The sad looking little Brugmansia has grown a lot. It is pushing flower buds now. I think it outgrew the container, so I repotted into one with twice the volume.
The black plastic container absorbs heat from the sun and heats the soil too much. In the past I found that a shiny foil cover reduced the soil temp by 10 or 15 degrees F, so I did that today.
I canned the first batch of Asian pears. Followed USDA canning book recipe, light syrup. They came out very good.
Here are the tomatoes I harvested today. Plus some peppers and onions.
I'm cooking the sauce tomatoes now to make frozen tomato sauce. I also added a few of the firmer other ones.
These are from dwarf varieties. They are just starting to ripen. The pink ones are Livingston Dwarf Champion. The red one is Livingston Dwarf Stone. There should be many more of the other ones soon.
The star quilt was nearly done. I completed cut the batting, and pinned it all together. This time I wanted to be extra precise with the stitching, so I marked the first row with blue tailor's chalk. I sewed the first line.
Still, something was nagging at me. They say you should test a sample and see if the chalk line washes out. I thought, it's tailor's chalk. That's what it's made for.
Guess what. The blue color didn't wash out. I washed twice. Still didn't wash out.
It's faint, but I will always see it. I used a brush to remove what I could. It didn't stay on the dark blue areas, which are slicker, or the dark grey areas. All of the white areas on two corner patches were stained.
So, I removed all if the line of stitching. I removed the two corners of white fabric that were stained. Now Im removing the large patchwork blocks that need to be either replaced or taken apart and just the stained parts replaced. If I have enough fabric scraps (maybe), I'll replace the entire blocks. Easier than taking them apart. If not, I'll just replace stained peices.
This four o'clock comes back every year. It never gets winter protection or watering. It started blooming a few weeks later than the others, but will bloom all through fall. nIt's much larger than the first year plants.
