Over the last week I picked a bowlful of cherries - cherry tomatoes, that is, saving them for Sunday night's dinner. Here's how it went: Bake the garden's only eggplant to date, scoop out the innards. Sautee a load of garlic and onion, add all the tomatoes, let them crack, squish them, let their sweetness flow. Add the softened eggplant, a scoop or two of pasta water and finally, a large handful of fresh basil. Serve on penne. Wow! Dinner tasted like a mouthful of garden. Meanwhile, bad news for my tomato patch. A knowledgeable friend has diagnosed verticillium wilt, a soil-borne fungus that attacks more than 200 different plant species, including - unfortunately for me - tomatoes. (Some others - eggplant, beets, cucumber, peppers, watermelon.) My tomato leaves have been turning yellow, not just at the bottom, which usually happens when the weather turns hot and dry in August. This year, they're yellowing all over the plant. So far, the tomatoes are fine, but eventually, the fungus (which enters the plant through the roots) blocks water and nutrients and the tomatoes starve to death. I've already lost one plant and several others look sickly. The fungus behind all this (or below, as it were) loves excessive moisture such as we've been having and stays in the soil a long time. The only way to combat it, my friend and other sources say, is to surrender: Plant tomatoes elsewhere for 4-6 years and buy verticillium-tolerant varieties. You can find a list online ('Celebrity' is one) or check the plant tag; it'll say VF for verticillium and fusarium, another wilt. And be sure not to compost your infected plants. So there you have it: the sublime (last night's dinner) and the ridiculous, coming to a garden near you. As if we haven't have enough bad tomato news this season!

Oh nooooooo! Look at this supermarket display. What's next - scarecrows and pumpkins?! Please. It's barely August and the mums are back. These are a popular, if boring, plant for fall. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, mums are the third best-selling cut flower, after roses and carnations, and third in potted-plant sales, after poinsettias and orchids. Guess I'm missing something. I like roses, carnations, poinsettias and orchids, and I love the truly hardy crysanthemums, which won't be blooming for another month but are always a treat in late summer and early fall. These short-lived imposters are another story. They're the fast food of the Mum World, produced, in effect, by assembly line without variation (except for a limited array of so-called "fall colors") and about as interesting as that sounds. And you know the mums' return means the end of summer. Time to go back to school, time to put the garden away, time to head inside and hibernate.  It's too soon for that! The tomatoes have just begun to ripen. My entire neighborhood, blessedly, is at the Shore. The windows can stay open. The curtains are blowing in the warm breeze. It's easy to get into restaurants. Traffic's light. In other words, IT'S STILL SUMMERTIME! 

This is the "queen" tree, one of two white oaks at Springton Manor Farm that we visited yesterday. She's a big girl, isn't she? Very healthy, still growing. Scott estimated both trees at between 250 and 275 years of age. They're growing near a pond, so there's plenty of groundwater to keep them nourished, and being out in a field, they have no competition, so they're growing - especially sideways - at a good clip. But even here, he noticed practices that likely will eventually hurt the tree. There was a drainage ditch dug nearby, through the trees' root zone. There was a paved pathway alongside, which will prevent air and rainwater from percolating down into that zone. Yet here we were, in the most bucolic of settings. Imagine quality of life for trees stuck in those disastrous shopping center parking lots in the burbs or cemented in on all sides on a city sidewalk. Dave Johnson, regional forester for the New Jersey Forest Service, says many people today feel no connection to or particular affection for trees, nearly paving them over or cutting them down (or not replacing trees that die or fall down) in developed areas because they drop leaves and make a mess. "Trees don't have to worry about getting their roots cut for a new sidewalk in the forest," he said. Thankfully, there are also people out there like Dave and Scott - Tree Tenders come to mind - who are passionate about trees, grateful to have them and eager to plant more. In the city, where careless trucks, haphazard code enforcement and even thoughtless dog owners can render a tree's life (to say nothing of residents') a nightmare, you are reminded every day - especially during hot spells like this one - that trees are excellent citizens. Welcome on my block any day. 

