Snoqualmie

Rolling salsa blackout!

My tomato plants are all dying this year. I mean, tomato plants don't last forever, but these are dying before they get their third set of leaves. It's probably just because I don't have any good place to put them in the new house, but it seems like they're dying no matter what I try. Kitchen window? They all died. Plant some more and keep them out on the front porch? They're all dying again.

One small problem with this is that I need good, detailed pictures of healthy tomato plants to show Mike so he can make my tattoo look realistic. My less-than-crisp printouts of pictures I found online are a start, but they're not good for minutiae like the shape of the blossoms and the fuzziness of the youngest leaves. My latest plan, hatched last week, was to buy a couple of big thriving plants from a nursery and take pictures of them with my old analog camera so that no inkjet blobbiness would creep in. Easy!

I stopped by OSH last night because, well, I missed my chance over the weekend to go an independent local nursery with frustratingly short hours. I picked out two beautiful lush plants (which, the way things are going, may be the only ones to actually grow in my garden this year) and brought them home. Because there wasn't much sun left for taking pictures right then, I brought them inside and set them near the living-room window for the night. I fussed over water and light and keeping them out of reach of the cats. Very important, I told myself. Very! Important! that these plants stay as healthy as they are until I can get some good pictures!

That is why, when I got out of the shower this morning and discovered that a) I'd put them on top of the furnace and b) the furnace had been on full-blast for twenty minutes, I was actually, incredibly, too appalled even to swear about it. My babies have been cooked! This is like cannibalism, but worse because nobody except me is going to think it's so terrible!