Hope springs eternal—and so do summer tomatoes.
Rita and her brother David from Missouri have returned from the pool. Her Subaru just pulled into the drive. After they get settled, I’ll go over and offer them some of my abundant greens, many of which I should have harvested weeks ago. Rita won’t chide me over letting them get stringy. Lately she doesn’t needle, doesn’t grouse, but doesn’t explode into laughter either. Is she drugged out? No, she is off the pills. In the last two years she has had three back surgeries, two of which made matters worse. If it’s stoicism, it seems increasingly a cousin of despondency. Everyone’s got troubles, she says. I sometimes teeter on the verge of telling her, as one of my clueless relatives advised me when I was blue, to “just cheer up.” Whatever I do say leaves an aftertaste, as if what I really mean is, sorry it’s happening to you, thrilled it’s not me.
Today, a surprise so late in the season, it has been rainy again, the sky a daylong cavalcade of grays and silvers and blues. Now and then, raindrops slice through the air like arrows and thrum on the roof. Then stop, sudden as they came. Soon there will be another downpour; the clouds’ gray thickening promises as much so I speed up harvesting: arugula, lettuce, nasty-looking but best-in-the-universe spinach, chard, frilly mustard greens. I fill two large bags and my mouth in the process, grazing like a crazed goat. There is no danger in becoming jaded growing vegetables because everything changes, every season and year a vibrant variant of the one before. Step up to the plate. You ground out often, but occasionally you connect and boom, a grand slam, like two summers ago, with my tomatoes. I felt sanctioned by the gods, and thanks to “Purple Cherokee,” the most popular guy in the neighborhood. Last year, the gods were busy elsewhere. My tomatoes were sparse and mealy. If I could dial up the Thomas Jefferson in me to make meticulous observations of temperature and sunny hours, date of planting, depth of mulch, amount of fertilizer, phase of the moon, etc., I might be able to begin to get a tiny handle on what causes these annual disparities, but really, what difference would it make?
Lined up on the deck in part shade is this year’s selection of tomato starts. Every morning for the last 10 days I have carried them in and out like a manservant, hardening them off, getting them used to the not-so-gentle world. Once I inadvertently left them out overnight. They didn’t seem the worse, but there will no doubt be psychiatric bills down the road. I am almost embarrassed to admit how nurturing heirloom tomatoes has become such a life event; the selecting (and later saving) seeds, the planting and labeling, the multiple inspections to see if the “green fuse” is lit, and then, the thrill, when the pale tip topples its lid of soil, as angels sing hosanna. I couldn’t be more full of myself.
This year’s collection includes 36 plants, eight varieties. Why so many? Just in case. I’ve consolidated gains of previous years by planting those that were successes, “Purple Cherokee,” of course, “Black from Tula,” and easygoing “Early Girl.” Then there are the newcomers, “Brandywine, Pink,” “Druzba,” “Blondkopfchen,” “Box Car Willie,” “Black Sea Man.” The only glimmer of rationale in selection is a bent toward darker varieties, with which I’ve had success. “Fantastic,” “vibrant,” “stunning,” “outstanding,” “robust”; these adjectives peppered the description of “Box Car Willie,” but it was the name that got me. After the order was dispatched, it occurred to me I should have checked how many days Willie needs to mature (Willies in general are notoriously slow). The fewer the better in our cool clime.
Once Willie was in the electronic “cart,” “Blondkopfchen” seemed a good mate, a cherry, thus presumably quick to ripen. Click. “Black Sea Man,” click, because my grandfather as a youth swam in the Black Sea. “Druzba” means friendship in Bulgarian. Click. I had gotten only as far as the D’s and was already drowning in lycopene.
Each seed packet, when it arrives, contains 30 or so seeds. You never plant all (are you nuts?). Tomato seeds generally stay viable for three to five years if stored in a cool, dark place. The temptation is too great not to order one more—and then one more—variety. Thus I have extra seed packets in a yogurt container in the cellar, each marvelous strand of DNA hoping it will get another chance at the big leagues. Inevitably, you plant more seeds than necessary. Just in case.
Spring training is over. The decisions about who makes the roster will be made within hours. The ones that don’t (for reasons as arbitrary as their original selection) will croak pathetically, like fledglings ignored, or be routed in a sweeping massacre. Horrid.
