More rain, a baby raccoon, and almost red tomatoes

It's been an interesting week so far.  We thought the boys would get to have tennis yesterday, but literally 5 minutes before the lesson was to start, there was a small shower.  It wasn't much, but it was enough to soak the court and cancel lessons.  They've only managed to have 2 lessons out of 5 due to rain!  We've never had a summer quite like this.

The garden has suffered from the excess water, but I'm pleased to see that 2 of my Italian heirloom tomatoes are trying to ripen:

 

Also, one black Krim is turning purple (the color it will be when ripe).  We've been able to get a handful of red cherry tomatoes every day this week, and the yellow ones are just ripening now.  We also were able to enjoy some tasty crescent beans and green beans.  The tiny amount of broccoli I managed to grow has been eaten as well, and we've had 3 zucchini, with more currently growing. 

 

And now for the baby raccoon story that you're wondering about.  Well, for the past week, we've had a baby (small cat-sized) raccoon trying to live in our chicken coop.  Nathaniel has been trying to catch it in the trap, but it didn't seem interested in the bait.  He finally was able to catch it last night with the help of a fishing net.  (Who knew how very handy fishing nets can be?)  Anyway, the hens are much happier not to have a raccoon hanging around, and we are thrilled that he managed to catch it before it got big enough and brave enough to actually kill one of the hens.  We did lose one hen yesterday anyway, but not to predators.  It was our oldest hen, the one that came from June last year.  I think it just died of old age, since it was around 7 years old.  It had been acting just fine up until it laid down and didn't get up, so I don't think there was any disease involved.  I will keep a close eye on the other hens just in case, but I think we're probably fine.