Greetings! Welcome to #WeekendCoffeeShare, thank you for meeting me on this Saturday. It’s much too warm to be outside, so please come in and enjoy a nice cool beverage, or warm, your choice. I had an iced matcha latte from Starbucks a few days ago, it wasn’t bad.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you I am preparing for heat for the next two days. There’s an excessive heat warning in my area from tomorrow (Sunday) until at least Monday. That’s at least 2 days of upper 90’s and lower 100’s degrees temperatures. Nothing and no one (not even me) will be happy.

For my garden, I have erected a tent-like structure over my large raised bed with a couple of 6-feet stakes. Then secured a 10-feet-by-12-feet piece of 50% shade cloth over the bed. I have ordered an additional shade cloth to be draped over the front yard tower and it’s scheduled to be arriving today. Hopefully, it’ll get here on time. I can tell you my plants won’t be happy to have a shade cloth thrown over them but at least they’ll survive.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you after a few weeks of learn Hiragana on a website and not learning a single coherent sentence in Japanese, I decided to switch tactics. I decided to try Duolingo after one of my co-workers told me he was using it to learn Mandarin. In Duolingo, I’m finding out Japanese isn’t that hard.

Maybe that’s just me but I’m currently acing all the lessons and the sentences I’m learning are sticking. Do I sense a hidden talent?

Perhaps soon, I’ll be tri-lingual instead of bi-lingual.

If we were having coffee, I thought about putting yesterday’s thought post in this post but as I typed up my thoughts, it turned out my single thought ran longer than I initially thought. It was nearly 500 words by the time I finished with it but it was perhaps the most ridiculous thing mom has ever suggested. It was the co-raising part that was ridiculous and horrifying, not the other part.

Finally, I might have reached peak tomato harvest this week. I planted mostly determinate tomato varieties this year, meaning most of the tomatoes on the plant will ripen at once and then stop growing, as opposed to indeterminate tomatoes, which will peak later in the season and will keep growing until frost. Though my indeterminate tomatoes have yet to ripen, I have not let them go wild as I have in the previous years. I don’t want to get so tired of tomatoes that I never want to look at another tomato. I want to enjoy tomatoes while I have them.

With that said, I have kept my indeterminate tomatoes to minimum of 2 leaders and a maximum of 3 this year. Leaders are main branches on a plant. Hopefully, that’ll keep the tomato harvest to a manageable amount.

#weekendcoffeeshare is hosted by Natalie of Natalie the Explorer. I appreciate you stopping by. Until next we chat. 🙂