the good & the bad

i'm taking the good and the bad in my first year of gardening. all my fellow new englanders will remember the 4-6 weeks straight of rain we had in june and early july. well all that rain resulted in a serious plague of late blight in many, many gardens up here this year. i've already heard quite a few sad stories from friends of mine who have gardened for years having to throw away all their tomato crop b/c of blight. i thought i had escaped the plague of late blight b/c i did not see any of the tell tale signs in my tomato leaves and stems. then all of a sudden yesterday i discovered 8 tomatoes on one roma plant that looked like this: if you've never seen late blight this is exactly what the fungus looks like once it's infected tomatoes. i now only have 3 tomatoes left on this one plant. my other roma is toast too but not from blight. so i'm left with my 3 heirloom varieties which i'm happy to say still appear to be happy and blight free (knocking on wood...).
i've also managed to acquire my first cuke(!) and a whole slew of beans, pineapple tomatillos and other tomatoes (pre-blight) over the last few weeks. so it's been a good first season i think.
it's friday and i won't leave you without a puppy pic! fern came over to visit last weekend with sarah & josh and she and foster had quite a fun visit playing & snuggling. somehow i only managed to get one semi-good pic...we're off to cohasset, ma this weekend for the wedding of ethan & amanda! wedding #5 for the year! have a nice weekend everyone!