First Tomatoes of the Season
Like many people this year, I found myself at home more often, with a bit more “spare” time on my hands. I had already gone through the extreme lounging phase and the extreme baking phase of quarantine. While these activities were delicious and comforting I needed something that helped the passing of time not feel so warped. So I decided to try my hand at the next stage of pandemic pastimes, horticulture. I had never grown anything outdoors before; in fact I had only recently stopped killing my houseplants with benign neglect. The venture seemed rife with both the possibility for failure and the possibility for some raw, and uniquely human actualization. Terrifying yet alluring.
I am a huge baby when it comes to really committing to trying something new. Some people truly relish in getting all the right tools or gear or creating an elaborate set up for their new hobby, but not me. I usually determine what the lowest amount of effort and cost is required to receive the desired satisfaction. Then later, if the payoff still interests me I’ll scale up the operation. So I took a handful of baby reds that had grown eyes during their long term stay on the counter top and plunked them haphazardly into a large terra cotta pot filled with soil of unknown origin and watered heavily. Having the daily task of watering the plants gave a tiny bit of structure and routine to my day outside of my very flexible work from home job. A change I welcomed as the days began to drone on and on devoid of any events or activities. It had been a struggle to be able to see any point in planning for the future in any other aspect of my life amidst all the chaos. At least with the plants there was an expected cycle that I could track, and prepare for, and have something I could nurture towards fruition. The potatoes had done so well I decided to try some other veggies and flowers. I got a few heirloom tomato starts, pole beans, marigolds, mint, and cilantro from my sister. I even started a different variety of tomatoes from seeds I saved from a tomato my boyfriend had scored at the beginning of the pandemic when the grocery store shelves were bare.
Week after week went by and the plants grew and developed and flowered and made a delightful spectacle of themselves. I found myself greeting the plants and telling them how beautiful they were. I was sending my sister (and whoever else would consent) pictures of what was new or what had developed overnight. I hadn’t anticipated the pride I would feel about turning what would have been food waste into more food. I felt strange about eating them, after all I had watered and spoke to them every day for 90 days. When it came time to harvest these first tomatoes I was beaming yet again. They might be split and cat faced but I did it!
While growing food I learned about the kind of momentum it takes to start and sustain life from scratch. Going through the whole process brought clarity to some words of wisdom I learned from Jennifer Joseph (@naturalmagics on IG) almost two years ago, and that is: Show up and do it terribly and, some word from her father, little by little gathers much. This was never more clear to me than when it almost didn’t matter how “correctly” I was tending to these plants (the tomatoes had constant leaf curl and required more calcium). What mattered was that I showed up everyday, consistently and was rewarded with growth. The parallels between horticulture and the kind of cultivation my own life needs right now were not lost on me. Who knew a little garden would teach me how to grow?
