The last tomatoes of 2024

Tomatoes, garlic, peppers, parsley, oregano, basil and the several yardlong beans you see in the photo all came from my garden.

Books I read over the last year

 

First figs

 After three years, I had a small fig harvest. I have three fig plants that I planted in my yard. The one that is three years old produced ten delicious figs, five are shown below. I have a one-year old fig that I grew from a cutting, but it only produced a few figs and they are unlikely to ripen before its gets cold. My third fig in the ground is the largest, and it too is at least three years old. It is the tallest, over six feet, but it did not produce figs this year likely because it doesn't get enough sunlight. It is about time to winterize the figs so that they won't die back. All of these figs are the Chicago Hardy variety.

Ideological floorboards

Below, an excerpt from the book Godwin by Joseph O'Neill, from a review written by A.O. Scott in the NY Times:  "It’s also possible that reading Mark’s alternately diffident and combative first-person narration in “Godwin," Joseph O’Neill’s sharp and slippery new novel, will provoke a more intimate tremor of recognition, especially when he describes the intellectual milieu that formed him":