The Topsy Turvey Verdict

As you can well imagine, I have been deluged by e-mails, phone calls, fax transmissions, telepathic messages, Western Union, and carrier pigeon queries, wondering how things have been going with my Topsy Turvey Tomato Plant Experiment '09. (Or "Tomatoe" for you Dan Quayle fans.)

And the official verdict is: It's ok.

The Topsy Turvey is this thing that gives you the magical ability to grow a tomato upside-down, much to the envy of all who see it. We had always had problems with deer eating our garden tomatoes, so I thought I'd give this a whirl. After all, I doubt very much that we have upside-down deer in this area... so I would think these devices should be safe.

The problem with this thing is that a bird decided that the top of the Topsy Turvey was a lovely place to build a home early in the summer. So every time I'd water the thing, this bird would flounder around inside and then escape, which gave me some degree of heart failure every single time.

My first instinct was to scare the bird away, and a friend had suggested utilizing a rubber snake to encourage it to go elsewhere. I tried that, and it seemed to work quite well. However, the bird had laid eggs inside the nest, and people made me feel guilty about chasing mommy away from her babies, breaking up a perfectly lovely family unit.

I was starting to think that maybe the bird had simply upped the ante by using rubber eggs to get back at me for the whole rubber snake thing, but at least a couple of the eggs did eventually hatch. The family eventually moved on, thankfully, so I was able to go back to tending to my plant.

So far I have had a handful of tomatoes from the plant, and they have officially been "ok." Nothing spectacular. I may have to try adding a few more plants to the collection next year with a couple other varieties involved.

Or maybe I'll just get some rubber tomato plants. I dunno.