One of my little hills of squash

Nothing will make you more popular than a tomato patch in summertime. I already have quite a list of friends claiming my “extra” tomatoes, once they come in. I hope I have enough to satisfy everyone.

At this point my six plants are growing inches every day, so the tomato situation is looking promising. I have six plants, six different varieties. Four are heirlooms: Brandywine, Green Zebra, Carbon and Cherokee Purple. Two are hybrids: Lemon Boy and Rutgers. Some are old favorites of mine, but the Rutgers and Carbon varieties are new to me. Carbon is a black tomato that supposedly won a tomato taste test at Cornell, so we’ll see.

This is the most beautiful time in the vegetable garden, when everything is young and healthy and full of hope. The true heat hasn’t set it yet, the bugs haven’t gotten out of control, and the gardener looks forward to the fruit of her labors with expectation and optimism. My photographs can’t capture my sense of satisfaction in looking at the orderly rows and well-weeded paths. Over the weekend I put a few marigolds around the borders. They say that marigolds are a good companion plant for reducing insects, but I just think they add a nice splash of color to the unrelieved solid green.

In addition to the tomatoes, there will be zucchini (green and yellow). I love ratatouille and eat it all summer long. I have a row of pepper plants in all colors and heat levels, basil (both Italian and Thai), carrots, and zinnias for cutting. We’ve already been eating salads for a month from a separate patch of lettuce and arugula. Although I have the lettuces under a shade cloth cover, I’m afraid they may not last much longer. The hot weather will set in for good soon, and the plants are already thinking about bolting.

Curiously enough, no-one has tried to claim any extra zucchini I may have this summer.

I’ve been unhappy with Facebook for a long time. You are too, admit it. I finally decided I’d had it with their cavalier treatment of my personal information, which apparently goes way back to the founding. I’ve had it with their sloppiness, their constant changes to the site that only made it harder to use, their obvious aim to squeeze as much money out of the site as they possibly can. I’ve worn out my poor (non-Facebook-using) husband’s ears complaining about it. In short, I really believe that Facebook is evil and can’t be trusted.

I worry a little bit about losing contact with all my friends who don’t actually e-mail anymore. They seem to be much more comfortable living their lives on the public stage than I am. Lately many of them have stopped communicating any other way. Facebook is the medium for party invitations, photo sharing, personal news, even invitations for drinks.

But if you have even a little bit of concern about your privacy, don’t you feel a little uncomfortable too? Let’s face it, Facebook isn’t set up for anyone with even a shred of compartmentalization in their life. Speaking for myself, I have close friends and not-so-close friends. I have friends I know through yoga, friends I met professionally, and other friends I met in my nightclubbing days. I don’t necessarily want all those groups to mix. I like being able to present a more limited persona based on context.

And that’s exactly where Facebook fails. There’s no context. I may “like” Victory Brewing Company, but it’s because I’m an investor, not because I’m a keg-buying partier. I may choose to “like” a business just because I’m researching them, not because I want to be identified with their actions. Facebook, in not allowing me to limit access to that list of “likes”, forced me away from the whole enterprise.

I’m not alone, it seems. The next issue of Time magazine has put Facebook privacy concerns on the cover. There’s even a movement to delete accounts en masse on May 31. But I’m not waiting.

I’m not giving up on social media, by any means. I have to keep involved for my work. I’ll keep my LinkedIn account, I may even go back to Twitter, if only to tell friends when I’ve posted a new blog entry. But Facebook and I, we’re done.

Mark struggled all day yesterday just to keep the doorways clear enough that we could open the doors, since our lack of porch overhangs means that our front and back doors are easily blocked by the snow. I was inside trying to finish a big presentation that’s due Tuesday to a client in Baltimore. Wonder if that meeting will still happen?

I’ll update later after we get out into it this morning.

11:30AM:  After 90 minutes of shoveling, we’re about done in. Maybe another burst of activity later this afternoon will get the cars dug out. This may take a while! New photos posted to flickr…

After a bit of debate– will we be grasshoppers or ants?– we decided to be bad and go have some fun. We drove out west to Leesburg and north from there to the Old Lucketts Store. I wrote about the Lucketts Store a few years ago. It’s the world capital for shabby chic. Three stories in an old house on a crossroads, packed with everything from antique radios to vintage clothes to full size stained glass windows from actual churches. We had a ball. We followed our successful shopping expedition with a long Italian lunch in a little cafe in Leesburg and roamed the old town center until it got dark.

After we returned, I was straightening up a pile of books and found this quote from Albert Schweitzer:

Do not let Sunday be taken from you…If your soul has no Sunday, it becomes an orphan.

I like that. No more feeling guilty about taking a day off from responsibility now and then. And if I’d missed the trip to Lucketts, I would never have found this little fellow:

A little bronze frog sings and plays the violin

He reminds me a bit of Toad from The Wind in the Willows, and made me smile so much I had to bring him home. He is now sitting on top of a bookcase in the office so he can serenade me while I work. He ought to do wonders for my soul.

Halloween always seems to me like a pleasant throwback to an earlier era. It’s one night when I actually see most of my neighbors (at least the ones with children). The whole street comes alive with happy noises and light. I’m always glad to be around that night, since the rest of the year I often feel disconnected from my neighbors. While I used to know all my near neighbors, that’s not true anymore. The language barrier isn’t helping. Next door is an extended Hispanic family that speaks very little English. On the other side is a semi-reclusive Filipina lady who rarely leaves the house.  Across the street our long-time neighbors Joe and Jonita retired to North Carolina, and their house is now occupied by renters whom I haven’t met. Thank goodness for Nicolette, who still lives directly across from us, and our good friend Chris who is just down the hill.

The build-up to Halloween may help me survive the final weeks of campaign season. We’ve pretty much stopped answering our phone, we’ve had so many calls exhorting us to vote one way or the other. At least two or three every day. If we didn’t know before that Virginia was a hotly contested state…  So many people here in Washington and elsewhere across the country seem gripped by a kind of temporary madness, passionately declaring their support of one candidate as though the other guy’s victory would mean the end of the world. I know how I plan to vote, but I don’t expect major changes no matter who wins. After all, isn’t that the great thing about the U.S.? No matter which party wins the presidency, the government and the rest of our lives continue quite smoothly.