progress report
First: veggies. I have a zillion green tomatoes. The "volunteers" have turned out to be standard cherry tomatoes. Probably either the Super Sweet 100s or the Black Cherry toms don't breed true. (My guess is the SS100s, since those are a newer, selectively engineered brand, while the BCs are an heirloom variety.) Either way, the cherry toms are pretty sweet. Still, I want my OTHER tomatoes to mature and ripen.
I'm being ruthless this year about pinching off suckers. I'm also topping the vines when they get a certain length. Last year they kept putting out flowers right up until the first frost, which is just ridiculous. All I could think was what a waste to spend energy on that when there was no chance of them surviving, rather than putting energy into ripening the fruits that were ready to go and propagate for another year. So yeah, I'm not letting the stupid plants get any bigger. They will have no choice but to ripen the damn fruit.
The pepper plants are in a similar state: lots and lots of green peppers, but they are supposed to be red and yellow peppers. I may start topping off those plants, too. I was afraid for a while because all the red peppers were rotting on the vine, so I didn't want to discourage it from continuing to fruit. Now I seem to have solved that problem, but all I'm getting are a jillion little green peppers.
I also need to check out the carrots. I'm pretty sure my problem there is I should have thinned them more.
The Brussels sprout plant continues to grow, but it's getting eaten by something now, so I'll have to spray it.
The lettuce is starting to bolt (finally), so I planted seeds for a fall crop. The first of those already sprouted, so that's pretty good. We'll see what happens. Ditto for snow peas.
The watermelon vine has decided to come alive, but at this point, given the cool summer and everything else, I don't expect to have fruit before the cold weather comes and kills it. But at least I learned not to plant them with the corn and green bean plants, which give it too much shade.
I liked the corn in the boxes, but I think maybe next year I'll plant the corn in the ground and see how that works. I would rather use the boxes for other things. The in-the-ground section of the yard is sunny during peak corn-growing time, and it doesn't shade anything else.
Second: writing
Slow-but-steady seems to be happening. I go home at night and I turn on the writing computer and I have no interest in turning on the other computer. This isn't so good for the freelance work, but there it is. I suspect I'll need a break soon, though, since I'm in a knotty part of the plot and I might need time for the brain to sort it out.