MORE tomatoes

Another post about my tomatoes. It is going to freeze tonight, so I decided that I had better get outside and pick whatever was left on the vine. Well, this is what was left!! One large cookie sheet, 2 bowls, and 3 pots full...and yes, there are some green bell peppers in there, too.



We canned 12 jars of salsa when my parents came to visit last weekend, wiping out my stash of tomatoes. Now I have another stash that will have to ripen on the counter. I've already given some away, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the rest of them yet...more salsa?? Tomato sauce?? We'll see. As always, Miya was quite the helper, especially after she saw me throw one of the rotten tomatoes into the trees behind our house. Before I knew it, she was taking the picked tomatoes and following my example. I'm not sure how many tomatoes were lost duing the throwing episode... She also ate her fair share, and took only one bite out of multiple tomatoes. It's a good thing I had tomatoes to spare.



The high temperature was only 46 degrees today, so it was a bit chilly outside. Notice her pink nose and red hands (I did put gloves on her, but the first pair she soaked in a puddle of water, and the second pair ended up covered in tomato seeds and a squashed caterpillar...yes, I have yet to teach her how to be gentle with anything smaller than her hand...lots of grasshoppers and caterpillars have died due to my failure to teach her properly).

Miya periodically went back into the house to warm up since it took me an hour to pick all of these (my tomato plants grew into a jungle-o-tomato-plants, remember?). It was a lot of work!