Tiny Tuesday : : Tomatoes *

Last night's sunset could have been some sort of weather predictor (see extra). OilMan and I sat up in the arbor and watched as the sky went from hot blue to streaky clouds to pink and blue. It was a nice break from all bad news all the time. We practically never watch live television anymore, and never the news.

Ozzie hit the trail early this morning with the promise of temperatures in the mid 90's later in the day.  The brambles, are a nightmare of aggressive growth in this county and line many of the trails. They are showing little green fruits,  except for one or two places that see the first rays of the sun and are sporting reddening berries. Soon they will turn almost black and be ready to pick. We will begin to see people with buckets and various ingenious devices for picking the fruit without getting torn apart by the thorns. A board thrown down over the plants to walk on was a favorite in Sebastopol, but their growth is more tall and upright here and that method doesn't work so well.

When I arrived at the Flying Goat for my Aztek Mocha this morning, the little plaza was full of loud trucks cutting down the trees next to the tracks and tearing up the cement for a new covered walkway. Progress always seems to come with a downside. A new high density housing development is proposed for the other side of the tracks, so if it happens, there will be construction for years there. I found a seat in the back patio, thanks to Larry, who has an office upstairs and produced a table and chair for me from somewhere. I don't know if he actually owns the building or just acts like he does….

I spent the afternoon finishing the top of Will's tee shirt quilt. Now that it's all in one piece, I have moved it from the floor to the bed in the guest bedroom to decide about borders.. It's going to have a lot of dog hair built into it since it sticks to the backing like velcro. 

The promise of the sunset did come about, but it should soon be cool enough to have a glass of wine outside and test our newly purchased mosquito coils. I doubt if it will work on the gnats that seem to be storming the county this year. They are annoyingly persistent, but they don't whine in your ear and they don't bite….

*About half an inch right now. They will ripen into 'sungold'  sweet yellow cherry tomatoes. They rarely make it from the veggie planters to the kitchen, but serve as snacks for whoever is working up there….