.

I don't know how the carseats will fit, and we have to sell the airplane (it only has four seats). I am filled with dread at the pregnancy-related discomforts to come. It feels like I will never be thin again and the physical indignities of near-constant pregnancy and nursing for what will end up being six years will definitely take their toll on my body. Gaining and losing the same thirty-five pounds for a THIRD time will also definitely be bruising to my ego. I'll probably never sleep again, but that's the least of my worries.  If I think about it too much, it sounds really tough (and exhausting) to have three young kids. The overriding thought I keep having is,

"Things will get so much harder before they get easier."

And...that's probably very true. (Well, I am GUESSING. People with three children, feel free to correct me. FEEL FREE.)

I console myself with the idea that our kids won't be so little and so whiny and so needy forever. It'll last a few years and then we'll be on to other things that require less round-the-clock attention. Mostly, I think about how much fun they'll be to watch grow up. And, when we're older, we'll have lots of people to take care of us. That part is nice to think about, too. 

I never, ever thought I would have a family this size. For a long time I wondered if I'd ever have even one baby. And now, in a span of about four years, I'll have three. For some reason, knowing this is my last pregnancy makes everything in my life feel more grounded and firm than it ever has before. It feels as if a big piece of the story of our family, that we didn't quite know we were waiting on, has fallen into place. 

And just like that, I can picture myself as an old woman, surrounded by my thousands of iPhone pictures and unedited videos, wondering if I ever really did have fits of worry about parenting three children. I am certain that one day I will remember this next year, this year of my last baby, with great fondness and joy.

The Garden, Weeks 18, 19, and 20: Just Call Me Farmer A'Dell*

I have been eating tomatoes.

Yellow ones! And a red one! I've also been eating okra! (Lots of okra, LORD is that ever a food fit for southern weather, it just keeps regenerating overnight). Today there are two cucumbers in the garden, plus one bell pepper and YOU GUYS I THINK I AM A FARMER NOW.

Let's back up to Father's Day weekend, when I picked the first tomato. Well, Claire picked the first tomato. It was a Yellow Pear and I told her we were going to pick our first tomato and she got very excited. She ran outside while I grabbed my camera. I wanted to get a few snaps of The First Tomato (Ever!) on the vine, and then pictures of Claire picking it because it was kind of a big deal.

When I arrived outside, seven seconds later, she had already picked it.

Okay, then! Here's the first harvest, one Yellow Pear tomato and three okras:

After that I got three more Yellow Pears, a (red!) Amish Paste, and a lot more okra over the next week. Harvest as of July 2, 2012 is:

4 Yellow Pear Tomatoes: 1.4 ounces

1 Amish Paste Tomato: 1.5 ounces

13 Okra: 10 ounces

At this rate, I will absolutely not be earning back my money. Let's hope things pick up. Okra is about $1.48/pound at Walmart and okra cannot carry the fiscal burden of this garden. The tomatoes need to start setting fruit.

Which....they are not. No new tomatoes in weeks. None at all still on my Brandywines or Mr Stripey. One of the Bradywines appears to be dying a slow, painful, turning-yellow-from-the-root-up, death. It's the plant the caterpillar ate, so I wonder if it was just too much to lose all those leaves at the same time. But then, the other Brandywines are looking similar (though not AS bad right now), so that makes me think it's a problem with the variety.

I know it's tough to pick out the single Brandywine plant in this picture, but it's the one that's yellow at the bottom:

I'm not sure what's going on.

Anyway, it was time to fertilize again (related, maybe?) so I sprinkled some more of that STINKY STINKY stuff on the dirt. I am hoping somewhat lower temperatures (not 100's) plus the food for the plants will result in some more fruit being set. I have 12 plants and 7 of them have no tomatoes at all, which is just kind of sad. (Also annoying and frustrating, AGH STUPID TOMATO PLANTS.)

I'm encouraged to finally be getting FOOD from my back yard, but even though we're still pretty early in my personal heirloom tomato growing season, I'm super impatient to see more things going on back there. I should probably not start to panic and use four-letter-words until the end of July but that seems SO FAR AWAY. (Seriously, I looked at the calendar today and July has four full weeks, plus three days so July will likely never, ever end.)

