New more spacious home

The Tale of the tomatoes

As you will see by the picture below we had a bad start in life, however we have to say we are now much more settled in a new enlarged home. However one dark night a snail got at one of us and he has become a bit lopsided. We are also concerned that the new home brings expectations of reproduction and to be honest with you we are not sure if we are up to it....him suffering from the snail and that......Also new owner is going to abandon us for the weeks while she goes off gallivanting and entrust us to her grandchildren! Some people...... Still,it could br worse.

The Tale of the tomatoes

Progress update

These people - http://www.tomato.co.uk/ - like tomatoes so much they set up a design company named after the red delights. We have given them a brief to come up with a name and a design concept for our coterie of plants...we'll be back with the concept as soon as we have it...

Dear friends,
Thank you for all these contributions, just let you know my computer still does work properly and I have difficulty to set up the photos to share with everybody ,I'll try continuously. from Chao-Mi

Bethnal Green's growth spurt

Bethnal Green is settling in so well in his namesake; so well he's had a growth spurt and now he's nearly as tall as the building opposite (see earlier updates). This week he's also had a near brush with frame; The Apprentice TV programme filmed in his road; if it wasn't for all the buildings being the same he might have seen whether his window was in the frame!

Tom has a problem with wind!

I came home on Thursday to find that someone has repotted Tom and put him in the garden. I must admit to feeling slightly miffed. Afterall, Tom is my plant and I have taken great pride in nurturing him so far..... I didn't need help. Well, I came home for my lunch Friday and was horrified to find that the wind had blown him over and he was bent at a terrible angle, with a damaged leaf and I swear he was shivering from the shock of it all. Well, that was it, he is now safely back inside where I can watch over him and his bent stem is loosly tied to a stake. I just hope he forgives me.

"Tom leaves home"

Oh, it is with much trepidation that I write this, "Blog" being totally alien to me, but I must progress beyond just mere emails, so here goes....
22nd April 2007
Chaomi has trusted me to look after and nurture a tomato plant (obviously oblivious to my lack of green fingers - this is the woman who managed to kill a yukka plant and most other green things). Anyway, I call my plant Tom and our journey together begins. We leave the safety of Chaomi's and take the relatively short walk to my house, the wind trying it's hardest to destroy Tom before I even get him home. So his new life starts, on the window sill in my kitchen, watching the world go by............
15th May 2007
Tom is looking remarkably healthy and has settled into family life well, getting fed at the same time as the cat (I have a better track record with cats, than plants). He is a healthy 18" tall and quite bushy. Am thinking he'll need a bigger pot soon, but can't bring myself to put him outside, as it is too cold.
I am about to push a button called "publish" now.... please send me to where I need to go.....here goes....

A Hello From La Belle Ruby!

All I can think of as I contemplate this moment is how wonderful this month of May has been! All this wonderful, life giving rain!!! I am feeling on top of the world right now, my leaves spread lushiously in every direction, my baby buds forming, and soon I will be blooming. I will be covered with tender white flowers, which will change in due course into ruby red fruit. Life is good, life in beautiful, and I’m not the only one who seems to feel that way. The birds, the birds ... have you listened to the birds? It has given me such joy to wake up in the early mornings and listen to that magnificent bird song, a veritable orchestra of sound, full of life and joy and celebration. You see, I am sitting here at the top of this old chimney pot – a bit like those beautiful old chimneys on the roof of Layer Marney Tower (ever been there? Worth a visit, I’ve been told!) – and can view most of this enormous garden, which is slowly gathering in colour and, at the moment, is mostly a sea of greens with splashes of yellow, orange and red. Aaaah, I must stop, my time is up, enough of celebratory musings. Duty calls, my attention and presence is needed. But watch this space, for I will be back soon.

The Fall of Miss Plum

WEIGHT: back to nearly a pound
HEIGHT: back to just over 17cm

MONDAY 14TH MAY
Good evening!

A lot has happened over the past day. Yesterday morning I had a small accident.

I was nudged from the height of the desk where I had been resting. Im not gonna lie - I lost a lot of soil. I thought I was a gonner.
At first I thought i'd just suffered from depotted syndrom, then I realised,.........

........I had broken my stem

I was feeling very sorry for myself..... but then....

...with the spilled soiled gathered at my roots once more, I was taken to the kitchen where I was given some water. After, I was placed on a different table to the desk I had been on, at first I was afraid as I saw what is known as 'cocktail sticks?' coming towards me. They were gently put into my soil and gathered around me like a splint, then I was wrapped in white tissue and bandaged.

I feel a lot better today. I was even put on the window sill to get some air. Hopefully my stem will repair. I think it'ss be a couple of weeks before the bandages can be removed.

My friend hates tomato's

So much so she felt the need to write it down:-

The devil is red and shiney.

Don't eat tomatos, have a potato. Trust me, you'll appreciate it much more. There is nothing appealing about the tomato. Their very substance is an attempt to implode, explode, or disintergrate. God gave us the clue in their physical form. The moment a tomato gets close to a knife it simply dissintergrates, it's pussy insides spill out as its the flesh slumps to one side.

