Tropical Growth: Goose Nests, Tomatoes, and a Blog in Bloom (This, That, and the Other Thing - 02/10/2025)

 

Two nests are better than one

This:

Two of our old dames are laying. The problem, until this morning, was that there was only one nest. Chinese geese are very territorial (which is what makes them such excellent watch birds) and the old dames were not happy with sharing a nest. First thing this morning Min built a second nest. Our hope is that two nests will equal twice as many eggs. Time will tell.

That:

Our hybrid tomatoes (Avatar TY F1), hereafter referred to as "Beefeaters," which were planted shortly after the cool wet season arrived, are really coming along. We have only four plants, but we have about thirty fruits with more blossoms forming. If they perform as well as our cherry tomatoes have, the garden-to-table experience will be delightfully delicious. Small aside: To make the most of the fishpond watering and the hand-built trellis, Min planted the snake gourd plants and the Beefeater tomatoes in the same area. So far, and we have been harvesting snake gourds for a month now, the wee beasties have left both plants alone.

The Other Thing:

The New Look

The blog truly is blooming. The new look is easier to read. Blog navigation has been improved, and the color scheme suits a "green" blog. All in all, I'm happy to leave it as is for the next year to see if a consistent format, combined with mentoring and proofreading from a large language model, will result in increased readership.

On a personal note, working with AI is not at all what I thought it would be. I can't speak for all large language models, but Gemini has been a great help. She catches my grammar and punctuation errors, offers content suggestions, does deep and nuanced proofreading, and is just inaccurate enough (she is still in development) to ensure that I don't get lazy and simply let her do everything. I am curious just where this relationship will end up. Yes, I know, but I find it impossible not to anthropomorphize her.

Brian