Normally, having a hobby is good for the soul. It’s a stretch of time where you can forget the worries of the world and simply enjoy doing something you love. Other times, your hobby can turn into a nightmare. A garden can go on the attack.

Around this time of the year, The Funny Farm can be very scary place. I never quite know who’s lurking in there.

Let me stop for a moment and explain a bit about gardening. We idiots who garden have dreams of the perfect vegetables, plenty of rain and no bugs. It is a magical gardening place that does not exist in this state.

Now don’t get me wrong. We have our tricks here to still grow great vegetables. The extra watering, fertilizer and organic bug spray can work. In fact, sometimes they work too well.

That’s the problem I’m having this year. The garden is going growing by leaps and bounds making my tomatoes the enemy. It strikes terror in my soul when I catch a glimpse of all the bright red color coming out of my garden. I realize I’ll have to deal with more tomatoes.

I know what you’re thinking. “Ah, fresh tomatoes. Nothing better.” Easy for you to say. I hate the taste of a fresh tomato. It all stems back to Dearly Demented Mom forcing me to eat a raw tomato which I immediately spit out. I gave them up that day. Obviously, a lack of fresh tomatoes can warp a woman’s brain. At least it has mine.

Now here’s the strange thing. I love spaghetti sauce, stewed tomatoes, ketchup, salsa, and fried green tomatoes – anything that has been cooked. Just don’t try and slide a raw tomato on my BLT. It could be grounds for divorce.

So, like an idiot, every year I run out and plant 24 tomato plants. I grow the round kind, the pear shaped kind and the small cherry kind. In June they mount a full attack so I drag bushels of raw tomatoes in my house. I guess it’s a self-inflicted torture.

There are five stages to a tomato. Green, blush red, red, dark red and rotten. Now I understand why people throw rotten tomatoes. There’s just nothing else to do with them.

But for all the rest, I must “put them up.” This requires much time and effort. With my work schedule of late, I don’t have much time for canning like my fancy retired lady friends do.

Plus no matter how hard I try I can’t get Stroke of Genius interested in making homemade Tomato Basil Spaghetti sauce. He claims his hobby of choice is chasing women.

So I have spent every day off I’ve had over the last month playing with tomatoes. I don’t understand how all those Heinz employees do it. I’m really starting to see red.

I’ve already made enough spaghetti sauce to keep Italy fed for a month, so now I guess it’s on to salsa.  Doritos sales are sure to go up soon.

There is only one way to end this torture and I think I’ve do it in the dead of night tonight. I’m going to sneak out to the garden, pick all the green tomatoes and then rip the plants out of the ground.

Maybe if there are no witnesses, the Master Gardeners can’t have me arrested for wrongful plant death. In my defense, I simply can’t take anymore. I can not be held responsible at my “ripe” old age.

Fresh from The Funny Farm

Spreading laughter throughout the world…one chuckle at a time.

Mikie Baker
www.mikiebaker.com