It has occurred to me that I might give some of the extra starts to Rita, but the idea doesn’t resound of the obvious. I always supply her with ripe tomatoes, for which she dutifully sings my praises. But not seedlings, because I don’t trust her to care for them. She is a total oddity who loves flying almost as much as the getting somewhere else. Now that she’s stuck at home, at least for the summer, it seems reasonable to think she might get involved in growing tomatoes, might even find something therapeutic in it, but cut out my tongue if I even hint at that.
A new concern sends me back to the online catalog: Which of these seedlings will do well in containers? Rita has no place for tomatoes in the ground. Her lot is a slab of clay and redwood roots where even oxalis is despondent. They’d have to go in pots on the south side of her house. I have a collection of 15-gallon ones in storage, so expense is not an issue. The thought of carrying heavy bags of Ultra Potting Mix and Soil Booster up from the street, however, makes my mind buckle. Is not auspicious, two messed-up backs.
“Black Sea Man,” I learn, is a good candidate for containers. There’s no word about the others, so I Google tomatoes+containers and presto, enough firsthand info to make me think it’s worth a try, even with indeterminate ones, as long as they get regular water and fertilizer. Rita can supply that, if she will.
“She stooped to pull a weed or two, and then she got the hoe and began clearing out the plot she would plant in tomatoes. She had always liked the strong smell of the plants in the sun, the beaky little blossoms. The garden gave her a perfectly good reason not to be anywhere else, not to do anything else.”
—from Home by Marilynne Robinson
In my gift collection, in addition to “Black Sea Man,” I include “Blondkopfchen,” “Purple Cherokee,” “Box Car Willie,” and “Druzba.”
The rain shower is in high gear when I knock on Rita’s back door. I put the starts on the deck and hurry inside when David opens. I’ve met him twice before, but barely know him. He’s well over 6 feet, blond curly hair, with a barrel chest like my Black Sea grandfather’s. He escorts me into the living room, where he invites me to take a seat. Rita’s in her study, talking on the phone. I hear one conversation end and another begin, and another. I think that, other than at parties, this is the first time I’ve sat in the living room. The mantle clock goes tick tick tick. Nothing worse than a clock with something to say. David looks out the window as if the rain holds some kind of promise.
“I brought some tomato seedlings for her,” I say. There is no point in advertising my qualms. “They’re on the deck.”
“What kind?” he asks, lighting up. It turns out that he, too, is a tomato nut. He has 63 on his kitchen table in Joplin under grow lights.
“Sixty-three?”
“Every one I planted came up. I had five growing in a cup the size of a shot glass. I can’t kill them.”
“Oh, good. Since you’re running an orphanage, maybe I should put some of my extras in your suitcase. What’s your favorite?”
“Missouri Love-Apple.”
“Well, what else.”
“That was my partner’s idea, I swear,” he says, blushing, though I’m not sure why. Something to do with tomato’s history as a purported aphrodisiac? “It really does taste good,” he adds. “It has a really unique taste.”
When Rita at last makes an appearance, David and I are on the deck, inspecting the variables in the starts. Look at the fat leaves on this one, the hairy stem on that one! The rain has been replaced by brand-spanking sunshine.
“I’m sorry I was on the phone so long. Getting everybody out to vote for the pool measure. The warm pool has been a lifesaver. What are you guys doing?”
I show her the plants.
“We’re conspiring,” David says, “to turn you into a farmer. Get you on the bandwagon. Where are the car keys? I’m going to the nursery for potting soil. Do you want anything else? Maybe some beans?”
“Did I mention wanting a vegetable garden?”
“Your friend here read your mind. The keys?”
I tell him to make sure he doesn’t get ordinary potting soil but something with oomph. He, the father of 63, knows this already, but just in case. It will be interesting to see what vegetables he comes back with.
“I like your brother,” I say after he leaves. “I was afraid he was one of those strong silent types like my grandfather, but he’s just shy.”
“Not as shy as he used to be, I think because he’s happy, in a good relationship for a change. It kind of throws me for a loop, I got so used to the drama. I wish he would stop saying he’s worried about me. Is that what this is all about? Horticultural therapy? What’s on the tags?” I tell her their names. “What do you know, the Village People. A black, an Indian . . . and a blond German girl.”
“And this one is ‘Druzba.’ It means ‘friendship’ in Bulgarian.”
Her smile is slight, more musing than amused, but it’s a start.
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R. E. Faro is a regular contributor to The Monthly. A collection of his previous columns, In Faro’s Garden, A Tour and Some Detours, was published by Ithuriel’s Spear Press. Readers can find his blog at berrypicking.wordpress.com.
