Rejoice with me, dear reader,
and witness victory:
I’ve grown actual tomatoes
I’m chuffed and filled with glee!
When I walk through a nursery
the tomatoes run and hide
they know my reputation
for black-thumbed tomatocide.
An occasional single fruit
a miser’s salad plate
was the most I’ve ever gleaned
or could anticipate.
But, lo, a red ripe miracle
such glories on the vines!
I’ve danced the gardener’s jig
and changed my name to Heinz.
Maybe you remember
my Christmas tree mishap
when it toppled over
and flattened carpet nap.
Family ingenuity
perhaps aesthetics-free
brought it back to standing
with pragmaticality.
And now my poor tomato
bowed by wind and rain
lists like my old tree
risking break and sprain.
So whether Yule tradition
or heavy-laden vine
when the question comes from listing
the answer comes from twine.
It’s an earthen air
sagging over the dawn
musty
sweating on the lawn
popping with toadstools
and yesterday’s rain sits still
gathering the scent of soil
and a nameless farmer’s till
ghosts of crops past
rain-wafted now
old farms unburied
by summer storm plow
smells of wet summer
airy thick soup
fragrant toothsome
morning droop.
What funion
to be an onion
to know that when
the day is through
there’s a hot dog
that waits for you.
Vined and twined and tendril’d
bulbaceious tantalization
the first fruit of the garden
is always anticipation.
As you know, dear reader, I am trying to ready my house for selling.
I’ve been packing, hauling, sweating, heaving, sorting, tossing,
stressed, sleepless, harried and hassled,
weary, bruised, and cross.
It’s been a long dark tunnel with a tiny light at the end.
My son called. Also a gardener.
They have so many plants left over from the plant sale —
he’s planted all he can —
would I take some?
If you are a gardener, you heard my gasp.
Wasted plants? All those cramped roots longing to stretch?
Gardeners are irrational
so I said sure.
I have so much to do and am so close to being ready to list
but I said sure.
And we had some perfect June days.
I sank my knuckles into the dirt
brushed up against the tomato leaves as much as possible
cooed over the poor cramped marigolds
fussed over the red onions
introduced the new jalapeno to old-timer daylily
pictured the banana peppers next the cherry tomatoes come August
basked in the brief respite from the world’s chaos
and my own
and now have the prettiest little kitchen garden you ever saw.
Planted
— go figure —
for someone else.
A garden is where you make it
on patio or sill:
God created flowerpots
as Eden’s codicil.
More thanks to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives
and to the D.J. Berg green thumb.
