Loading…
15
My neighbor's 3 a.m. tomato garden confession stopped me mid-weeding
Ran into the guy next door last Tuesday while I was out pulling weeds at dawn. He's in his 70s, keeps to himself mostly. He saw me fussing over some crabgrass and laughed. Said he used to do the same thing before sunrise, trying to beat the heat and his own head. Then he pointed at his tomato plants and told me, 'Those things only grow when I stop checking on them every hour.' He waters twice a week, ignores them the rest of the time, and gets more fruit than I do from my raised beds that I baby daily. Stood there with my weed bucket and realized I treat my whole yard like a job I'm behind on. He walked back inside for his second cup of tea. I put the bucket down and sat on the porch for 20 minutes. Anyone else have a moment where someone's casual comment about plants or chores made you see your own busy-ness as pointless?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
stone.lisa1mo ago
That thing about checking on them every hour hits close to home. What gets me is that your neighbor probably wasn't even trying to teach you anything, he was just talking about his own tomatoes. We hear wisdom in stuff like that because we're already worn out and looking for permission to slow down. But here's the part nobody mentions. Some of us got into the daily fussing because it felt good at first, and then somewhere along the way it turned into a scoreboard. The plants never asked us to keep score. Your twenty minutes on the porch might be the most useful thing you did in that yard all season, and the crabgrass will still be there tomorrow either way.
1