First June Tomato
We're in the hot, dry period of June, before the monsoon gets here in July to give us some moisture, and the tomatoes I bought in April and planted last month all have fruit on them and I was able to pick this small one tonight and make it a part of a big chef salad. We've almost never had ripe tomatoes in years past before mid-August. Among the plants is a patio tomato which some fruit was turning color when we left for Utah at the beginning of the month. When I got back, the orange tomatoes were all gone, victims of snails, so the slug bait is out now.

The scouts went to camp Rand last week and the older boys made their own camp in the Zuni mountains. Another one of those cold late spring storms came through Wednesday night and it snowed at both camps. Jason Payne in the bishopric went with the older boys. He awoke in the middle of the night -- "All I saw outside the tent was this big expanse of white; I didn't even want to wake up the leader to tell him about it." But the dry climate has a sure grip on us now.

I home-teach a 70-year old lady, Mary, whose grown up kids dumped all ther dogs off on her (3 at present), among which is a boxer named Maia; aimiable but still like a puppy and strong as a horse. She was walking Maia in her back yard when a neighbor's dog jumped the fence into her yard and Maia took off after it with a lead wrapped around Mary's wrist. She got dragged across the yard and into a pile of rocks, blackening her eyes, bloodying her nose and breaking a thumb; spraining the other. So Jon and I were up there Sunday giving her a blessing. Her back yard fronts the mountain wildland, so she can't let any of the small dogs out at night. Several coyotes come down at night and in the morning and taunt the dogs to come out, so they can get one. Mary says that the coyotes walk along the top of her back wall in the morning.