Gracilis is a variant that is slightly less tall and has slightly slimmer culms.

Shekanahh, For what it is worth, I think most colorful heirlooms are higher in nutrients and studies have shown organically grown produce is higher in antioxidants, which makes sense because the organically-grown produce have to fight diseases and pests on their own, thereby producing their own stronger phytochemicals and antioxidants in the process. (My taste buds tell me many heirlooms are superior in flavor too, and so is organically grown produce.) When we moved here to very rural Love County in the late 1990s, I think I was pretty much tagged a "hippie" by the old farmer and old rancher crowd around me because I grew heirloom varieties in odd colors and I grew them organically. Good heavens! Clearly they all thought I was nuts and they tried hard to convert me to chemically-based gardening. Some of them now grow and love Black Krim and Cherokee Purple as much as I do, by the way, because good-flavored tomatoes won them over (although they thought I was giving them "rotten" tomatoes the first time I gave them black and purple ones to eat). Occasionally, one of them asks me about an organic solution to a garden problem now, so I feel like they've accepted me and my "unorthodox" ways even if I haven't fully converted them to organics. The dark-colored tomatoes are my favorites. Some years I have grown as many as 10-15 different varieties of black, purple or pink tomatoes. This year I dropped a lot of the blacks in order to try some new red hybrids, but undoubtedly next year I'll grow fewer reds and more blacks. I grow a lot of yellows, golds, oranges and pinks too. Just because the grocery store world wants red tomatoes doesn't mean the rest of us can't grow the other ones. This year, I dropped Cherokee Purple and Black Krim, both of which I have grown for many years because I was growing Indian Stripe and True Black Brandywine. Then, somewhere along the way, something happened to my two True Black Brandywine plants---one was snapped in half while very small and still in its paper cup (and I was at an all-day-long wild fire, so didn't get home in time to find it and root the broken top before it wilted and died) and then the other one just wilted and die, perhaps from severe windburn on a day I was hardening off the plants and was at another wild fire. I could have survived without Black Krim, but then when I saw it, I thought of the two dead Black Brandywines and decided to get one. Aunt Ruby's was an impulse buy just because it is such a tasty tomato. If you want to grow some of the black and purple ones, here's some great ones: Black Cherry (indescribably delicious) Black Krim (long time favorite, but True Black Brandywine is more productive for me and cracks less) True Black Brandywine (I got my seed from rareseeds.com) Cherokee Purple (first "purple" tomato I ever grew and a ong-time fave) Cherokee Chocolate Indian Stripe (has more-or-less replaced Cherokee Purple for me and is believed to be a variant of Cherokee Purple--I'll write a paragraph about its history below) Carbon Black From Tula Black Sea Man Black Plum Black Pear Paul Robeson Chocolate Stripes (new for me this year and I have 4 of these planted--two in the ground and two in containers) Pruden's Purple Indian Stripe: This tomato has achieved the impossible---it has gotten me to drop Cherokee Purple after growing it for well over a decade! I thought nothing would ever replace CP, but IS has. However, when you are growing Indian Stripe, you still ARE growing a version of Cherokee Purple. Indian Stripe was introduced by Dr. Carolyn Male after she received seed from a Texas gardener who I believe got them from an Arkansas gardener who knew them as Arkansas Zebra. They are believed (by Carolyn Male and by Craig LeHoullier who originally received seed for Cherokee Purple from JD Green in Tennessee) to be a variant of Cherokee Purple that was grown in isolation in Arkansas for many years (many Cherokee people settled in Arkansas), but IS has slightly smaller and slightly lighter-colored fruit with distinctive darker stripes both in the green and ripe stage. IS grows more fruit than CP in its clusters and, in my garden, it is slightly earlier than CP and definitely more productive and with less fruit cracking. The flavor of IS is either exactly the same as CP or slightly better, and if Dr. Carolyn and Craig LeHoullier believe IS is a variant of CP, that's good enough for me since they are the two people responsible for "saving" these two heirlooms and making them widely available. I got my seed of Indian Stripe from Victory Seeds and Carolyn was their seed source. For years I have said that if I could only grow one tomato variety it would be Black Krim. However, since True Black Brandywine has proven to be just as flavorful and produces more fruit per plant, I'd have to say it would be my "only" if I could plant just one variety, and Indian Stripe would be my second choice. Honestly, Brandywine would be my choice of an "only" variety if it would produce more than six fruit per plant per summer in our climate, but it doesn't, so it isn't. Carol, You are a woman after my own heart! I think ProMix would make a lovely gift for any gardener for any occasion. In our family, practical gifts are cherished much more than less useful ones. I think woodworking equipment is much more useful than guns myself. DS and DH have quite a few guns between them, but they don't get used as much as any and all of my gardening tools. Dawn

What you have is probably not an orb weaver, since they top out at 3/4", which, even if your husband is an arachnophobe, doesn't constitute "huge". Farysoapgirl has posted a picture of an argiope, which is known as "banana spider", "gardener's friend" and several other common names, and the female can be 1 1/8" in size. By all means, encourage this spider to stay put and eat insects--she/he isn't called gardener's friend for nothing! We have loads of them and treasure each and every one. Their web has a herringbone pattern in the middle, which some entomologists think makes it invisible to insects. I have seen them capture many grasshoppers, which makes them garden-friendly in my book!

Nice shot! I don't know why I don't see them here anymore. when we had a big vegetable garden they were the star attraction.