It's really the 4th

Even though the post will be dated the 5th, it is late (or early) enough that this still counts as my post for the 4th.

I really just want to lament my tomatoes. A handful of months ago I planted these little guys

A mixture of hierloom plants from the Wasatch Community Gardens plant sale. Japanese black, cherry, black plum, and two roma-esque varities.

Over the course of the summer those little starts grew into these guys

Sadly, that picture was taken after the storm we had this past weekend. Those plants are almost twice that height, the wind and rain knocked them over, bending most of the stalks (branches? what are they on a tomato plant?) at the wire tomato cages.

About half way through the storm I went to check on them, and much to my dismay, they were tangled up and had fallen down. They are growing in the enclosed patio of our condo, which creates a small vortex when the wind kicks up. The wind, rain, and weight of the plants had bent the cages at the base, adding to the sad situation. I put on my jacket and boots and headed out to do what I could to help. I ended up cutting some of the branches, unbending the cages, and, as you can see from the picture, bracing the cages with some 2x2s. On top of everything by the time I got out there it had already hailed.

The damage was done. When I went back out to check my heart sank a little. The cages, which had been so helpful in supporting growth became barriers against which the stalks had bent and broken, effectively decapitating the top three or four feet of my plants. The stalks and fruits were riddled with welts from the hail - a weather induced, tomato marring small pox.

The black plum had already given us a few dozen little, delicious fruits. It was somewhat protected by the plum tree we have in the court yard, but about half of the remaining crop is probably lost. We had picked about 6 little cherries with plenty more on the vine. I had maybe been a little over zealous with 5 plants, because the roma-esque in the back did not get enough sun to produce much fruit. Because they were in the back, they also grew tallest, looking for sun I guess. This height is also a big factor in the loss of the others, they fell forward onto the poor little plants. But the Japanese black is the biggest tragedy. None of fruit had matured yet, but there are buckets of various sized tomatoes, waiting to ripen. This one was in the front and received the brunt of the punishment. Pockmarked, bent, and broken. We will still be able to salvage some, but won't get the crop we were expecting.

This may seem like an inconvenience at worst, and for most people that is true, it would be. Not for me. This is only my second attempt at tomatoes. Last year I planted late, in uneven, thick-clay dirt. I ended up with three feet of sad plant and a dozen grape-sized green tomatoes, the other plant died a month after planting.

This year I build a wall to even out the bed. I mended the soil with pep and manure, two feet down, with a shovel. I watered and fed the plants. This year I did everything an urban gardner could do, and I love it. Then one storm undoes a good portion of what I had done. The next time something like this happens it will roll off, but this is my first real tomato year.

I'm sure there is a lesson here. Something about eggs and baskets, or the inadequacies of man in the face of nature, or a some philosophical lesson about some principles of the human psyche. But I don't really care about a lesson, I just want to be bummed out because my tomatoes came to a sad ending (the happy ending would be ending up in my belly).