Compulsion
It must be spring. For starters, the sun came out today, a rarer occurrence in New Jersey winters than readers who don’t live near the coast might think. I took my daily walk without a coat. Lawns are showing a bit of green that doesn’t look like it’s left over from the previous year. Our attic bedroom was too uncomfortably warm when I took my laptop up there to write away from Eileene’s videos. And we bought some potting soil and tomato seeds last weekend.
This will be my fourth year at it, and I’m not very good. The first year, an animal stripped our meager crop. The second year, we got two tomatoes, the size of a golf ball and a tennis ball. The third year, we got a huge crop, but they refused to ripen; all were green when harvested around Halloween. Though we get a better return each year, my expectations for this year’s performance are low.
Each year, we purchase ever more equipment for my tomato patch. What began as a bag of potting soil and a trowel is now three plastic tubs, plastic wrap, three kinds of fertilizer, four garden tools, a bale of chicken wire, gloves, kneepads, specially designed plastic stakes, permeable cups meant for easy transplants, and two bags of soil. I estimate each tomato costs us roughly $12, not counting labor. If we could get them in the depths of February, it might be worth the cost, but naturally our few tomatoes arrive when tomatoes that taste like tomatoes arrive in the supermarkets.
Still, hope springs eternal in the human breast. Maybe this year, I’ll get a full crop of beauties. Maybe the Cubs will win the pennant. Stranger things have happened. I may never understand the enthusiasm of gardeners, but I'm beginning to understand the sheer doggedness behind the hobby.