Smokies: A Teaser

Had a great day for our visit to the Cades Cove area of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  Alas, I took too many photos and didn’t have nearly enough time to cull through them for the blog after we returned home.  Actually, truth be told, I had plenty of time, but sitting in a comfy chair overlooking a mesmerizing river was less-than conducive to getting any work done :-)

So for now … just a teaser …

Just inside the Townsend Entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Tomato Garden Follies

At
the end of year 6 of the Transplantable Rose blog, what better way to start
year 7 than with tomatoes? We like peppers and tomatoes. We like growing them
and we like eating them. I even wrote lyrics about the end of Tomato season for
a music video called Farewell, Tomato.
After
Philo made our small vegetable plot in .. we tried different ways to support
& protect the plants.
For
a few years we just staked them
Our
next phase lasted a few years - a large, strong, painted wooden framework that
could support plants, bird netting & shade cloth. We hoped the net could
slow down attacks by squirrels & birds.
It’s
been fun trying new varieties every year, cramming in 9 or 10 tomato plants and
7 or 8 peppers, watering them by hand while knocking leaf-footed stink bugs
into soapy water every day, with the reward of some salad tomatoes and frying
peppers.
A
post on GardenWeb suggested tying net gift bags over the tomatoes to protect
them from the stinkbugs. I was too cheap to buy more than 2 – a good thing
since the squirrels chewed off the whole tomato stem & ran away with the
bags.
On
Tom Spencer’s radio program we heard him mention one gardener who painted
wooden balls red & hung them in the garden while the tomatoes were green.
The idea was that any critter attacking the fake tomatoes would be convinced
that hard, bad tomatoes grew in that garden. We tried it and saw no effect, but
at least they’re decorative!

Recent
years broke the weather rules and what worked before no longer held up. Last summer after every pepper plant in the
vegetable garden died, I found a few new plants at a local nursery, put them into containers and those
survived. The bird netting kept the birds from taking the tomatoes, but it
allowed them to poke their beaks through the spaces to puncture the tomatoes.
The
tomato frame filled the entire center of our little plot, making it difficult
to get in to weed, prune & tie the plants and even harder to reach the
stinkbugs. The stakes & frames gave the birds a good place to perch while
they attacked the fruit. But we gardeners had no place to perch - the seat made
from a slice of tree trunk had rotted.
So
we tweaked the vegetable plot, moving the compost enclosure and changing the
layout. A central path looks better and gives us better access. There are fewer
plants this year. Five pepper plants grow in containers and we’re getting a
small, steady supply. We bought only 5 tomato plants and we’re getting a few of
those each day, too.
The
tomato vines are sort of draped over wire cages to hold the fruit off the
ground but they’re not staked. In place of the garden netting I bought a few
yards of inexpensive nylon net to sort of pouf over the top, using recycled bricks to keep it from blowing away. With a tighter weave and no convenient
sticks for birdie feet to grasp, they have to work harder to punch holes in the
tomatoes.
They
can still do it… our Blue Jays boldly cling to the kitchen windows and tap on
the panes! The squirrels will chew through anything and possums and raccoons
lurk at night. We know we can’t beat any of them but we're trying to stay in the
game.
If
a stinkbug lands on the outside of the net it can’t fit through the small mesh.
If the little monster is already inside clinging to the net I use the net to
enfold & squish it.

A
central path now leads to the concrete bench, relocated from the Secret Garden
to the Vegetable Patch. Last June we turned two old compost bins upside down,
painted them, added handles and called them tomato guards. This June they cover
two tubs bought at some long ago garage sale, painted white. The tub on one
side of the path has a pepper plant and a ‘San Marzano’ tomato grows on the
opposite side. There’s something going on here but it doesn’t fit the usual
categories… it’s not Potager and it’s not Austintatious and it’s not Garden
Junk. Maybe it’s Transplanted Frugal Midwesterner?

Two
of the tomatoes were supposed to be our favorite ‘Black Krim’. At planting time
I noticed a ‘Better Boy’ tag down the side of the pot. And that one ‘Black
Krim’ has now turned to None. Look at these tomatoes! They all came from the
same mislabled plant – not ‘Black Krim’ but it might take a tomato-genealogist
to figure out what they are.


On the other hand, when that heirloom-lumpy
tomato at far right finally ripened, it weighed in at over 13 ounces. Folly it
may be, but what a delicious folly it was.

