Up with tomatoes!

I'm not much of a baker (though I'm getting better) because I lack precision.

As a gardener, I'm experimental, and more "get it done now" as I fight my tendency toward perfection derived procrastination. This is a battle of sometimes epic proportion in other areas of my life (as my parents, husband and friends can attest....)

Enter Kelly, who is much more orderly than I am, and thankfully, very generous with her time and energies. After I willy nilly planted up our victory garden (OK, there really *was* some thought given to it) I knew I'd need Kelly. Dubbed our neighborhood's accidental tomato farmer with a bumper crop of zebras and other glorious heirlooms, I've long admired Kelly's MacGuyver-girl instinct and vision (something I lack, though I can be taught!) and have hankered after trellising similar to what she came up with in her small tidy plots in her urban backyard last summer.

So this morning, Kelly arrived with her twins in tow (a bonus playtime for the kids!,) an enormous skein of twine, scissors, and clippers. We broke out the bamboo I harvested at Mel's, along with a few other tools. My Beloved Mister tended the children, I poured more coffee, and we got to work.

Things are looking quite a bit more pulled together, er, up -- and there's more yet to do, to help the limas, bush beans, butternut squash and wando peas grow upward, and there's a small grouping of tomatoes on the garden's other side. I may cage those, or come up with a smaller but similar trellis system.

I even let Kelly tear down the bean tee pee to put to use on the pumpkins. I'll build another. The heavy rains and hot sun of the week's end made the garden explode since I shared this photo on Wednesday! Whaddya think? How do YOU tomato?....