Ken Burns is one sexy little elf

Last night and tonight I've been watching and loving Ken Burns' new documentary on the national parks. After a mere 4 hours I'm going out on a limb and declaring it fab-u-lus.
Check it out http://www.pbs.org/nationalparks/

Another 14 pounds

I'll post picures from last weeks harvest-I made tomato juice and gazpacho. The tomato juice was incredible but the gazpacho was just ok. I'm trying to decide what to do with this haul. The neighbors took a few pounds but that still leaves a lot of tomatoes. I'm torn between roasting the tomatoes and/or making more tomato juice. Hummm

12 pounds of tomatoes

Here's yesterdays harvest

Tomato review 2009

I'll post some pictures later but since I just ate one of nearly every variety we planted I thought this would be a good time to review them.



Brandywine-best taste, fruit are big (some over a pound) but bruise easily, may be more disease prone

Dr. Wynches yellow - big, lots of fruit that ripened early

Paul Robeson - should be black but only the first few tomatoes were darker than the purple calabash, flavor is pretty bland and texture was pretty mushy

Purple calabash - interesting color and shape, decent flavor and texture

Peach - yellow fuzzy medium-small tomato, very sweet with no core

Green zebra - meaty tasty green and yellow stripped tomato, inside completely green when ripe

Roma - we only planted one which isn't providing nearly enough salsa tomatoes for us, we'll plant more next year, good flavor, very meaty, prolific

Mexican midget - small cherry, great flavor balanced sweet and acid, prolific but not as many here where it doesn't get really hot-this tomato loves heat and sun

White currant - small white/light yellow cherry, very sweet, thin skin, needs to be eaten quickly because the skin generally splits when it's picked



I'm going to try seed saving this year so we'll see how that goes next spring when I plant those seeds. We talked about reducing the varieties of tomatoes for next year but I really like nearly all the ones we planted. The Paul Robeson and white currants are the only ones that I'm willing to drop.

Water Water Everywhere

While at sea there really isn't that much to take pictures of. The first 80 or so miles are through the Straight of Georgia and Juan de Fuca but this cruise it was nearly dark by the time we got out of Saanich Inlet. And I can't get the MIMS fully up and running till we are out of Saanich (the water is too eutrophic and I'm afraid it will contaminate the tubing and membrane compared to the open ocean water), so I'm generally stuck in the lab during the scenic part of the cruise. For the next 2600 km the only thing that changes is the weather. But sometimes that change is pretty spectacular.

The view from the lab on a relatively calm day.

And the view during a storm. Of course a still picture can't capture the feeling of the world around you shifting, occasionally throwing everything that isn't firmly secured across the lab (chairs, boxes, a very large tool kit, compressed gas cylinders eek, other scientists...)

This was the scene at the lab door just before I took the above picture. Generally we don't use the water door between the aft deck and the lab-for one I can't lift the 50L carboys over that sill. However, the storm 2 weeks ago was big enough that we were taking fairly major waves over the aft deck so they put the sill back in to keep the lab from flooding. For reference, in calm seas the aft deck is 10-12 feet above the water.

I'm fascinated with the development of storms out sea. Rather than looking at the sky like you'd watch a thunderstorm develop on the prairies, you watch the water. Here is the beginning of the storm. The ripples on the surface of the water indicate the the wind is getting strong enough to disturb the water which eventually lead to the big waves and swell.

Even though we still we under nice skies, the coming storm is whipping up white caps and driving air into the water changing the color.

Nearly the end of the cruise

The past few days have been great. We had extra time so resampled 2 of the stations giving us another time scale to look at the communities-10ish days after we sampled it last rather than a few months or year later. Yesterday, I was kind of involved in catching the last tuna of the cruise (I held onto it when it was on deck to make sure it didn't go over board). All together we (royal we) have caught 21 tuna, since they're not indigenous to Canada you don't need a license to fish and I'll get to take some home. The fisher people have also caught 20ish salmon most of which the people with fishing licenses will take home, but they have shared and given the galley fresh salmon several times during the cruise so we all get to have some. Last night, one of the guys hooked a squid while salmon fishing so he switched to squid jigging and landed a 4 foot (5 foot if you count the tentacles-I don't know how to officially measure squid) Humbolt.

The third mate suggested that we head up to Hot Spring Cove on the way back because we have a bit extra time. So this morning I got to visit one of the nicest hot springs around-and sample that too. I was too busy parboiling myself to take pictures but I'll try to get some off another crew member and post those too.
Now I just have to pack up the MIMS and get ready to get back to dry land.