back to normal now?

We're finally back home -- my husband, dog, canary and me -- after several crazy weeks!  YEA!  :-)

Our absences were hard on the tomato plants, potted on the balcony outside J's home office, because the work in the back yard would probably have been completely fatal to them.  This turned out to be a real "win" of a technique despite the constant hand-watering necessary.  Usually, the multitudinous squirrel population in our neighborhood has dictated that we were only able to harvest less-ripe specimens or they'd steal them, take a few bites, and leave them in the grass for the bunnies to finish.  DAMN -- i tried everything i could find or think of to discourage them, and nothing worked!  But this year, my half-dozen plants have yielded an impressive collection.  We ate quite a few as caprese salad and as BLTs in romaine leaves.  The ones i picked before our last drive to TX ended up as a large batch of "special tomato sauce," to be frozen in packets adequate for portobello pizzas.  :-)  I'll be growing my tomatoes in this squirrel-resistant fashion from here on out!

This isn't going to be as good a year for sunchokes as last year was (and the year before) -- i think we might have been too efficient when we dug them out last year, and didn't leave enough root-stock.  Oh well....  Our jalapenos are thriving, though, and i'm sold on the "chocolate" chiles -- the latter have so out-performed the poblanos that they're going to be a regular in our garden for rellenos (which my husband LOVES).

And it's finally "really summer" here in the midwest -- temperature in the upper nineties for the first time in a long time and humidity around 60% ... but it still feels better than Houston did!  :-)  Next week it should get a little better, and i have PLENTY to do indoors, in the meanwhile.

So life should be a little more normal for awhile, thank goodness.  ...Excuse me now -- i need to go launder some shorts and pull some oxtail out of the freezer!