True Love and Home Grown Tomatoes

It takes a world of patience to get it like you want, vine-ripened!

Hiding coyly behind the foliage.

Waiting…..waiting…..waiting…..

There is an old country song that I like to hear, it’s John Denver singing, ” Two Things That Money Can’t Buy, True Love and Homegrown Tomatoes”,   a person can consider themselves Blessed if they ever have either one.    Lately I have taken to leaving the garden with a fat, red tomato in hand, heading for the kitchen and lunch.  I can’t think of a faster or easier lunch than a tomato sandwich, the tomato still warm from the Sun.  People have fooled around with them for years trying to improve what can’t be made better.  The simplicity is part of the joy.  Two pieces of white sandwich bread, best on Sunbeam if you have it, mayonnaise, salt and pepper.  Cut a thick slice from the middle of your tomato, slap some mayonnaise on the bread, position the tomato in the center, salt and pepper to taste, put on the lid.  Holding it carefully between two hands, carry it to the back porch and eat it thoughtfully as you survey the coming afternoon.  Your first homegrown tomato sandwich will be the very best one of the year, you’ll tell the neighbors about it, casually bring it up at the grocery store while standing in line,  let the lady where you buy your books in on it.  Oh, yes, it’s called bragging, but it is also a fact that wants to be known.

You can’t buy a homegrown tomato, you might can purchase one raised by someone else, but your own takes a certain amount of planning and yes, work.  When you set that baby plant in the ground, you are already planning that sandwich.  This is called delayed gratification,  you are going to have to wait for it.  The love and care you lavish on that plant will be your reward later, that delicious sweet tanginess in your mouth could be called gratitude, you’re so glad you did just this one little thing, you planted that plant.   Towards the end of Summer you will most likely grow a little tired of them, the first twenty or so will take the edge off your craving, and it’s time to either start freezing or canning for the winter soups and sauces.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            First loves and tomato sandwiches have several things in common.  There is excitement, sweetness, and anticipation of something marvelous about to happen.  You know it won’t last forever but you don’t care, it’s what you want and you want it now, all the goodness, all the joy, all messiness that comes with both.  You know there will be other loves, and other sandwiches but not now, not right now, this is the one you’ve been waiting for, the one they sing songs about.  Well, I’ve only heard one song about homegrown tomatoes, but you get my drift.  There is certainly one thing that is a major difference, while you have to work for the tomato,  true love can only be a gift.  You can’t make it happen, you can’t work hard enough to make it bloom, you can’t take it by force or manipulation.  It is a Gift, sweet and pure, given by God through another person, or perhaps through yourself.   There is not enough gold in the World to buy a First True Love and while the years may tarnish some memories and possessions grow old and photographs fade, that first love remains as a shining light in your heart.  You can always grow another Homegrown Tomato,  there will only be one First True Love.

There is another measure of True Love that I always remember:    Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it doesn’t boast.   It is not proud, it doesn’t dishonor others.  It is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love doesn’t delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always  perseveres.    Love never fails.               Corinthians  13:   4-8

Be Right With You, I’m Practicing!

A shower perks everything up.

A long row to hoe calls for mulch!

     There are times when a word or phrase trips my switch and some spark of illumination lights up my imagination.  My friend, Laurie Buchanan, furnished the last sparks with her words “practicing living”.

     Living.  Isn’t it amazing that something so basic can be so hard to describe in words?   And being so simple and basic, how tempting it is for us to make it hard to do.  It’s something I was mulling over last night, that Life is not so much an Event as it is a Journey taken step by step, as Laurie puts it “practicing” all the way.  If this is the Journey and we are practicing, the Event must be sometime and somewhere in the Future.  In this time people seem to want eveything to happen microwave fast, or at least at the speed of sound.  You pick up your cell phone, speed dial a number and the pre-made casserole goes from freezer to micro-wave in about 30 seconds.  There – supper is taken care of.  Done.  I am ever mindful of the speed of time and feel no need to cram as much as possible into my days.  In fact, I find myself culling certain things that have become bothersome or simply non-essential to my peace of mind.

    In Gardening I have discovered that I have developed a train of thought that allows subjects on and off in a leisurely fashion, no frantic or obsessive thinking allowed, no rushing to achieve results at record speed.  It’s no surprise that so many Spiritual Orders find meditative gardens so useful.  Like labyrinths, physical motion is required but frees the mind to consider other avenues of thought.  I suppose I am thinking about the practice of patient living.  I’ve never been a patient person by nature, now with one or another circumstance revising my take on life, I find that I’m really not in such a hurry.  The deadline hasn’t changed, just my attitude on how fast I want to run to get there.  Practicing patience is hard as any mother can tell you, especially under trying circumstances.  So my green beans still aren’t ready to pick at 60 days instead of the 53 days promised on the seed packet.   Will I go hungry or lose sleep?  Certainly not.  I should be able to adjust to the rhythm of Life instead of expecting Life to change it’s tune to accommodate me.  It’s just so much more fun to take the slow train and see the sights than jump the fast jet and miss all the scenery.  I reckon we’ll just keep practicing until we get it right and Graduate with Honors.

