Death by Gloom

Is it possible to die from gloom ? This spring has been an incredibly gloomy one, little sun, much rain and unseasonable heat. With the passing of June 21st we are now definitely and irrevocably into summer, there was very little transition between winter cool and summer sizzle.
Heat and humidity affects most of us to some extent, I too am not immune to feeling summer's lethargy and insipidity, even the vegetation appears to be succumbing. My colorful Fiesta Lantanas have lost most of their blossoms and are now struggling with mealy bugs and powdery mildew, the rotten tomatoes still battle early blight fungus, along with an aggravating thief of a squirrel that keeps stealing the hard green fruit before they've a chance to ripen. Of all the garden the only things flourishing pest and disease free are the weeds and the wild vines.

above : Vines growing into the tree tops and a stately old
Florida Pine dominates the skyline.

below : Looking down Cow Pen Creek
with lush growth of vines starting to over take
native trees and brush.


Yesterday I ventured to the far back of our property, it had been a while and I was curious to see how things looked. Under the shade of one huge oak, I happened upon an unusual growth, undoubtedly a fungus of some sort. It measured approximately 8 inches across, fairly large for fungi. If anyone is familiar I'd love to know more about it.

Rotten Tomatoes

Today I'm in a fog or perhaps it's a fugue. Have had a number of ideas for a blog post but all of them require taking photos and that requires setting up my lights, light box etc. , which requires organizing space in the spare bedroom which...well it's a domino effect that I'm just not in the mood to tackle, at least not today...or perhaps that's "lest" ? Went out to lunch the other day and I don't think my brain came back with me, its probably still at Island Time Grill sipping pina coldas !
So I'm attempting something that doesn't need much work or concentration. There are a number of photos from my garden already in my files, could do flowers or maybe my pathetic tomato plants...flowers, too predictable...infected tomato plants...hmm, has possibilities. Hope you don't find them boring.

A couple of months ago, John and I purchased 2 huge storage units at "Lowes", the price was right even though the home improvement store had somehow "misplaced" all of the snap on lids. Well it must really be hard to keep track of so many items like that, right ? Especially easy to lose track of something so small as a pallet of 2 foot by 4 foot dark blue plastic lids. But lids were not the deal breaker with us as we had little need for them. These storage bins would soon have holes drilled in the bottom for drainage, a layer of large rock gravel added (to keep the soil from washing out) and of course several huge bags of potting soil dumped on top of the gravel layer.

These bins, perhaps unattractive, would become an above ground garden for my tomato sprouts.





After these seedling were planted Mother Nature decided to send rain. Ten days of almost constant downpours and very little to no sunshine. Now I'm battling a tomato fungus called early blight, well not me personally...the tomato plants have the blight !


Not sure who is going to win this battle, me with my copper spray or the ever spreading black cankers of early blight fungus ! I really did have my heart set on fresh home grown tomatoes this summer. We'll just have to wait and see if the plants can recover or not.


Would be such a shame to lose these tiny fruits. Perhaps Mother Nature will show us some mercy !