Gardening the Garden

Question:

Spring is springing here in Eastern Ontario and we are having some raised garden beds built in the back yard.  I like watching things grow and I strongly suspect I will be obsessively peeking at the beds every five minutes or so.  This is my way of saying that I am going to take a break from the things that remind me of MS, including this newsgroup.  I will return around Mad Hatter day, although I will poke my nose in from time to time in the interim. Tomatoes are my favourite fruit.  I have started two containers inside with nineteen different kinds of tomatoes from the fast paced Early Girl to slow and stately Brandywines and Beefsteak (wave to Michael) varieties.  This is the first time I have started tomatoes from seed; last year we planted four beefsteak plants in a small area outside.  Below is a short tale I wrote on another forum followed by a URL where you can see Audrey flashing her genitals at you.  Tommy and his kid should control themselves. I do not know what I will do with all the tomatoes from 19 different plants.  A person on the other forum also likes tomatoes and she cruises her town for parked, unlocked cars.  She then places a basket of tomatoes in each of them. She is serial planter, I guess.  The reason for growing so many kinds is just to sample each, they all have different flavours. From the other forum: "Along with gardening, we feed the wild birds, which pleases the squirrels! Our neighbours began finding "unusual" weeds in their gardens; when they pulled them out they found peanuts attached to the "weed".  Our wild bird mix has raw peanuts (unsalted, unroasted) and the squirrels were burying these in the gardens of our neighbours.  The peanuts were growing! Fast forward to last fall. The neighbours told us about these peanuts but neither Joan nor I had never seen a peanut plant. Joan got a large flower pot and pushed a whole peanut, shell and all, into it.  What do Canucks know about growing peanuts?  (Former tobacco growers need not reply to that.) I was eating the last of the beefsteak tomatoes, which we had picked green just before frost and ripened them indoors. As a joke, I reached down and took a seed from the tomato and planted it in the same pot. Both the tomato and the peanut sprouted. All winter long they grew, not well, but they grew. The peanut has grown to about 18 inches tall and has recently started to grow orange coloured blossoms. Quite attractive. The beefsteak tomato plant is another matter. It kept growing and growing and … We named the plants. The peanut is Penelope, Penny for short. The tomato is Audrey, named after the plant in "Little Shop of Horrors". Audrey reached the 8 foot ceiling a few weeks ago and her main stem broke (we had only 6 foot stakes). The stem did not die, but its growing end has reversed course and is once again ceiling bound. Other branches are now almost at the ceiling. Audrey has also started blossoming. There are photographs of Audrey just before her growing stem broke. I apologise for the fact that she is waving her genitalia in the pictures.  If such things embarrass you then do not follow the link.  :-) Anyway, if I can keep Penny and Audrey going until the end of May then they will be moved outdoors. You may see Audrey up to the ceiling at http://web.ripnet.com/~jcarter/audrey.html ." — Spelling and grammatical errors are deliberate to catch copyright violators.