Claire made a birdhouse (with two roofs) out of popsicle sticks and put it in the garden. Nobody tell her the way her birdhouse is constructed makes it impossible for a bird to actually get IN the birdhouse. It's a detail she doesn't want to hear about.

*You may not call me Farmer In The Dell. I suffered that humiliation in grade school, we don't need to revisit.

7 Quick Takes: King Leck, a Cooking Rat, Stokke, and The Worst Chore

1. I read Graceling and several weeks later I bought Bitterblue. (I had no idea I'd missed Fire, the second book, until sometime yesterday.) The book is firmly YA dystopian fiction and Graceling (the first book) hinted at a bad thing King Leck had done. Bitterblue picks right up with this storyline and I endured several chapters of suspense on the topic before I was positively DYING to know just WHAT had King Leck been DOING?? It was really awful and really mysterious and I JUST WANTED TO KNOW.

I went ahead a few chapters and found nothing. I went to the end of the book and found nothing. I Googled and found nothing. (RARE.) I was really frustrated I could not figure out what this horrible King had done and I was feeling really inconvenienced that I would have to READ THE ENTIRE BOOK to find out. But, I resolved to read it, like a good, literate human. Approximately five minutes later, I got bored reading the book because I was so distracted by KING LECK! KING LECK! WHAT DID HE DOOOOOO? 

I finally figured out how to use the search feature on my iPad for "King Leck" and I paged through the book in fifteen-word blurbs via the search window in the margin, until I finally found out what horrible things King Leck had done. (They were very horrible things.) Now I could concentrate on the other storylines and themes of the book. (Digital reading, FTW!) (Pretty sure this is NOT what the author intended.)

I do this a lot with books and television shows and movies. I want to find out what's going to happen so I Wikipedia and immediately feel better. (I have recently done this with Game of Thrones, Sons of Anarchy, and Breaking Bad.) Then I continue watching or reading, happy with the knowledge of what's coming, whatever it is. I know, it sounds like I'm RUINING everything but I'm not! I promise I still enjoy the books, movies and TV shows.

2. The airplane is going in for its annual mechanical inspection next week so everyone think good, non-breaky thoughts for it. I would love it if I did not have to replace a $400 blinky light this year (as we did in 2010).

3. I hardly ever break out the DVDs any more, thanks to Netflix and Amazon, but the other night I wanted to watch Ratatouille with Claire and I could not find that stupid DVD to save my life. I spent a full thirty minutes double checking the soft-sided DVD cases, the linen closet, behind a cabinet, in a drawer, perhaps in the office? The cooking rat movie was nowhere to be found.

This is why DVDs are dying/dead. Even when you OWN the movie you want to watch, it's still a giant pain in the ass to actually watch it. (Not to mention the fact that it's a stupid Blu-Ray, which means it would take like ten minutes to even start up, OMG I hate Blu-Ray.)

We never got to watch the cartoon rat cook a meal. (Four days later, I still haven't found it.)

4. I spent a large part of my afternoon sorting clothes for the children. (Is there anything worse than this chore? No, there is not.) Charlotte is kind of shrimpy (about 20th percentile) and at almost 14 months she's still comfortably wearing a lot of 6-12 month items. Claire, on the other hand, is wearing a wide variety of sizes and this whole 4T/5T/4/5 sizing is very confusing.

The brands don't seem to be consistent at this age (she's 3 and will be 4 in October) and it's a total crapshoot as to whether a dress will be scandalously short or sister-wife long. Same with the shirts and shorts: will there be four extra inches in the chest/waist or will it not even go on her body because it's cut so slim? Since her Grandma and Grammie buy ALL THE CLOTHES, this is putting a cramp into my sizing advice for them. (I have big problems, I know.)

5. Charlotte really likes to dance to Super Why.

6. Thank you to everyone for the thoughts on the lime green Stokke a few weeks ago. You convinced me to get it and when it arrived it was...electric green. Kind of Mountain Dew green, actually. It hurt my eyes.

