CLIFF'S GARDEN

I've had big gardens in my time, as evidenced by the one in the background of the above picture; that's my daughter, on the right, with the kids who lived next door back in the early-to-mid 1980's . I've canned hundreds of quarts of green beans throughout my married life. Tomatoes, too. I've frozen sweet corn until the freezer was overflowing.

Then I got a job, and it just wasn't so much fun any more. I always had tomatoes and a few pepper plants, though.

Then the blight came along, nasty fungus that it is. It seemed as though each year, my tomato season got shorter and shorter as the blight killed off my plants a little earlier in the growing season. And last year, I simply called it quits.

"We'll buy tomatoes," Cliff said.

Trouble is, we couldn't really find good ones to buy. My friend Carol gave me quite a few, enough to can, even. But it isn't like having them right outside, fresh from the vine, when you need a tomato.

This year Cliff decided to have a garden. Just a few things, you know. Especially tomatoes.

Here, you see one of his tomato plants. That largest tomato is about the size of a quarter. I told him that ideally, a person would remove those little fruits so the plant could establish a good root system... but that it wouldn't matter all that much if he left them (since blight will likely get them anyhow... I'm a real positive thinker, ain't I?).

I suggested to Cliff that he might try spraying the plants with an anti-fungal stuff regularly; maybe that will stave off the blight, although from what I have read, it's a slim chance.

Here's one of Cliff's bell pepper plants, blooming merrily in the rain.

The mustard greens are almost ready to eat. I remember what a pain it is to check all those little curly edges for bugs as you wash the leaves.

Yesterday I actually managed to find four radishes, which Cliff had with his dinner.