I don’t think things are going well in the tomato test garden. I have plenty of blossoms:
Lots and lots and lots of blossoms in fact but very little fruit:
The few tomatoes that have condescended to grow are very small. Am I being impatient? How long does it take for a tomato plant to go from blossom to ripe fruit anyway? It is already mid- July and I think these plants had better get motivated if they are going to produce anything by the first frost in September. They have plenty of sun, lots of water and about two months to come up with something edible.
Last week I continued experimenting with natural dyes, this time using onion skins.
I used regular yellow onion skins that I had collected over time. The natural coloured wool was pre-mordanted, as usual, in cream of tartar and alum. I was surprised by the colour. I expected something more yellow rather than this brown/gold colour. These onions came from my uncle’s garden. Somewhere along the line, without ever discussing it, my uncle and I have reached an agreement where he provides me with his onions, which are particularly sweet, and I provide him with maple syrup. It works for us.
I think the next dye experiment will be with wild grape leaves because the vines are growing like crazy and interfering with the clothes line. Not that the clothes line is much use right now with all the rain. Oh well.
Yesterday we went for a bike ride to a small pioneer cemetary that is about two or three kilometers from where we live:
It seemed fitting to stop off at this cemetary on Canada Day. Two families came from Scotland and settled here in the 1830’s. There are only about a dozen graves, the oldest is from the late 1800’s and the most recent dates in the 1960’s. At the risk of sounding morbid, and I don’t think I am, I find old cemetaries fascinating. First of all, there are trends in tombstones. There was a period when all the tombstones seemed to have weeping willows on them, then that trend died out ( of course the pun was intended) and the weeping willow was replaced by another motif. You just never see weeping willows on tombstones anymore. References to lambs have always been popular on the graves of children. I have seen many tombstones that say ‘the wife of so and so’ but have yet to see one that says ‘the husband of so and so’. Since families didn’t seem to move around very much, several generations of a family are often buried in the same graveyard. Lots of time can be spent speculating on whether this person was the son of that person, etc. Occasionally, by looking at the dates of death, you can find hints of other things that were going on. Sometimes you will find a tombstone saying several people from the same family died in the same year. An illness? A fire? So really , hours of entertainment can be found at an old cemetary. I’ve noticed plenty of pioneer cemetary signs on the backroads around here and I think I might stop and take a look at some of them. Anyway, enough about that. After paying our respects to the pioneers we went into town, had a picnic and stared at the brilliant blue sky:
Eventually night came, as is it’s habit, and the sparklers came out:
No eyes were injured.
And, finally, the fireworks:
Happy Canada Day
