Tommy Toes II

The Tommy Toe tomato seeds planted last Thursday looked this way on Monday. I'm thrilled. New life! Summer tomatoes!

Tommy Toes

 "Tommy Toes" is a real Ozark heirloom tomato, a bush that pumps 'em out til the last week of October unbothered by heat, droughts, frosts, and the soil around here. Demetrius grew and fed us heirloom tomatoes named Boxcar Willie, Mister Stripey, and Mortgage Lifter, but only Tommy Toes grow like mad. I got it from the catalog Totally Tomatoes, which sells only seed packets, not plants. Demetrius grew all his vegetables from seeds but this is my first time, and I did what I had watched him do, and felt the same holy love.

One tiny ivory seed per pocket

Grape-sized tomatoes means squirrels and hornworms don't wreck them before we get some, and we can pop 'em into our mouths anytime we're nearby. So the Tommy Toe is the right tomato in the right place.

How to germinate: Poke holes in all 12 pockets of an egg carton, fill each with organic potting soil, set in each one tiny ivory seed, cover 'em up with soil, water, and set in warm sunshine 70 to 80 degrees. Cartons are easier than flats to carry and manage. Our frost-free date is May 15 so seedlings won't be planted til then. I'll have extra for the neighbor's garden. Happy Earth Day.

Meet Farmer Bob

He'd just got there and parked, because his truck bed was full of dozens of eggs, in miscellaneous cartons. (Who decided eggs should be sold by the dozen? It's the perfect number: a brilliant, immortal idea.)
I screeched the car to a halt. The brown-egg man on the side of the highway again!

This time approaching him I did better. He said, "Hello, young lady." (Always the salesman.) I smiled and said hello, and we exchanged how'er you, good morning, i'n'it a pretty spring day, and shook hands. He held my hand in his own cold hard hand and looked me square in the face. He said, "I've seen you before." I said yes. (My rare and elegant Turkish nose is unforgettable.) He got around to asking me how many dozen eggs I wanted.

"Just one," I said.
"Just one?" (Always the salesman. He isn't standing on the road shoulder for his health.)
"I only need one. There's only me," I said.
"Only you? You mean a lovely young lady like yourself i'nt married?" (Always the salesman.) "Why is that?"
Keeping things simple, I said, "He died."
"Sorry to hear that. There's only one place to take those kind of troubles," he said, "and that's to the Lord." He said more and I just said, "You gotta have faith." It's a sentiment that nobody in Missouri objects to. (I've discovered only one other such statement: "Freedom isn't free." When I wear my "Freedom Isn't Free" t-shirt, people from all walks of life, in the bank, the drugstore, the street, read it and say, "Damn right," or "That's a fact.")

I thought about the friend I was on my way to visit and said, "Better make it two dozen; I know someone who'd like some fresh brown eggs."

He said they'd been laid just yesterday and crowed, "Any fresher and you'd have to be standing in the henhouse."

It took a long time for him to count out change in dollars and fives worn thin as toilet paper. "Can't see without my glasses," he explained. I asked his name. It's Bob something (a truck was roaring by and I couldn't hear the last name.) I asked if I could take his picture because I knew you'd like to see it. He's holding a carton of eggs he's bagged for me. He promised in the summer he'd bring his truck back full of homegrown tomatoes, pickles and more eggs.

It's Persimmon Week

One week a year, right now, the persimmons are ripe -- peachy-apricot-orange fruits ranging from cherry sized to apple sized. I've eaten one, but what matters to me is their BEAUTY and secret ability to forecast winter weather! And, darn, the only fruiting tree, absolutely leafless, that I found was on private property and the fruit you see pictured hung just about a foot out of my jumping and grabbing range, and that's all that kept me honest. (Demetrius called stealing other people's produce "stealth gardening.")

Persimmon trees, related to the ebony tree, are strong and hold fast against flooding -- good riverbank trees. Longbows are still made out of 'simmon wood. Persimmons grow mostly in the southeastern U.S. and Pacific, MO is in the northernmost part of their range. In the Ozarks people say if you cut a fruit in half, you can read inside how severe the coming winter will be. Their tannin makes them inedible unless ripe.