Eagle-eye reader Meaghan suggested WHITE, which was not one of the options on the table, which was actually very genius of her. I traded the green for white and it's fantastic. THANK YOU MEAGHAN! (Also, WHY NO BLOG MEAGHAN? You are obvs very clever!)

7. I purchased all of the turquoise zig-zag fabric for the curtains in the kitchen (as seen above, still thumbtacked to the wall), and I have even sewn the panels, but they remain laying on a chair upstairs and not hanging on the window. I can't find the right curtain rod. The windows in the kitchen are on a wall that meets at an angle, (it's kind of like half a bay window) and any curtain rod with a finial won't work.

So, I found this and thought, "Oh! That is perfect!"

Low profile and slim enough to hang on adjacent windows (that meet at an angle) without them knocking into each other. Also? Not ugly. Perfect! Except...they're $50 and I need two of them and I wasn't really thinking this was a $100, plus tax, plus shipping project. These also do not appear to be $50 curtain rods, I mean, there's just not a lot TO them. These appear to be worth...$35. AT MOST.

I keep looking for a not-PB version but apparently the people in charge of PB knock-offs are not really clued into these curtain rods, and it's the only version like in all of America.

Because, of course.

I have a picky eater and I really don't care

I didn't realize Claire was a picky eater until my best friend pointed it out to me. She said something casual and I was kind of like, "What? She's not a picky eater. That's crazy!" Then I realized I could count almost every item she eats on my two hands and...yeaaaaah. Claire is a very picky eater. 

My best friend's daughter is the same age and she will try ANYTHING. Last summer she was eating mussels like they were popcorn. (I DON'T EVEN EAT MUSSELS.) 

Claire is so picky, I can list everything she will deign to eat without any risk at all of being tedious:

Tier One (70% of her diet)

Cheese (Cheddar and Colby Jack. NO OTHER CHEESES ALLOWED.)

Bread (includes tortillas, waffles, pancakes and actual sandwich bread)

Fruit (strawberries, bananas, grapes, apples, etc)

Tier Two (20% of her diet)

Cheerios

Cashews/Peanuts

Cereal Bars

Applesauce

Yogurt

Tier Three (10% of her diet)

Ravioli (Unreliably)

Cheese Pizza

French Fries

Chicken Nuggets (Unreliably)

Peanut Butter (A new addition to this list, as of two weeks ago)

(Of course, sugars of all kinds of welcome: cookies, cakes, brownies, ice cream, candy, etc.)

That's it. That is basically all she's eaten for the past three years. I have tried, OH HOW I HAVE TRIED, to get her to branch out and perhaps try a green bean or a leaf of lettuce or even an avocado (which she DID eat as a baby, which makes it all the more infuriating). She's also very particular about temperature and format: She will eat cold cheese in a tortilla, but if I heat it up and call it a quesadilla? HELLS NO. 

She won't touch lunch meat, hot dogs, ground meat, pasta (except ravioli and, as noted above, not very reliably) or basically anything else that a normal person might call a full and complete meal. Claire is very fond of finger foods she can eat straight from the fridge, I think because it translates into "what you see is what you get." She will eat an actual meal (that is, eating what's offered until she's full), but she often takes a long time to eat it and is easily distracted from the table. She's getting better at sitting at the table until she's finished, but she has never, ever displayed an "I am so hungry I could eat that entire cow!" kind of appetite.

And, as bothersome as this might be to some people, I don't really care. 

She's basically a self-selected vegetarian and she seems to prefer whole foods. (It's very Michael Pollen of her, don't you think?) I don't mean that in a hippie-uppity-snobby way, because she will happily eat the hell out of Oreos or any other processed sugary thing. She's just VERY SUSPICIOUS of foods she can't identify that have been blended into something else. For example, a taco is a no-go because she can't see all the parts of it laid out plainly, but she'll happily eat a tortilla and cheese on their own. (Lettuce and meat are already on her Hell No list, so those didn't have a chance.) If I pack a cheese sandwich in her lunch, she's very likely to take it apart and eat the bread and cheese separately, but she'll eat it. She certainly LIKES all of the ingredients in some meals I prepare, but she absolutely won't eat them cooked together and certainly not hot.

