If you are looking for advice on how to grow beautiful tomatoes, please look elsewhere. I can't help you.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is a miracle. I give you, a baby tomato!
I realize that for most people, this really isn't anything to get excited about. You can literally buy tomato plants with dozens of these already on them. Big whoop.
Trust me, this is a big whoop.
Let me tell you about one brown- nay, black-thumbed woman's dream to garden.
I grew up in a household where gardening was no unusual thing. My dad was always tinkering in the yard, whether it was raising ducks (Sam and Frodo, both of whom became unfortunate victims of a neighborhood cat) or including a corn stalk in decorative flower arrangements on the patio. I was often roped into these little experiments, and was no stranger to dirt and growing things.
I didn't realize how much that kind of behavior was ingrained in my way of life until I found myself living in a college dorm room and desperately wanting to grow tomatoes. I didn't even like tomatoes. I just wanted to grow something. And some of you might remember the craze of growing tomatoes upside down from hanging baskets a decade or so back? Well, I wanted one. Badly. It was around this time that I realized my future really needed to include a garden of some sort.
And a dog. That's a story for another day, though.
Fast forward to happy wedding bells. Jeff and I bought our first home and got married all in the same week. I had a house and a husband! It was a lot to process. But alas! I had a yard! That wasn't too hard to figure out...right?
Between working crazy hours and barely having two nickels to rub together, the garden dreams slid by me those first couple of years. I would walk through the garden section of stores and wistfully look at big bags of cedar mulch and flats full of petunias. It just wasn't in the cards at the time though. Next year, I would tell myself.
Then I got pregnant. It's very difficult to commit to doing any work in the heat when pregnant, but I had life growing inside of me. A child. I knew that the following year, I wanted to have a garden and share it with my child.
Then I got cancer. Chemotherapy, for me, was not sun-friendly. I'd get lightheaded and dizzy after just a few minutes in direct sunlight. As I lay dozing on the couch, watching Alice crawl around the living room, I would look at the sun dancing between tree leaves out the window, and think it again. Next year.
"Next year" finally came for me. Let me skip ahead here. Alice is now four, and I've had about three years to work on this gardening thing. I've learned a lot. I've enjoyed it, and at times, really hated it. I've fought squirrels, birds, cats and dogs. I've learned that my biggest obstacle to gardening is July and August. And laziness. Can't forget that.
I have yet to grow a mature, red, ready-to-eat tomato.
Why, one might ask? A fair question. I don't really know. I know at first, I wasn't watering my plants enough. Our yard holds a lot of moisture, and I guess I just thought that would be enough? But for a plant to have enough resource to produce big, juicy fruit, it needs a LOT of water.
This year has been the most ridiculous though. I had worked up the soil to something beautiful. I planned out things, watched the weather. This was it. I planted my seeds.
And watched birds dig up and eat every one of them.
No problem. It wasn't too late. I bought some tomato starts.
And watched, and I'm not lying about this, a blackbird drag one off, root and all. I think a neighborhood cat may have been involved in the demise of my other plants.
Okay, nature. Determination drove me to drastic measures. I was going to buy some tomato plants. I was going to figure out a way to protect them from the unruly wildlife. I was going to have tomatoes!
I present to you, the garden cage of shame. Or of determination. Let's go with that.
It's pretty sad, if I'm honest. One day some critter got inside, so I had to put the netting over the top, and thus the cage was born. My little plants have struggled on, and I'm proud of that, if not the cage.
And now I have a tomato growing. Finally!
So, a tomato might not be a big deal to most people. But for me, it feels like a major accomplishment.
Why should anyone care about this? For me, this was a little how my writing journey went as well. Struggle, grit, determination, and sometimes, a rather embarrassing garden cage.
I would submit to you that everyone has that thing that they dream about, even if it is as simple as a tomato. Maybe for you it's a handmade quilt, or a maybe it's complex like a car engine.
Maybe for you, it's a book.
I still don't have a fully mature, ready-to-eat tomato. And maybe my tomatoes will develop some kind of blight and I won't get it this year either. I don't know. But I'll try again next year. And the year after that. One day, I'll get there. I'm abominably bad at gardening. Most amateur gardeners get fruit and veggies in their first year. That's okay. I'm not in it to be the best.
I am a better writer than a gardener (I hope!). I work hard at writing. I study how other people write and edit. I try to keep up with writing trends and what's happening in the world of books. I try to read new bestsellers, and classics, and debut writers and little-known writers, to keep myself well-rounded. I often sacrifice free time and sleep to get my writing goals met. At the end of the process, a finished book feels no less of an accomplishment to me than that silly tomato.
When you find the thing that you dream about, whatever it is, don't let blackbirds or neighborhood cats stop you. Don't let water shortages or your own lack of knowledge stop you. Don't be discouraged when it doesn't happen as fast for you as it does for someone else. Don't be held back by anything but your own imagination. Keep going. You can do it. It just takes grit and determination.
And possibly, a ridiculous garden cage, too.