Scott Wade winces when he hears the term "tree-hugger," but the guy loves trees more than anyone I know. He travels all over the state, mostly in the Southeastern part, measuring big trees for the Pennsylvania Forestry Association. Yesterday I met up with him at Springton Manor Farm up in Glenmoore, Chester County, yet another of those little-known treasures we're blessed with in the Philadelphia area. This 300-acre property, now a demonstration farm and county park, was an original land grant from William Penn and has been in some form of agricultural use since the early 1700's. Check out the view that greeted me as I drove in to meet Scott! How sylvan is that? He wanted to measure the "king and queen trees" - two massive white oaks - down by the barn that have been described in older tree literature as "two original forest monarchs." And regal they certainly were. Scott took one look at the pair and exclaimed, "Wow! This is so cool." They're what's known as open-grown trees - out in a field, not in a forest competing with other trees. And they usually don't grow more than 100 feet tall because, as Scott says, "They're too busy growing out" - 'cause they can. The "queen" had huge lower limbs stretching out horizontally, touching the ground, very tempting to sit on. A sign warns against doing that, so Scott ran his hands along the branch, which was hilly and lumpy, suitably "wrinkled" for a tree that's more than 200 years old. I'll be writing about Scott and his big trees next week. First, though, I have to find the right words to describe them - not just the trees. Scott, too. He's his own kind of "original."

Meet John Parry, aka "Tomato Man," of Cochranville. He was the unnamed subject of my last post - and he's a character, for sure. Leaving blight aside, he grows 350 heirloom tomato plants on four acres in a part of  Chester County that still looks like it used to - farm country. John has "a real job" as an appliance repair guy, but tomatoes are his true love. He grows black, red, pink and yellow Brandywines, Pineapple, White Queen, Hillbilly and a nameless Vietnamese tomato whose seeds someone gave him. He does all this by himself, selling his tomatoes and some other crops to restaurants. John also does tomato tastings. He romps through his rows of tomatoes grazing at will, plucking mostly cherry tomatoes off the vine. It's quite intoxicating. Each tomato he picked was tastier than the one before, with Sun Gold - of course - coming out on top. This is John explaining things to Inquirer photographer Tom Gralish. I was chagrined to learn that the Amish farmers across the street spray heavy doses of pesticides on their crops, which then waft across to John's fields. Even more distressing ... though the scene was oh so bucolic, the bearded Amish farmer at the reins of a plow pulled by two horses was growing tobacco! It's a very lucrative crop, according to a couple of extension agents I spoke to last week. Anyway, John is selling heirloom tomatoes as fast as he can grow them. More power to him. Story to come this Friday.

Am feeling a bit like Job. As if it weren't enough that the garden's been slimed this year by more fungus and bad-actor insects than I've seen in its five-year existence altogether, now comes what I believe is the downy woodpecker to set up housekeeping in our cedar pergola. This came to light at breakfast the other day. My husband said, "Oh, look! There's a beautiful woodpecker." So cute. Not long after, we discovered why this guy was hammering away - carpenter bees have moved into the pergola, causing deep holes and gouges that I guess they take naps in. If you look closely at this picture, you'll see the woodpecker - and he is beautiful - attached to the pergola with his strong claws. He pecks with a bill that's been compared to a chisel - sharp, pointed, able to penetrate not just cedar, but redwood, stucco siding, metal gutters, TV antennae and other materials. He likes to hear himself drill and, in spring, uses this "drumming" or pecking to attract a mate, defend or establish territory. Well, spring's over, pal, and from what I read, you're supposed to be gone by July 1. That is, unless you're feeding on the carpenter bees, extracting them from their beds and squishing them with your long, bristly, sticky tongue. What a way to go. So we filled up the holes with putty, only to find the woodpecker had returned the next day and dug 'em out again. Now I understand we need to attack with shaving mirrors and hawk silhouette mobiles, black plastic strips and aluminum pie tins PLUS gas cannons and air guns and loud music and banging pots and pans. Good grief! Even my super-tolerant neighbors might object to such a sensory onslaught. Or maybe not. I live in the city, where pots and pans and air guns and loud music and bone-rattling car stereos for that matter are no big whoop. But woodpeckers? What the heck do I do about them?  

