Early cherry tomatoes

First up, the mea culpas: We have been bad bad bloggers.  Not just mediocre or even single-bad, but double bad since there is two of us doing this blog and it's gone over three weeks without an update.

Last week in sewing chat, Val asked if I had tomatoes yet.  She actually meant tomato plants, and I replied that the yellow pear (heirloom variety) cherry tomato was about to ripen.  Since then I had harvested four little yellow pear tomatoes off the vine.

yellow pear heirloom cherry tomato plant, about four foot tall

There are certainly many more, as this plant just keeps on setting new fruit.  I bought it as a started plant, in the Bonnie peat pots, from either Lowe's or Wal-Mart.  Along with having 100% success rate in rooting cuttings off it, I also plan to save seeds as this is obvious a strong specimen!

Now, for the only tomato plant I won't be saving seeds from, the husky red ("hybrid") cherry tomato.  "Hybrid" is in quotation marks because it is not a true hybrid like a rutabaga is, but more of a tomato-mutt/crossbreed.

Husky red "hybrid" cherry tomato plant that survived three hard frosts

This was the first tomato plant I put in the ground back in February, and it got frost-bitten pretty badly once (out of three hard frosts!) which seemed to serve as a pruning.  It may not be tall, but boy is it husky.  While an insect or worm got the first ripe tomato before I did, I did pick three lovely ripe ones off it this morning.

Well, we've both had our bowl of cereal, and the outdoors beckon.  Hubby is burning the fourth downed tree, which like the third one shattered before it even hit the ground due to insect and woodpecker damage.