And it makes your cucumbers cry like little babies.  Ooh, my leaves are all STICKY, I’m going to turn YELLOW now.  Unh.
 

Bastards.  They’ll get copper sprayed tomorrow and hope that it isn’t too late to save them.  In the meantime husband and I harvested 7 lbs (SEVEN POUNDS!!!) of fruit from them this afternoon.
 

Pickles anyone?

Innnyway… Today let’s have some wide angle shots, see what the big picture looks like.

The tomatoes are killing me, really. They were started indoors in peat pots Feb 3 (thank you garden journal!) and they are now officially frickin’ huge. Observe:

And today, the sungolds finally started turning yellow, woo!

The parisian pickling cucumber is much happier inside the enclosure with the tomatoes. You can see why it was moved in on the lefthand leaves there :

The other tomatoes, the San Marzanos, are doing amazingly well. Look at the size of this trunk, wouldja?

Yes, Caitlin, those are new wedding rings. The silver ones made by Connie were so wide they irritated the skin underneath, we had to constantly take them off. These are titanium, so, y’know if we ever get caught in an undersea oil drilling rig, we’ll be ok.

Outside the pool enclosure, it’s a world gone mad. It apparently rained a couple of inches last night, and the plantsies expressed their thanks with explosive growth:

The daikon radish, planted (as you can see from the tag) three whole days ago, have sprouted:

And I’ve officially changed the name of Box #4 to The Nursery Box:

Bet you can’t guess why.

The red bell and poblano peppers still taunt me with blooms:

The lemon cucumbers look like they are sturdy enough to be used as building materials:

Which is good because they’re planted right next to this monster of a zucchini:

Don’t take this personally, little buddy, but I’m really looking forward to when I can sautee your little green ass with red bell pepper, onion, olive oil and thyme…

The Second Slowest Tomato seems to also have enjoyed the rain. And the criticism:

The Slowest Tomato Evar is still taking his sweet frickin’ time:

Out front, the zinnias are doing their thing, namely growing tall enough to hide the ugly-ass power boxes:

And the front plants are filling in nicely. The canna lilies there in the middle have Gone Mad, growing easily a half a foot since they’ve been planted. Everything behind them is *supposed* to be taller, but the sodding roses and delphinium seem to have joined the same union as the Slowest Tomato Evar. No growth without equality! Need to hire me some muscle.

And finally, here are all the newly planted seedlings that will nicely fill in that area behind the crepe myrtle, and (hopefully) stave off further fountain grass invasion:

Whew. Posting about gardening is almost as hard as actually doing it. Nappytime.

I am fairly confident the wildflower mix we threw down out front consisted of more than just zinnias, but zinnias are surely all you can see at the moment:

Plucked the first fruit off the parisian pickling cucumber yesterday. Impatient as I am, I tucked my camera under my arm and gently broke the cuke in half. The smell…holy gods, the smell. Imagine the cucumberiest-smelling cucumber you’ve ever smelled…then quadruple it. And the taste…holy gods, the taste. It was not the least bit bitter, even eating it with the skin on, as I surely was, right there in the garden.

It was slightly sweeter than the average cucumber, and had something no other cuke I’ve ever tasted had…depth. Yes, depth of flavor from a cucumber, kindly contain your astonishment. So if you’ve been eating grocery store cukes your entire life, do yourself a favor and buy a big old pot, fill it with potting mix, and plant one of these. Your tastebuds and family will thank you.

And now, ladees and gentlemens, I bring you a Tale of Miraculous Growth. Shortly after my much-anticipated purple strawflower sprout had been transplanted to its final home, the Girlchild’s fat-ass tuxedo cat jumped up there (chasing a bug no doubt), planted her aforementioned expansive ass on it and broke it at dirt level.

I was horrorstruck. I am a big (HUGE) fan of strawflowers, and having only ever seen white and yellow, I was REALLY looking forward to purple. (I now know there are a skosh more colors out there and am bygod growing every one of them this year.) Aaaanyway. Looking at my poor broken plant I noticed part of the stem was still intact, so I grabbed my trusty Rootone, powdered the hell out of the break, then buried it in dirt and supported it all around with stones.

And walla, my purple strawflower is about to reward me with a bloom!

Life is good.

Up top there is one of the billion creepers the cucumber plant is sending out, desperately grabbing at anything it can find, much like its insane sort-of cousin, the wisteria. The other cucumber plant in that pot, if you listen very closely, is screaming ala Bugs Bunny, “Get me outta heeeere!”

The big plant there on the right is covered, COVERED I say, in blooms and tiny, hairy cucumbers:

The gioia della mensa tomatoes have bloomed and now peel back their blossoms in readiness for fruit:

The pineapple melon plant has blooms-o-plenty already, despite being about six inches tall:

The parisier market carrots are going like mad, no doubt put to shame by the insane population of radishes next door:

The Meyer lemon tree, whilst working dutifully on the existing fruit, has popped out about nine thousand more blooms, awaiting the arrival of the bees:

And how are the peas doing, you ask?

Let’s just say they learn well.

*Movie quote…who can guess it WITHOUT GOOGLING?