Better

Feeling better, day by day: when I cough, I think my head will explode, but fortunately I'm not coughing all that much. I attribute my recovery to the remarkable healing qualities of kim chee, which we had with dinner, and which I thoroughy enjoyed in today's leftover lunch.

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Met with Paula this morning: she handed over some files and correspondence that I'll need for fall. It's now as official as it gets: I'm the interim editor of West Branch. We're setting the fall issue (#59) this summer and I am very happy to say it includes new work by Betsy Sholl and Paul Guest. This fall, we're reading for the spring '07 issue (#60).

Have poems, you say? Have an essay? A dandy story that will knock my socks off? We resume reading on August 15. Send poems by mail [West Branch, Bucknell Hall, Bucknell Univ, Lewisburg PA 17837]. You can save trees, stamps, time by e-mailing your fiction to wbfiction at bucknell dot edu. (Yeah, we'll still read fiction via snailmail.)

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One of the cool plants I started from seed last month is the smallest, damned-cutest tomato I have ever laid eyes on. It's called 'Micro Tom' and when the seedlings first came up, I thought "You have got to be kidding me, these puppies will shrivel to gray-blue wisps by morning." Or I thought something like that. Only four seedlings even came up (though I think I planted six seeds, so that's actually not too bad).

I start my tomatoes in egg cartons. I cut off the top lid, seal the tab holes with waterproof packing tape, and use it for a saucer/tray. Then I cut a slit in the bottom of each cup and poke a sliver of capillary matting--about 1.5 inches long x 1/16 inch wide--up in there: about 1/3 inside the cup with the other 2/3 dangling out. This way I can water the whole contraption from the bottom: the wee wicks suck up the water evenly.

So I had three tom. varieties in this one egg carton, and the last seedlings--the absolute runts, the slow boys in the class, were these micros. Yesterday I finally popped them out--nice root balls, healthy, stocky leaf development, and two wittle teeny flower buds--and set them into flower pots. I brought one to the office this morning. The pot itself is less than 3 inches tall, 4 inches wide. The tomato plant (actually two, so intertwined were the roots that I decided to let the twins remain in their conjoined state) is maybe 1.5 inches tall, about 3 inches wide, stocky, fuzzy, very very green and just cute as shit. Two of the flower buds are starting to open. I am hoping to keep Tom-Tom going on my window sill all year. Snow's gonna fly, but my Micro tomatoes (size of a pea? a nickel? who knows?) will bask in their own ruddy glow.