We are growing tomatoes in our garden once again. They are running very late this year - about 6 weeks. We are finally getting some Early Girls, Lemon Boys, Sungolds and Romas. I may be working on a lot of green tomato recipes this year. I didn't keep a very good record of what we planted and some of the tags have gone missing...

 

We went to a Tomato Tasting at Farmington Gardens. It was very good. The Washington County Master Gardeners were working the tasting end. Red Ridge Farms also had a booth promoting their Olive Oil. Chef Dan Brophy from the Oregon Culinary Institute, had cooking demonstrations - with some very good recipes! There were some green tomato recipes in there too. His assistant got lost getting there (poor girl) she said she had a nice drive in the country.

 

We tasted 17 different types of tomatoes. They were still a bit cold, so the full flavor hadn't come out. There were the ones we liked:

 

Rich:
Juliet
Sungold
Pink Beauty
Cherokee Chocolate
Beefsteak

 

Leslie:
Marvel Stripe
Glacier
Hancock Shaker
Aunt Ginny
Principe Borghese
Striped German
Sunsugar
Red Currant
Sungold
Mammoth german
Limony
Aunt Gerties Gold
Mariannas Peace
Brandywine Pink

 

 

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We do have a mystery tomato that is producing well. It is a yellow cherry tomato - with round fruit. My mom (in the master gardener program) was given the plant by a client who brought it in to see if they could figure out what was wrong with it. It turns out the guy's wife accidently gave it some weed killer. It survived this. She brought it over and dropped it off at my house and told me to get it in the ground right away. We were out when she left it, didn't see it right away and it was late before we even go the message. We were also leaving early the next morning for a beach trip. So we moved it into the greenhouse (don't be impressed it is a tent thing in the backyard). Rich left a message with the neighbor feeding the cats and asked him to water the plants in the greenhouse. When we got home the plant is not looking good at all and the neighbor confessed to accidently watering it with Carl's bubbles. So we planted it that night (in the dark). With TLC it has survived and thrived.

Here are two more videos of family.

 

Here is my nephew Logan playing the piano at my Dad's house:

 

Here is my niece skydiving:

 

 

I posted some new videos to my youtube account:

 

Here is a new videos of my nephew David:

 

Carl loves watching video of his cousin!

 

Summer has been fun and busy. We had a trip to the beach, vacation bible school at a few churches (our church, preschool church and grandma and grandpas church) and classes at the rec center.

 

I have been making some jams and jellies. Our berry bushes have been producing well. The blue berries are not a prolific as they have been - we are going to need to prune this fall.  The rest of our garden is not doing so well. Tomatos are really late, as are peppers. We have only harvested 2 zucchinis - we should be at a stage where people are avoiding us so we won't make them take a zucchini.

 

So we are off for another day of fun!