Finally got back out to the garden

 Still dry, warm and very little wind. Went to ComiCon yesterday so no gardening. Amongst peopole and sity surroundings, couldn't pay attention to much else than where Iw as. Geekiness is my other side and sometimes have to feed that too.

As for what's going on in the garden...nothing much. Tomato is still growing, so is the cilantro surprisingly.  Neither showed signs of stress but watered this morning because they needed it.

Interesting how the shade marks the boundary of my growing area. The cages are keeping the cats out because there's signs of scraping in the south bed.

So just watered and checked to see what the little tomato flowers were doing and... they were all yellowing at the base which means no pollination.

That's all right, not expecting much from a summer tomato going into winter. Plants are so amazing taking what we think of as a killing situation and they survive. Much like other animals and people except plants are doing it out of survival and higher organisms sometimes do it out of revenge or a sense of hope and perseverence.

A little too philosophical there but there isn't much else to talk about. Looking out the window and there's barely a breeze, the sky is absolutely clear with very little haze so it's that wonderful light to medium blue. There's a sense of waiting and an almost tense air while we transition into the holiday season. Normally I would be busy at work likely patrolling either plant tables or the seasonal section depending on how busy it is. I do not miss that. Plants don't care. They exist and have very few needs which we are responsible for if they are in our care. I would give up my weekends again to be able to help water, arrange plants, educate people... but then I wouldn't be writing this blog.

Shifting seasons without much else to mark it can be almost surreal. The trees are losing their leaves and it is definitely colder at night and during the day. There still hasn't been any rain and by all indicators it's going to be another dry winter where I am. It's going to be dryer for many years to come due to the shifts in weather patterns and 'global warming'. The world has gone through this before, people have contributed to it this time around but previously it went unnoticed except for changes in animal and plant growth, migrations and evolutions. 

Oh something that comes to mind that has nothing to do with gardening but more of representing plants in media.

I play in Second Life which is a virtual world way before the current term of 'metaverse' was in the news. What I have discovered is there are creators of content in SL that use various bits and parts of plants when trying to create 'alien' worlds. I am helping to relandscape a Pandora world and another totally made up one. Being a plant geek I can look at a multi colored plant and see what the original plant was that they based it from. A pitcher plant in bright orange but it has a hibiscus stamen in the middle of it. A blanket of pansies but they are brilliant crimson and purple, bamboo that you can color purple, light green, pink or yellow. It's amazing that you can take a regular earth plant and change the colors, suddenly it's not on Earth anymore.

It's just fun to see people use familiar names but then the image is nothing like we would think. I even came up with an idea for an alien plant that would drip sap below  the flowers and if anything walked through it would get stuck and then die and get absorbed by the plant much like a carnivorous plant. Another would drop seed pods if the ground below vibrated and it would occasionally kill whatever was under it. Yeah kind of nasty but just about anything on Pandora will kill you.

I think I'll just wrap it up for this session before I go completely off track.