In late summer of 2021, I decided to plant tomatoes in an area of the back yard of the house that I rent. In the three years that I have lived in the house, I had not considered vegetable gardening. (I know: Tomatoes are both a fruit and a vegetable.) Hostas emerge from the ground each Spring in the front yard and back yard, but I do nothing to encourage their growth; they just bogart their way through the plastic ground cover and the redwood mulch and spread their leaves. But I wanted my youngest granddaughter to experience the growth and harvesting of a plant, so I planted two varieties of tomatoes, hoping to have the three-year-old help me with the harvest.
Despite my reluctance to grub about in the ground, I have some experience in vegetable gardening. When I lived in Camarillo California with my first bride and first child, I planted a garden in the rear of the house that we rented. We also had either snow peas or snap peas – I cannot remember which – that wound around strings from window boxes. That garden yielded, among other vegetables, beets that our two-year-old would pull from the ground. Lisa would slap the root against her thigh to knock off the dirt, then bite into it. We had no garden at the last house we owned before moving to Southern Indiana, but in Clarksville, we were inspired by a neighbor to plant again. This garden grew, among other things, peanuts, which I dug from the mounds and dried by spreading them in the sun. That garden was the last of my life until I planted the tomatoes.
My tomato harvest was small – I planted too late in the season – but I enjoyed sending Myah crawling beneath the leaves to find the red ones. She did this willingly, despite not liking tomatoes. But she does like to see things growing and would marvel when the hummingbirds would visit the long stems produced by some of the hostas. We would go for walks, and she would pluck flowers from a neighbor’s yard. (She had permission to do so, and a standing invitation.) Her mother bought her some plant-grubbing gloves, and Myah would take a small spade and dig into the dirt with it. But Lauren decided, “Go big, or go home” and planted eggplant and watermelon. The eggplants have borne large purple goodness, but the melons have not yet arrived.
My youngest granddaughter’s interests tended toward the insects and animals. She would “rescue” frogs from the marshy ground near her family’s house and once cultivated some butterflies from a kit. (One of the butterflies hatched with what seemed to be a deformed wing, and Imani worried about whether it could survive in the wild.) Considering her mother’s morbid fear of spiders, I admired her willingness to allow her daughter to have those insects.
This past Sunday, Lauren, Myah, and I went to the Irvington Farmers Market, or as Myah has named it, “Vegetable Town.” Our haul was light: blueberries, peaches, and corn. But watermelons are swelling in the back yard, and the eggplants grow large, demanding to be harvested and donated. (And roasted, toasted, breaded, fried, and “parmesanned.”) Neighbors had already provided Lauren with homegrown string beans and tomatoes, so the peaches and blueberries were a complement to what had come from other’s gardens. And Irvington is a garden-rich area, where neighbors are likely to leave on your porch, sweet tiny orange tomatoes and cucumbers the size of Popeye’s forearm.
But no garden grows a child’s Princess fishing pole, so there’s that.
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