Catching Up
“The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature halfway.”
Michael Pollan
On June 14, I posted an essay called “The Love Apple.” Planting tomatoes with my grandson as a circle of life ceremony was the theme. Love of family traditions coupled with love for the Earth rounded out the sentiments. An invitation to “please visit our blog in a few more weeks to see our love ripening” ended the piece.
June slowly turned to July. We watched the warm, summer sun encourage our plants to grow. Spiked rosemary and herbaceous oregano grew in the front plot, their fragrance greeting us each visit. Bright yellow and red heirloom cherry tomatoes flanked the sides. We looked, with hopeful hearts, for the first mottled, crimson blotches on the skins, signaling the ripening cycle.
On our next weekly check, we wandered thru the grass and pine straw toward the garden, only to find our tomatoes … gone! Plucked cleanly off the bush, a fragment of stem remaining, leaving the branches amazingly undisturbed.
My initial emotions included disappointment and frustration. Concern for my grandson quickly followed. Taking a deep breath, I braced for his reaction. Sitting for only a few seconds, our energy shifted and the mood lightened with the blithesome statement of a four year old: “Nona, someone was hungry.”
Enough said.
We are privileged to have land free for planting. We are privileged to have a car, allowing a drive to our local farmers market to replace our vanished tomatoes with organic varieties. We are privileged to harvest the yellow and red cherry tomatoes left for us to enjoy.
Wildlife corridors diminish with continued development, blurring the boundaries between cultivated and uncultivated. We are privileged to share the land with deer, rabbits, raccoons, birds, squirrels, frogs and lizards as they search for food, water and shelter.
The time of meeting halfway has past. We have some catching up to do! Let’s go further, and work harder at our end to support the natural world.
Nature deserves a rest.
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