thinking on tomatoes and second chances

My relationship with, or more honestly, my passion for, plants began early. As children we were required to help in the garden, usually given the task of weeding designated spots in the flower beds or vegetable rows. Now this assignment could just as easily have caused me to hate the garden. It did the opposite. My conversations with plants developed in those early years. (I was a child after all.) My understanding that interaction with plants was good for me developed later.

My father especially loved to garden. It was a pleasure he never lost. The day of his heart attack, his first words to me as I hopped into the ambulance before he departed for the hospital were "Don't forget to water the tomato seedlings!" Unfortunately, though those seedlings lived to be given to friends and family at his wake, he never lived to eat of their bounty. Today, my brother in Colorado, still raises tomatoes from the generations of seeds that he has saved from those seedlings in 2006. So, I'm not the only one of us kids who inherited the crazy love of playing in the dirt. In fact, all 7 of us kids have gardened for joy as adults. 

It is this idea of "garden for joy" that guides what I expect of myself and the gardens here on our ridge meadow property. My responsibilities as steward of this little bit of land in my care. My honest acknowledgement of what I am physically able to do. My goals are not to fill the larder for winter. Not to harvest the first ripe tomato on the ridge. Not to turn my joy into burden. To develop a balance of what I am capable of with what needs to be done as I age. To have fun. To have time to see and savor the joy.

Am I the only one who apologizes to the seedlings that get culled when thinning a row? Does anyone else comfort a shrub or a tree when pruning it? 

(Can you identify the plant rooting in the jar in the photo above?)

Every summer I like to grow something I've never grown before. I like to experiment with methods of growing the tried and true.

This year I am growing my tomatoes on hog panel trellises. With the weather we've been having the tomato stems have become fragile, in need of very careful handling. I actually snapped off a plant at the ground just by easing it over toward the trellis last week. Was all lost?

The first year I gardened as a newlywed, a cutworm had toppled a young tomato plant which I discovered when the severed plant was still fresh with dew. I popped it into a jar of water, it rooted happily, and eventually was replanted to flourish and fruit for the season. And so, 46 years later,  I didn't hesitate to do the same with this little one. As you can see the roots are coming along nicely. The plant is perky and fully of flowers. Soon it will be planted and then reintroduced to the out of doors. 

Do you sense a parable?