A Winter View Of One Of My Favorite Garden Tools
For years I cobbled together all manner of apparatus to trellis my tomatoes: t-posts and baling twine, baby Lodgepole pine trees, untreated wood scraps from the shop, left over field fencing, if it could bear weight I would secure a tomato plant to it. My friend's father took pity on me, and gifted me with the most amazing tomato cages. They are made out of welded Rebar, and you can plant four tomato plants within the cage of rusted steel awesomeness! I train the tomato plants up through the cage and let them cascade down the outer edges. Have I mentioned how much I love these things? Doug (my friend's dad) might possibly be one of my favorite humans to ever exist. He knows his worth to me due to a never-ending supply of cake products!
Most of my tomato cages are stored safely in one of the various farm sheds for the winter, but I didn't get to this one. I might be known to plunk plants into any available space, and there happened to be some for vegetable rent in my flower bed this spring. Sometimes, I just look out my door at that frozen cage, occupied by the shriveled remains of last season's nightshade dwellers, and I get all excited to start planning for next year's agricultural challenges. Why today alone I calculated square footage and yields for the crops that I want to attempt this next growing season! This bit of gardening fever occurred why I was warming my bruised carcass after hurtling down a gigantic sled hill with a bunch of rowdy 4H kids at Farragut State Park. Apparently because I am of their stature they believe that I like to sled. Their belief is not misplaced.
I'll leave you this evening with the view out my back door; It's a view that makes one prone to contemplation, even if in my case that moment might have been filled with wonderment that I didn't have a forty pound bird gobbling in my face. At eye level. Obnoxiously.
Steem on ya'll!
All images were taken by the author on my iPhone.
Written with StackEdit.