I hear about picky eaters and how their parents try to get them to eat other foods through tricky means and smoothie measures and...that is not a tactic for me. (Claire is not going to eat anything resembling a smoothie unless it comes from Sonic and is called a chocolate milkshake.) She is obviously thriving, so that makes it easy for me to say I don't give a crap if she chain eats grapes and toast all day. We try not to do that EVERY day, but I'm definitely not spending a lot of mental space thinking about how to get her to eat some carrots or some steak. I just don't have the energy or desire to fight with her about food if I don't have to, and I suspect that's probably the wrong tactic to take anyway. 

As fine as I am with her pickiness, I have always wondered in the back of my head if there was a misstep somewhere on my part, that led her to this very, very selective culinary path. Did I not introduce the right variety of foods, at the right times? Was I not consistent enough?

Then Charlotte came along and ate everything in sight. Everything! With no hesitation whatsoever, my second-born child will eat ANYTHING and if you don't offer your bites to her, she will demand them loudly. Charlotte will throw a fit over the enchilada (with jalapenos!) on your plate and when you give her a bite, she will ask for the entire thing and eat it merrily.  Claire never did that. She was extremely snooty about food, even as a baby.

I suddenly realized, in what is surely going to be one of my top-ten no-shit statements of 2012,

"Oh! Some people are just picky!" 

I've come to see Claire's food preferences as more of a personality trait rather than a behavior I molded, formed, or influenced. We all know plenty of ADULTS that won't touch a tomato, won't eat green vegetables, and hell, I even have an uncle that doesn't like cheese (I KNOW). I won't eat eggplant or shellfish. We all like what we like and when I meet an adult picky eater? I never, ever, think, "Oh, that person's mother must have only fed her fruit growing up. That's why she won't eat broccoli. What a terrible mother she had."

No. Nobody thinks that.

Perhaps Claire will branch out into delicacies such as spaghetti, hamburgers, or macaroni and cheese over the next few years, but for now I'm happy to make her a cheese sandwich and sliced strawberries every day for lunch (and sometimes again for dinner). She's a picky eater. Whatever.

Look, I tried to like Vampire Diaries but I think it's just kind of dumb and I can't watch it any more

I do this thing where I go in phases of extreme productivity where I get All The Things Done followed by weeks-long stretches where I spend my evenings watching questionable television about teenage vampires, with an iPad on my lap, and a slice of chocolate cake at my side, getting absolutely nothing of importance done.

(I am currently in about week 4 of a vampire/chocolate cake phase.)

My friend Courtney used to ask me, "What are you doing tonight?" and she would ask me this on like, a Monday, which is traditionally a non-drinking day for single people in their early twenties, so my usual response would be, "Um, I don't know?" Courtney always had some kind of plan for her after-work hours. Paint her nails, organize a cabinet, research something, make a curtain, watch a specific movie, make something new for dinner, go to bed early, etc.

She planned out her off time in advance and I started doing the same thing and it was kind of fun and nice to have A Thing to look forward to in my evenings rather than getting home and just laying on the sofa for three hours. (I totally sat on the sofa for hours at a time anyway [and still do!], but now it was The Thing and I looked forward to it all day, which somehow made it BETTER.) Sometimes, The Thing even required a trip to Target for craft supplies or nail polish or whatever and that was also kind of fun.

I picked up on this habit of hers and I've been silently planning my evening hours for about ten years. I like to stew about what I'm going to do that evening and consider my options all morning (or even days before) and when I decide (even if I decide on vampires and chocolate cake) it's like this delightful little carrot waiting for me at about 8 PM.

"If I can get through this meeting/commute/pile of dishes/whiney child, I can do XYZ!"

Sometimes, The Thing is ambitious like "Sew Kitchen Curtains" and sometimes it's "Open A Bottle Of Wine As Soon As The Children Go To Bed." But the point is there's always SOMETHING (productive or not) to look forward to and that's the part I like.

