Tomatoes! Tomatoes! Tomatoes!

I have a very elaborate container garden on the back deck of our house. The reason it's a container garden is that it's a sort of compromise between me and Mr. Strega. Our home is in the woods, and, before I came here, Mr. Strega was devoted to getting the land back to a state of naturally occuring wildflowers and plants. It's been successful--and then I came into the picture and took over the back deck. Right now, we have, among other things, a lilac, a honeysuckle, a giant peach-colored rose (I think it's one of the Peace roses, but am not sure), two planters full of morning glories (with weird, twisted branches for them to climb on), and rows of annuals--nasturtiums, cosmos, catmint, sweet peas, poppies, sunflowers, columbine--it's a jungle out there.

This year, we've started on tomatoes--I have four container tomatoes, and today found REAL GREEN TOMATOES on one of the plants!
For weeks, the tomatoes have been putting out their starry yellow flowers, and there are masses of them (which means, of course, masses of tomatoes later on)--but the Italian tomato has not only flowers, but a lot of long plum tomatoes in their infancy. My friend Mary is planning a Tomato Fest this summer (she gave me two of these plants and has been handing tomato plants out to other friends and neighbors). It's nice to see that one can still plant something and it'll come up!