Tired of tomatoes

Summer was short and tomato season was short, along with the tomatoes themselves. The successful plants in my garden were all cherry and grape tomatoes that came up from last year's seeds. I ate them in salads, gave the split ones to chickens and a few to the dogs--but not many because the high acid content can upset even iron-lined Airedale tummies--and added them to recipes from my new cookbook.

That's Tuscan bean stew from the book. Some of the green stuff is organic kale from the grocery store because I didn't have time to get to the market. Never again. A handful of leaves from the neighbor's poplar trees could not have been more tough and chewy.
I think even the chickens are tired of tomatoes because when I threw a handful into the pen this morning, they cocked their heads instead of rushing to eat, going, "What, those again? How about some leftover parrot food instead?"

I also turned Alanis into Fuzzdog by brushing her out. After you get an Airedale all brushed and fluffed, the first thing she does is go to the water bowl and drench her face so that she can walk away dripping from chin dreadlocks and ruining the photo op. In dog language, that's a relaxed dog, tail and ears neither high nor low, muscles loose. Standing or lying on the grooming table while a person brushes, plucks, trims and--horrors!--Dremels the toenails must be hard work.

The tragedy of the ants

When I was cleaning up the yard after the recent storms, Miro helped by eating all the yellow grape tomatoes left on the vines. He cleverly left the green ones, taking only those that were ripe.

All summer I had watched hundreds of black ants moving little twigs at the foot of some steps made of railroad ties. It took weeks to figure out that they were building up a berm, for reasons unknown. From the number of them, I guessed that their tunnels extended a long way into the slope; but I resisted the temptation to dig in and find out. It didn't seem fair to disturb the tremendous amount of work they had done.

When I checked on them today, I saw holes instead of their little mound.
The entire mound was flattened.


The neighborhood flickers had discovered the ants and bored down like the anteaters they are. A few ants wandered above ground--too tiny for my camera to capture--like the dazed survivors you see in the movies after an apocalyptic event. Months, whole ant lifetimes of work, gone in a few days of rain and birds. Really, it reminded me of the time my computer crashed and I foolishly hadn't backed up weeks of files.