What Gardening Teaches You About Love
Life lessons in my vegetable garden.
On a hot July day last summer, I was at the pool with my kids. In line for the concession stand, I noticed a couple straggling tomato seedlings reaching through the fence. A public garden plot just outside the fence had grown cherry tomatoes there the previous summer. The few lucky seeds that had burrowed into the soil and survived the harsh winter were now fighting for a chance to grow.
It was like they were reaching out to me, whimpering “rescue us!”
Tenderly, I tugged the babies loose from the soil and folded them in a napkin. When we got home, I carefully embedded them next to tall, fully-grown mama tomato plants. July was way too late in the season for tomato plants to begin their life. I knew this. But still, I felt it was my duty to give these wanderers a home with a chance for growth. They ended up becoming long skinny vines without many leaves and never reached the stage of tomato production.
Still, I weeded and pruned them as I did for my other plants. They were just as important as the bigger guys in my garden. You have to include some little guys so you have an equal-opportunity garden.
