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| What Gives? |
Here are the first of our tomatoes for
the year. You'll notice they're in simple, boring wire cages. Yes, I
grow my tomatoes in wire cages. What gives, right? This stuff is my
profession, shouldn't I be above such a “Home Depot” garden
solution? How could I stoop to such garden-variety gardening? After
all, isn't any self-respecting gardener, when confronted with a
problem in the garden—in this case how to support tomato plants and
their impending load—duty-bound to ignore the advice of every other
self-respecting gardener and come up with his or her own perfect,
unassailable method against which all other methods pale like a Scot
in Winter (e.g. yours truly). Is this not what makes one a “serious”
gardener? Well, that and a casual derision at the obvious
shortcomings of every other solution out there. So maybe I'm not such
a “serious” gardener after all. Could that be it? Either that or
…
Maybe this is the horticultural
equivalent of being a hipster. The wire cages are ironic, right? The
rejection of modern innovation through a loathing embrace of
nostalgia. I'm making a statement. If you don't get it, forget it. Or
…
Maybe I'm simply sparing you all the
shame of seeing your own harvest whimper next to the obscene
bounty unleashed by the implementation of my own unique modern twist
on some arcane tomato trellising system I stumbled across in the
dusty cloisters of an old French monastery. That's probably it. I do
spend a lot of time in dusty cloisters. Or …
Maybe I already bought all these tomato
cages and I'm too cheap to spend additional resources on research and
development to hold up my Sungolds. Or …
Maybe, as father of two young children,
I perform my gardening in two-minute bursts whenever no one happens
to be eating rocks or crying about tight-fitting clothes, and thus my
gardening solutions must be easier than putting a swim suit on a
3-year-old. Or …
Maybe these aren't really the tomatoes
I'll be growing this year. Maybe I staged the whole thing as an
elaborate ruse to confuse readers and protect trade secrets. The real
tomatoes are yet to come. The real tomatoes are behind the curtain.
The real tomatoes are in an underground facility, in aqueous culture,
tended by a super-intelligent but catty octopus named Hans! There
are no real tomatoes! Or …
Or maybe I'm just lazy.
You decide.
