Looking at this photo, most people see two unlikely friends, cuddled up and enjoying a hot day on the deck together in the shade.
What you do not see in this photo, or understand, is that the reason these two are cuddled up at this particular moment is that neither of them can fit any more tomato inside of themselves after eating (mostly) a dozen ripe tomatoes.
To see any evidence of the crime at all, the photographer has to pan out and encompass the evidence of the crime as well. An incompletely eaten, fully ripe tomato. That, combined with the tomato seeds on both Piper and the bunny’s face, were all the evidence I needed to draw my conclusions.
Last night I had assayed the ripe tomato situation here in my own yard. Frank and I had harvested about a gallon at the Minnetonka garden, and Frank had taken those home. Here in my own yard I had found good quantities of Galina, Joe Lauerer, Coldset, Rumi Banjan, and Manitoba. The Manitoba are inside the far northern end of the pet run. Just 4 plants, but quite large, and had full lower sets of fruit numbering, between all 4 plants, 18 fruits.
This is what they left me. 6 tomatoes. Maybe they divided the total lot of 18 by 3, and figured they each got 6, leaving 6 for me to pick today.
Baby Vi ate one of them, leaving 5 to be seeded and go into the pot of red sauce bubbling away on the stove. She even got a rude gesture in. No respect for me here.