Watermelons know when to hide.

Blood is Thicker Than Red Clay

A couple of evenings ago I straightened my back, leaned against my hoe handle and surveyed the work I had done.  Two new rows of okra, the ultimate Southern Vegetable, a couple of double rows of field peas and one double row of green beans.  Feeling as satisfied as a dog with two tails, I threw a glance at the pick-up truck traveling down the road and noticed that the headlights were on.  As a matter of fact, the lightning bugs were flash-dancing in bushes and trees that surround my garden.  Still propped up by the hoe, catching my breath, I took in the field where my garden lives year after year.  That field had gone from cotton to corn, to cattle and back to corn in the last 150 years and there had always been one of my family working it. Because of the good-hearted help from my family it would be worked again. There had been some strong doubts about my putting in the garden this year.  What with wild and crazy weather conditions, droughts and my over-loaded schedule,  there didn’t seem to be a good reason to put myself through the physical workout a good garden requires.  After all here it was, already June, well into the year. I would have a few tomatoes, peppers and some onions, a salsa garden and let the rest slide.  After right at 40 years of feeding myself and others, I would back off and pay no mind to the rainfall amounts, grasshoppers, and a deep freezer with an echo inside.  It was too late.

Only a week before I had asked a young cousin to clear out my old Winter garden, do away with the ratty kale, old wooden knobs of turnips, mustard greens that would light up your mouth like a blow torch.  Here it was, first of June and I had fine patch of red clay, suitable for brick-making and laying empty under the Sun.  Around and about volunteer zinnias, poppies and watermelons had sprouted and were making the best of it, unloved and uncared for.  The tomatoes and peppers were standing bravely by their supports ready and willing to get down to business if I would only show some interest.  I moped about, kicking a clod or two, trying to ignore  feelings that were not at all common to me;  guilt and remorse.  Guilt that I had let this splendid stretch of soil sit neglected, remorse that I had not only turned down the generous offer of having it tilled but had stared into the face of the Future and said, “Ha!  If I don’t have bread I’ll just eat cake!”   Just paraphrasing a famous lady who understandably came to a very sorry end.  It was too late.

Friday morning as I readied myself for a trip into town, a doctor’s appointment, I heard in the background a sound I knew well.  The sound of a roto-tiller tearing up the ground in some industrious soul’s vegetable patch.  This was not surprising, I live surrounded by family who have the good sense to get out in the Spring and put their well-thought out plans into action, laying out rows to plant seeds of corn, beans, squash and cucumber and settle tiny tomato and pepper plants into the receptive soil.  They all had fine stands of early planted food stuffs, flourishing under the watchful eyes of their caretakers, moving closer to the anticipated days of gathering and preserving for the year ahead.  I felt very much like the fiddling grasshopper laughing at the toil of the ants. Really?  I felt envy.   It was too late.

Locking the front door I spied movement beyond the trees lining my driveway, moving closer I could see a wide strip of plowed earth.  In my garden!   Somebody was tilling my garden!  Oh, my word!  Running across the distance that separates the house and garden site, I could make out my big cousin, Mike, working steadily down the length of a row, handling that tiller like he was walking a dog.  It only took a second to see that he had been at for most of the morning.  This was not Mike’s first rodeo, he’s wrangled tillers before, he’s tilled my place nearly every single year, simply out of the goodness of his heart.  As for my heart, it nearly exploded with joy and gratitude, I had turned him down once and yet he must have realized that empty ground was wearing at my gardener’s soul.  I grabbed him, hugged the breath out of him and asked, ” Why!?”  He shrugged, shook his head and replied, ” Well, I just figured you’d be wanting it.”   I could have cried, so happy for this gift of time and effort, but no way was I going to embarrass him and possibly cause him to stop.  After I explained that I was on a time sensitive errand and couldn’t stay to help,  I shot off to town, did my stuff and was back by lunch time.  By dinner time I had laid out raised beds and marked my rows for planting.  By night fall the next day I had as good a garden as I could have wished for, courtesy of one exceptional cousin, who decided to go ahead and till up that garden anyway. I have the kind of family who doesn’t have to be asked, they see a need and undertake to fill it. As they say Blood will tell, blood is thicker than red clay. And of course, it never really is too late, a Southern garden late is so much better than no garden at all.