Need any tomatoes?

I will deliver.

The problems of late September have always included taking down the air conditioners (used exactly three nights), pulling down the storm windows (before it snows) and putting the garden to bed.

I hate gardens. I hate gardening.

Since Hannaford’s has all the produce one would ever need (forget the spinach), I have always questioned the wisdom of turning a portion of the back 40 into a garden. It’s sort of like going hunting in the woods for meat that Hannaford’s has for sale already wrapped and weighed.

First, you have to rent a tiller and tear up the grass. Then you have to cart the clods away. (The grass, not the neighbors.) Then you have to buy Cock-a-doodle-doo, or some other magic power to fertilize. Then you have to go to the store and buy some plants.

You have already spent more money than you will spend on produce for the next two years.

But wait. Then there is planting. And watering. And weeding.

Weeding should be enough to turn anyone off to gardening. It seems to me that all that fertilizer is doing a lot more to promote weed growth than the damn plants.

I follow the Tom Sawyer approach to weeding. I choose the times that Blue Eyes or the Bulgarian visitor are sitting on the deck to start weeding. Thank God, they feel compelled to help out, then I go in the barn for “some tools” and never return until the heinous chores are done.

Hey, it has worked so far.

The first year, I bought 10 tomato plants and buried them 36 inches apart as the label suggested. Any fool (me) now knows that tomato plants should be planted 5 feet apart to stop them from growing into each other.

This year, I bought only five.

I should have bought one. That’s what I will do next year.

First of all, I love tomatoes. I eat tomatoes every day. If they are an anti-carcinogen, as some have argued, then I shall live forever. But enough is enough.

When the red fruit started coming in this year, they came in bunches.

I had tomatoes on the deck. I had tomatoes on the wood stove. I had tomatoes on the counter.

If you came to my house, I packed your car with tomatoes when you were not looking. Ha, ha. I thought about shipping them to Bangladesh.

Then the slugs showed up. After 10 years, I don’t know how the slugs found Cobb Manor. But they did. They started eating the tomatoes much faster than I did. When my adorable grandchildren (you should see them) arrived, I offered them a red treat.

When Meara (honest to God) started to take a tomato bite, a slug reared his (very) ugly head and the tomato was thrown into the neighbor’s yard as punishment.

Sometimes, I understand why God made flash floods, dictators, pit bulls and even Republicans, but I will never understand the reason for the creepy slug.

Not only are they disgusting to behold, their slime trail alone should exclude them from the planet.

But in my heart of darkest hearts, I secretly welcomed the slug invasion this year. They must have eaten at least 75 percent of the tomato crop.

Even with the heavy losses, the tomatoes still line my deck, wood stove and counter top. Imagine if the slugs didn’t show up?

Tomatoes, anyone?

Send complaints and compliments to Emmet Meara at emmetmeara@msn.com.