The stench is one that assults the nose and clings to everything within a ten centimeter radius. The natural will of the tomato is to attatch itself, like some grusome spore, to whichever salad item that comes close, so as to infect said salad quickly and effectively within a moment of tossing. It leaches on to bread, and soaks into the serface equally. And yet every supermarket insists on inserting this foul fruit into eight out of ten sandwiches, with the full knowledge that we cannot ever, no matter how furvently we persist, remove the tomato to replicate a higher standard of fast food.

No my friends, do yourself a favour, choose it's more varied yet constant cousin, the noble spud. Boycott the tomato! One day they'll pay, they will all pay...

Antitomato

http://www.antitomato.com/home.cfm

It's not a perfect fruit!

Welcome Miss Plum !!! (*****must read)

FRIDAY MAY 11TH 2007,WEIGHT, under 1poundHEIGHT, 17.2cmBIRTHDAY unknown (so for celebratory purposes roughly around 01/03/2007)FAVOURITE TIPLE: water, if I feeling a bit adventurous maybe a bit of lemonade - I like the bubbles!(lemonade makes me roots tingle)FAVOURITE INSECT: the ladybird, its red body makes my leaves look even greener.PET HATE: snails!!! the bastards! (me aunt cherry was sunbathing in this fantastic allotment once, and this massive antenied freaky sludger of a snail - Burt I believe his name was; slimed his way over across the soil - she couldn't do anything but wait - for two whole days! and 'e got trod on the next day! what a waste!)IDEAL MR T: Tall, Green, Adventurous, GSOH, Doesn't mind a bit of wind.IDEAL ROOT TO ROOT: Mint, - How do they stay so fresh?! Hello!First of all I should introduce myself. My name is Miss Plum. I have sixteen beautiful green leaves (similar to the colour of grass).I am full of clorophyll and raring to grow.I like sunshine, but wilt a little when it's too hot. After sunbathing I sometimes like a bit of rain to cool down.Today has been a crazy day. First of all I was with Chaomious, and then she gave me away! One minute Im in a suitcase, presumably going places then i slumped on some desk that stinks of turps (When I was younger I used to think I was a turnip).Next thing I know, I got some blimin plastic bag being wrapped around me - I mean hello - I'm alive - I need oxygen. You know as soon as you've gone into that really dark place of someones rucksack that your life is gonna be short lived. I thought that was it. i thought the next thing I'd see would be good old burt warbling across white fluffy clouds!Luckily instead, I'm sat in front of this computer. The rooms not bad, bit dim at the mo, I think I could be comfortable here. Not many other tomatoes though. hummm.What's that over there, its narrow an a bit like a thick root - like a cylinder I think, it looks silver inside but has got like a gold nd black wrapper. It's also got a plus at one end and a minus on the other end - humm, whats it say 'DUR,' ooh, hang on 'DURA..DURAC...DURACELL'. 'DURACELL' Where do Duracell grow?What's this down here, there's a blue plastic bit with two holes, one slightly larger then the other then they join by two long metal things that overlapSCISSORS, oh my god oh my god, SCISSORS! sCISSORS! TOMATO ALERT TOMATO ALERT, THERE ARE SCISSORS NEARBY - SENDING SOS - SCISSORS!!!!!!!!!!!to be cont.....
11 May 2007 14:53 from Sarah El

My new tomato plant (Welcome Bethnal Green!!)

Travelling Tomato Plants

There are so many tomato plants in my garden, I don't know if the people like them or they could enjoy to look after the plants, if they would tell me about their tomato plants?If they are just normal tomato plants?
I'm very happy most of tomato plants have gone, I imagine everyone has their own journey and I wonder where they up to?

It's very exciting to see Wendy's tomato plant because they live in London.
In the photos the plant is growing very well and beautifully,I'm sure they are very happy.

Who drawn it?

Nature

"At its most successful, my 'touch' looks into the heart of nature; most days I don't even get close. These things are all part of a transient process that I cannot understand unless my touch is also transient-only in this way can the cycle remain unbroken and the process be complete." -Andy Goldsworthy http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/artartists/photoandy.html

Original: After 7 years of British countryside life, I start to explore a part of special British life style: Gardening work. 2006, I started with 3 plants of zucchini(courgettes)and 4 plants of different types tomatoes.Observing nature is amazing, looking how it grows and creating the production.That's a beautiful experience in this kind of world,you seems to purify.I was so happy with my plants started to take photos and draw them... To share my joy,one day I brought some zucchini to my friend Yuki, in London. When I saw The Gerkin, I thought about my grown zucchini which had never seen the world so I asked my friend to show my zucchini London and we took a photo of them together. So with Yuki and my zucchini,we had a tour in London. Therefore,I liked travelling with my Veg. When I was going to Italy for the summer holiday and saw a big tomato in my garden, I was very worried that unpredictable the British weather was not good for it.I decided to take one with us even though it was still premature, I imagined the hot weather would be good for it. I was so proud of my green tomato which I showed to my family and neighbours in Italy. I've to say it isn't a clever idea to show the Italian a tomato. A few day before back to England, the green tomato become strangely orange,it was scandal for the Italians, to see such an alien thing from England.Tomato should be red! I thought maybe it needed to get more sunshine, so I took it to have a Italian summer holiday tour and took photos of its travels at the seaside,to the mountains and in the west coast of Italy. I don't know what the tomato thinks of its experience, we ate it before coming back to England on the Apuane mountain.