To Garden in Colorado is to be Crazy

As I set up my third line of defense on my completely beaten tomatoes this afternoon, a little quip ran through my mind. "Where is your god now?!?" rang over my thoughts. As is often the case in my internal dialogue, I wasn't being serious. But in a wry way, it was a bit true.

To garden in Colorado, I am learning, is to be crazy. The weather pops all over the place here. I remember last summer, when we arrived here from California, every afternoon a fierce thunderstorm broke over what had been a perfect blue sky spotted with the whitest of puffy clouds. I reveled in the dramatic weather, thrilled at being back in the land of thunder and lightning. My New England heart leapt at the prospect of my children growing up familiar with such gorgeous nature. The San Francisco Bay Area has splendid weather patterns as well, but they are milquetoast compared to other parts of the nation and you are lucky to hear one thunder roll a year.

Last summer, as I gloried in the storms, I had clearly abandoned any memory of gardening!

A few weeks ago, my ten tomato plant starts were whipped by incredible winds. One poor little puppy, the Hillbilly, was snapped. I believed it to be a hopeless cause, but it amazingly (limpingly) began to rally. After the wind, I got smart. I took the five Texas Tomato Cages I had, set them around the tallest plants (plus the Hillbilly) and wrapped the base of each TTC with bubble wrap, hoping to create a moderate wind break. It really looked like I had the weather licked!

In the calm weeks between, I set about getting the irrigation system in place and sat back to enjoy a more normal rhythm of fertilizing, pruning, etc.

Then, last night we were battered with an incredible storm. The rains were intense from 7-2 AM, coming on heavy then light. But at two.... the weather ended everything. We had 30 minutes, easily, of drilling, damning hail.

Today, we are expected to get more. So, my new design includes putting plastic trash bags on the top of each cage and hope that will save them more misery.