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Tomatoes dominate summer With our terrific, new USDA-certified "pretty big yard," my wife decided this year to fully indulge her gardening fancies. I knew we were in trouble when she decided we needed help from a tractor. She had our kind neighbors plow up a plot that was roughly the size of our first home. She then set about making this into her dream garden. She hauled manure-laden soil from our old corrals - dozens of wheel-barrow loads. At her direction, I designed and carefully built a fence around the garden to keep the vermin out. Any critter unable to get through that fence though should be returned to wild-life remedial school. In fact, one of our new puppies accidentally blundered into the fence and fell through into the garden. The one thing my fence did stop, though, was the lawnmower. As a result, kochia weed grew along the fence into a hedge of sorts that was so tough and formidable that no creature great or small could penetrate it and gain access to her precious garden. After many hours of preparation, 24 tomato plants and a similar number of pepper plants were carefully transplanted into the heavily worked soil. For about a week those plants just sat there, forlorn and weak looking; too far apart, they looked to be no match for the elements, especially Colorado elements. Sure enough, after about a week, a great wind came upon the land and blew all day and night. When the storm passed and the dust returned to the ground we ventured out to check our plants. It was a sad sight, indeed, that greeted us. There they stood, nothing but pitiful little stems poking up from the ground like so many twigs. There wasn't one single leaf, branch, or bloom left in the entire garden. Those sad little stems seemed to look reproachfully at us for allowing their misuse and devastation at the hands of the vicious wind. "What a colossal waste of time," I snapped to my wife. She just looked patiently at me and hummed along. I guess she kept watering those sad little stems, and a few weeks later I was startled to find that barren garden had transformed into a rioting jungle of interlaced tomato plants. Still, there were no tomatoes. But, there were blooms and green ones aplenty. We waited impatiently for the first ripe fruit to arrive. At last they came, initially in ones and twos, then in fives and tens. Suddenly though, ripe tomatoes poured fourth in a torrent. Our home seemed like a lonely garrison on the plains being overrun by a pitiless cavalry of tomatoes. They came large and small, oblong and round, short, tall, fat, skinny, sweet, tart, high-on-the-bush and low-to-the-ground, and still they just came. When I arrived home in the evenings and asked my wife about her day, it was like listening to Bubba from Forest Gump talk about shrimp. Day after day she undertook a litany of tomato-based activities: Salsa, sauce and frozen tomatoes, tomatoes with beans, with corn, with squash, with shrimp, with salad, with apples, with potatoes, with eggs, with artichokes, and on and on. At last, we knew we needed help and called on neighbors and friends. We lured them to our home with the promise of a few home-grown vegetables. When they arrived, my wife greeted them with a small basket of five or six tastefully arranged tomatoes. While she engaged the unsuspecting victim in charming conversation, the kids and I would frantically race from the house to their car, leaving dozens of ripe and ready tomatoes in their back seat. Though we've eaten, canned, frozen and given tomatoes away until we're exhausted they keep coming. We've cut their water off, but still they come. My wife awoke last night in a cold sweat crying out about tomatoes and still they come. We eagerly await our rescue in the form of the first frost. The tomatoes were wonderful - at first - and we will plant again next year. However, next year we will plant with a proper respect for this rich Colorado loam. Planting 24 tomato plants here was like throwing lit matches down in a hay field: We were destined to be overrun from the outset. Ah well, maybe next year... I hear cucumbers might do well here.--Lance Bolton is president of Northeastern Junior College. He and his family moved here from Delaware in 2006.
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