The tomatoes in the greenhouse made it through our week away with little damage; this was in spite of the failure of my automatic timer the morning we left. I made the mistake of hanging it below the level of the hose instead of above, so the water running back down the hose soaked the electronics inside and jammed the valve open. I’m glad I checked on it one last time, or we’d have come home to a swamp in the greenhouse, drowned tomatoes, and a sky-high water bill. Thankfully I was able to get our sister to stop by and water everything through the week.

I’d picked as much ripe fruit as possible that we packed on the trip with us—a bowl full of cherry tomatoes and a handful of Romas and heirlooms. The latter were delicious in guacamole.

Everything looks OK right now. The second wave of cherry tomatoes are coming in, and there are a few heirloom plants that are making a late-season rally: both of the Cherokee Purples, the second Roma, and one of the Beefsteaks have produced a ton of new fruit that looks healthy. I’d pruned everything way back before I left but there are new shoots everywhere that need some major attention, some of which have fruit and some that don’t. And I keep spraying the shit out of everything with Rot-Stop.

The other concern is that of varmints. Several of the ripening heirlooms have been lost to nibbling, which enrages me. I’d left a bunch of traps out over the vacation and caught one rat which was getting ripe under the table. I put six traps out last night and got a mouse this morning; obviously something is going to need to be done about the larger problem. In the meantime, I’m going to keep setting traps to see what I can kill off.