I am not a gardener, no green thumb. I do enjoy admiring theefforts of others, but I’m just not one to spend hours pruning andtrimming. Where I have pruned and trimmed, the result usually looksmore like whacking and hacking.

Several years back, Amy and I purchased a home with magnificentlandscaping – a sprinkler system through out, and an automatic oneat that. It even makes its own decisions on when to turn on andoff.

A perfect yard was my thought, no need to do anything not evenworry about turning on a hose. Just sit back and enjoy!

We did, for about two growing seasons! That is when the whackingand hacking started.

Not to be daunted, off to the nursery we went to buyreplacements, and replace we did. But after the first season noblooms, no bright pink or white flowers – just green leaves thatset off the hues of the brown ones.

Asking someone about my plight, they suggested with a chucklethat maybe I did not get boy and girl plants. I have yet to figureout how one tells the difference.

All of this brings me to a gift I received this summer from mywife.

You have seen the commercials for the Topsey Turvey tomatoplants system. Seems some fellow figured out that planting a tomatoplant upside down is better than right side up.

Remember the Pet Rock craze a number of years back? Yeah, thisguy has made a killing!

Back to my Topsey Turvey plant. We filled it with the necessaryspecial soil, hung it up and watered it. No sprinkler system here,this is the old-fashion hose situation.

It took a while but after a period of time, growth was noticed.She (I guess it is a she) grew throughout the late summer gettingbigger and bigger every day but no tomatoes. Proof of the boy andgirl plant theory I thought. So I chided Amy for not knowing betterwhen she purchased the plant.

Then about eight weeks later the first bloom appeared and thenanother. Before we knew it we had two tomatoes then a third. Notbig ones but nice-sized green ones.

We are probably now three months into this project and mytomatoes are still green and still growing, with two of themreaching edible size but dark green. The other day several otherblooms appeared and out popped three more tomatoes.

Here we are in mid-October, I have six green tomatoes, actuallyfive because the oldest and largest one appeared to succumb to thefate of an insect of some type.

The other day I saw the Topsey Turvey commercial and noticedplumb red tomatoes and lots of them. I have yet to figure out whyupside down is better than right side up, but I have figured outthat my Pet Rock of years past was much less trouble.

Write to Bill Jacobs at P.O. Box 551, Brookhaven MS 39602, orsend e-mail to bjacobs@dailyleader.com.