Jesus, shouldn’t these tomatoes have ripened, like, in August? They haven’t listened to me (‘STUPID TOMATOES, WHY DON’T YOU TURN RED?!!) Maybe I should have been a little more polite. Anyway, I’m thankful Your sun doesn’t give up on late bloomers and producers … and that Your Son doesn’t give up on me.
O Lord, thank You for ruffles of green lettuce that portend fresh salads for supper. For little Roma tomatoes that vow we won’t have to eat store-bought, pink-plastic fare for long. For blackberry blossoms that promise a future yummy pie. OMG, I’d love for You for wave a magic wand. Make it happen without weeding. But is the wait-watch-and-work part of Your gift to us?
And so it begins. The cucumber flood. The tomato avalanche. The squash tsunami. OMG, we give thanks! And … could You remind me where I hid the food processor?
And so it begins: the summertime cucumber flood. The tomato avalanche. The squash tsunami. And, OMG, we give thanks!
O Lord, You invested so much sunshine and rain in this first tomato from my garden. You must have thought it was worth it.
Investing aches, pains and Tylenol in pulling these weeds, I wasn’t sure. …
Until I tasted this fruit? vegetable? of our labors.
Image by congerdesign from Pixabay.
OMG, You were right! As usual.
Gardening addicts. Never leave them alone at a garden center or nursery, where obliging, devious personnel help them take out a second mortgage to buy the last bougainvillea. This, though the tropical lovelies prefer Argentina over Indiana.
Younger junkies fall victim to buying binges after watching HGTV. However, gardening addiction does its worst damage in women of a certain age.
They should know better than to trust this mad urge to nurture. Most spent decades caring for little humans. They’ve repressed memories of endless feedings — and the waterings with which baby sprouts responded. These women dealt daily with mountains of fertilizer. Eventually wising up, they limited the number of nurturees they’d cultivate.
However, spring gardening regenerates the madness. While spouses are playing golf, the women load up with 35 flats of annuals, 37 bags of potting soil and barrels of pansies, adding just one more hanging basket here. Another there. How can they ignore wilted tomato seedlings? With their TLC, the weaklings will flourish.
Addicts.
With symptoms listed below, I hope to alert family and friends of this malady.
Signs of Gardening Addiction
Early Level
Second Level
Third Level
Final Level
I am proud to inform readers, as well as my spouse, that today, I didn’t brag to a single stranger about green beans or zucchini. I bypassed needy tomato seedlings. I kept my regular cart and made a single purchase.
“Only one?” Hubby blinks in disbelief.
“Only one,” I assure him.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Are you a gardening addict?
O Lord, I’m thankful that You bless Your people with food. Though, um, we didn’t expect yellow tomatoes. Lots of them. I imagine the children of Israel didn’t expect manna, either. Tons of it. OMG, I suppose if those desert wanderers learned to eat Manna Surprise, I guess I can learn to eat yellow spaghetti sauce.
I appreciate dedicated farmers and truckers who continue to bring us produce during this challenging time.
Still, grocery-store tomatoes provide fresh gardening inspiration. They also inspired my tomato-loving dad. One February day long ago, he filled egg cartons with dirt. In our mother’s clean kitchen.
My siblings and I awaited her fiery, fly-swatter judgment.
Instead, Mom said, “I can almost taste the tomatoes now.”
Dad explained he was planting seeds that would grow into tomato seedlings, which we’d later plant in our garden. Unfortunately, only a few lived.
Though Dad doubted the scrawny survivors would produce, he planted them. One he named Methuselah, after the biblical character who lived 969 years, almost filled our family’s pantry by itself.
Methuselah grew as tall as I and spread out as if king of the tomato patch. Dad often counted more than 70 big, juicy tomatoes on Methuselah’s branches. We hauled bushel basketfuls from the garden until Mom locked us out. After canning for weeks in 90-degree weather, she considered the bumper crop a for-real attack of killer tomatoes.
Decades later, my husband and I relived that abundance when we bought a house with a garden full of tomato plants, heavy with fruit. We would enjoy fresh-tomato goodness — with almost zero work!
I thought.
Eventually, I understood why Mom ran screaming from the patch when new blossoms appeared. Way too many tomatoes! Lacking canning equipment or a freezer, we put dozens outside with a “free” sign.
Still, that tomato-y summer ruined us forever. The following spring, we could hardly wait to raise our own. Where to buy seedlings?
Hubby’s barber shop, the source of all small-town wisdom, supplied the answer. The local Future Farmers of America raised and sold seedlings every May.
Since then, we’ve grown tomatoes every year. Red sunshine not only tickles our taste buds during summer, but during winter in homemade spaghetti sauce, chili and stews.
This year, however, the Future Farmers cannot grow seedlings. When Covid-19 first struck, I feared a run on gardening supplies.
Hubby gave me a you’re-so-paranoid look. “It’s not even Easter.”
With a few more gentle (Ahem!) reminders, he tried to order seeds online. Garden websites sang a unanimous song: sold out.
Would a similar run gobble up all seedlings? Would we be condemned to store-bought tomatoes forever?
Having learned his lesson (Always listen to your paranoid wife.), Hubby tracked down and planted tomato seeds. The seedlings will mature too late to plant at the usual time. But we’ll repot and keep them indoors. We’ll share them with others, spoiling them forever for tomatoes that taste like red sunshine — one small way to sweeten this pandemic.
Methuselah would be proud.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What’s your favorite fresh veggie?