Stitchpop

First of all… look!



Little baby tomatoes! Aren't they cute? They're even cuter because they belong to a plant named "Sweet Baby Girl" cherry tomatoes. Gertrude loves this plant the best, and every morning she asks if we can go check on how Sweet Girl is doing.

What makes their appearance even more astonishing is the poor (actually, lack of) planning that went into this strip of garden. In fact, if my garden were a city, the zoning commissioner would have been fired. Or shot.

On the outskirts of the city is where we have the high-crime district:



Cucumbers bordering one edge and string beans against the fence invite bunnies by the thousands to nibble at low-growing leaves. The bean population was all but decimated, necessitating the erection of a protective wire barrier. It hasn't stopped the violence, but it's slowed enough to permit some rehabbing and rebuilding of the community.

In the heart of the city, we see all the symptoms of overcrowding and poverty unleashed on this blended tomato/cucumber neighborhood:



Positioned too close to our next-door ornamental plant garden, the tomato population feels suffocated and undervalued, sometimes lashing out against its oppressive cucumber neighbors.

Where the line of cucumbers ends, the tomatoes have established a harmonious suburb, with rows of free-standing cages and little competition for resources from surrounding plants. Sweet Baby Girl counts herself lucky to have been planted in this area of relative prosperity.

And then, we have an incidence of urban sprall, where a homogenous community of hot peppers has trended away from the inner city and invested in new housing developments:



At least something's growing, that's all I've got to say.