Adopt a crop update: Magic garden that heals my cooties

I was sick this week, y'all.

Like sore throat, blow my nose one million times, cough in a scary way and then sound like a man kind of sick.

In the middle of fucking July, folks. Excellent timing!

That is such a ME thing to do. No, don't get sick when it's 40 degrees out in January when I can bundle myself in blankets and all my ugliest warm clothes and drink tea in front of a hot fire all day.

NO.

I get sick when it's hot July summertime and I can't be in the house in more than flip flops and my smallest shorts. Also, this is the best time to get the sick sweats because, you know, the heat isn't making me sweat enough.

PRETTY!

Anyway, this is a garden update, not a Finny is So Gross update, so let me bring this home for you now.

(Feel free to skip down to Adopt a Crop update begins here if you don't want to hear about Magic Tomatoes. But why wouldn't you? I mean, they're MAGIC. Come on, here we go...)

The garden is Magic.

I know it is because Kelli told me so. And, well, she's usually right.

See, I'd gotten to Wednesday afternoon with my Super Cooties and had peeling sore nostrils from all the nose blowing (sorry, my grossness just comes through no matter what) and still felt like total shit even though I'd had this evil cold since Sunday and shouldn't it be gone by now.

Then I realized that I'd barely eaten anything since Sunday due to the feeling crappiness and also the fact that I had Sick Mouth which makes everything taste like a horse's ass and that all my nutrition and caloric intake was coming from Airborne, Robutussin, Healthy Choice Fudge bars and apricot jam.

At this point it dawned on me that my lethargy and declining health could possibly be attributed to more things than just the Super Cootie and may, in fact, be due in great part to lack of normal food in my body.

Idea! I'll eat a normal meal!

So I had to dig deep and think about what kinds of things always taste good no matter what. And in my sicky state, this was a challenge. My normal mind montage of food porniness was at an uncharacteristic standstill.

So I asked my brain in a different way: What is my favorite favorite food that, if I were being dragged into a solitary cell buried deep in the earth's core never to return, I would name The One Food to Last Me for All Time?

DING! Warm summer tomatoes.

Yes, we have those here.

So the one benefit of getting stupidly sick in the middle of summer is that when you're on the verge of collapse from lack of nutrition, you can force feed with Summer Tomatoes. Which, if you're me, is a lifesaver.

Adopt a Crop update begins here.

I am magic. - Tomatoes

From a handful of warm tomatoes picked fresh from my plants, I made my favorite pasta dish, Mellowed Tomatoes for Pasta and also a tomato salad, because I just have that much basil and that many tomatoes to frivolously burn. Delirious with fever maybe!

And even with my Sick Mouth and not being able to breathe and having to take breaks to blow my nose, I managed to eat a nice sized bowl's worth of pasta and a good amount of the tomato salad, which incidentally is just the pasta recipe without the pasta but whatever it is SO good that even when my brain cells are dying from high fever and I'm sick to the bone I can still eat them.

Thankfully my plants are getting into the swing of producing, so my gluttony didn't devastate the plants.

How many ripening tomatoes do you see?

How about on this plant?

Anyway, I made one more veg-a-licious dinner the next night and went to bed crossing my fingers and chanting "feel better feel better feel better achoo" and when I woke up Thursday morning I didn't want to die anymore.

MAGIC.

I could breathe from both nostrils and didn't have to spend the day with Kleenex's shoved up in my nose. Again, MAGIC.

So, the garden is magic and that is all there is to it.

I also have enough cucumbers to start Round #3 of pickling, which is fun.

Try to find all the cucumbers in here. Challenge!

And the Bell Pecker is growing into something that doesn't look like a bell pepper to me. Weird.

There a may have been a mixup at the hospital.

Surprise Pumpkin is getting more ambitious by the day and actually producing more little pumpkins which I am pretty sure are actually pumpkins now and not some freak form of squash. Maybe if I get lucky a bastard creature won't gnaw through the back of them and I'll be able to Jack-o-lantern one for Halloweens.

These leaves are big like a toilet seat.

And if you remember back to the time when I told you of the legend of Midget Cantaloupe, this is the one Midget I've actually harvested and eaten. In summary: decent, small and cute. But with the amount of recovery the plant is having to undergo after nearly falling victim to the Evil Squash Beetles, I'm having to cross my fingers extra hard hoping that this plant's Rebuilding Season of July will actually produce some real fruit this year.

I'm more of a a nice idea than anything else.

I'm such a tease with all these flowers.

This is just for show.

In a surprise turn of events, the marigolds are actually making the blog because I decided that they've grown so impressively from seed that I might actually not think they're ugly long enough to take a picture and show you.

Ugly marigolds.

And because no crop update is complete without a scary shot of the Chard Forest to send you all into hysterics (or maybe just me, I can be dramatic), here you are:

I can smell fear.

So, to sum this update - I am on the mend and ready to do battle with this chard while eating a lot of tomatoes and getting ready to go on vacation.

Oh yes. Finny goes on vacation, people. To sunny, warm places where there are ocean waves and people saying things like, "Buenos Dias y quieres algo que tomar?"

But I'll get all excited about that later. For now, I have a big weekend ahead of me, which I'm sure I'll spend some time reviewing/complaining about next week. Ooh! And I made another bacon thing I'll share with you and maybe a craft.

Ha - I'm so not sick anymore. Take that, Asshole Cootie!