Tour Divide

We'll start with the few pictures I did take. Yea, I'm a littleembarrassed by the lack of pictures in general. To undertake such a massively epic and beautiful endeavor and not really document it, is kinda silly. Though any extra bits of effort kinda went out the window. Generalhygiene, picture taking and bikemaintenancekinda slowed to a crawl. Eating and riding took over as the primary functions. Its all still like foie gras in my brain and the regurgitation of brain film to decipherable thought is still taking place. That's 2 of the big 3. Stay riveted to your bar stools, church pews and inflatable furniture, I'll have a semi-legible report together soon.

Journey to Indian Valley Open Space...

Sammie here - I LOVE this place and wanted to bring Avalon to see it, cause I only get to go here after a big rain! There's a creek here that fills up then and I knew we'd have a pawesome time! The adventure began the moment we got out of the Sammie-mobile - a big, huge horse/doggeh clip-clopped by and it was suure interesting!

The moment we passed by the gate, Avalon found a stick and lay down in the creek to gnaw on it for a bit!
Then she got up all alert from her stickie reveries and checked out the scene!
I was watchin' closely, fur I had so much more to show her! She just loved that stickie!
A cool bridge! I showed her what was up the trail a bit and then we crossed back over it to Mom and Dad.
Then a ways up the road, we found a cool trail that wound up and up through a thick forest, where we ran and ran.
We finally got to a beautiful meadow, where we just had to take some time to have some pawesome zoomies!
Wild Zoomies! Bitey face zoomies!
Then, all of a sudden, we heard some sounds we knew we should investigate...
Sure enough... some cuzzies... maybe! We hung out with them for a while and had lots of fun in the creek!
The sun began to go down and we headed back for the car. What a bootiful day on Indian Valley Trail!
Thanks for all your wonderful comments about Ozzie! She continues to do wonderfully well and as mentioned in our last post, gets her stitches out Tuesday morning!

Tranquility Tire Tantrum XC Race

This afternoon was the Psycowpath race at Tranquility Park. In today's photo, Omaha Devo racers start out on the Tranquility race course.
It was brutally hot and humid during the race. I did not stay through the whole race - just too much for me. By the time I was home, weather.com was showing a temperature of 93 with a heat index of 117.
I hope that I caught a photo of each racer on the course. As the Cat 1 racers finished their second of 3 laps on the 9 mile race course, I called it a day. My photos of the race can be found on my Photo Race Web Site.
BTW, I have been advised that I did not miss a race yesterday. Two races were combined. I hate it when I think I am wrong, only to find I was correct anyway. :)

Trip to Albuquerque

It was a tiring 2 day drive to Albuquerque. But I made it! Wednesday morning it was +1 in Omaha. The temperatures sloooowly climbed: 5 in KC at 10:30, 10 in Emporia at noon, 20 about OKC. Spent the night in Elk City. Highest temp On that day's drive was 24 deg.
For safety reasons, I drove through KC instead of Topeka. Did not want to take a chance of having problems out on 2-lane road. Added almost 100 miles on my drive.
Thursday morning it was 19 when I headed out. It was in the 30s in Amarillo. In New Mexico the thermometer in the car hit 54!!! It was 51 when I arrived in Albuquerque. I can handle this.
Checked into my room and headed to Fat Tire Cycles. Picked up a copy of the Albuquerque bicycle map ( addition - word is that the new edition is out). Once again, the staff there were very friendly. This was the same shop I used 1 1/2 years ago when I had flats from goatheads. Visited with Tony (Manager) there, finding out what's going on in town and trail conditions.
Preparations are under way to head out for exploring the bicycle trails. Hope to have some more interesting photos today. The photo on this photo was taken at a I-40 Rest Area in Texas.

Time out

It's been one of those days. At work the boss is away, the clients are moaning for this that and the other. I stay back an extra half hour to finish a set of accounts for a client (who couldn't make up his mind about his deadline), before setting off way too late and trying to make up time, riding really fast down the coast to the latest Bicycle Gold Coast meeting (these things rarely start at the stated time, but I know if I'm late, this will be the one, and in anycase, there's pride at stake). And it had been like this for nine hours straight.

However, alongside the beachfront at Miami, for just one moment, the sky is lit up just so, by a powerful sunset on the opposite horizon (sadly, obsured by suburbia). It's that moment, where the ride reveals itself in all it's beauty. It's that moment, suddenly, everything else seems inconsequential. The evening ski is as soothing as the voice of Sarah Blasko. This is the moment where I take time out.