Given a hose that doesn’t reach the spot and a contractor who shut off the nearer outside water valve in such a way I can’t get it open again, this involves my filling old milk jugs with water and dousing them on a near-daily basis. That’s okay; it keeps me actively involved in the process of nurturing them. Leaves starting to droop on a hot day? I’m on it.
But I am a klutz. Which is how I managed, to my great grief at the time, to lose my balance and break off a branch that had two layers of flowers and the tiniest beginnings of a tomato on it.
Lost. Crum.
It looked so small and so woebegone. All that potential it could have had if I’d been more careful. In the intertwined leaves outside, I wasn’t even sure which plant it had come off of and didn’t want to spend the time I can’t risk in the sun to track it back to the main stem to find out.
I put it by the window and checked it daily, and it didn’t die, but it seemed to just sit there.
Till two days ago, when there was the tentative small white start of a single root in the water if you looked close enough.
Today there are twenty-four, including a cluster at the ragged bottom, spreading out, searching for nutrients. That 1 cm tomato is now a third of an inch across, a new second one is 2 cm across so far, and the plant suddenly seems to be growing like dandelions.
Tomorrow I go looking for a large pot to plant it in so that I can have it growing next to the house. I’m thinking that will help keep its growing season going longer; it’s getting a late start for reaching full size, and should it get cold enough to kill off the parent plant in the yard, this one might just keep on going strong from the warmth radiating from our home.
Life has its own inner strength. One little sprig of tomato growing steadily now into full root and bloom, saying quietly, you don’t know the outcome till it begins to show. Never give up.