Anyway, I go through phases with my selections. These days I'm watching Vampire Diaries but I read ahead on Wikipedia and now I feel bored and like it's not moving fast enough and there's too much pesky character development. I think my new project is going to be a huge, giant, toy purge. I can only do it in the evenings so the children can't see me donating/throwing away their toys, but we have seriously reached Maximum Capacity with toys. There are four plastic bins in Claire's room because there is simply no place else to put them. Charlotte has also outgrown a lot of baby toys and there are even more toys with missing or broken parts, plus lots of toys nobody plays with that need to move along to their next home.

(This is making me think of Toy Story and how sad the toys must be because I'm going to pitch them. Surely THEY KNOW, right? They have to know. Too bad, toys!)

Anyway, I was wondering what YOU all do after everyone is home from work and dinner has been eaten and children are in bed, pets fed, cows milked, etc. and you have some time of your own. I am about to abandon Vampire Diaries and the toy purge can't take me more than two days, and then I'll need some new, exciting ideas, and I would very much like to just copy you. And, does anyone else do this "wheeeee, it's finally MY time" thing? I realize it might read a little OCD, but I do keep the whole thing loose and easy and I'm not militant about it AT ALL. I just like to look forward to things!

The Garden, Week 18: It's Getting Closer to Tomato Time

It rained a few times this week and I had a lot of family visiting, so I ignored the garden for a couple of days. When I finally dragged myself out there to inspect things, I was OH SO PLEASANTLY SURPRISED. Here, virtually walk with me through my garden, friends.

First up, we have the first Cherokee Purple tomato of the season! Now, I have HIGH HIGH hopes for these suckers, so I was really pleased to see a tomato FINALLY happening on one of these plants. I might have yelped a bit when I spied it.

And then I was very happy to see a second Cherokee Purple on the same plant, with a handful more starting to form. Excellent.

This makes FOUR of the six varieties that are producing actual tomatoes so far. (Amish Paste, Cherokee Purple, Yellow Pear, and Black Krim all have infant tomatoes. Mr Stripey and Brandywine have none, but they're the BIG tomatoes so maybe they just take longer?) (Although, one of the Brandywine plants IS still recovering from the mauling our resident Very Hungry Caterpillar gave him, so I'm not really harboring negative feelings towards him for not yet producing. He has an excuse.)

I think part of the change in tomato status is it hasn't been as hot lately. We haven't hit 95 in two weeks and I think that probably helped with the blossom drop immensely. We're slated to run up to almost 100-degrees by Sunday though, so I'm curious to see if tomato production drops off again.

I also have several clusters of Yellow Pears on two plants. Easily 20+ of these little guys on each plant.

And, two biggish Amish Paste tomatoes with several other tiny ones starting out.

We even have what appear to be the spiky beginning of some cucumbers! So, you know, food! In a garden! That I'm growing! This is kind of cool! 

***

At this point I am about 126 days removed from sticking seeds in the plastic tray. Remember this? All the way back in February? Back when it was cold enough to wear pants and Newt Gingrich was still a candidate? Yes, this was a long time ago.

The plants have been in the ground for about 63 days (9 weeks). Most of my seed packets say it'll be 85 days after transplanting until harvest, so that would put me at eating a home-grown caprese salad the week after Fourth of July, which is only a few weeks away. (!!!!!) When I put it that way it doesn't make me feel as badly about all of the already-harvested tomatoes I'm seeing on Facebook. I'm still on schedule. I've planted indeterminate varieties, which should produce consistently all summer until the frost kills the plants, rather than determinates, which produce all of their tomatoes at once (but early) and then stop.

I will be verrrrry satisfied and possibly a little bit smug if I'm still getting tomatoes in September, is what I'm saying.

A Long Year

It feels really indulgent to write about Jake again, about a year after he died, but next Wednesday it will have been an actual year and I think about Jake a lot and I miss him often and it still feels like he'll come sauntering around the corner to say hello any moment.

Of course, he won't be doing that.

