A Meditation on Tomatoes

Nurturing Growth, Gratitude, and Self-Recovery Through Tending the Earth

This year we moved our garden to the southeast corner of our lawn. The southwest corner provided too many hours of shade the year prior. With this transition came work. Not work that I do Monday through Friday as a salesman, sitting around talking to those who will listen. Instead, this work is hand-to-tool, digging, tilling, and cultivating. In this work is connection and rootedness. And somehow, it feels like what we were always meant to do.

We don’t grow much at all. But we do grow tomatoes. Now I’m confident that the calories burned preparing the area is a deficit compared to what I will receive from the tomatoes, I do it for so much more than the nutrition. And while I could write a book on the topic of tomatoes, don’t worry, I’m not writing any more books any time soon.

One more thing- even if you don’t like tomatoes, keep reading.

Have you ever looked at a sliced tomato on a fast-food sandwich? It is not red-orange. It is pink. For those of us who eat them on our sandwiches, they are bland and tasteless. They are on the sandwich because there is an expectation that something resembling a tomato ought to be on the sandwich. Yet, it is not a tomato. It is something disguised as a tomato. It is a sliced entity that never received love from anyone. This stand-in imposter is tasteless, juiceless. For the recipient, it is a joyless experience to eat it.

But when you toil. When you pick up the tomato stands after the heavy storm and lace the vines delicately through the structure. When you check on them daily and water them when they look like they need a drink. When you talk to them and thank them as friends for being a part of your life in this season. When you finally carry them into your house, wash them, and place them on the sunny windowsill. When you finally slice the dark red tomato with so much juice pouring out from them. You are appreciative. You are thankful. You see the work of your hands and the delight in your toil.

If working the landing, sowing some seeds, and caring for that which we grow brings so much satisfaction and delight, how did we ever leave it in the first place? Maybe this is what we all need to recover in some way to help recover ourselves.

Peace,

Brandon