Mocking birds, that is.  They love tomatoes.  I had to put up a net one year and then it was a battle to keep them from digging under it, squeezing through an opening, reaching their beaks through the net to get at the tomatoes…then there was me getting caught on the net, the tomato vines growing through it and getting broken off in the wind…endless battles.

For a couple of years, we had a great cat.  She was a dear thing; a stray that we adopted, and boy, she went after those birds.  I don’t think I lost but one tomato the two years we had her.  Sadly, she disappeared one year without a trace.  I’ve missed her for a lot of reasons, but I’m really missing her now that the tomatoes are coming in strong.   Some will say I’m completely crazy, but this year, I’m using camouflage.   Yes, you read that correctly.  Check out the picture:

If you click on the picture, you’ll get a larger one and in the right-hand bottom corner you’ll see a tomato just about to ripen with a big chunk taken out of it…

Basically, I found material that looks like twigs.  Well, not the beige part, but the rest of it.  As the tomatoes hint at turning, I go out and wrap the things.  Time consuming and tedious?  You bet your bottom.  Foolish?  Probably, but it seems to work fairly well. I have lost a green one or two because the birds still spot them and try them out. A bird also spied a bit of red in a gap one morning and pecked at a prized two pounder. Oooh, if I had caught that bird…!

My neighbor is having a lot of trouble with the birds this year too. Her husband built a cage out of netting. I think it’s working for her, but I actually have tomatoes in several areas of the garden so a cage would have to have a hallway and a ninety degree angle. Yeah, I kind of plant a little haphazard. But it works. The plants I put in later, away from the first set, tend to get the bugs later or not at all.

At any rate, I’m getting a very good batch of tomatoes this year. As always, it’s a lot of work. But I have high hopes for the tomato sauce I’ll be making this weekend. I know the salads we’ve been eating have been superb!