I have yet to read Dog Heaven all the way through (I am sorry Natalie, but it just makes me BAWL by page three.) I have been meaning to change the URL of this website but I'm dragging my feet. Claire occasionally talks about Jake, telling strangers, "We have a dog! His name is Jake!" Or other times, "When is Jake coming home? I want him to come back to our house."

I feel the same way I did last October, when I wanted not another dog, I wanted JAKE. And I've come around to the idea of maaaaaaaybe getting another dog, a Not-Jake, but with two young kids and our travel schedule it seems poorly timed. Certainly a puppy is not in the cards (we have enough needy creatures to take care of) but an older, rescued, dog seems appealing, in theory. 

But then I think about an older dog and I think about saying goodbye again in five (or fewer) short years and that idea seems unappealing too.

So, we're in a kind of holding pattern on another pet. His nose smudges are still on the back window of my car. His little door to the back yard is still here. His bowls are in a cabinet in the laundry room. I sometimes see those things and it's almost like he's a lost pet, a runaway, and we're holding onto these things just in case he comes home, after all this time.

I think that's the part I wasn't expecting: the still missing him a year later and getting sad when I drive past the vet (at least twice a day) and always, always thinking about wanting him and not just another dog.

Because he wasn't just another dog, you know? 

Oh, buddy. I sure wish you could come home. 

 

The Garden, Week 17: I'm Starting To Think This Was A Terrible Idea

The tomatoes keep blossoming and then dropping the blossoms. They shrivel up, turn brown, and fall off. I have two tomatoes growing on my Amish Paste plant and six teeny tomatoes growing on my Yellow Pear plant. But the other ten plants have bupkis. Lots of blossoms! Lots of leaves! About four feet tall! NONE TOMATOES.

This is discouraging.

If I'm to be eating ripe tomatoes sometime in the next few weeks, green tomatoes need to be forming. It feels like my vines should be heavy with small green baby tomatoes by now. I'm starting to have visions of getting through this entire summer and only eating a handful of small yellow tomatoes, which would be SO UPSETTING. (Also it would positively kill the rate of return I'm aiming for on spend.)

I know I'm growing heirlooms, I know they're not easy and are actually kind of fussy, I know I started them from seed and they'll take longer to set fruit and ripen, I know I have no idea what I'm doing and my strategy is largely "put it in the ground, add water and cross my fingers," but HOLY MOSES GUYS, THIS IS LOOKING BAD. 

I think the blossom drop problem is because it's too hot, which is infuriating because I thought tomatoes LOVED HOT. It's not even THAT hot yet (90's!). I should have done more research on which heirloom varieties do best in Texas, but I just didn't have that kind of spare time on my hands last January and I was such a newbie I didn't even know it was a question I should ask. 

So. I'm not really sure what to do about this, if there's even anything to be done. Should I shade the plants for part of the day? (As someone once told me I might need to do, as full Texas sun seems to be too much sun OMG THIS IS SO ANNOYING I CANNOT BE EXPECTED TO CONTROL THE SUN.) Should I water a crap ton more than I do? Should I cry a little? A few tears of tomato-grief, perhaps? I will do that, if someone thinks it might help. In my wildest dreams I did not imagine I'd grow these plants for four months and they'd get big and they'd blossom and then...refuse to set fruit. I figured if I made it this far the tomatoes would come on their own, as they are supposed to, but this appears to not be the case.

The cucumbers are blooming too, no cukes yet but they just starting blooming a few days ago. The okra is getting tall, but no blossoms on that either. The pepper plants are TINY still (about 8 puny inches), but they're blooming so I guess I'll have some quarter-size bell peppers later (wooo?). The basil is huge, though. The basil is my gold-star student. One million gold stars to Basil.

I'm constantly picking grass out of the beds, plus little shoots of Bradford Pear tree. The root system is still alive on the tree we cut down (otherwise the entire yard would have been shaded, which I am sure would also spell tomato doom, I just cannot win), and the tree is trying to survive but I wish it would just DIE already and stop growing in my garden. Seriously Tree, you're not going to win this one.