Anyway.  Summer is definitely here where we live.  This weekend it’s supposed to get to over 110 degrees.  My poor garden, I’m glad I built the shade structure over it.

My celebrity tomato plant keeps getting attacked by tomato worms (they burrow into the tomato and eat it from the inside, causing it to rot on the vine), AND those that don’t get attacked end up cracking.  I just can’t seem to win with that plant.  My cherry tomato plant is still plodding along despite that nearly all of the bottom branches are completely bare (no stems at all) from having to clip off the dying ones.  And my better boy is now trying to take over the box that IT is in (like the celebrity did) and has a few branches that span the entire width and length of the box (4×4) plus a foot or two.  It’s still budding tomatoes too, although I wish the birds would bugger off… (if it’s not worms, it’s birds).  I’ve only managed to get one good tomato off of it in the last month thanks to the darn birds, and I picked that one before it was completely ripe.

My watermelon plants started growing like crazy, all the way up the five foot trellis with one of them now snaking horizontally across the top of the trellis, too.  I think I spotted at least three good budding melons so hopefully by the end of the month we may have some big enough that we can eat?  They’re up high too, so I won’t have to worry about my daughter picking them off long before their time.

Despite that my cucumber plants are sprouting baby cukes like crazy, they never get very far (I presume due to the heat)… I think I found *ONE* little one this morning that seems to be getting further along in growth than all its predecessors, so maybe I’ll get a lone cucumber, we’ll see.

The corn was a bust.  It got hot too fast and many of them started drying up before I had a chance to pick them, so I left about six ears out for the birds to pick at and eat if they want.  They weren’t very big either, maybe six or seven inches was the longest ear of corn.  There are still a few small ears that I left on hoping they would grow, but I’m not holding out much hope.

I pulled up the peas last weekend, they were done.  I left the beans but they don’t seem to be producing anymore, so I’ll probably do the same with them soon.

There are quite a few things I will do differently next time around, in addition to planting earlier in the spring, many of the plants will get their own designated garden beds so they don’t have to compete with other plants, and to increase yield.

So now I just have to start planning for next spring and figure out how much more timber I’ll need to buy, and what size beds to build, in addition to purchasing the soil ingredients again as I have very little left from the spring planting.  I’m not sure I’ll do another shade structure though.  There seem to be quite a few people who garden around here without it, so if the one I have survives until next year, I’ll experiment and see how the uncovered beds do compared to the covered ones.

We’re registered Independent, mainly to avoid getting a slew of political material from either of the parties, but also for the reason I stated above.  During the last election, we voted Kerry, because we were tired of Bush. I think during the 2000 election we also did not vote for Bush.  Was it Gore who ran against him then?  I can’t remember, since whoever we voted for did not win.

This election, however… I think we’re both leaning toward McCain.  Back when there were no clear indications of who would be going head to head in November, Obama did look to be an interesting option.  Although I also had Romney on my radar.  My husband did not, though. He had eyes on Obama.

All we definitely, 100% agreed on, though, was we definitely did NOT want to see Hillary.  We both said that if it came down to Hillary against McCain, we’d vote McCain.  But if it was Obama vs McCain, we’d have to watch all of the debates closely to ultimately decide.

Then my husband read about something that went down between McCain and Obama that just left me dumbfounded, and extremely disappointed… in Obama.  I guess at some point, it was proposed – by Obama – that they both sign up to use public funds, which are extremely limited in $ amount, for their campaign money.  McCain agreed, and submitted his paperwork. Then supposedly Obama backpeddled, and changed his mind before he submitted his paperwork.  Meaning he could use money he raised – which he is good at doing, and therefore has quite a bit at hand – instead of the limited funds.  Meanwhile, McCain would be stuck using the limited public fund.

That just wrankled my hide to no end.  That just seemed to me to be an underhanded way of sticking it to the McCain party and forcing them to rely wholly on the public fund.  Meanwhile, Obama continues to raise money hand over fist.  To me, it just makes Obama lose face, and puts a tic on the “cons” column in my mental comparison chart.  There was really no reason at all to pull that crap, for a long time it’s been obvious that Obama is much better at raising funds than McCain.  Why not let it be?  Why pull this underhanded crap?  Obama would outpace McCain in raised funds, probably for the rest of the campaign. Even with the addition of Palin, I don’t see there would be any way that McCain would overtake Obama in fund raising.

Some people may see this stunt to simply be a clever move on Obama’s part.  To me, it just makes me wonder… if he is so willing to pull that when running against his competition, what kind of garbage could he pull on the American public were he to take the Presidential win?

I will still watch the debates with an open mind, but after this stunt, there will always be a little voice of doubt in my mind about his statements.

Ok, go ahead & throw your tomatoes.