Toe-may-toe, Tow-mah-toe

I harvested our first Cherokee Purple this week, and the Solar Fire finally has it's first fruit set.  Solar Fire is suppose to be more heat tolerant?!?

Cherokee Purple, Mountain Magic, Green Zebra, Lime Green Salad and the saved Camparti seed are the best producers thus far.  Oh, and I need to start seed earlier in July.  Speaking of starting seed, I'm going to start tomato seed over Thanksgiving weekend.

I have one Mountain Magic growing in an Earth Box and hiding in plain sight under heavily pruned shrub.  Its doing pretty darn good, and doesn't stick out too much.  A tomato plant by anybodies definition can hardly be called attractive. 

Check out that broccoli!  It's soaking up the nutrient rich water coming off the Earth Box.

Tomato Hill is doing all right.  I've got fruit setting, now just hope it starts to ripen before the first freeze.  Average first frost date is Dec 21, so hopefully the warm temps will hang on.

In the mean time, I have more eggplant than I hardly know what to do with.  I've got all the ingredients to make a spicy eggplant relish.  More on that later.

The grand hide tomatoes in the full sun of the front yard garden is so far working out OK.  I am harvesting them early, before they turn fully red.  Surprisingly, not due to squirrels.  Rather due to two small bipedal humanoids who plucked every.single.last.one of my Myer Lemon's .  Grrrrrrr

Rant On!  As dysfunctional as my mother was, as a small child when we inevitably did something wrong in a neighbors yard, we were marched right on over to apologize.  Instead, I've got mom doing I-Spy drive-bys.  Grrrrrr

Can you believe that Florida has no latch-key laws?  A child can legally be left home alone at age 7?  Oh.my.gosh.  This is from Seminole County Sheriff's Office: 

Q:What is the age that a child can legally be left home alone? 

A: Again, there is in no easy answer. Florida State Statute does not establish a "bright line" age at which a child can be left home alone, so again it will depend upon the totality of the circumstances for the individual case. In most cases, unless it is so obvious that the child should not have been left alone in the particular case circumstances, the incident will not be a crime. However, a call to the Florida Abuse Hotline may still be warranted. They will look at such things as if the child had a plan of what to do or whom to call in an emergency, the maturity and responsibility of the child, and if the child or family has had similar contacts with the CPS in the past.

This family just recently moved into our 'hood.  The kids walk their dog, and are all over in front yards, back yards.  In my pond!  There is no way they could see my pond from the road, so what the heck where they doing 350' from the street?  Oh, with pygmy rattlesnakes being killed right next door to us.

I'm busy checking out internet based security cameras.  Actually, I'm thinking off buying a webcam and hooking it up to an old laptop computer, pointing out to the front garden area.  Running a software program called 'Blue Iris' to set up motion detection alerts.