Rotten Devil Tomato, Baby Stringbeans, & Teeny Tommy Toes

Well, as all good things must come to an end so does the life of the "Devil Tomato." However, I do think she was looking most particularly devilish there near the end!

Yeah. I "saved" her until the fruit flies got to be a bit much.

There were, unfortunately, no other interesting tomato demons lurking about the garden.

However, my son, who is almost three, still enjoys toting his "tomato bucket" around in anticipation of trying to find a few end of summer ripe ones. With a rather glum look on his face yesterday he refused to pick any tomatoes. I asked him what was wrong. As he stomped off he shouted back to me, "None of these tomatoes have noses and faces!"

While there haven't been any other tomato devils, there have been a couple other interesting little babies.

This little stringbean baby, is actually two stringbeans which merged on the vine into one lovely and tiny little "fetus." This reminded me of either a Mother Nature or garden variety version of Camille Allen's Marzipan Babies. In case you're not familiar with Camille Allen, her miniature baby dolls are definitely not really made out of marzipan. They're delicately hand-crafted clay sculptures which she creates in limited editions. They are occasionally listed for sale on eBay.

While my doll collection is carefully stored until my small children realize that a Simon Halbig is not translation for, "See mommy, how big!" as something they reach out to touch accidentally breaks, I am in complete awe of the Marzipan Babies. I was equally in awe of this little stringbean baby as well...this is my doll collecting...on a "shoestring budget!"

Though I still think a great idea for a real Marzipan Baby collection would be vegetables, or "Fresh from the Farm." Instead of pink, blue, or white crochet diapers and hats, how 'bout green ones with miniature stems? Twins or triplets in a pea pod? An orange hat and diaper for a new little pumpkin? Yellow for sweet silver queen corn?

Ok. I'll stop. But not until I've shown you one more baby from the vegetable garden.

I call this one Teeny Tommy Toes...

What's so neat about "Teeny Tommy Toes" is that he's still so little that his skin is translucent and you can see his spinal cord!

If you never look at produce the same way again, I will definitely be elated!