Tomatoes Ripening

The tomato season officially ended about a month ago but the bushes in front of the house had grown so huge they protected the growing fruit from the nasty cold nights, until two days ago. The night before we’d had a record low frosty night. All the foliage froze and turned dark. My two sage bushes suffered the same fate. Below zero temperatures are now commonplace. We are in winter and it’s only month number one. Seeing the state of these excellent garden performers, I hastened to pull out and cut out all of the stricken greenery, or blackery. It was a big job but somebody had to do it. John could have accomplished what took me an hour, in 10 or 15 minutes. I also saved every teeny growing tomato baby on all of the branches that were only half grown and lime-colored green.
The following day I washed them all up and snipped off any damaged limbs.
It was quite a collection and I pondered where to put these for a nano second and then decided to cram about half of the cherry tomatoes onto the kitchen sill. I’d already separated the damaged ones earmarked for the chickens’ feed bucket and began my labor of love, redesigning my window ledge. When I was done playing with these tomatoes, I concluded that I’d just arranged them like a painting. Pleased with myself that I turned something mundane into a piece of art, I finally sat down and thought about the state of my garden.
I could (and do) spend hours every day raking and pruning and digging up and planting in and still the garden is messy, disheveled and in a general and specific state of flux. How long will it take to rein in all in, I ask myself and always get a depressing answer. No matter how hard we try now, we got behind last winter and have never caught up. It was too cold and too rainy for most of the year. So, plants that usually thrive didn’t, but weeds grew spectacular specimens that suppressed real flowers. Our native grasses that were little dots of grass when we moved here are now the size of easy chairs or even sofas. And they’re just awful to clean up and look messy both before the haircut and afterwards. But if I can locate that stack of bibles I need to swear on, I will avow to put everything in its proper shape even if it kills me.
Judging by the way my back feels, the latter seems to be taking place.
So, this windowsill of mostly cherry tomatoes is my artistic trophy for managing to grow a profuse amount of deliciousness in yet another very sketchy season marred by weather from the dark side. Considering how few sunny days we had, I think I’ve done pretty well under less-than-ideal conditions. So well done me. Triple yay.