Went To My 30 Year Reunion

Today's harvest includes 20 Babywine, 19 Black Cherry, 19 Red Currant, 15 Snow White, 9 Italian Ice, 8 Plum Tigris, 8 Jaune Coeur de Pigeon, 6 back yard Garden Peach(2), 5 Sweet 100, 4 back yard Green Grape, 4 Black From Tula (6 ounces, 9 ounces, 6 ounces), 4 Oaxacan Jewel(2), 4 front yard Speckled Roman (one 6 ounces), 4 front yard Husky Cherry Red, 4 back yard Husky Cherry Red, 3 Patio, 3 Japanese Black Trifele (7.5 ounces, 6 ounces), 3 SunSugar, 3 Black Krim, 3 Silvery Fir Tree, 2 Super Snow White, 2 Vintage Wine, 2 front yard Garden Peach, 2 Oaxacan Jewel(1) (8 ounces, 9 ounces), 2 Red Grape, 2 White Currant, 2 Green Zebra(1) (new!), 2 Tiger Paw, 2 Pierce's Pride (6.5 ounces, 6 ounces), Yellow Perfection, Green Zebra(2), White Zebra, Mexico (18 ounces), Big Yellow Zebra (23 ounces), Amazon Chocolate (6 ounces), Jaune Flamme and Dr. Wyche's Yellow (10 ounces) for a total of 174 tomatoes.

Today represented a dramatic drop from the day before. However, I got up late and it was getting hot outside so I didn't work too hard harvesting. Let's see how tomorrow's numbers are before determining if we have a pattern.

The reason I was late harvesting today was that last night I was at my 30^th high school reunion. The reunion was a bit of a blah reunion, but mostly due to the organizers. For $90 per person they can serve iced tea with the meal. They only served water. My wife came along, asked for coffee and it never came. There were a couple of other things that indicated the handlers hired to run the event were phoning it in.

After the meal, the standard deejay cranked up the music and drove a fair amount of people outside the doors.

Still I'm glad I went and more glad my wife came along. I enjoyed being with my wife more than anything.

I met some old friends and at the end there was a group that went to the Catholic elementary school, which included me.

But...growing up in Orange County wasn't fun. It was, well, dreadful. Orange County probably isn't too bad today. But when I moved there Huntington Beach had approximately 8000 people. I was beyond bored. Having what I now recognize as an abusive father growing up and currently have an abusive brother makes the OC an unfriendly, strange, ugly and unhappy place to be.

The town exploded. It went from about 9000 people in the town to over 100,000 people in one year. No joke. It was white flight and defense industry money. For our freshman year we had around 5000 students.

As I have mentioned at other reunions, people who didn't talk to you during high school won't talk to you at the reunion. It's just the way it is.

Still I had a nice time even though I didn't go out of my way to be sociable to everyone. If people came up to me (which happened) I was thrilled. I really did have a good time. A person that lived across the street from me while in high school (and didn't much care for me then) was face to face with me, less than two feet apart. Heh, she didn't say anything and I wasn't about to break the ice.

My wife made it a lot of fun.

Speaking of which, I haven't been mentioning all the hard work she's been doing processing all the tomatoes. We have over 30 jars of canned tomatoes. On Friday she spent over four hours working on a reduced tomato sauce that was excellent. She's both a trooper and a keeper.

I finished the front yard watering on Friday afternoon.

At dinner tonight we tried three Zebra tomatoes, Green Zebra, Big Yellow Zebra and White Zebra. My wife liked White Zebra the best while I liked Green Zebra the best. In both cases, though, it was the first tomato we tried.

My wife couldn't stand the Big Yellow Zebra a few days ago. While it was our least favorite of the three tomatoes, that's not a shot at Big Yellow Zebra.

White Zebra – smooth, mellow and refreshing.

Big Yellow Zebra – same, though watery.

Green Zebra – same, though more refreshing.

I preferred the refreshing Green Zebra while my wife preferred the smoothness of White Zebra. But all the tomatoes didn't have the tomato acid kick. They were all quite good.

Black Cherry has passed up Yellow Perfection in the total number of tomatoes harvested (320 to 319). So for now Black Cherry holds the all time record for the most tomatoes harvested from a back yard tomato plant.

Earlier today, we got a freezer delivered to us. We didn't have to pay for it! Josephine, a neighbor two blocks down whom my wife has known for years, had an extra freezer. Her son delivered it. It's the perfect size for our garage. Repeat, perfect. So we will have more room to hold our tomatoes!