Class Picture

(l to r) Brandywine, Green Zebra, Black Prince (in the back), Riesentraube, Orange Strawberry Oxheart. (Gold Medal Yellow was absent on picture day.)

Aren't they so pretty? Definitely not as prolific as the engineered hybrid plants we usually grow, but I have really enjoyed these heirloom plants. As you can see, we finally got fruit from the Orange Strawberry despite its slow start, but we only got a few. The Green Zebra, Riesentraube and Brandywine did the best.

Green Zebras are probably my overall favs for a few reasons: they produced the most; they and the riesentraubes were the only two who managed not to fall victim to the slug invasion; the flavor was - for me - a perfect balance of sweet and tangy; and of course, they look SOOO COOOOOL!! Sliced on a sandwich they made quite an impression with little strips of their green-yellow zebra skin peeking out between the bread, and I even canned a few and they have such a pleasant melon-green color in the jars.

I'll never do black princes again. They tasted fine, but they are not very visually appealing and they were the most susceptible to slugs. I canned a few of those too and it's a bit of a problem, because they look downright rotten in the jars. Can't give those away as gifts.

Will probably go back to mostly early girl hybrids next year, but may put in some green zebras for fun and variety.

A thing of grace

Bought a new car over the weekend. Haven't picked it up yet. Maybe tonight or tomorrow night. I will be very sad to say farewell to the Tacoma, nicknamed "kitty" because of how she always reminded me of a little black kitten curled up napping in the sun when I had her parked on the street.

I stayed within the Toyota family, although I looked for quite a while at the Honda Fit. I like small cars. I'm all about simplicity and fuel-efficiency when it comes to cars. A car is a mode of transportation to me, not much more, so I really don't care too much about how they look and Will's got his big ol' work truck so it's not as if we need another big vehicle for totin' and haulin' stuff.

So I'll be bringing home a Yaris. It reminds me a lot of the Red Bullet only it's black (they call it mica pearl sand or something silly). The RB is the car I owned for many happy years before the Tacoma came into my life. It was a Geo Prism (and actually came off the same assembly line as, and was identical to, the Toyota Corolla of its generation). Jenn V bought one that same year and is STILL driving it. Great car. Hers is red too, only it's that really nice grown-up maroon, whereas mine was big-hair-mall-chick-Jersey red (which faded horribly during the life of the car, making it more of an over-bleached-picnic-tablecloth red). Over 158,000 miles on it, and a young driver pulled out in front of me causing only minor damage to both vehicles, but enough for his insurance company to total the Red Bullet. They wrote me a check for much more than I thought she was worth and came and towed her away. A sad, but peaceful ending.

Right after the Yaris test drive, I asked the sales guy what the name meant. He confessed that he didn't know. During the hour or so we had to wait to see the finance guy I came up with this explanation and told him to tell future customers who ask: "Yaris is the ancient Greek god of fuel efficiency."

Yeah, right. Like who else asks something like that? Anyway... I looked it up this morning. Really much more stupid than my explanation. Apparently Toyota invented the word (not surprising), by smooshing together the name of the Greek goddess of grace, Charis (pronounced with a 'k' in the beginning so it actually sounds like "CARis"), and the German word for yes, ja, which is pronounced "yah." Hence: Yaris. Like: 'yes, this car is graceful'? Or 'say yes to grace'? Or 'yes, this is the car for anyone named Grace'?

Whatever. I like my answer better.