Shortly after they came to clear away the first huge fallen branch, I heard creaking in the big elm tree, and another branch started to bend. We kept an eye on it for the next few days, but by Saturday a chunk of it had bent far enough to hang down and touch the sidewalk, so it was time for another call to the city. This time they sent out an arborist, who circled the tree and made notes and wondered how long it’s been since it’s been trimmed and muttered things about how they’d need to cut here and here and probably here too. And then an hour or so later he returned with the city tree crew in their giant yellow truck, and they proceeded to take out another hefty branch and pieces of a few more. Later in the week yet another yellow truck came by to clean all *that* up, which was nice because it was enough tree piled in front of our house we could no longer actually park our cars there.

So that was last weekend; or rather, the weekend before last. The week that followed was a busy one, and I’m not entirely sure why, except that it felt like I was doing a lot of running but not getting much done. It didn’t help that Wednesday I got up at 4:30 am to catch the 6:15 flight down to Santa Monica for an all day meeting, and then took the latest flight back home. Plus there have been conference calls and meetings and it just felt like I spent all week accumulating things to do, but never getting a chance to do them.

In other news, look what we pulled out of the tomato jungle last week.

We put in four different varieties of cherry so I think all four are represented there, although I haven’t the faintest clue which is which. This weekend we harvested even more; or rather, I climbed around in the tomato jungle and tried to look for signs of bright red or bright yellow or deep purple, and Richard held out his hands and acted as a bucket. The purple cherry tomatoes are the biggest of the bunch, while the gold ones are so tiny I was not sure whether they were ripe, until I touched a few and realized we’d left them too long on the vine.

The tomato plants themselves continue to grow wildly, and are now trying to take out one of the nearby trees, and they are completely covered in little green tomatoes. This almost makes up for the fact that all four pepper plants have now shriveled up, even the one with three tiny red bell peppers hanging on it. Everyone I have talked to has the same problem with peppers, so apparently it is not just us, but I still reserve the right to be a little disappointed. Of all the carrots I planted, only two are still growing, and while the garlic is doing wonderfully, it’s not exactly something you can just pick and eat right out of the garden, and despite yet another taste test – this time with one of those big fat purple cherry tomatoes – I still find raw tomatoes completely revolting (shudder), so I was really holding out hope for those peppers. Ah well. Next year we’ll put in beans and peas, and maybe even some cucumbers, and we’ll relegate the tomatoes to their own separate space so the rest of the yard will be safe from their marauding. And maybe I will try peppers again, just because I still hold out hope.