Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Not even a bite

Cold fronts keep rolling through Texas, so they reach all the way to Houston in a way they haven’t done for a number of years. People are pulling wooly sweaters and even overcoats out of their closets.

By four PM today, however, it had warmed into the sixties, so I took our B dog for her walk. On the street behind our building, a few houses down from the razed house I blogged about earlier, a woman keeps a lovely rose garden. Even this time of year, it has blossoms—souvenir de la malmaison, for one.

The woman who nurtures these roses was out in the garden, in the sunshine, and I wondered if she was preparing to prune them. It would have been early, of course. Pruning roses is done traditionally in our area in mid-February.

I spoke to her, and she called me over to show me something. She pointed to the pink rose, spread generously across one bed, and then to the arched trellis. “Cherry tomatoes,” she said.

The tomato bush was a good eight feet in width, and lush, even before it climbed the trellis. A few yellow blossoms peeked out from beneath the foliage. “Here,” she said, and she handed me a tiny golden tomato, no bigger than my thumbnail. “I’ve picked a lot of them today, and this is the last one,” she said.

There was an eggplant, too, although that plant—even bigger than the tomato—had been nipped by a freeze.

“How deep are these beds?” I asked.

“Oh, they’ve been there a long time and they keep sinking. Three feet deep, I guess.”

Maybe that’s the reason for the prolific vegetables. Or maybe it has to do with her fertilizer—a diet of banana peels, alfalfa and fish emulsion, covered with a nice deep mulch of pine needles.

Something to ponder.

8 comments:

Jinksy said...

What an esquisite piece of wood the tiny fruit is nestling on.The photo Looks like a Dutch Old Master's painting. I'd hang it on my wall, anyday.

aliceinparis said...

I love cherry tomatoes:)
Here today the wind chill is -33!!!!
Brrr, it is everywhere.

The Texas Woman said...

OK, we commenters have spoken. We want to see the piece of furniture that tiny tomato is on.

It is a lovely photo!

The Texas Woman

Anonymous said...

It's snowing here!
-FringeGirl

Babette Fraser Hale said...

Ah, snow! Ah, -33 degrees! Houston in January is a well kept secret--but of course who can take vacations in January, right?

Jinksy, that's a lovely thought!I'll try to blog the table later today. It is a beautiful slab of old wood.

Tess Kincaid said...

It's hard to believe it's so warm down there! It's -11 here as I type! And that's no wind chill factored in. Brrrr.

PJHornbergerFolkArtist.com said...

I be loving Texas!
Have you seen the art on http://artpropelled.blogspot.com/ ? It goes on and on.... ~PJ

Sydney said...

I agree with you about Houston in January... sometimes up til March. The air smells good, the sun slants beautifully in the morning when I drive away from the apartment. I like the cooler temps.