The Big Snow

People in the south get excited about snow, primarily because it is a rarity, especially on Christmas Day. Everyone makes the bread and milk run and other favorites things before the big event. In the city of Atlanta they have the first Christmas snow in 128 years, so this is keeping the weather forecasters busy with pictures and comments.

In north Georgia we too get excited for some of us have visitors coming and we want them to arrive and depart safely. At my house only half of our family arrived before the snow hit. We had a great time with early lunch as my grandson had to leave around 12:30 to drive to the Hartsfield-Jackson Air Terminal to pick up a friend from England. All went well with that venture and my daughter and her husband stayed on until around 3:30 when the snow arrived and began to ice over on the bushes. The temperature outside was still in the mid thirties so there was no immediate threat.

The other half of my family was expected Sunday but with warnings of "don't drive unless you have to" they decided to play it safe and postpone the trip until Monday.
One needs to be flexible when the weather plays tricks on us.

I kept waiting for someone to notice something in the southeast corner of my front room where the big windows are. I have several lush plants grouped in the area and back of them is a big old white, five gallon bucket, with something growing in it. Gardeners are experimenters and this is my experiment. It is just as well that they did not notice as it is rather unsightly.

Last spring I ordered some seeds for heirloom tomatoes. I planted them in small pots. I then covered the whole thing with a plastic dome, and put it on a table in the front room. I am positive that every seed I planted came up. Good seeds, Baker Creek Nursery! I will be ordering from you again. After these plants reached the stage to move to larger pots, I placed them out in the sun room. When they seemed large enough to put in the raised bed garden outdoors, I again moved them there. I had more plants than I could use so I gave some to my dentist and to another friend. Some went into individual outdoor, makeshift pots. One did not thrive down in the raised bed garden so at the end of the season I brought it back up to the back porch. It did not grow well there, so when cold weather threatened I moved it indoors. I just hated to relegate it to the compost heap.

This one heirloom tomato plant is what I now have in my living room hiding behind the lush plants but where it can get some sun. It is actually growing quite well. I have not used any fertilizer on it as that should wait until fruit appears. I just had to give it one more chance since it had clung to life for eight months. I suppose you could call it a traveling tomato plant as it has been in many locations. Perhaps the threat of the big snow will cause it to summons enough strength to defy all odds and do what it was made to do. Then I will know at last if the fruit is orange, Arkansas Red, Purple Red or the Kellogs Breakfast yellow. Whichever, I know it will be "yummy".