Today I just found my first red tomato of the season. I found it on the 4th of July too!
I learned as a teenager that growing a tomato around the 4th of July is special metric that gardeners get excited about. When I was maybe 13 or so my sisters and I visited my aunt and uncles house to go swimming. It was July 3rd. My uncle, a gardener, had just discovered his first red tomato of the season. He picked it. Then it went missing. Somehow it was discovered that a mystery person ate it. He became sad that his tomato was gone. He said, “Who would eat a tomato?”
I hope that I am not telling tales out of school or rubbing salt in any wounds. This incident happened in maybe 1992.
I am here to say today, I know understand his feelings. The first tomato of the year is exciting.
I will turn 45 years old later this month, but I feel like such a baby gardener. There is a Thomas Jefferson quote that I saw in a magnet in the gift shop at Monticello that says:
“But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.“
Thomas Jefferson
That is how I feel when I am doing gardening. To quote my eight year old son, I feel like “such a noob”. My next door neighbor has been extremely helpful last year and this year in helping me set up my garden. She gave me chicken wire and helped me set it up so that rabbits would not eat my young shoots. She advised me to buy deer netting to help keep the deer from eating my plants.
I tried to reuse last year’s deer netting this year. It had a few small holes but I thought it wouldn’t be a problem. The deer figured it out a week or so ago, so I had to replace my deer netting earlier this week.
Here are some pictures from where they chewed the tops of the plants off.
Anyway, it’s time for me to get ready for the 4th of July. I hope that you have some excitement today too.
Happy 4th of July!
We laugh every year about “Who would eat a tomato?” Gardening is addictive- I’m not good with vegetables, but I do like to grow, move and enjoy flowers – Perennials are my favorites because it’s so much fun to see them pop their little heads up through the dirt in the spring and grow into lovely, strong plants. Uncle Jim goes nuts fighting the groundhogs and deer every year- he’s like Wylie Coyote and the deer and ground hog are the road runner- we need an ACME fence….Happy 4th! We’ve spent lots of summer Holidays swimming and partying with you and your sisters/ good times !
Thank Aunt Heidi and Uncle Jim for always having such fun swimming parties in the summer. They were/ are the best
So who ate your uncles’ tomato?
I’ll never tell