But I’ve been delaying about one of the most manual-labor-y tasks I have in the garden — and I finally decided yesterday morning that I simply couldn’t delay one moment longer: I had to build the trellises if I wanted to get the tomatoes in on time.

[Now, right off the bat, we can acknowledge that this is pregnancy nesting in some form, because I've planted tomatoes well into May and still gotten lots of fruit. But, I don't plan to be doing any planting in mid-May this year, and we'll certainly have tomatoes a lot sooner if I hurry the heck up and get those plants in the ground.]

So yesterday, I had Ashby help me unroll the fencing I’d bought to create the trellises from, I cut it, and I wired it to the poles. For the most part, it was like building a chain link fence, if you’ve ever done that. A lot of pliers and wrapping wire and crimping it. While no one would call that fun, I’m pretty good at it, and I find a lot of satisfaction in accomplishing manual tasks like that.

Let me NOT recommend this method of trellising to you if say, you’re 36 weeks pregnant and you have had rheumatoid arthritis, so your hands get tired and cranky easily anyway.

I’ve had trouble with my hands swelling the past couple of weeks, due to the pregnancy, but as long as I don’t use them in some way really out of the ordinary, they’re always better in the morning.

Building a fence or a trellis does not fall into “the ordinary” for my daily activities.

So I knew after getting the first two trellises set up that my hands were going to be in bad shape. But I figured, no need to go through this twice. Might as well push on through.

I got all four in place and secured, but it started to rain as I was finishing the last one, so I took that as a sign. It won’t be too much effort to finish it up later this week once the weather improves. [It's pouring rain at the moment.]

Let’s just say my hands were not amused. And of course, after I finish doing that kind of work, I’d normally pop a couple of Advil…which you can’t do while pregnant. I barely did anything with my hands the rest of the day, and spent quite a lot of time with them over my head, but they kept me awake a decent portion of the night. The whole pregnancy swelling thing is strange to me. It doesn’t hurt, exactly, but once you get past a certain point, you are hyper-aware of your hands or feet. You can’t stop feeling them.

They are much better today and should be back to normal tomorrow, based on my recovery from other over-the-top things I’ve done recently. And as soon as we get a couple of sunny days later in the week, I’ve got a lot of tomato and cucumber plants and lima bean seeds going in the ground.

I’ve spend an inordinate amount of time in the past month inviting, accepting applications from, confirming and rejecting vendors for the festival. We had a huge number of applicants this year, overwhelming! My big plan for next year: Start much, much earlier!

Come on out to 5 Points in East Nashville tomorrow and join the fun. Lots of events, food, fun for the whole family.

Full schedule

Vendor area map [PDF, updated as of 10 min ago!]

Tomato Art Fest website

P.S. I’ve been growing lots and lots of tomatoes in my garden, as well. Mostly through the time-honed practice of benign neglect. The ones I can stop the dog from eating, we’re really going to enjoy for the next few weeks.