Surprise Tomatoes!

Back in summer of 2012 (probably July-ish) I noticed some cute little sprouts in my compost bin. (At that time, it was a literal bin...a small rubbermaid bin with holes drilled in it. I carefully transplanted the little sprouts into the flower bed. Most of them met their demise by weed-whacker-weilding gardener, but two lived. Of those two, one grew only about 16 inches tall, and the other became a fabulous cherry tomato vine!

 Now, while I originally assumed that this would end poorly for the little guy, as winter was coming, I started to notice how vigorous it was. By mid-November, I found this.
Crazy, right? But it kept on going! Suddenly, tomatoes were ripening every day!

I started to take more care to keep this plant healthy. I already have acidic soil, which the tomato seems to like. It's in a corner of my flowerbed facing south, so it gets lots of sunshine. That particular corner gets warm, even in the winter because it's sheltered from wind but sunny. (We have a window-mounted  thermometer, named Wildly Inaccurate Thermometer, who claims --among other things-- that the temp gets up to the 90's in winter... which I doubt. But that corner is warm.) I have had to throw a few blankets over it when the temperature crept down into the mid-30's at night, just a few times. Thankfully we never had a hard freeze. I hate freezes.

 By January, I started to pull them when they were just starting to turn and let them ripen on the windowsill.

Then Mrs. A told me that if you hang red Christmas ornaments on your vine, it will confuse the birds.

Notice how the (seemingly) nicest, reddest tomato is fake? Well, birds go straight for that and then think "What's up with these tomatoes? I'm outta here!" and the others survive. So now I have been able to let the tomatoes safely ripen all the way on the vine. The question now is, what to do with them all?
I have added them to BLT's (Slobolt lettuce also from the garden), canned for sauces and soups (more on that later), given to friends, family and neighbors, and still they come!  Yay for Surprise Tomatoes!