From Walking on Air to the Mundane

Life is really full of exciting moments if you think about it.  Getting the contract was a big exciting moment.  This evening my daughter came in from watering our plants, and announced, "We must have a hundred tomatoes."  Then she conceded it was more like fifty tomatoes and fifty blooms.  Still, that's a lot.  We'll have tomatoes to share when they ripen.  Nothing like the year I did my first big garden .  I've always had flower beds and stuck a few tomato plants or squash plants here and there.  But the year my grandson was born, I finally decided to make use of my overly generous back yard and put in a 25 X40 foot garden.  We had corn, cucumbers, black-eyed peas, squash, bell peppers, sweet potatoes, and 48 tomato plants!  I had no idea they would produce so profusely!  For a while we were giving them to neighbors and co-workers in big, brown grocery bags.  We put up jars and jars of salsa.  Finally, at the end of the season, we were just chucking the surplus into the compost bin since friends were pleading, "No, thank you!"  This year Kristin and I are doing the flower bed method.  Even so, with only three Early Girls, two Marglobes, and what we thought was a Sweet 100 cherry tomato, but turned out to be a Pear tomato, we have more than enough.  We don't know if the Pear tomato is going to be yellow, orange, or red, but it's an heirloom variety that dates from the 1700s.  Kristin still wants a Sweet 100, but I'm looking forward to the Pear tomatoes.  Through the years, both my mom and I have grown antique roses and old varieties of iris and hollyhocks.  I've always intended to grow heirloom veggies, and this is my first year at it.  Although the Marglobe only dates back to 1917, it is still considered an heirloom.  If you love gardening, a tomato can be almost as exciting as a book contract.