Thank God I Never Went To Medical School

Because I would SUCK at being a surgeon.


I finally got around to pruning my tomatoes again yesterday. I'd done a good pruning a few weeks ago, but the instructions in the article I got from a friend's husband specifically say to prune the lower branches AFTER the first flowers appear. This ended up meaning, on several of the tomatoes, that there were thick, vigorous branches all OVER there place before the flowers appeared. Since I felt mighty sad about hacking off perfectly lovely branches with great big, bright green leaves, I probably waited a bit longer than I should have.

So it was with no small amount of trepidation that I finally made myself head out yesterday evening to do the deed.

Now, I wanted to follow the instructions to the letter, so I did use a razor blade, rather than clumsy scissors, to make a nice, neat, surgical cut. However, while I did make neat cuts, I'm almost POSITIVE the instructions didn't say "now have some sort of spasm and slice off a layer half-way down the plant too, like a total git." I mean, I read it twice, and I don't think that was either implicit, or implied, in the instructions.

So then I had to spend the next 15 minutes apologizing to my poor plants, in an almost Buddhist like belief that if I was at least sorry for my butchery the plants would forgive me and not cack on me.

Anyway, the good news is that the peppers are totally undaunted. They don't have to suffer my pruning skills like the tomatoes, and are gleefully putting out fruit. SO much fruit in fact, that I'm a little concerned about a couple of them. How can a plant, only 7 or 8 inches high, put out so many already large fruits, without just falling over in exhaustion? It's a bit like stumbling across a very short man with a severe case of elephantitis of the testicles. I don't know whether to be concerned or impressed.

In any case, here's the photographic updates.