Tomatoes
July 12, 2007
The summer, as I keep moaning, hasn’t really kicked off. We get glimpses of blue skies and promises that things will get better, but then it’s echoes of Spring or worse – premature lapses of grey, like early omens of an inevitable slow but steady demise into Autumn.
The cold these days is the warning sign before the bend.
Tomatoes, anyway. Or the plants thereof.
Mine are stringy, pathetic reminders of last year’s plants. I thought I was doing something wrong, but they are in the same position as they are every year, right there on the east fence.
Hey – funny how that makes my house sound bigger than it is. It’s a fence and it’s on the east. My point is it gets the sun from about 11 and then right through until it sets.
But having spoken to those with fingers are darker hue of green, I have discovered that no one’s having much luck.
So why, glancing out the window from the shower today, do I notice in my neighbour’s garden plants three to four feet high pregnant with litters of under-ripe plump green fruit?
On their east fence, just like mine.
Their house isn’t bigger than mine. It’s just a fence and it’s on the east. Technically, it’s my west fence. I also have a fence to the south, which runs the length of my grounds and eventually connects the two.
Tomatoes.
Are they trying to taunt me? Where do they get off trying to keep up with the Joneses? Especially when I am the fucking Joneses.
Well, it turns out they bought the plants that way, matured in a heated greenhouse and the plunked down in their garden. “Right there against the east fence. Next to Jones, so every morning in the shower he sees our plants.”
What’s the fun of buying mature tomato plants? It’s the horticultural equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.
You may as well buy tomatoes. Where’s about the nurturing? The feeding? The pinching out?
Fuckers.
Watch this grow. (I do a sort of slow unfolding of my middle finger.) Oooh, look at that. Mmmmm, that’s going to be a beauty. (Visual gag) There it comes. Look at that? You like that?
Assmonkeys.
Also – today is Henry David Thoreau’s (Thoreau’x?) birthday. He’d be 190 today and he was a friend of my man Ralph Waldo Emerson. I’ve written about both a lot on these pages, and here’s a post inspired by HDT written about this time last year.
10 comments
Did you nurture and water and care for andpinch out that hand gesture ?
The tomatoes might be growing a bit faster on that side of the fence.
But you are flipping them off a whole lot better.
They only wish they had your spirit…they’d trade a rip, juicy one for what you have.
GREAT post. You’re the only person I know who could pull off a visual gag like that in a blog post without using a picture. My mascara is probably running now, fucker.
“Are they trying to taunt me? Where do they get off trying to keep up with the Joneses? Especially when I am the fucking Joneses.”
Brilliance!! I chuckled out loud! (COL?)
Cheats! The lot of them!
Have you seen this year’s runner beans? Limp isn’t the word!
“I also have a fence to the south, which runs the length of my grounds and eventually connects the two.”
Now, that makes it sound like you live in a palace. Here in Texas we call them lawns or yards.
If your tomatoes continue to perform poorly, I would fire your grounds keeper.
Wendy – Cheers. That’s an achievement on such a grey morning.
Ed – No, mother nature took care of that one on it’s own.
Kim – Hey, welcome – They can keep them. Unless they fall on my side of the fence.
Sooz – Don’t get me started on my rasberries.
Dawn – it’s not that big. I can’t blame the (non-existant) grounds staff.
Why don’t you just buy tomatoes?
Surely gardens are just for sitting in and the odd barbeque?
Today tomatoes, yesterday Mollusks- will tomorrow be manhattan clam chowder?
Ed raises a good point there, Sam. Someone’s got to grow the tomatoes. It may as well be you.
I don’t really like tomatoes.
Leave a comment. Play nice. I will turn this blog around.