The dish planter out in front of our house, which sat empty all last season (at times upside down in the shrubs if wind happened to catch it) now holds a bright red geranium, three plants with tiny violet flowers, and a sweet potato vine. I was somewhat undecided in picking out the plants initially, but they do look good together and once they fill in they'll look like they came that way from the store. And all for about the same money as the pre-planted pots at the garden store, except I chose the plants I wanted. Hooray for overcoming indecisiveness and making use of what you have. I'm proud of myself.
My interest in gardening and digging in the dirt goes straight back to my mother and father. My mother kept houseplants and regularly transplanted them. I remember sitting at the table as she spread out newspapers, put gravel in the bottom of a new, larger pot, and carefully lifted the plant from the old pot. The smell of the potting soil was rich and pungent, and I observed my mother's hands, dusted with loamy dirt, carefully separating pot-bound roots and setting the plant in its new home, firming the new soil around it. She regularly watered and fed her plants, and they flourished, except for the christmas cactus which refused to flower again after the first year. But those plants are notoriously fussy. Our houseplants ranged from cacti to mother-in-law's tongue to jade tree plants, with others making appearances now and then as interest waxed and waned. I remember the windows on the sunny side of our house being almost unreachable due to the plants set near the window on stools or on sills to catch the light. Every Saturday was watering day. Our house was green inside, and that seemed normal. Other people who had few plants or none seemed unusual to me.
My father also grew indoor plants, but his true forte is as an outdoor gardener. He grew up on his grandfather's farm, a true working farm with cattle and crops; they made their own wine. My father's first love is the tomato. Wherever he's lived, if it had a yard big enough and sunny enough he'd grow tomato plants. And not just one or two. Ten or twelve of them at least, each one with soil carefully mounded at the base in a hill to hold water, and a stake set into the soil beside them as they grew, for the vines to climb up. Carefully and lovingly tended, the tomato plants could easily grow over our heads, and the rich green smell of the vines with fruit ripening on them is still one of my favorite scents.
One day when I was nineteen or twenty my stepmother came running down the stairs frantic; my two year old brother was nowhere to be found. It was summer and the front and back doors were open, the screen doors easy for a child to push open. He could have been anywhere. My father ran out the front while I went out the back. Two steps out the back door and something prompted me to turn my head, towards the tomato garden. There was my brother, in nothing but a diaper, holding two huge red tomatoes as he walked towards the house. It made me laugh, which startled my brother into dropping the tomatoes, but we grinned at each other. We both loved Dad's tomato garden.
My father still has a garden, and tomatoes still dominate it, though he adds cucumbers and eggplants as well as peppers, and sometimes lettuces and radishes. I try to emulate him with my small garden of three or four plants, with varying success over the years.
My aunt and uncle had the ultimate garden, at least to a kid. It was huge, probably an acre if not more, with everything from sunflowers to peas, broccoli, lettuces, beans and carrots. There were tomatoes, cucumbers, herbs, eggplants, cauliflower, corn...and probably much more that I simply missed. My favorite memory is of pulling up carrots, washing them at the outside spigot, and eating them immediately. The garden was a source of fresh, good food, which I did not realize at the time. It just seemed normal to me.
Woodchucks had nothing on my uncle. I remember he shot two in one week that decided to raid the broccoli plants. I did not at all feel sorry for the woodchucks. They trespassed and were eating food planted by my uncle and meant for us. Any other invading animals met a similar fate; my uncle was not intending to share with the wildlife.
My father had a similar mindset, but he was not a gun owner. One year, after planting a tomato garden at my grandmother's house, his ripening tomatoes kept mysteriously disappearing overnight. Fearing a raccoon, my father took a baseball bat and sat out, hidden in the plants, waiting for the critter. The culprit proved herself to be my great-grandmother, who lived downstairs from my grandmother. She loved fresh tomatoes too, and had been sneaking out at night to filch them. I wasn't there for the confrontation, but I always wished I was. It would have made a great addition to the comic reel running in my head.
Last year I bought plants for my sons, one each, to plant themselves. My younger son also brought seeds home from school for the summer that exploded all over the garden with wild abandon. I fully intend to pass on this love of digging in the dirt and watching green things grow. There's always been something more than satisfying about eating food you grew yourself.
And even if your tomatoes don't turn out quite the way you hoped, you can always have a rotten tomato war in your own back yard.
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