People love talking about growth: cities, facial hair, finger nails, waist lines, love, and all sorts of shit. For some reason, we have innate appreciation for humans who consistently evolve through life. Folks talk less about the more depressing topic of devolution or stagnation of human curiosity. It’s always about: “try something new” or “get a new hobby” or “try that thing you’ve always wanted to try”.
Luckily for you folks, it is 2020 and I can’t write a post shitting on the human condition because no one needs that (including me). However, I am going to talk about gardening (I was doing it before 2020, and by doing it, I mean failing at it). Previously, I talked about the fact that every 2020 crap cloud has a slightly bronze lining and we need to grab onto those slightly good things and embrace them. For me, one of those was gardening (I’ve been baking my own bread since 2012).
In my return post, Been a Minute, I talked heavily about my gardening and how working from home had given me the ability to monitor the garden more than if I had been in the office: catching two groundhogs (relocated humanely to a local forest) and plugging their hole permanently.
I rather not dive into the battle of “Beefcake Bernie and the Tomato Plants of 2019” but dig into the garden and why I wanted one: I like to eat, I want to eat unique things that cannot be found in a store, heirlooms taste better but are expensive at the farmers market, I have land to support my own garden, and I prefer eating food than looking at flowers (also I save money). That’s the basics and my initial reasoning for jumping into a garden.
Yet, that’s not all that happened, it strengthened a friendship. It made me appreciate and enrich the love I have for two humans and their little one. It blows my mind thinking back on it, but we all love the same thing: food… why did it take this long to fortify this friendship.
To take a quick aside, since this post won’t be about friendships but about me, I have relied on these two so much that it is important to give them a call out. I wouldn’t have the garden I have without their innate knowledge, their experience, and, most importantly, their willingness to share that experience and wisdom with me. Without them, I never would have vined my tomato plants when they outgrew their cages, I wouldn’t have pruned my suckers, and I wouldn’t have achieved the harvest I am still eating today. So, from the bottom of my heart: I love you Randy and Kristine, thank you so much.
Now back to me, but remember as you read this, that I didn’t achieve this by myself. It took a village (of two and their little one). [click “Read More” to be philosophized]
Now, back to my adventure through gardening, I tried to garden for the first time last year when I got a plot of land that could support life. I briefly touched on this in my first post in a year or so: groundhogs, failures, watching food ripen from the window. What I haven’t really discussed is where the drive to garden came from. It all stems from research. Specifically, a show that drove me to research.
Many moons ago, I had been enjoying Mind of Chef on PBS (highly recommended) and one of the chefs was talking about lost food. Now they hadn’t misplaced their inventory, but rather, the varietals of fruits and vegetables that we no longer consume because it is hard to harvest (just like how different cows can be from a different breed). What a lot of people don’t realize is that tomatoes are extremely fragile and therefore difficult, if not impossible, to harvest by machine – my Sicilian Rossos have to be handled like a swollen scrotum because any pressure will bruise them. If you can’t harvest by machine, you have to by hand, and that means the price of the produce will go up. This has lead us to prioritize thick skinned water heavy tomatoes in our grocery stores as they are easy to harvest with a machine.
In that show, I was shown a world I had been neglecting. A world of flavor and uniqueness. And that day, I realized the root for my manuscript: BlackBox Enterprises. With the future manuscript budding, I got myself a Seedsaver’s Catalogue and my mind was shattered. I was shocked to see that they, and this number isn’t even the full number, had 48 varietals of tomatoes that my mouth had never greeted nor my eyes had seen. In that entire catalogue I rarely saw food that resembled what I was buying at the grocery store. So, I made a promise to myself: I would start a garden the moment I had land.
Fast forward many years, and I get a small plot that I can grow plants on. I order the seeds and get ready… only to learn I have to start them inside and I am already late. They need to have a lot of light and warmth to germinate, but that wasn’t the stick in my craw that surprised me, I need a fan. See I had to simulate wind so the stems can be strengthened otherwise they will fall over since their cell walls aren’t strong enough for the wind.
Somehow I get my babies in the ground and they grow, but a groundhog can smell the sweet fruits of my labor and out of 60 plants, I get nothing, zilch, nadda, a bankrupt garden.
At this point, I was the equivalent of a green tomato. I could give up, offer myself to that fat fucking groundhog, Beefcake Bernie, or fight and try and ripen. In 2020, I started my seeds on time cause I had learned from my previous failure, but even with the knowledge, I had lackluster enthusiasm. Did I really want to try this hobby a second time and fail?
Yes, I did because we don’t grow into a beautiful ripe fruit if we just try once and give up. That’s the issue I have with the phrases to try something new, have you succeeded at the previous thing before moving on? How can you honestly know if you liked something if you tried it once and it was hard, practice, time, patience, these are the things needed to grow into a sweet tomato instead of remaining a bitter green nugget of rage.
Then I realized, our society is too focused on growing and moving onto the next thing. Because of this odd phenomenon to do all the things, we fail to see that there is more to learn. Whether a hobby or a job, the well is always deeper than you expect. If it wasn’t for Randy and Kristine, I would have spent this year learning more and more about my tomatoes and eventually getting to where I am now. It may have taken two or three seasons and I would have constantly been digging into why something was one way or another; they dragged me up to a higher level but they didn’t stop growing themselves.
We are all the tomatoes and we are all in different stages of becoming delicious:
All of life on this planet takes time to grow and shape itself into its final form; it isn’t instantaneous. I am still eating tomatoes from my September harvest because they take time to ripen. So don’t just move on and stay green, enhance the different portions of your life and dig deep into those hobbies you love, and if you don’t love them, give them a little more of a chance. Nothing worthwhile matures instantly.
Furthermore, realize that all around you are people at different stages of ripeness and we can all work together to bring one another forward; I wouldn’t be at my level without Randy and Kristine. They wouldn’t be where they are without their parent knowledge that was gleamed from their family’s gardens/farms. The knowledge their parents have wouldn’t be possible with the countless generations before them. Knowledge that is shared helps us all grow and taste sweeter – which is what the aliens really want.
In the end, remember that happiness isn’t found in quantity but quality. And a quality thing doesn’t just spring out of nothing. It starts as a seed, grows into a plant, but without a bee or flies to pollinate its buds, its journey ends there. It take others, and once that pollination is spread, a tomato forms. Over time, that tomato goes from a bitter thing to a sweet and tender treat. So be patient, dig in, and learn. Stop rushing to the next thing, embrace your interests and grow them.
A haiku about tomatoes and how they ripen faster when together:
Lonely Tomato ripens slowly - very sad party together
~Theodore