Tomato Graveyard

I spent some time outside yesterday and finished the garden cleanup. I pulled the old landscape fabric off the area where we had cukes and melons. It has degraded and needs to be replaced. I’ll put down new next spring. I also raked all of the dead vegetation into that area. I’ll either burn it next weekend or burn it some time next spring.

This was the tomato patch last week after I pulled all the vines out and stacked tomato cages.

I left the tomatoes there for the turkeys, who have done a good job of coming in and cleaning them up. (Sometimes the turkeys are useful.) I left everything to dry out as it was pretty wet the day I pulled the vines. They’ll get burned eventually, too.

I pulled up the hot pepper plants and took the peppers off. I think they are destined for the last batch of salsa, which I need to do this week. The pigs go to the processor a week from today and I need to get freezer space organized.

Elysian brought over some tomatoes and a bottle of Nonna Pia’s Balsamic Glaze (get it at Costco) for me to try, so I had them as part of my lunch yesterday:

The yellow one is a Dr. Wyche tomato and the green ones—which are actually a very dark purple on the outside—are called Indigo Rose. She got the Indigo Rose tomato plant from Jeryl, our pastor. It is an open-pollinated variety, so I am going to save the seed from one of the tomatoes I didn’t eat. The flavor is amazing. I will add it to the ones I plant next year.

We really do have the most amazing little seed-sharing and gardening community here.

That is it for the garden unless I decide to haul some compost over there next weekend. I am wavering. We’ll see what the weather does.

********************************************************

I was catching up on my podcast listening this weekend while driving, and I was delighted to discover that Seamwork Radio is podcasting again! This is the brainchild of Sarai Mitnick, a designer and the founder of Seamwork, a sewing pattern design company. Sarai started the podcast in 2015 and did two seasons before suspending production. I used to listen to it while shelling peas and it quickly became one of my favorites. She has a gift for finding and interviewing the most interesting people in the sewing universe. I was so disappointed when she stopped podcasting.

Sarai started the podcast up again last year with help from several of her employees. I began with one of the more recent episodes and then went back to catch up from the beginning.

Episode 55 is entitled Escaping the Cult of Efficiency. Hmmm. Am I part of a cult? And do I want to escape?

Sarai opened the podcast by noting that she had received feedback from a Seamwork community member about the goals feature they had added to their member area. This member said that she had plenty of to-do lists and goal setting in her day job and didn’t want that as part of the sewing she did in her free time. My (obvious) response to that comment would have been, “Okay, don’t use that feature if you don’t want to,” but Sarai took the opportunity to explore the idea of productivity in that podcast episode.

In a nutshell, the danger of to-do lists and goal setting in sewing is that an activity that is supposed to be relaxing turns into its own demanding taskmaster. I get it. I am especially aware of the demands of “production” having just finished the co-op craft sale. I know how easy it is to get burned out on something you enjoy doing that becomes a business, which is why I have knit nothing besides prayer shawls and dishcloths for the past eleven years. Still, “cult” might be a bit of an overstatement. I think a lot of it depends on personality. I am highly motivated by my to-do lists, even though the universe tends to derail my plans on a regular basis.

Food for thought.

In any case, I’m excited about the sewing I get to do this week. I have a variety of projects to choose from, but I’ll start by finishing some quilt tops and cutting out a few winter tops.