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Friday 22 August 2008

Red

What I think will be last new flower has emerged in the garden - I thought they were just going to produce leaves this year, but I've been pleasantly surprised by this: It's Crocosmia Lucifer. I love the way the individual flowers start at one end and progress towards the tip. And as red is my favourite colour I'm very happy with how red these are.

Talking of red - the first of our tomatoes are starting to ripen. I've been reading blogs about people having loads and loads of tomatoes and looking at our plants and thinking that we'd have lots of little green toms, but these ones have decided to ripen. These are on the couple of tomato plants (along with a couple of chili plants) that I brought indoors as it's starting to feel a bit autumnal here (there are still some outside along with some peppers). Unfortunately we don't have a south facing window to put them in - so they can either be constant temp but not so bright, or at the mercy of the weather but with more light.

These are tumbling toms.

And of course there's some knitting progress (sorry about the weird photos of my feet against the wall).
These are the vinnland socks I've been knitting two at once from the toe up using magic loop and one ball of wool (taken from each end). So far so good....

3 comments:

Kristin said...

My friend at OSU (new prof there since we left) says they ripen green tomatoes in their basement:

Take the plants, pull them from the ground, shake the dirt from the roots (well most of it). Then hang them up from the piping in the basement (dark so I think light doesn't matter too much). The key thing is to provide some cushioning in the event that the tomatoes fall off the vines -- I have successfully used several sleeping bags on the floor.


I'm considering bringing the jade plant inside. Fall is beginning. Snow soon, I hope.

Deb said...

I think I'll give them as much time as poss and resort to that when it starts to get properly cold outside. I think they've probably got a few more weeks... I'm ever optimistic that the weather at the moment is just a blip and it's going to get sunny and warm again! No basement, but the sauna would probably work.

Kristin said...

Sauna....the locals would probably be horrified you would consider putting plants in there :) How could you live without a sauna.


Here in Northern Minnesota I've been to more than one place where they built the sauna first and then went on to build the rest of the buildings. They lived in the sauna until the house was built, I guess.