Ok slowdown, you will need to be realistic.
Let this be the year that you don’t go ballistic.
The tomato plot can only support nine or ten.
The baby’s coming, you’ll be helping Shannyn!
Oh, the jungled isle of tomato varieties.
So many!! … but with different similarities!
Expansive tables, ran longer than from A to B.
My cart was filled! Oh glee, what a great shopping spree!
Yes, I went overboard. I did it once again
I really can’t take all of the hoarding blame
When presented with so many super choices
It’s simply the begging of my inner voices
My intention was only 10 tomatoes to plant
But 16 had to share space, with soil now more scant.
Cherry, roma, yellow, black, zebra plus beefsteak
Soft loamy earth, bright summer sun, for them to bake
Their only daily nurturing consistencies
Were timed waterings and a cool morning breeze
Some received supporting stakes and sucker pruning
But most got just plain neglect and rampant growing
Oh well, it was a busy year of “other” things
Sista’s wedding, grandbabies, and traveling flings
From my window I could see, the tomato plot
Overgrown, tumbling, ripe red and starting to rot.
I’m a guilty gardener, it is a sinful waste
Why didn’t I plant less starts? It’s a mondo mistake
Ruin. The final mess came after wind and storm
I must get out there, to bring back the tidy norm
I put on my boots, grabbed nippers and a bucket
Hacked it down, found a few tomatoes to plucket
But to my surprise, it was nowhere near all lost!
Pounds of tomatoes were there for me, not Jack Frost
Another bucket, two bins and three stainless bowls
Filled to the brims with tomatoes from red to gold
Abundance of lush orbs, too many to count-ee!
I’m so thankful for this unexpected bounty!
With these colourful tomatoes I canned small batches of tomato juice, yellow tomato curry base, a few jars of green tomato mincemeat for the holidays and green tomato & mango chutney for a Indian food condiment. About 10 of the perfect beefsteak tomatoes are at different stages of ripeness on our window sill.