Unexcused absence

Are you there blog? It's me, Kate. It has been 5 days since my last entry. I have been remiss in my writings and will try not to let real life get in the way again.

Actually we had out-of-town family visiting us and when we have company the first thing that gets the boot is the ole' computer. That, and I've had quite a few custom orders to get together for my real online business, so I put that first. And it's been cold here in Central Florida and I don't do cold. I go into full-out hibernation mode when the temperature dips below 75 degrees. I'm one of those annoying Floridians that complains that we don't have seasons and we have too much hot weather, but when nature responds with a helluva cold front, I curl up into the fetal position and rock in the corner.

The garden has had a hairy week. The first exciting bit of news is that I was cyberjinxed by my gardening friend from Our Engineered Garden and another blogger called Dani. Both told me they expected to see Blossom End Rot on my tomatoes after I discovered my crack problem. Well wouldn't you know that it happened? I plucked my first red tomato off the vine only to discover a blackened sunken end - blossom end rot. I stood in the garden cursing two people I've never met before for using their cyber-psychokinesis to rot my one red tomato. Actually the rest of the tomatoes seem to be clinging to life, so maybe this was a fluke. We'll see.

Then I noticed that my taller-than-the-cage yellow bell tomato plant was falling over and the tallest stem was starting to break in half. I grabbed a stake and jammed it into the ground and realized I needed to tie the stem to the stake…but with what? Hmm… I have no clue what you tie a plant to a stake with so I found some pretty red ribbon in my sewing box and tied it on with that. I figured it'd be soft and wide enough so it didn't cut into the stem and it was pretty and red - a plus. I'm sure there is some sort of gardening tie-up stuff I should purchase for this, but the ribbon seems to be doing the job for now.

Fast forward to last night. I watched the 11 o'clock news and our local weather idiot said that my county wouldn't have a frost or freeze, but some of our neighboring counties would. I felt good about that and started wondering what I'd do when our first frost or freeze finally happened, but I knew I had a long time to think about it since we never get frosts or freezes until about January or February. Then I woke up this morning, looked out front and saw this:

Do you see all that white? That would be frost. The car windows were icy and the grass was frosty and all I could think about was the garden. How would it react to this? It wasn't mega-frost, but it was definitely frost. I've never known a November frost (or a December one for that matter) so I wasn't sure what to think. I went out there after it warmed up a bit and snooped around and everything looked as it did before the frost. The half-dead stuff was still half-dead and the green stuff was still green. I'm not sure how to tell if the frost did any damage, but I'll keep checking for chattering teeth and goosebumps on my peppers.