Tomato Seeds

As he cleaned off his desk piled high with papers, books, and sundry items, Husband said, “I notice they are not sprouting in the bag on my desk. They have been there for a year, so I want to see if they will germinate.”

My husband decided to plant the tomato seeds he was describing. However, he did not do it the conventional way, or at least the way I think he should have. My way is to plant them in a pot or in the ground and care for them from there.

My husband’s way was to take a paper egg carton and craft and elaborate upper and lower decks. The seeds were supposed to know to germinate in the lower deck and grow through the hole in upper deck. I forget why he chose that method, and I am too busy to ask for further explanation.

He likes to do things with a certain flare of creativity and difficulty, especially when it comes to working in his garden. He often says.  “If it doesn’t work, well, we will always think it should have.”

His mother liked to be creative. Mother was more like my husband in her flare for doing something different. One year she decorated a tumble weed sprayed green for her Christmas Tree.  Another year she nailed 1X2 boards to the wall in a triangle shape and decorated it accordingly. It really did not matter about the tree because the floor surrounding it was piled high and deep with presents of all sorts for her children and family.

Husband likes to brag about her artistic flare. “It made it easier for her when the Christmas Tree stayed up several weeks after the first of the new year,” he once told me.

Problem for me is that he doesn’t think it is appalling that it stayed up that long.

However, I should continue with the story of the seeds. Eventually Husband placed small plants in the ground and actually remembered to water them. That is, he remembered for a few days. Thanks to rain showers, they received the necessary water to grow sturdy plants with blossoms before the summer heat began to advance.

I think he watered them intermittingly, but passably. He picked a total of one small yellow fruit that stubbornly produced in spite of age and speculative effort.

Husband now tells me he would rather buy tomatoes at Farmer’s Market or his favorite health-food store. He thinks less effort to which I agree. It is less frustration for me, too.

In the earlier days of our marriage, we attempted large garden plots each spring. I wanted to see well-tended rows and mulch around the base of plants. Husband planted the neat rows, but ignored the weeds and sometimes forgot to pick the fruit. It totally annoyed me.

Husband’s responded to my annoyance by saying, “It sounds like a personal problem to me.”

In spite of the weeds and the mosquitos that thrived among the plants I faithfully watered, we gathered enough summer produce to somewhat off-set our labor.

When Husband would tell me, “I want at least five acres of land for a garden and fruit trees”, I would immediately go into an inward panic.

I didn’t have the time or physical strength to care for such a project.

Fortunately, our current half-acre plot does not contain good garden soil. I think we are getting old for large and grandiose projects.

He continues to dream of crop farms, huge gardens, and canning fruits and vegetables. I tell him, “Get real! It won’t happen in our lifetime.”

He often retorts that he looks forward to gardening in Heaven where each tomato will fill the bed of a pick-up truck.