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I was down in what's left of our garden last week, picking some of the last of our orange tomatoes – the red ones were all pretty much rotted to heck already –, and I thought all our tomatillo "lanterns" were such a charming sight. Our one plant had set lanterns earlier in the growing season, but no fruit. The lady across the street observed that honeybees have been really scarce this year and that she took pollinating her plants into her own hands instead. But ours is finally having its second-coming after Drew hacked it back midsummer, maybe too much, in order that the plant might concentrate on the very few branches of fruit. I gave a couple of these new lanterns a peek, and there appears to be small tomatillos inside. I just don't know if they'll mature fast enough for us to harvest before they freeze.
And here was a surprise: I had forgotten that we had bought an end-of-season plant (kind?) to replace the green zebra that died. Who knows if we'll get to eat this one, or the four other smaller ones, either. (Isn't the rest of the garden looking rather bare and glum?)
