My Secret Fetish

Ok, fetish may be a strong word for it but I got your attention, didn't I? Since no one else has posted! I had to come up with another subject so I thought I'd share my secret fetish with you. I love the smell of tomato plants. As fetish may have been too strong a word, love may be to weak. I think I could sit all day & smell tomato plants. I'm trying to convince Jill to make a perfume that smells like tomato plants but she is to busy in her yard now. At this time of year, when all the nurseries are full of tomato plants, she won't even go to a nursery with me. She says it is embarrassing trying to explain to people why I'm standing at the display sticking my nose into all the plants. If Jill is embarrased, it must be pretty bad.

In an effort to keep my vice safely at home, Jill has kindly planted some tomatoes and put them in a pot on my deck. Now I can go out every day and sniff all I want. I get kind of high from the scent, so future blog posts may be significantly more interesting.

I'm sure that you would all like to learn more about tomatoes and probably go out and buy your own plants to sniff. Just don't come over here & try and sniff my plants - I'm very territorial. To save you the trouble of looking up tomato information online! I'm including some links for your edification. The California Tomato Growers Association has a nice site that includes a lot of information and recipes. Here is a Britannica article on tomatoes also. You will be tested.

Did you know:

• Tomatoes are in the nightshade family, whose plants are poisonous and the American colonists were afraid to eat them.
• The roots and leaves of the tomato plant are in fact poisonous; they contain the neurotoxin solanine.
• Most of the vitamin C in tomatoes is in the pulp.
• Its name is derived from the Náhuatl (Aztec) word tomatl.
• The tomato is by definition a fruit, but in 1893 the U.S. Supreme Court declared them to be vegetables. (I thought I was being very clever & asked Jill if a tomato was a fruit or vegetable. She told me exactly this. I told her she was a smart-ass. You're wondering what possessed me to think she wouldn't know. No idea, periodically I hope to be able to say aha, you're wrong.)

So there you have your little lesson on tomatoes. As you probably figured out, I'm not yet blind as I'm still posting. My eye still hurts though (see previous post for why). Last night I was looking things up online and decided I had Hyphema (bleeding in the eye), which is a medical emergency. I considered going to the ER then but it was late & I was really tired. I decided to wait until this morning & now my eye looks better so I guess it is ok. Although as I am typing this things are looking a little blurry. Anyway, the point of this is to give you all some advice - don't poke yourself in the eye with a pencil!

Robin, the lonely blog mistress