If you grow tomatoes or potatoes, take heed. This is shaping up to be one of the worst years for Late Blight, the fungal disease made famous as the cause of the Irish potato famine of the mid-1800’s…

Late blight is caused by the fungus called Phytophthora infestans, and it’s actually not uncommon in the Northeast, since it thrives in cool summer temperatures and frequent rains. But usually its occurrence is limited to later in the growing season and only certain areas of the region, typically in a few farm fields. This year, it has shown up early and is widespread. Worse, it’s been identified on tomato plants for sale at a number of home garden centers [*], suggesting that large numbers of home gardeners have purchased infected plants, which may serve as a source of inoculum (spores) that can spread the disease.

Late blight inoculum is easily carried long distances by wind currents, so anyone growing tomatoes or potatoes should be on the lookout for signs of the disease, even in the most remote areas in our region. Currently all varieties of tomato and potato plants grown in home gardens and in commercial fields are susceptible to late blight. If your plants have late blight, be prepared to destroy them in order to limit spread of the disease.

Well, I went out to see my garden - finally, after a couple of days of nonstop downpour - and there it was: sure signs of the blight on the banana fingerlings. What else could this be?

The other potatoes seem fine, and I am hoping the earlies, the Keuka Golds and Red Norlands, will be harvestable soon enough. The tomato plants seem fine as well (there are some blossoms, no fruits as yet). But the Bananas are, I am afraid, a write-off. I dug some up to see if they are big enough, but no. They haven’t flowered yet, they’re after all mid-to late season. I will dig them up and dispose of them as soon as it stops raining again (tomorrow I am told).

[*] This seems typical of our times, yet another way in which our food is being threatened, and hitting particularly hard those who are trying to take food into their own hands.  I grew all my plants from seed and potato seed, but this stuff blows off in the wind…

As for the rest of the garden, in this constant rain and cloud cover nothing seems to grow. The eggplants have been stalled for weeks: no extra leaves, or inches. The tomatoes grow but slowly, droopily, leggily. What with the wet conditions slugs have been rampant, eating almost all of the kale and broccoli. They’ve proven unstoppable by my crushed eggshell ramparts, so I will have to switch to thin copper strips around the beds and a couple of evenings with flashlight and umbrella to cull the slugs already in the beds.

It’s a whole different game from the seedlings-in-the-basement and the planting-out times! Seasons…

But our last conversation, the day before he died, was longer. He asked how the garden went, and could I email pictures of it to my dad, who could then bring them on his laptop. My grandfather was a gardener too - the only gardener in my family , in fact, till I took up this crazy business, recently. He grew many vegetables, apple and pear and cherry trees, and a compost heap (I remember the hilarious experiments with worms).

I wanted so much for him to see how well all my vegetables and herbs are growing. I didn’t get to send the pictures - even if I had that moment, it would have been too late. Then it rained, and rained. But here they are, some pictures I took on a brighter day:

The old cold frame (lights removed, fenced in with, yes, repurposed shelving) with cherry tomato, lettuce and chard, and day lilies, and path to the garden.

Potato towers in forefront, more potatoes in beds in back.

Beans on a gloomier day  no luck with the lentils, in front, they’re not growing. Notice the big pile of stones to the left: that’s not half the stones we dug out of the ground. In the background to the left you can see the scaffolding for the tomatoes. I have no close-up pictures of it, though, because… it started raining. Sigh.

{UPDATE} Aha! A couple of hours after posting this entry the clouds cleared and I could run out to take a picture of the tomato and eggplant beds:

So it stopped raining. Of course.

The context was thus:

Grandmother sitting by, also drawing the rose, and grandfather, on the other side of the world, witnessing via webcam.

When it was time to leave she got hold of four chunks of throw-away and went to ask the teacher very sweetly if she could take it home. There must have been something forbidding in the situation - all those adults suddenly so intent on hearing what she wanted to say - because this is how she asked:

- Lisa, can I please take this clay home? Here [holding out one chunk] you can have this. And this one too [holding out another one], you can have this one too if you want?

Lisa accepted the gifts - quickly, before Amie offered her all of them - and everyone laughed benevolently. Amie was a bit flustered but happy with the chunks she got to keep. Oh, and I remembered those awkward social moments, and realized that this was a glimpse of the struggle she is heading for, quite fearlessly, as she exits that part of childhood when it’s just her and her closest family, and enters the world where things are asked and deserved and owed in certain, mysterious ways.

I brought home the pots and plates I made. I was more adventurous with the clay this session, with the result that there were less pots to bring home (and give away), but more lessons learned. I took some pictures but in bad light conditions (it’s been so rainy here!).

I loved turning those plates, what a great tactile experience! And that glaze really put the birds up there in the sky (it’s a translucent white, the blue background was put on before firing as a pigmented slip over paper cutouts of the birds).

I’m so keen on a pottery wheel, but honestly we don’t have the space to put it or, with everything else that’s going on, the time to make it turn as often as it should. But we’ll be doing some handbuilding for sure.

There is more portrait sketching. Amie made several fast sketches of Thhaam:

And here is a glimpse of Thhaam’s portrait of Amie:

And yesterday I was fiddling with my camera when:

Click!

They settled into a regimen right away, part of which is “school”, “where Thamm pretends to be a teacher, and I pretend to be a student, and our house pretends to be the school”. They read and write and most of all engage in lots of crafts.

Here they are sketching each other - Thamm is attempting to sketch her every day:

Here are the results:

Amie (to one of her dolls): “You know, my Thamm is good at arts and crafts. But she still needs to use an eraser… That’s because I can’t sit still.”

So true.

We have also been working on a dragon. After rescuing some boxes from the recycling bin, we wrapped them in newspaper and painted them - the newspaper takes the paint much better, and as a bonus it gives the wrinkly look of dragon skin! Gruesome teeth were added.

Wait, he (she?) is not finished yet! More boxes and paint and glue to come…

There were birds, wild (Eastern phoebe?) and tame:

And farm equipment (defunct):

And strawberry picking - and eating:

And, when we returned, the littlest Robins of Robin hill (not so little anymore):

{Update} They have left the nest…