The Tale of the Tomato

I love to be outside! As girly as I am, it doesn't bother me to get sweaty - I love yard work. I love to watch plants grow. There are several times when I thought a plant had died and was just about to pull it out of the dirt, I'll see a little bit of green. With some gentle coaxing and pruning, often that plant thrives once more.

(Plants do the darnest to keep growing. Our road was paved a while ago. And wouldn't you know it - some of those weeds decided to find the cracks in new pavement and to keep right on growing.)

Watching plants grow renews me to keep on keepin' on - if a plant can, then so can I!!!!!

Back in March, I bought this tomato. (I love a slice of tomato with a bit of mayo and salt and pepper) Since Florida's soil isn't too kind to tomato plants, I listened to advice and planted this little tomato in a pot - she had great soil to grow strong.And grow she did! Very soon, I had to transplant her to a much bigger pot and give her stakes to grow up. Over the next few months, she had many beautiful flowers, but not a tomato. After some researching, I realized that the plant didn't have a way for her flowers to be pollinated. Sooooooo - began the journey of pollinating her. Hannah and I would use a make up brush and brush each flower. Sarah would make the flowers close to each other "kiss". Even Richard would take his straw as he was walking by and blow on the flowers. And I think that we had a couple of good strong winds. But something has worked - I now have TEN tomatoes!!!!The moment that I took from my tomato plant is to make a task successful requires a team of people to do their best. Hardly ever is something successful as a result of a single person - that is rare. Most often success is a result of team.

The other thing that I have noticed is that as the tomatoes are getting bigger, her branches start to break. I have to tie them to the stake for support. Her branches have some outward scarring from the breaks but they keep supplying the nutrients for the tomato. All of us are broken and scarred, but we can keep going, too!!!