It's A Beautiful Day!

So after our crazy cold front that caused us to save all our tomatos from freezing, we are back to beautiful days. Monday was perfect! I spent about an hour and a half outside on a blanket doing some reading in the sun (I may have got a slight sunburn, but I don't think so.) At one point when I was driving the car thermometer read 79! It was awesome. Ryan and I had to take advantage of the great weather, and we got our cars all cleaned up.





Yesterday wasn't quite as nice, I think it only got into the 60s, but heck, it's November. Today is another beautiful, warm, sunny day and I am about to head outside to lay on a blanket and do some more reading (I put my sunscrean on just to be safe.) So Texas weather is crazy, but on 79 degree days in November, I will not be complaining about the craziness.

Blue Skies Smiling At Me, Nothing But Blue Skies, Do I See...

Tomatoes, tomatoes, and more tomatoes

So, mostly we have had really nice weather lately. In fact, two weeks ago I tried to take pcitres of Ryan and me flying kites. It was such a beautiful day, I think it got up into the mid 80s that day. Unfortunately when I got my camera out and focused on the kites, it shut down - battery dead. So my great plans of blogging that adventure were foiled. Well, that was just two weeks ago and most of the days since then have been the same. High's in the low 80s or 70s, lows inthe 60s or 50s. Well, for some reason the weather decided to change on us yesterday and it got super cold. Highs in the 40s (I guess it is possible we broke into the low 50s but I don't think so) and lows below freezing. Luckily we had warning of this drastic change so we were able to take precautionary measures. So yesterday morning we did our best to rescue all our tomatos from possible freezing. We plant a garden every year. We are not fantastic gardners. We learn something new about gardening every year. But, if we are ever living ina community where we need to grow our own food, Ryan and I volunteer to grow the tomatos (as long as someone gives us started plants - we've never tired from seeds). We are excellent tomato producers. Tomatos are our one crop that has never let us down. We do have one problem though. We don't get them in great abundance until the fall (Texas summers are just too hot for htem I guess.) So we picked tomatoes for an hour yesterday, until we had to tear ourselves away to get ready to leave, and still hadn't picked them all. We were out in our jackets and stocking caps, freezing - our hands were so cold it took a half an hour for them to stop tingling after going inside. But we have TONS of tomatos, in all different stages of ripeness. Luckily we learned a couple years ago that you can pick tomatos green and put them in a box in your garage and they will ripen, so that is what we will do.


All the tomatos we picked yesterday divided into their different ripenesses.

Our sad tomato plants after they were frozen.

But, with all these tomatos, we are going to need some good tomatoe recipes. I am particularly interested in creamy tomato soup recipes. And recipes that call for cherry or pear tomatos.

Also, if you are interested in partaking of any of these tomatos please let us know because we are mor than happy to share. We also have mint, rosemary, oregano, and thyme that could use a trimming if any one wants some fresh herbs.