Posted by admin | Posted in Tomato plant care | Posted on 27-06-2010
Tags: Back Yard, Fist, Freezer, Garden Experience, Garden Plots, Gardening books, Greens, Herbs, Jig, Last Spring, Legs, Plastic Pot, Seed Packets, Soil, Toad, Tomato Plant, Tomatoes, Vegetable Garden, Vegetables, Zucchini
How I Lost My Mother to Cancer, and Found Her Through My Garden
I didn’t start gardening until I was 29. To be truthful, my husband started gardening when I was 29; I became “gardening support.” It started with one sad and wilted tomato plant last spring, and ended with a freezer full of garden-fresh tomatoes, zucchini, and beans that fall.
“Look!” My husband, James said. He had just come in from work, he was holding up a black, plastic pot with a wilted tomato plant that hung limply to the side. He was smiling like a twelve-year-old boy with a huge toad bulging out of his fist. I eyed the tomato plant with far less enthusiasm than he, and didn’t say anything.
“It’s a tomato plant!” He said, thrusting it toward me. I reached out to take it, and then changed my mind, dropping my hand back down to my side. Our two-year old son, Ben, plowed into my husband’s legs at that moment, and the sad tomato plant flopped from side to side.
“I can see that it’s a tomato plant,” I said. “What is it doing here?”
“We’re gonna plant it! We’ll get more, and we’ll have a vegetable garden this year,” he said. He knelt down on the floor to show Ben the plant, “look, Ben, tomato plant,” he said to the toddler, who promptly grabbed at the limp greens.
“‘Mato pants,” said Ben. “‘Mato pants… Mato pants!” He chanted, dancing a jig around my husband.
That was the beginning of our garden. Plots were dug, the soil was prepared, gardening books of all kinds started showing up around the house; books piled up on the bathroom counter, in the office, and in the kitchen. Nearly every day brought James home from work with some new plant, or more seed packets. More and more vegetables, fruits and herbs were planted, and started to grow in our back yard garden.
James was thrilled with each new sprout, and I was indifferent. It wasn’t that I disliked gardening so much, I had not been enthusiastic about anything then; my mother had died suddenly and unexpectedly from a ruptured tumor in her lung a few months before, and nothing I did held much pleasure for me. Gardening just seemed like another chore to do, something to be “gotten to,” during the day. I kept Ben out of the garden, watered it when it was hot, and just continued to muddle through my days, reminding myself to get up each morning and breathe.
It was a Tuesday evening when James brought home a packet of bush beans, and I began to garden.
