This post is about tomato plants and love. I know a weird combination. If you’ve followed the Instagram account that goes with this blog then you may recall I posted a picture and a story of why I decided I was going to grow food almost 3 months ago. I felt like there was something to be learned from growing food…I come from a lineage of farmers. Farmers from Bowdon Junction, Georgia, a place so small they reference the closest tiny town because you’d never find them on the map otherwise.
I started out with 10 cups with 3-5 seeds in each which only resulted in 3 cups sprouting and one plant disappeared, likely the result of a bird’s lunch. For the last few months I’ve tried to keep two tomato plants alive. It’s a lot harder than it looks. It requires a village to keep it alive. When I went to the beach for the week, I asked a neighbor who is very serious about his plants. He uses q-tips to cross-pollinate his plants because there’s a shortage of bees to do it. A pro-gardener. When I returned from the beach he told me he went out of town also and passed it down to his neighbor. When I say a village, I mean a village.
I’ve done the research. They say it’s better to deeply water them a few times a week instead of every day. (This is not gardening advice. : ) ) I’ve repotted and replanted. I’ve bought way too big tomato cages and then I ordered off Amazon tiny cages. I’ve repotted them a second time. I saved them from my dog ripping them out and strewing them across the yard. I was so upset but the roots were still intact so I repotted them and moved them to the front yard. Tears were shed amidst the replanting. I tried so hard to keep those things alive.
Weeks and weeks it seemed they weren’t blooming. There was no fruit so I looked it up on the handy dandy internet…that thing seems to have all the answers. It said tomato plants may not produce fruit when it’s really hot. They are conserving all their energy and water to survive. They will bloom when the conditions are more favorable for their survival.
You’d never know what a conversation starter a tomato plant is until you start getting gardening tips at a baby shower. This girl told me that I should look into adding more nutrients because they may just be lacking a vitamin they need. She said she did that for hers and all the sudden she had all these tomatoes. I told my parents one weekend I needed to get better, new soil and some nutrients. They picked them up on their way home from breakfast and they were at my door 30 minutes later. I repotted those things immediately. I sprinkled the nutrients on them.
We were newly friends but she knew my love language…self-growth and wallpaper quotes.
When I try something new, I act like an 8 year old and expect results the next day. Every time someone drops me off at my house or I come home from a long day of work…I get out and check my plants. Someone asked me what I was doing. I said, “I’m checking to see if I have any tomatoes yet.” They laughed…I literally repotted them and gave them nutrients less than 24 hours earlier. I am so hopeful and so expectant at times. I am impatient and anxiously awaiting results. This is part of the lesson of growing food…this is why it’s a lost art. Almost every milestone the internet says your plants should have mine have not. They’ve been behind and I’ve mostly given up every step of the way and am pleasantly surprised.
This past weekend I was out of town and I forgot to ask my mom to water my plants. My parents headed out of town by the time I remembered and it was hot, really, really hot and I resigned myself to my plants being a lost cause. I mentally adjusted my expectations to arrive home to dead tomato plants that never bore any fruit even though for months I’d tried really hard.
I have on the background of my phone a wallpaper with a bible verse that my coworker gave me for Annie Downs’s challenge she did for singles. It had a way better, cuter name but I don’t remember it. My coworker noticed I was an Annie fan by the devotional I keep on my shelf at work with her name on the spine. Annie announced a summer challenge for singles and with it came a bible verse. I like to keep the wallpaper on my phone updated with a quote to remind me of whatever it is I feel I need to read during this season. My coworker sent me the wallpaper before I even had a moment to download it myself. I remember thinking that it was a God wink moment. We were newly friends but she knew my love language…self-growth and wallpaper quotes.
Often over lunches we talk about dating and faith and all the things. Months ago I updated my phone with this wallpaper. The challenge was over weeks, maybe months ago. I lost track midway and didn’t keep up. I have found myself a little embarrassed when I catch people reading my wallpaper because it feels like a weird verse and even weirder to explain why it’s there, however I haven’t replaced it in all the weeks. I haven’t found something that moved me so I left it there out of laziness and honestly I don’t feel like I really noticed or read that verse too much until I read it last night at the end of a day of a lot of disappointment and tears and a 7 hour drive home in the rain. As I write about my coworker, I hope this is a reminder you are woven into the testimony of others through the small things you do without thinking…you impact people when you don’t know it.
I will continue to believe that a flower is on the way. A precursor to the fruit. I will continue to believe that I am on my way…on my way to a fruitful harvest.
I got out of my car after this long drive and I checked my plants in the dark and there were no tomatoes or buds that I could see. I went inside and as I sat on my couch looking at my phone…waiting for it to ring with that familiar name on the front…knowing it wasn’t going to ring like it has every night for the last six months. I read the words on my phone screen: “ She is like a tree planted by streams of water which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither- whatever she does prospers.” Psalms 1:3. I honestly never paid much attention besides “she is planted like a tree” which doesn’t sound romantic or fun or like something interesting to me and sounds weird so in all honesty…my brain got bored and didn’t really pay that much attention to the rest of it but last night when I glanced at the screen the “which yields its fruit in season” stuck out to me and I laughed…exactly like my tomato plant that still hasn’t produced ONE SINGLE TOMATO. It’s like me…stubborn and will do things in its own time.
This tomato plant has been raised by a village. Last night I thought to myself there was some analogy here of the tomato plant that I feel like I’ve kept pouring into and watered and replanted and saved from my dog and all the things and yet it still hasn’t done a thing. It feels a lot like dating…something I’ve spent years pouring into. Just a reminder that like tomato plants you can’t force yourself or your season to arrive ahead of schedule.
Today on a Monday at work after a long emotionally exhausting weekend I received a text from my mom, “Saw a blossom on one of your tomato plants.” This is a thing I’ve been waiting on for months. I announced it aloud to my coworkers and another one said, “I think this is a sign.” She had no idea of the thoughts that passed through my head the night before. It is indeed a sign. A sign that you never know what’s going on underneath the dirt. You can check every day for months on end hoping for a bloom. You can think your hope is absurd. You can really just give up all together and take the L that your plants are probably dead…but they will bloom when they want to…maybe when you most needed the reminder that all hope isn’t lost. That just because something isn’t blooming on your schedule doesn’t mean it isn’t ever going to bloom. A reminder that all can look like it’s lost and that’s when the breakthrough happens. A reminder that even when you see the remnants of your tomato plant strewn across the backyard that all that matters is that the roots are still intact. I’m not sure why I bothered. I’m not sure why I hoped or why I believed that there was a chance but I did and I’m glad I did.
The situation may look different than you want it to and it may look like it’s over and there’s not a chance in hell that fruit will be born but who are you to know…you are no one. You will bear fruit when the season is right and it really isn’t up to you. I will continue to water my plants. I will continue to believe that a flower is on the way. A precursor to the fruit. I will continue to believe that I am on my way…on my way to a fruitful harvest.