Oh No! It's Too Early for Snow!

My hopes for a bumper crop of tomatoes this year have been crushed. The weather prediction for last weekend was for unseasonably cold weather and I came home from work on Friday evening ready to wrestle Audrey III into the garage and to cover the plant with a water sheet to protect the fruit from the freezing temperatures. Sometime during the day, however, Audrey had fallen/been knocked over and a lot of the heavily laden arms had broken off.

(This is all that's left of poor Audrey III . . . . )

So, my kid and I plucked all of the tomatoes off the shattered plant (which were all still quite green and hard) and brought them into the house.

I now have 10 large brown paper bags filled with green tomatoes sitting on my kitchen table. I'm hoping to ripen them up a bit before making a massive batch of Green Tomato Salsa on Friday night. I guess all of my friends and family will be getting a jar of salsa, along with their Western Border Collie Rescue Calendar for Christmas.

Green Tomato Salsa is actually quite tasty and my spouse is anxiously awaiting the first taste, so I guess it will be okay, but I was really looking forward to a few more tomato sandwiches and pico de gallo.

We woke up Sunday morning to about an inch of snow, which the dogs enjoyed. My mother-in-law called to tell us that they got a foot and a half at their place (about 30 miles or so from us), so I guess we got off easy. I'm not ready for snow, so I hope we don't get any more until at least Thanksgiving.

A Fall Morning Walk

Our typical weekday morning routine is to frantically pry the teenager out of bed, run him through the shower, shovel some breakfast in his mouth and then hop in the car and drop him at the high school several miles away. The dogs LOVE the morning routine and get really excited about the time we grab the leashes and poop bags out of the closet, and they eagerly jump into the car for the ride - Rusty prefers the far back of our ancient Trooper, but Allie always sits in the middle seat and wraps herself around her boy for the entire 10 minute ride (and the boy loves that part, too and it gets his day off to a good start.)

Once we've gotten the kid out of the car, we turn around and try to remember whose turn it is for morning walkies (my spouse and I alternate mornings, but I usually do the evening walk). We have several different places we start the walk from and as it was my turn this morning, I decided to be dropped off at a point we call the "Emigration Route" (very originally named, as we walk past the small local market which is called . . . . . you guessed it, Emigration Market). It's about a 2 miles walk back home.

It was really beautiful this morning and I was looking foward to the walk. Fall has definitely arrived and the leaves are starting to turn and I love the slanted autumn light. As a bonus, it wasn't "Garbage Day" -- walking Allie on "Garbage Day" is really a nightmare, as she is very sound reactive to the noisy, lumbering waste management and recycling trucks and a simple walk turns into 30 minutes of frantically trying to hold onto Allie, who insists on acting like a 30 lb. sled dog. She has the best commando crawl I've ever seen. Ugh!

We started off on our walk.

Stopping to pose for a picture in front of one of the better done "zero-scaping" yards.

Our path soon crosses the breakfast cafe "Eggs in the City". The pups like to say hello to a nice Weirmariner pup who apparently comes with his owner every morning for breakfast, but he we must have missed him this morning.

Waiting to cross at the corner.

Drat! I'd forgotten that the city is in process of replacing all of the old sidewalks and Allie is not all that fond of dumptrucks, either.

Yikes, let's get going!!!!!

Saying "hello" to some friends. (Rusty is walking to my other side at this point, as he is a little intimidated by these dogs, although they usually don't bark or growl -- until we're down the sidewalk).

"I'm tired of posing for pictures!"

The end is in sight. The dogs are waiting for permission to cross.

Home at last! (Geez, you'd think I'd have at least taken the time to photoshop the glaring security company sign out of the picture. Oh well.)

It was a nice walk!

The dogs like this route, but I think their favorite one is the "Bagel Run", so maybe that's where we'll go next time. :)

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

It's been kind of a funny growing season here in Utah this year. I'm not that into a big vegetable garden (not a whole lot of space, lots of clay soil and if you plant pumpkins or zucchini they make themselves at home across the entire back yard), so I usually only do a few vegetables in big terra cotta pots and place them in strategic spots around my yard.