Here's what late blight looks like, but don't panic. Other diseases bear a maddening resemblance to the scary fungus that's been attacking tomatoes and potatoes this year earlier and more broadly than at any other time in recent memory. Prolonged cool temperatures and a lot of rain in spring provided ideal conditions for late blight, which - thanks to our recent rainy streak - continues to spread through home gardens and organic farms, according to several cooperative extension agents and vegetable pathologists in Pennsylvania and New Jersey that I've been checking in with. (Non-organic growers have been spraying preventatively and are doing OK.) Most tomato-growing gardeners in my universe are pretty paranoid, and with good reason. The disease is fatal to the plants and spreads on wind and rain for 30 to 40 miles at a stretch. Even if you had beautiful seedlings, are growing heirlooms, started your plants from seed or bought them at a big box, you could be vulnerable. I've already destroyed one plant. It looked horrible. But nothing seems to be happening with my other tomatoes, beyond some yellowing leaves, which - to an extent - is normal for this time of year. I think my newly departed tomato plant may have had Septoria leaf spot or one of the other leaf spots going around this soggy summer. Who knows? This photo was taken Monday at the organic tomato farm in Chester County that is the subject of my story on Friday, Aug. 7. The farmer appears to be staying on top of things by spraying organic copper fungicide and removing all damaged foliage, and the experts say he may beat the blight - or at least prolong the inevitable. I wish him luck. Meanwhile, I'm obsessing over my tomatoes, which are - knock on wood - looking healthy and starting to ripen. May we all stay blight-free. 

Late blight, that scary fungal disease popping up in fields and gardens up and down the East Coast, is the talk of home gardeners. We're all a little paranoid, obsessing more than ever on our green tomatoes. We've entered the much awaited tomato season, albeit a little later than usual because the wet spring pushed everything back, and we're ready for the harvest. This is a Brandywine tomato plant, loaded up with fruit. I picked the first one yesterday, perhaps a little early out of concern that the dreaded resident squirrel would get it first and out of sheer eagerness to begin the feast. It sits on the kitchen counter ripening.

This morning I was talking to a master gardener in a South Jersey county that shall remain anonymous, asking him if he'd had any calls about late blight. He didn't even know what it was, and began telling me that he just clips off the yellow leaves and tosses them. His ignorance surprised me, given the activist role Rutgers has chosen to play in this and the tremendous price South Jersey would pay - in loss of tomato and potato crops - if late blight continues to spread. Today's weather - cool, cloudy, rainy - is perfect for spreading this scourge, which depends on airborne spores travelling miles in the wind and rain.

As I check my tomatoes daily, I'm fully aware that while they look healthy today, they could develop late blight's ugly brown lesions on stems, leaves or fruit tomorrow and I'd lose them all. If you see such lesions, you'll know - this is not black spot. This is not anything like what you might normally get at this time of year. The lesions are really disgusting looking. 

So while we all oohed and ahhed over out gorgeous, rain-fueled spring, and the amazing blooms it produced, there's a price to be paid now. Late blight almost never shows up this early; the rains made it happen. Yet another reminder that nature rules.

Our cool, wet spring produced a glorious bounty of flowers. We all remarked that it was one of the most sparkling springs we'd seen in years. Now for the bad news. My garden is full of disease this summer partly, no doubt, because of that nice wet spring and partly, truth be told, because of bad habits. Not long after I waxed poetic about the beautiful bee balm and coneflowers filling up my garden, the dreaded powdery mildew appeared. It spread so fast - days, really - that soon more than half of my bee balm patch was covered with it. (A matter of time till the rest goes)

I blamed all the rain. Then I began examining my plants. They've spread so much, filled in all those empty spaces they were designed around, that now they present a stand so full and crowded, I marvel it took this long for powdery mildew to show itself in such numbers. I need to thin out, the experts say. I already have 'Jacob Cline,' a more resistant variety and I don't water at night, so that's good. But it's time to be ruthless. Even the supposed disease-resistant roses have black spot. The clematis have wilt. The phlox, peonies and bee balm are decimated by mildew. It's been rough. For the last five years, I've added and purchased and watched everything grow. This year, it's all huge and wild and way too crowded. Live and learn is the name of this game, I guess, but it's kind of fun to hack at it. Very satisfying to fill up those trash bags with nasty stuff. Gets me thinking about a different kind of garden for next year. Now that's sounding expensive.