All that hard work...

OK, well it wasn't that hard, but I was emotionally invested! You wouldn't believe how often I've had dreams lately about my tomato plants dying, being sabotaged, generally being no more. It's plagued my dreams! By the way, the dreams of a pregnant woman are CRAZY!!! I've never had more vivid dreams than when I've been pregnant. I've dreamed new song lyrics, poems, prayers, and lots of oddities! I thought it was particularly absurd when I dreamed that my neighbor came and uprooted all the tomatoes and planted them in a different spot. I cried and cried in my dream. I also dreamed that my cat Pumpkin was watering my tomatoes WAY too much with a little red bucket she carried in her mouth. She filled it up in the sea that was in our backyard. She didn't like the tomatoes.



Well, today I knew something had to be done about my tomato plants. They've been getting worse and worse. Last night I looked up "brown spots on tomato vines" and I then knew that my plants had been infected with "late blight". From what I can tell it's due to the crazy amounts of rain we've received. I also think it spread so quickly b/c last Saturday I cut away some of the infected branches, not really knowing what was wrong with them, and the more I cut, the more I spread the disease. I've learned to disinfect the shears between each cut. Experience is the best teacher! I also think it has something to do with the lilac bush that is close by. I noticed today that my lilac bush's leaves are curling, and it looks like they have a white powder on the leaves. Uh oh! Not good! Apparently this is considered awful for a lilac bush, so I'll be trying to combat this fungal disease too this weekend. I hope the lilac bush doesn't die. I love that bush, and I want it to thrive and bloom next spring. We'll see what happens. My theory is that the lilac bush didn't like all the water this season (they don't need that much water at all!), there wasn't proper drainage for it, it didn't like sharing the soil with other plants. So maybe the bush got the fungus first, and then spread it to the tomato plants? Or maybe the tomatoes got it first and passed it to the lilacs? It's hard to tell, but next year I will either not be planting, or I will plant in a totally different spot. I hope I don't have to uproot the lilac bush by the end of this season.

Here are some pictures of what I found when I entered my little garden plot this morning. The blight spreads soooo quickly!