The Tomato Report

I am at war with squirrels. Not the Canadian variety. Just the local ones.

For the past week and a half, I have been eagerly watching the first of the ripening tomatoes. A few were nearly ready to pick. But when I thought I could restrain myself no longer and went out to pick them, all but one (the least ripe) had vanished.

I know who the culprit was, too, for earlier in the day I had startled one of the scamps in the backyard. He fled over the neighbor's tumbledown (but freshly painted) shed, tossing back a half-eaten carcass over his shoulder, whether as a taunt or merely an oversight I don't know. I still can't believe I left all the other tomatoes just sitting on the vine, but I still had not realized how dearly squirrels love tomatoes. (Where I grew up, tomatoes are generally an indoor plant.)

Unfortunately, I don't think I have the skills or materials to construct a squirrel-proof shelter for the tomatoes. Squirrels are wily things. So I shall have to resort to the other solution, picking the tomatoes as soon as they start to turn color and letting them ripen on the windowsill.

Alas for vine-ripened tomatoes. And alas for my kitchen windowsill, which is pitched down toward the sink, as if in a perverse desire to knock things off all by itself.