Because this spring was so cool, I didn't plant my little garden until well after Memorial Day, which is kind of late for this area - we have a short growing season. I have 6 tomato plants, along with a few green and red peppers - my salsa garden. This entire summer I have only had 7 measly ripe tomatoes, including the 3 lousy cherry tomatoes that showed up on what was supposed to be an "Early Girl" plant. (I really hate cherry tomatoes -- what the heck are you supposed to do with them?!) I also got two tiny, one-inch green peppers, that I hid from my spouse so I wouldn't have to share.

Well, even though they haven't produced many ripe tomatoes, my tomato plants are veeeeeerrrryy healthy and thriving. In fact, one of my plants is so opulent and lush, it's downright scary -- I call her Audrey III.

Yes, folks -- this is ONE tomato plant!

Yesterday, when I was hopefully digging through Audrey's tentacle-like stems looking for just one ripe tomato, I was shocked and amazed to put my hands on this . . . .

. . . . .

. . . . .

*Note the look of terror in Allie's eyes.

This incredible example of tomato-dom is called a "Mortgage Lifter". The Mortgage Lifter was developed in the 1940's by an auto repair mechanic, who was called Radiator Charlie. He crossed German Johnson Pink, Red Beefsteak, an unknown Italian variety and an unknown English variety of tomatoes together and the Mortgage Lifter was the result. Radiator Charlie Byles sold so many tomato plants over the next five or six years that he was able to pay off the mortgage of his home (hence the name).

They're not real pretty, being squatty and broad. They are also a funny color which is very pinkish and dull, but they are BIG and they taste great! This beauty weighed in at close to 3 lbs.!

I've greedily counted at least another 30 of these giant delicacies lurking beneath Audrey's thick foliage. Now, I just have to cross my fingers and hope that the weather will hold (despite the ominous prediction of snow down to 6000 ft. this weekend - we're at 4500 ft., but a big cold front is coming.)

I often end up canning several dozen bottles of green tomato salsa in the fall because I have to rush to pick the unripe tomatoes from the vines to save them from the frost in mid-to-late September. This year I'll say a quick prayer to the weather gods and hope that I'll be making fresh tomato salsa, fresh tomato sandwiches and eating sliced tomatoes with our Sunday dinner, instead of having to try to find room for 100+ jars of green tomato salsa.

There is one other force of nature I'll have to keep at bay, to keep my infant Mortgage Lifter's safe . . . . .

The voracious "Rusty Dog"!!! He stands accused of consuming 1 or 2 of my tomatoes straight from the vine -- all that was left were a few stems and a smear of juice on his lips. The little devil was certainly eyeing this tomato and even tried to take a big bite. (Seriously, I do have to watch Rusty around the tomatoes because they aren't too good for dogs and can cause heart irregularities, dilated pupils and other problems.)

This tomato, however, is now safely in my refrigerator marinating in a lovely pico de gallo to serve with tomorrow night's dinner. Ummmm. . . . .

True Confessions From the Stage-Mom of a [Would-Be] Calendar Queen

I’ve been taking a lot of pictures of the dogs lately, even more than usual. Candids, action shots, pretty poses – you name it, I’ve been shooting it. Why, you ask? (Besides the fact that I enjoy taking pictures of my furry family members?) Well, it’s time to submit pictures for the premier edition of the Western Border Collie Rescue’s 2009 fundraising calendar! Rules for submitting pictures for the calendar are pretty simple: photos need to be high resolution shots containing one or more WBCR alumni/foster dog(s) (“no recognizable people or non-WBCR dogs, please.”) We adopted Allie from Wyoming Border Collie Rescue (http://www.wybcrescue.org/ in October of 2005, when she was about 6 mos. old and I think she is beeeeuuuutiful and would make a wonderful calendar model. Wyoming Border Collie Rescue is in the process of changing it’s name to Western Border Collie Rescue to reflect the growth of the rescue, which now has dogs/volunteers in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Montana and New Mexico.

