July 9: Tomato jungle

I haven't had a lot of success producing a tomato crop in the pots on my balcony. I've tried various varieties of tomato plants and various types of pots, including the hanging kind. (Tip: make sure the hook you hang the plant on is secure and not screwed into rotten wood.) If I get two or three tomatoes off of a plant, it's a pretty good yield. It's been a bit disappointing, and I've wondered if I'm just wasting the water I use to keep them healthy.

Last year, some new people moved in to one of the apartments that's right off the courtyard below and behind my apartment. They had some lovely shade-loving plants, but the prettiest one was... a tomato plant. It was tall and viney, and it never had a single fruit. Somehow, I could tell it was just there to be a plant. And I loved it for that.

So this year, when I planted my two little tomato plants, I decided that my goal was not fruit at all. It was just to have some bushy, tall, pretty green plants with that amazing, distinctive smell of tomato plants. I just wanted to enhance my balcony with the greenery.

The plants have actually produced a few tomatoes — one from the Arkansas Traveler plant, and four or five cherry-sized tomatoes from the patio bush plant. Lots and lots of blossoms, but few fruits. No worries, though, because they have gotten big and pretty and that corner of my balcony is practically jungle-y now. I'm really enjoying it.



I even have a millet plant that grew up volunteer from a piece of birdseed. It was 18 inches tall and had a head of millet forming before I even noticed it!

July 10: Cicadas with fiddle accompaniment

It's prime time for the cicadas now. They're not just heard, they're seen. I haven't found any nymphs' husks yet, but I've seen a few dead cicadas about, and one morning last week, there was a live one clinging to my window screen. I went outside to try to get a clear photo of him, but he buzzed away when I moved the door.



Tonight I was outside for awhile, listening to a radio program of Celtic music on my mp3 player. The cicadas were louder than the radio, of course, so I could hear both. When a fiddle tune came on, all of a sudden I had a flashback to childhood: summer nights, sitting out in the grass in the front yard, listening to the cicadas and hearing our neighbor in the distance, playing his fiddle. He lived across the road and up the hill through the trees. He was a somewhat famous traditional mountain fiddler, and when he had his children and grandchildren over he would play for them. And we would relax and eavesdrop.