A Fungus Among Us

When I said I would keep you posted on the tomatoes, I fully expected to post a few weeks' worth of pictures where you would see the plants getting bigger, putting out flowers, maybe even plumping out a little tomato or two before getting attacked by the Florida Fungus and shriveling up. Seriously -- I thought I could milk the tomato plants for at least four blog posts, at a minimum. But these tomato plants have let me down in so many ways.



Already! This is the shortest amount of time it has taken for a fungus to attack my tomatoes. They've been fungicided, insecticided, serenaded, and watered. But there you go. This is what I get for living in Florida. (Well, to be fair, it could have been the serenading -- I did just get relieved of my duties as a backup singer for our church's worship team. You wouldn't think tomatoes would be so discriminating, but apparently they're a pretty fickle bunch, so you never know, it could have been my rendition of "God of This City" -- I always had trouble with that one.)



So, so sad. All I want are good tomatoes without hard white centers. Is that so wrong? I cannot pay a gazillion dollars a pound for tomatoes that you can't eat all the way through. It's just a bad financial decision. Sigh.

But on a happier note -- the otters are back. I think we have three, but I can't be sure.



See -- here is an otter's back. Don't whine, it took me awhile to get that shot.

I finally got a picture of its head, too.



So Florida loses points for growing tomatoes on your margarita porch, but gains points for otters in your creek.

Just in case you were keeping score.

And no, I haven't seen those cute little ducks again, but it may not be the otters' fault. I saw a hawk a couple of days ago while I was walking out to get the mail and it had something suspiciously downy in its claws. It coulda been a mouse, but it could have been something else (that rhymes with yuckling). Or maybe the duckies are just hiding out -- we'll hope for the best.