An Exhausting Blast!

TomatoMania was an exhausting blast!

My wife and I worked the event for all three days (Friday and the weekend). My wife was one of the cashiers and I was out helping customers and sounding like I knew what I was talking about. That and pushing tomato seedlings around.

Also I was misnaming and forgetting the staff names left and right (I must be getting old). I kept calling Fran by the name of Judy (don't ask me why, even I don't know). Now get this, she's a Facebook friend of mine and I kept referring to her as Judy. Alison and Kevin came on Saturday with their newborn. In my mind I kept referring Kevin as Henry. Fortunately, I never called him by his first name. And don't even talk about the others whose names I forget but they remember both my wife and I. You hope to pick their name in casual conversation. Brian looked like a former colleague named Tim and in my mind he was Tim until I asked my wife what his name was. He's only been to every event since I've worked TomatoMania. I think I'll remember Trudy's name the next time around but for the rest of you I'll just have to ask every year.

Here's an image of me helping a customer at the TomatoMania event: http://twitpic.com/1b2gew

The customers are loads of fun as well. We met some old friends, made new ones and learned some new techniques, as you can well imagine.

We came back with sore muscles, dirt, a deeper tan, some cages and tomato seedlings.

My wife and I discussed the logistics of planting our new batch of seedlings as well as the plants we're growing from seed. Given time, I'd like to get a listing of each tomato plant, perhaps write the name on a small Post It, separate these out for front yard/back yard and them place them where I think they should go. We have hardwood floors, so just lay the Post It's around the hardwood floor, then write the layouts on sheets of paper.

That's not going to happen. We're supposed to get rain on Wednesday/Thursday.

So our goal is a quite clear – get the larger seedlings in the ground as soon as possible. I don't care where, I don't care how, just get in as many as we can before the front moves in. Slam them in!

Of course, one can plant after the rain showers so it's not a disaster. But you're dealing with digging wet ground, etc., it's just much more trouble than it's worth. Besides, a rainstorm after a transplant “feels right” for some reason.

We're going to have to move our seedlings grown from seed to a location that won't receive the roof runoff. We got burned by that the last time.