Friday garden update

To the left is the watermelon patch. Remember when it was just 2 leaves? Now we can't even see the ground. No melons yet, but lots of yellow flowers. I saw 2 fluorescent green grasshoppers in there today, so I'll be scared to pick melons when that day comes. Above is the tomato plant. The tiny tomatoes are now turning red. Which leads to an interesting mystery. Why am I getting cherry tomatoes when I planted orange tomatoes? I planted a variety called Patio Orange. They should be medium-sized and bright orange in color, without a hint of red. The tomatoes on my plants are definitely turning red, and they are very small. I could explain "small" by the clearly overcrowded pot, but I don't get why they are red. They are delicious, though. I had imagined the harvest would be so big that I would be giving tomatoes to all my neighbors, but that won't happen if I keep standing there and eating them off the vine every day.

This is not the only area of my garden where I'm getting things I did not plant. I have a flower bed I divided into 4 sections that I work separately. In 2 sections I planted Coleus, a plant with purple leaves. The other 2 sections got flowers. All from seed. The 2 Coleus sections now have little plants with purple leaves, along with other ground covers that I know I didn't plant. And they are not the weeds that are natural to my neighborhood, and they are not appearing in any of my other beds. They are pretty, though, so I don't rip them out. But I have to wonder about these seed packets. Luckily, I don't mind random seed packets, which apparently is what I am getting. This reminds me of my local Baja Fresh, which hands out random plates of food. I don't mind though, I just eat whatever they give me.