Okay, my harvest this year was not very impressive compared to Mom’s. I am still learning where my sunny spots are, and my dirt was not as good as I thought it was. So my basil is just taking off, my tomatoes didn’t set before the nights got too hot (they are now, but they probably won’t be very good), it’s rained about three days since May, etc. etc. etc. But Becky came to visit last weekend, and she is a better vegetable gardener than I am, and she brought peppers, eggplants and tomatoes from plants she grew in pots at her rental place in Boerne (she also MAILED us tomatoes mid-summer!). So I made some really good baba ganoush, and chopped and froze a bunch of peppers, and ate a lot of cherry tomatoes.

Becky wanted to go to Tyler, Texas, the self-proclaimed Rose Capital of (Texas, the USA, the World, depending on whom you listen to), so we drove over there. I’m glad we did; we went to the city rose garden, which was huge, and found a nursery that had a lot of $2 roses that we had heard of. I bought five. We also went to the Rose Museum, which was mostly dedicated to the Tyler Rose Festival, and its queen and her elaborate gowns. The gowns had twenty foot trains and were hand-embroidered and jeweled, custom for the festival theme every year with the initials of the queen included in the design. Becky and I noticed that a lot of the queens over the years shared a last name. I’ve read since that the queen’s family pays for the gown, so I think I know who the rich family in Tyler is. Those gowns must cost as much as a new car. The museum did also have some historical rose production artifacts; a lot of commercial rose growers are based in Tyler. I was excited because gas in Tyler was $3.19. It’s below $3.00 here now, so I shouldn’t have bothered filling up (I haven’t driven my car since).