Oklahoma! and Darwin

Cryptic title, I must admit. But it's a glorious day. The wind is rushing around, with exotic sound effects that only the wind can make when it blows across a silent hillside making the trees dance in the sunlight under a blue and white sky. Made me think of the movie Oklahoma! and the title song - "Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plains..."

The morning was so exhilarating, I decided to do my outside chores first thing, belting out the entry song of the same movie -

"Oh what a beautiful morning, oh what a beautiful day...

I've got a beautiful feeling, everything's going my way!"

Perfect song for the perfect morning it was! And in the course of singing and working, I went to check on the tomatoes, and there I ran right up against Darwin - yes, Darwin! You know, the guy who made us all aware of the law of survival of the fittest? Which I've always thought was perfectly logical until I saw what was going on with my tomatoes. Because how do you explain that the cast-off plants are the proliferating ones?

Cast-offs? What cast-offs, you ask... well, a couple of months after I started seeing little tomato plants poking their heads up, I realized that there were way too many... still, I let them grow, until I had a small jungle in the green room. All the while, Car was telling me to thin out my garden. So finally, when they were already pretty big, I started pulling out the scraggliest looking ones to give the hardier ones more room to grow. I left the cast-offs lying on the ground with their poor roots exposed, but then at the last moment, out of a sense of guilt, and because there happened to be a big tub of soil in the corner, I hastily replanted those poor things any which way in the tub. It made me feel better, but Car said it was ridiculous; they were limper than spaghetti, and I secretly agreed that they'd never grow... but lo and behold, they started to climb the wire meshing I put around the tub! I have to admit, I babied them a bit the first few weeks, giving them extra water and making sure they had something to climb. I wanted to prove Car wrong! Maybe they were so grateful at getting a second chance, they responded with all they had! Or maybe they actually were the fittest plants all along and that's why they survived! Whatever the reason, those plants turned out to be the ones that are decked out with the most fruit!!! Guess I'll have to re-interpret Darwin's theory!

Meanwhile, you know how last week I showed you our ONE RED TOMATO?

Well Samo found this baby:



- all red and ready to pick - in the tub of cast-offs!

And we hadn't noticed any red tomato at all there on Friday. It just turned red out of the blue!!! (or in this case, out of the green). So we decided to pick it...

And also the other one - the big one.

We're going to let them soften up a bit more, and maybe tomorrow, we'll eat them!

P.S. Those are avocado trees behind my hand in the last picture... I wonder if they'd be able to bear fruit living as they are, in their big pots... I just can't make up my mind to transplant them, but I know they're ready...