My Tomatoes

By G. E. Shuman

Last year, at right about this time, I started planning.  It had been a very long, very gray winter here in the North, and I was the victim of a severe case of cabin fever.  I could not wait to see something green besides my wife's badly neglected Christmas cactus that somebody should have put out of its misery years ago, and a death-defying rubber plant that sits beside our fireplace, silently mocking me and daring me to not water it.   I didn't care, because, in spite of many previous failed attempts, I knew that this would be the year.  This year, (last year,) I would finally grow the huge and beautiful tomatoes I had attempted to before.  This time... I had a plan.
Just the thought of putting seeds into some rich soil and seeing those first tiny signs of life poke their heads toward the sun, (Even if it would be sun coming through a dining room window.) made me head for the hardware and garden supply stores.  "Those other, disastrous years were probably just because I used already-started tomato plants," I thought to myself.  "This year I'll grow my own, from scratch!"  Or, from seeds, to be more precise.
I love shopping for seeds, although I have little reason to do so since we have no room for a garden.  Our house is in the city, small city as it is.  I'm pretty sure I could toss my wife's dachshund puppy right out a side window and hit the neighbors house, although that would amuse the puppy little, and my wife less.  I'm not sure why that thought came to mind.  Anyway, someday they will invent a Roomba for outdoors, and I will no longer have to mow.   To my point, seed-shopping is great, and is almost as much cabin fever therapy as actually planting the little buggers.  Here's a hint, if you're new at this.  Tomato seed packages are the best.  They always show those huge, red, luscious-looking fruit, and the tomatoes are sure to have names like Big Boy, and Beef Steak!  I could almost eat those tomatoes right off the package!
That very day I bought everything to grow the biggest, best tomatoes ever.  I filled a cart with bags of Miracle-Gro soil, a seed starter tray, two big porch pots, drainage rocks, tomato cages, (The strong ones, to hold all my heavy tomatoes,) and a huge plastic watering can.  Oh yes, and I carefully selected a pack of seeds that were guaranteed to grow the largest, juiciest, most delicious tomatoes anywhere!  (It said something like that on the label, and they couldn't print it if it wasn't true.)  This  time, (last year) I had all the bases covered.  I would practically force tomatoes to grow on those vines.   After all, God made things to grow the way they do, I thought, so even He could not keep my tomatoes from growing.  ( I did later read that the builders of the Titanic had, likewise, said that even He couldn't sink her...       Hum.)
I got home from buying all of my tomato-growing ammo.,  and planted the seeds from that yummy-looking package, in my new starter tray.  I then placed the tray on a stand  in front of that dining room window.  I watered the fertile soil, and I waited.    Within a week or so, the first tiny plants broke through the soil!  Eureka!  I could nearly taste the fruits of my labor already, as I lovingly watered the growing plants, carefully rotating the tray to insure that my tiny ones would become big, straight, tall plants, basking in the sun.  I wondered if those tomato cages would be strong enough.
All seemed well on the day I proudly transplanted the tomatoes into the large, prepared pots of soil already sitting on the sunny end of our front porch.  Throughout the summer I faithfully carried water in that big plastic waterer, never letting my charges go thirsty.  And, just as I knew they would, those plants grew, and grew.  In fact, they got so large, so fast, that I nearly couldn't get the tomato cages over them.   On windy days I pulled the big pots back under the protection of the covered porch, but was sure they received every ray of full sunshine available to them, every bright day of summer.   I eventually had some of the best looking tomato plants I have ever seen.  There was only one problem.
To me, there is nothing like a huge crop of red tomatoes.  What I got for my labors was exactly that; nothing like a huge crop of red tomatoes.  In fact, among all my green, musky-scented tomato vines, there were almost no tomatoes at all.   Still, I watered, and I waited.  In fact, I watered and waited until nearly Halloween, before giving up on my tomatoes.  I swore then that I would waste no more time and money on plants, and next year, (this year,) I would get my fresh tomatoes at the farm stand.  

Today it is snowing, and it has  been a very long, gray winter here in the North.   I sit here beside the fireplace, wishing for summer, and writing this column.  (That rubber plant is  mocking me again.)  But I don't care.  You know, I've been thinking.  My Miracle-Gro soil last year was probably no miracle, and I might have gotten the wrong kind of seeds.  I need to go to the hardware store.  This year... I have a plan.

Messy Miracles

by G.E. Shuman

The older I get the plainer it seems to me that nearly everything in life can be seen in more than one way.  Almost every circumstance can be viewed and interpreted as either a blessing or a curse.  Truthfully, some things are probably both.  (Such is my experience in  raising teenagers.)  "The rain falls on the just and the unjust." as the Bible says. That's a good thing if you have crops to water, but not so much if you're on you're way to the beach.  In both cases, one thing is for sure. Someones gonna get wet.  Also, truthfully, some people really do seem to be eternal optimists about such things, and others always have to view that old glass as half empty.  I'm not at all sure why that is so.   I'm just sure that the eternal optimists irritate the daylights out of me sometimes, even as I envy them.
Albert Einstein was once quoted as saying:  "We must accept the fact that either nothing is a miracle, or everything is a miracle."  I'm not even sure which side of the miracle-fence ol' Al was on, but I suspect that he might just have wondered if this big universe could really have popped (or banged) into being by accident.  In any case, as you may have surmised, my vote is for everything being a miracle.   I also do my best to view life positively, at least when it's convenient to do so.  The alternative is, as proposed by Lemony Snicket, a series of unfortunate events.  
The very existence of life itself, to me, is miraculous.  Just the simple fact, and it is a fact that really isn't simple at all,  that we are even here, is pretty amazing.  The further fact that we humans, as do no other life forms on our planet, KNOW that we are alive, even though, with that, we also have to know that we will die, is another miracle.   (That is the messy down side to sentiently observing the world, I guess.)   What I have observed, in my many years of observing and cogitating, so far, is that life seems to be a combination of both good times and dire inevitabilities; filled with hope and pleasure, and also with fear and pain.  Life is wonderful, but it is messy, and short, and sometimes hard.   For some, it is extremely short, and profoundly hard.  
Appreciating the miracle that is life depends entirely on our attitude  toward our own situation.  Some people are quite able to display impatience and dissatisfaction, no matter how good things are going for them.  An elderly friend of mine would have said that those folks "would complain if they were being hung with a new rope."  One owner of a brand new house or car, or other thing, may easily tire of it, (This is called 'when the new wears off'.) while some other owner of a lesser thing may be happy with and thankful for what he has.  Some folks, even if their pockets are full, always seem to find the dark cloud surrounding that silver lining, complaining all the way to the bank.   Other people, those eternal optimists, seem to always have smiles on their faces, no matter what.  For one person a hangnail can bring depression and distress,  while serious disease may not discourage another.   Our existence is not perfect, to be sure.  Bad things do happen during the miracle.   I believe that some people simply choose to be happy, anyway.
In all honesty, the "germ of an idea" for this column came to me in the form of a TV commercial, just last night.  The brilliantly-written ad was for a brand of diapers, and poignantly featured a beautiful newborn baby in the process of getting her diaper changed by her mom.  The narrator in the ad said few words.  Some of those words were these: "Sometimes... miracles get messy."  And so it is with life.