Let me say, Allie herself has absolutely no interest in becoming a calendar pin-up girl. She would much rather play fetch or frisbee, than pose for more stinkin’ pictures. Any aspirations of cover girl glory are purely delusions on my own part and are continually being frustrated by one very basic fact – Allie is nearly impossible to photograph.

"Allie look here!" "No, not over there -- here!" "No! Look HERE!!!"

Her dark eyes in her black face usually cause her to appear to have no eyes at all (except for the really lovely glowing “demon eyes” caused from the flash).

Sometimes her eyespots get mistaken for big white moth eyes and people always tell me that her head looks about three times bigger than the rest of her skinny body.

To further complicate things, she can never sit still, so most of my pictures of her turn out like this.

Rusty, on the other hand, is a dream to photograph, with his lovely red and white coloring and obliging shy smiles. He will also sit and pose for the camera, which Allie will not.

(“Ball, ball? Isn’t there a ball around here somewhere?”)

Rusty, however, is not a WBCR dog, but was adopted from another great rescue (“That’ll Do Border Collie Rescue”), out of Vancouver, B.C., and thus is not eligible for this calendar competition.

I’m sure a more skilled photographer could coax a better picture out of Allie than I manage with my little point-n-shoot camera, but I do what I can. I love Allie and she is my “heart” dog, but I’m afraid that my hopes of greater glory for my skinny pup are just pipedreams. I will have to be content with following her around going “Allie, sit still” – “stay,” . . . “no, no, Allie, leave the ball alone now!”. . .”look this way!” . . . and just hope that maybe just one of the last 500 pictures I just took will actually turn out.

Down at the Ol' Watering Hole

My son and I just got back from taking the dogs to one of the best off-leash dog park in town -Parley's Nature Preserve. This is a very cool dog park because the park encompasses approximately 85 acres, has lots of trees and vegetation and has a great river running through it -- many places are deep enough to swim, even at this time of year (much to Rusty's delight).

There were about a million dogs there and it must have been "Border Collie Night" because we ran into about 18 different BCs.

This is one of the favorite swimming spots because it's pretty deep most of the year. (However, we avoid it in the early spring, as the run-off out of the canyon makes this a death-trap for dogs and there have been several canine (and human) fatalities in this area.)

Something smells mighty good."Throw the @#&% ball already!" (Allie has a one-track mind.)

Shake it, baby -- shake it!

Both dogs are tired tonight and even Allie seems to be settling in. It was a good day for walkies. :)

Life Through a Peeky Hole

There is an alley behind my house. It doesn't get used a lot, in fact, it isn't really even paved. But sometimes people walk their dogs and the kids in neighborhood ride their bikes back there. One of my neighbors came over to tell me that lately Rusty had been greeting people through a hole in my fence.

I've known that we needed to fix the fence back there, but the foliage is pretty thick and I hadn't really seen the fence for a while, so I decided I'd better check out the "peeky hole". Tonight I put the dogs into the back yard and took a little stroll around the block so I could enter the alley and check the fence. Can you spot the doggie?

It's actually a pretty darn big "peeky hole" and the weight of the grapevine has collapsed a section of the fence, so I guess we'll be hauling in some new dog-earred cedar slats to fix it up. I actually hate to totally close off his view entirely, so I'll probably make sure we leave a little spot for him to stick his nose out.

Allie doesn't like sticking her head out of the hole and she barked and howled her fool head off at me when I was talking to her through fence. Silly dog.

(She does like popcicles, though.) :)

It's A Jungle Out There

At least my yard looks like one. We've had a bit of rain and it's been bit cooler, so all of the greenery has really taken off.

The dogs like it -- it's fun to roll in the long grass and to hide in the bamboo. It does make walking on the grass a little like walking through a minefield, however. You can't see the doggie droppings very easily, so I advise everyone to wear shoes (it's my 15 yr. old's job to "scoop poop" and unfortunately, he's a little hit-and-miss about it).

Allie reeaallly wants that ball to start flying.