Yes, we have no tomatoes




 

 

No kidding, the bloom is off the rose. That is, the bloom is off our tomato plants. At Camino de Catastrophe, we have a serious case of down-and-dirty blossom rot.

Pray to the patron saint of Martha Stewart. Drop withered cuttings at the font of St. John the Appleseed. Call out the blossom rot crisis counselor. The former farmer of America, aka Grumps, is at defcon four and counting. Counting each blossom as it shrivels off the vine.

Really. I don’t know why he is so alarmed. Shriveling . . . heck, sounds like us. It’s a language we speak. What’s the problem?

As if the entire world population depended upon our garden’s yield of tomatoes, Grumps hauled his sorry derriere, faster than a speeding bullet, down to plant doctor Glen Izard at Nordic Nursery in Newbury Park, seeking an immediate answer to his woes.

But first, he peeked over yards in the neighborhood to see if they . . . heaven forbid . . . presented the same withering blossoms.

What he discovered is that a very clever neighbor has planted a vineyard. In that case, stay tuned because we’ll soon be Camino de Cabernet. Voila! Oh that’s another column in about three years. We’re cheering for this neighbor. To heck with tomatoes.

So after the mad dash to Nordic Nursery, turns out we might be drowning the little suckers. No surprise since we have an irrigation system configured by Grumps with a little help from his friends at the Aswan Dam and the Roman aqueducts. If you see geysers in the distance, it’s probably Grumps saturating the crops. Too bad they don’t sell scuba gear for plants because ours could use it.

Here’s how it works, you see. To grow six tomatoes a week, we must precisely drip liquid on each plant, synchronized, like the fountains at the Bellagio in Vegas. Too bad Strauss didn’t write a waltz for tomato plants because if he did, we’d certainly be serenading the little turkeys.

We’ve got more canals than Venice, more tubes than the Los Robles emergency room, more drippers than the neighborhood swimming hole at CLU. It’s a “more” not “less” philosophy.

Pretty soon, we’ll install some boats and sing “It’s a Small World after all. . . .”

All things considered, a little rot isn’t so bad unless you have visions of beefsteak tomatoes dancing in your brain like Grumps does. Growing up on a farm in Illinois, he escaped to the big city in search of Astroturf and sleeping in till noon.

But, tucked away in his DNA along with a penchant for game shows and guacamole, is a need to grow red round things that hang on vines.

Sure, it could be worse. I could be a shrimp trying to survive in the Gulf of Mexico rather than a lumpy old broad hiding from the Conejo sun with a bag of dark chocolate Mallomars, a copy of “O” and a bottle of acidophilus.

Or, I could be running for governor of California under the mistaken delusion that the state can be helped.

It’s a rot crisis we can weather. The magical Newbury Park plant doctor sold us “the spray.” We shut down the fountains. Life is good. Bring on the blossoms.

You can reach Elizabeth Kirby
at kirby@theacorn.com or visit her
blog at http://open.salon.com/blog/
elizabethkirby.


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