Staff report
Is that Quasimodo?
Or the Elephant Man?
Whatever ó it won’t win the tomato beauty contest, that’s for sure.
Pat Childers of Mount Hope Church Road brought in this face-only-a-mother-could-love tomato.
It popped up in the front yard of the home she shares with husband Jim.
“We planted six or eight” tomato plants, Pat said. “Then we had about a dozen,” all volunteers from last year’s tomato patch.
And so Mr. Ugly sprouted, and the neglect shows on his or its uh … face. “I guess it missed my TLC,” Pat, a retired nurse, said.
Pat and Jim used to tend more than an acre in their back yard, but age and experience have brought them to a small patch in the front that used to be a flower bed.
“We plowed it up last year to move the flowers, but we never got around to planting anything in it, then we decided to do a little garden patch. And we did the same thing this year.
“The funny thing is, we were looking at some clippings and found a picture from 1998 of Jim’s uncle with a very similar tomato.”
Ugly tomatoes must run in the family.
She and Jim have had a laugh about it, as have friends and neighbors, one of whom declared, “Why that thing has hemorrhoids!”
How rude.
Mr. Ugly is still sitting on the table, getting uglier. But his future is sealed: He’s probably going to Pat’s sister’s house for dinner.
“I think we’ll cut him up for a nice tomato sandwich,” Pat said.
Ugliness is only skin deep.
If you have something for the Garden Game, call Wayne Hinshaw at 704-797-4296 to make sure a photographer is available to take your picture.