Living in southern California has some nice perks. Nice weather for most of the year, beautiful beaches, and there's always a lot of entertainment pretty much year round. It's been a great place for my son to grow up and a lot of family friendly areas. There are some down sides such as high taxes, it's crowded, extremely high gas prices (you almost need to take out a second mortgage to fill your gas tank,) and when you are away from home working you never really know how well your hired yard care guys are doing their job.
The last year I have been working out of state a lot so I hired a local company to take care of the yard once a week. Mow the lawn and take care of the garden and basic yard upkeep. Apparently to the guys I hired that meant mowing the lawn and making sure things were watered. They didn't pull out the weeds or cut back tomato plants that were growing out of control and didn't spray the aphids infesting my tomato plants. So my garden was a bit of a disaster when I arrived home after my last out of state contract.
The Peppers
On the bright side my pepper plants were extremely happy and loaded with peppers ready to be picked. The weeds weren't too bad to take care of thank goodness!
The Tomatoes
My poor cherry tomato plant was infested by aphids as were all the tomato plants, fortunately spraying them with neem oil took care of that problem! Those black spotted leaves should be replaced by new healthy leaves over the next months. But the tomatoes are ripe and taste great!
My Italian Heirloom tomato plants were left uncontrolled and got so heavy they tipped over the cage they had been growing in. This one will take some more effort to fix, I'm going to have to cut back a lot of the vines on the heavy side and try to straighten the cage upright again. I'm saving this project for next weekend because some of the tomatoes on that heavy side are just about ripe, so I'll pick them then cut the plant back. You can also see the aphid damaged leaves that will be replaced by healthy ones soon enough now that it's been sprayed with neem oil!
Some bonus citrus
I also have a dwarf lemon tree, that had a nice surprise ready on the tree. A fresh lemon right out of the yard! Most were still green and not nearly ready to pick yet. The tree isn't too impressive right now since I cut it back last fall and grafted some limes and oranges onto the tree. It's still a work in progress and at the moment kind of an ugly duckling so I skipped the pictures. In a few years it should be producing three different types of citrus which should be really cool!
Today I decided to take a break from silver coins, and do something different a little different just for fun. Not too worry I still have some really cool stuff to share coming up in the next few weeks!
Thank you everyone for all of your support, the Hive community is the best. I'm actively trying to recruit people who might bring some interesting content and expand our horizons! If you have any suggestions, comments, or questions please feel free to leave them below. Thanks again!
Re-blog lottery for a chance to win 3 HSBI!
Now for the winner of the re-blog lottery! Today we had 26 people re-blog my post, thank you so much! You guy are the best! The people who re-blogged were:
Voluntary daily reminder list for those who request to be on it:
If you want to be added to the list as well just feel free to ask!
Thank you everyone! I have been working to improve my engagement and all of you have really helped out! If you have any recommendations or suggestions please feel free to let me know. I'm always looking to improve my posts.
Good luck to everyone!
And since yesterday I was unable to do the draw today we are going to have two winners!
And the Wheel of Names results:
Congratulations 
I just sent over the Hive to fund your HSBI units!
Now for today's re-blog lottery! You just need to re-blog my post you will be placed on the Wheel of Names for a spin to possibly win 3 HSBI units! Just one prize for the lucky winner. An upvote is not required but is always greatly appreciated to help me fund higher prizes in the future. Bots aren't allowed to enter please. Contest ends at 14:00 (2 PM) California Pacific time tomorrow. If I somehow missed your re-blog please let me know and I'll add you to the next draw.
What are HSBI units? They are units that you can purchase to sponsor someone and you in turn receive a unit as well. This way we both benefit! They give you occasional upvotes on your posts for a lifetime, and the more you accumulate the more often you receive upvotes and the bigger they can be. You can read some more here:
If you have more questions feel free to ask.
