After a thoroughly exhausting, but ultimately satisfying, day in court, it’s good to come home to real light, and put my case to bed.

vs.

I love being reminded that there’s at least a little something good in every day.

The numbers of tomatoes ready to pick decreases bit by bit daily, but the garden still offers a small harvest every morning.

I cannot overstate the value of a good stake.

(above: found on ground “dead”)

(above: nearly mid-September, and still kickin!)

I started the season believing it unlikely any seeds I’d saved the prior year had any viability, sheerly from an inclination to doubt my ability. I was also skeptical that any of the new breed I’d planted (donations from friends who already had their hands full – all heirloom and some varieties from seeds I’d given them) would ever thrive. Now I start and end each day surveying the tomato farm, and learning something new from each tomato I harvest, whether it’s red (or striped or nearly purple), ripe and juicy, or mealy and overripe and spotted with little critters lunching, or perfect on the outside but with evidence of vine borers once cut open, or growing around the Christmas ribbon I’ve used to tie up the stalks that got much taller than I ever expected.  Every day, there’s at least a couple tomatoes worth picking, a few that have fallen or been victim to a random local cat (or my dog), and some just hanging out on the ground.  Every day, there are twice as many lessons as there are tomatoes to pick.  My surprise that there was any harvest at all.

Setting aside my natural gardener’s tendency to fear that everything I touch will die (anecdotally I’ve confirmed we share this in common, and no wonder since technically it’s true, though most things will hopefully grow, thrive, and produce progeny before they kick off), I’ve learned as much studying those ones that didn’t make it, as the ones that did.

Now, I wonder what I can do when I start getting some confidence with this stuff — maybe scale back my backyard tomato farm to a manageable garden plot and trust what I put there just might actually grow.

Thank you for the seeds Gardening in the Boroughsof NYC. These from last year’s Big BK Seed Exchange. Community is so yummy.

From the last hot soup and oven baked bread at the dawn of the season…

To ivy received and transplanted, courtesy of a departing neighbor…

To nearly exhausting my supply of wild growing plantain in the yards, for quick treatment on countless bites…

To observing how to properly stake a tomato plant…

Obviously not the work of these still fumble-prone hands…

But the work of Aimee at Red Garden Clogs, who asked if I might want to give refuge to her various orphan darlings.

And I did.

And they gave right back to me.

And gave…

Thank you, tomato farm.

See you again next summer?