Sometimes things just don’t go your way, and sometimes that happens for well over a week, and you rage at the stars and you wonder what karmic injustice you performed on another and you don’t even kill all the cucumber beetles in the hopes that saving their lives will help turn your luck around.
And then you go out in the garden and spend hours out there during the day, and all your Big Beef tomatoes are green as Lyle the Crocodile, and you finish your work and you go inside and you do some other things. Then the light starts to turn warm and the temperature starts to drop a little and the back yard is cast into shadows, so you decide to walk back out there and take one more look at your buddies, the plants, just to see how they’re doing.
To your great delight, the first thing you notice, the very first thing, is the following:
Sometime during the four hours between when you came in and washed the garden dirt off your hands and when you walked back out there, a tomato began to turn.
All’s right with the world, folks. At least for the moment.
on Jul 24th, 2006 at 6:47 am
The tension is killing me, are you going to post a 24 hour guard on it?
on Jul 24th, 2006 at 7:37 am
I would if I could…if one of the yard critters takes a bite out of it, so help me God…
It was still intact this morning when I left for work, at least.
on Jul 24th, 2006 at 10:10 am
They’re beautiful! Good luck, Genie! I hope the squirrels in Iowa are shyer than the ones I deal with!
on Jul 24th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
Jeanne, your tomato situation breaks my heart…I hope you’re able to at least salvage a few from the squirrels!
on Aug 7th, 2006 at 5:43 am
[...] I harvested the first red tomato off our Big Beef plant at least a week ago. A small hole had developed in its skin, and I was afraid that leaving it out to ripen in the elements would mean I’d end up with a rotten tomato. [...]