Tomatoes On The Hoof, er, Vine

I plunged out into the chill-ish morning to snap pictures of tomatoes in the wild for you.  Of course, I had to pick them too but not before I took a few glamor shots.  I love being out there in the early morning cool with the pure sunrise light streaming down through that big maple tree behind Lee & Suzie's.  The daisies and echinacea are still going gangbusters and the black-eyed Susans have grown up to screen the meter along the side of the house.  The white lilies are as beautiful as ever.  I found a Japanese beetle burrowing into one of them but I snatched it out of there and squashed it underfoot.  Damned rapacious bugs.

I finally got firm confirmation from the renter that she'll be out by September 1 so I can put the ad on Craigslist today.  For once we'll have a vacancy during the time that most people actually move, maybe we'll get a better crowd of applicants.  I got the sinks and range hoods and faucets at Home Depot yesterday for not too scary an amount of money, and a guy loaded them for me.  They'll live in Durwood's van until they get installed.  I see no reason to wrestle them out to put them someplace in the way until Saturday.

I think Durwood's feeling better because he slept in bed instead of in the chair last night.  He's had a muscle spasm, or something, in his neck for the last few days and it's been a bitch.  He can barely move and I feel like I want to do something to make him better but there isn't anything, besides fetching him another pain pill every once in a while; that I can do.  Aging isn't for sissies, I'm telling you.

August 1--Thomas Toft, Charger.  I hate that Thomas Toft plate.  The animals have crazy eyes and chains and sharp claws, and there's a skull in the tree.  The paint's so thick that food gets caught on it and your fork can't slide on it.  Jacob knows I hate that plate so he makes sure I get it when it's his turn to set the table.  When it's my turn I make sure he gets the bent fork, the one that pokes your tongue if you're not careful.  He hates that.

Siblings, can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em, and you really can't do without 'em.  We used to squabble over the "long" spoon, a teaspoon with a narrow bowl.  I don't know why it was more desirable than the others but I suspect that it was silver and felt cooler in the mouth.  Or maybe it was just to spite the others.  I also remember that it was a triumph to get the last of the milk.  "I brank aww," TW would say.  But there was more where that came from, Dad's parents had a farm with a few cows (not in Wisconsin, in Indiana).  Kids.  I'm outta here.
--Barbara