His 'n Hers

When we first planted our garden, Steve was gung-ho for tomatoes. He had so many tomato starts flourishing on our kitchen counter, waiting for spring. Unfortunately, most of them shriveled up and died in the transplant process. Undaunted, he bought some little starts of exotic sounding heirlooms, tigrellas, cherries, lemon boys, even some sort of rainbow pineapple tomato.
Then Steve spent hours building a supporting trellis. It was ten feet tall, and perfectly latticed with twine in a lovely diamond pattern. I tried not to laugh, looking at our foot tall tomato plants and the giant ladder they had to climb. Steve has always been an optimist.

In the meantime, after looking at all our plants, I realized that we hadn't planted any sensible tomatoes like romas- my favorite tomato for cooking with. I mean, there are only so many things you can do with cherry tomatoes. So I planted my own row. Steve mentioned building another trellis, but I laughed it off. I would just buy some of those wire cages later if they needed it.
Well, things started to grow, and grow, and grow. I couldn't find any of those round tomato cages, so I bought some tall thin bamboo stakes. I spent hours hacking back the jungle of tomato vines in my row. They had gotten so heavy and tangled up that I couldn't tell which plant they were, and they were crushing all their own fruit. I finally got them all trussed up, and they looked pretty ridiculous, but at least they were in some semblance of order. I was pretty proud of my efforts, but then I turned around and saw Steve's immaculate plants, climbing obediently up his ten foot ladder- they had made it all the way to the top and then some!
When Steve saw my attempts, he didn't laugh too loudly, and merely hoped they would hold up. I somewhat grumpily replied that they might be uglier than his, but I was sure they would hold.
Alas for me, this tomato story is somewhat of a recurring theme in our marriage. When will I learn that if you do it well and right from the beginning, you won't have to come in later to try and fix your initial half-hearted attempt. These were my tomatoes this morning-



And these were his



In my defense, I must at least say that my plants seem to be producing just as well as his, which is the point, right?

Oh, and speaking of tomatoes, this is our little friend who has been guarding the fruit from vicious tomato sucking bugs. Isn't he a beaut? We have watched him grow from a little 1/2 inch fella to a rather impressive 2 inches plus. Not sure what kind of spider it is, but the boys have christened him Hairy Potter.