Technically the persimmon fruit is a berry, and its formal name is Diospyrus virginiana, and I still want me some.

Male Flowers at Prom Season

Oak trees have catkins -- that's what these long strips of tiny flowers are called -- and catkins are long streamers of male flowers, releasing their pollen everywhere during prom season. Just as in the old V.D. movies, the catkins then drop off one by one, until your car or roof is covered with both yellow pollen dust and thousands of spent catkins.

It was TreePete who answered me "Catkins" when I asked what they were. He doesn't come around anymore, not since I invited him over and left him to tend the barbecue grill and he let everything burn rather than simply say he didn't want to barbecue.

TreePete aside, oak branches simultaneously have little red barely visible nubs. These are the female flowers. They hide ovaries that develop into the more familiar offspring of the oak: acorns. But they couldn't do it without the male flowers. The acorns too drop off onto your car or roof until you're fit to be tied.

My First Daisies

Daisies are often a child's first wildflower. I read about them long before seeing any. Grew up next to a tannery that had its own railroad spur, and in the disturbed ground, just outside of our wire fence -- that coathanger-type-wire, looped and painted white -- I saw and felt these, picked their heads off, tore the hearts apart to see what was inside. They left a strong, not unpleasant scent on my fingers. Thought they were daisies. Wasn't more than five or six, but I knew that you were supposed to pick the petals off saying "He loves me, he loves me not."

Forty years later I find out this stuff is unromantically called "fleabane." And "common fleabane" at that. Can't find anybody who's sure whether these are the bane of fleas.

Today, as you can see, I have them rioting around my mailbox. Petals can be pink or white. More than 100 petals per flower. When I want to know if he loves me or not, I'll pick up the phone and ask.

A Mind Like Wild Mint

Popping up in the roadside, this beautiful complicated bloom called either Bee Balm or Horsemint. To me it looks like an image of the human mind. For a while I confused it with the passionflower. Horsemint in Latin: Monarda bradburiana.

Has 101 uses. The leaves make a minty tea. Says Wikipedia: "Bee Balm is the natural source of the antiseptic Thymol, the primary active ingredient in modern commercial mouthwash formulas. The Winnebago used a tea made from Bee Balm as a general stimulant." Also says it's related to oregano, but I can't see any family resemblance.

First Hummingbird of 2009

This morning at eight, sittin on the porch drinkin tea, I hear a loud luscious buzzing that makes me look up at my feeder (new, glass and copper, real classy, from Dickey Bub's) is the first hummer of 2009. Just on time, too. In 2007 they also appeared on April 24. I remembered that and hung my nectar feeders last week.

This year with a tripod I may get some nice photos to share with yall.

Bluebird Box Mystery Solved

A bluebird pair flitted back and forth and checked out my bluebird box. But they didn't settle. By now they should have lived there a month. But no.

I'd cleaned the box in early March but decided to take it down off the pole to see if a snake might be coiled in there (as there once was) or if it might be filled with thorny sticks, courtesy of a jealous house wren. As I picked the box off the pole I heard a faint buzzing.

Strange. I listened. More buzzing, like a very faint dial tone. If I'd been carrying a cellphone I would have thought that might be it.

Opened the box top and teased out a partially completed yellow-teacup bluebird nest -- topped by wads of tangly moss, still green. This I poked all apart, finding nothing.

Went and planted some spinach. Returned to spot and saw a fat, fuzzy, good-sized bumblebee dazedly crawling out of the moss, getting its bearings and then finally feeling good enough to lift off into the universe.

Somethin Better Than That...

Beautiful day Saturday, took the camera out, and what did I see down by the creek but a wildflower I wait all year to see. This year's first bluebell (Mertensia virginica):

But then God said to me, I got something to show you that's better 'n' that.

Better 'n' that? I said.

So I walked through the woods for a few hours scouting for fungi. Didn't see none. Took a steep way back down, leading me to an unfamiliar backwater of LaBarque Creek. And what did I see there but a whole carpet of hundreds of bluebells. I couldn't believe my eyes:
But then God said to me, I got something better 'n' that.

I said, No way.

But I kept going; now I was headin t'home, when God put in front of me a bluebell that was blue and pink at the same time:

Top that! he said.