The Zen of Tomato Picking

Picking tomatoes is the ultimate Zen activity, and I think of my garden as the Zen palace. When the goings-on in my neighbourhood get testy, I have a place where things are simple and beautiful.

In my backyard, there are three tomato plants. They are located on the far side of my square lawn, the side furthest away from the front door, beside my driveway. They are the centrepieces of my manicured small garden, which includes some yellow marigolds -to complement the red and green of the tomato plants, three rose plants, and a swiftly-carved small wood sign that reads, "Garden of Joy". Two of the tomato plants are low, growing large-size tomatoes that droop from their weighted, outstretched vines. The other one grows higher, its vines strategically arranged, for stability, to intertwine with the pear-less limbs of the pear tree that shades it from too much sunlight. Perfectly rounded cherry tomatoes grow in clusters on its long weightless vines.

Every couple of days, there are ripe tomatoes waiting, beckoning to be snatched from their stems. The large ones want to be sliced, and served alongside strips of bacon, in a sandwich. The cherry ones wish to be tossed whole into a caesar salad. Their fortunes await them every time I step into the garden with a large metal bowl in my hands.

Stubbornly, I kneel down first alongside one of the low-growing plants, preferring to begin my picking with the deformed and welted large tomatoes. I want to get them out of the way. I don't pay attention to anything but their redness. A red brilliant enough that it stands out despite the afternoon sun glaring on its unsightliness is ready for picking.

The better formed large tomatoes come next. They're less difficult to look at, and more pleasant to touch. I pick one, making sure to leave as much of the stem as possible on the vine. I try to pick enough of the good ones to cover up, as much as possible, the deformed and welted ones, which are relegated to the bottom of the bowl, invisible.
I make sure to scoop up from the earth any fallen tomatoes. Because they are bug-infested, I throw them out.

I shift over to the cherry tomato plant, and my mood becomes lighter. I delight in the vision of long dangly vines that, despite their entanglements, seem to have a vivaciousness about them; a longing to be noticed. It is why the tomato is properly called a fruit. The cherry analogy seems most appropriate.

Taking heed of a ripe batch of five or six cherries directly to my left, I begin to pluck, one at a time. I start to wonder how many of my neighbours have a cherry tomato plant as fruitful as mine, which seems, at a glance, to have sprung twenty-five perfect nuggets since I last picked, only four days ago. The neighbours next door are new, and they don't have a cherry tomato plant. They don't spend enough time at home to properly nurture one. My neighbours on the other side would be better off sharing the delights of caring for a tomato plant. It would give them something to do together, besides hurling abuses. Sometimes, I hear them scream at each other. I hear their baby wail. I wish they'd shut their door. I want to sound proof my plants from their shouting, because I think that's what's causing the deformities and welting.

This batch has seven ripe cherries. That's a new record. I can already feel them bursting inside my mouth, as I pluck one after another out of my caesar's salad.

Mr. Swanridge down the road has more tomato plants than I do. His plants grow alongside the back of his house and outward. The large tomato plants are intertwined with the cherry plants, so the batch looks like a hodgepodge of big and little tomatoes. His tomatoes are bigger, greener when unripe, and often more fruitful than mine. Yet he still doesn't seem happy. I don't get it. It couldn't be because his plants aren't doing their bit to brighten him up. When I walk by his house, I always take note of the many bright red large and cherry tomatoes on his plants. I admire them, not so much because they're more abundant than my batch, but because Mr. Swanridge lives on a corner lot that's accessible to traffic, and people will appreciate them. My plants, conversely, have to live in anonymity, appreciated only by me.

When ever Mr. Swanridge is outside, I say hello. He's a portly man, six-feet tall, with cheeks drooping like a hound dog's and a vastly protruding forehead. When he walks, which he does only very slowly and laboriously, he appears desperate for the ability to manoeuvre more freely.

He used to come right over and talk. In fact, he inspired me to buy my first tomato plant. When I saw the expression of joy on his face as he talked about his babies, I knew I had to get my own plants. But that was six years ago. Back then, he walked with a lilting gait, and his portliness came across as an enormous capacity for affection.
Though Mr. Swanridge's plants remain as fruitful as ever, his mood has darkened considerably. His wife died a couple of summers back, in the middle of prime picking season. I think now he associates the season with her death. Considering this, it's amazing he's kept his plants looking so sprightly. It's a shame about her death. She was a melancholy woman -too dour to be called lively, too pear-shaped to be called shapely. And she didn't share her husband's enthusiasm for tomatoes. It's a tragedy that he looks lifeless now, especially since his tomatoes look so good. Someone else must be looking after them. Funny that I haven't seen anyone but an aimlessly meandering Mr. Swanridge around the property.

I found three more cherries on my plants. There are five or six more green ones in the same batch. They'll be ready for picking within the week. By then, school will have started. The twenty or so kids that have been running around the neighbourhood for the last two months will not be upsetting my plants with their hoarse screams and calls for attention. I will, however, miss J.B. Ellis' afternoon visits. He's the only black kid in the neighbourhood. His family's from Puerto Rico. I think he's the smartest kid around.

--I wish my dad was into cool stuff like that, he says to me, pointing to my tomato plants, --but all he wants to do is watch sports on the dish. Then again, at least he doesn't follow me around or want to do father-son stuff all the time, J.B. admits, though I notice the tone of his voice suggests that he'd really like to be doing father-son stuff with his old man.

J.B., I notice from my kitchen window, is always the first kid up and out of his house in the morning. He's always out before eight-thirty, usually shooting hoops. That's his Zen activity. He's dazzling with a basketball in his grips. For a ten-year old, that is. I've watched him grow from a feisty chubby baby to an enlightened and energetic boy.

Between unending tours of all "the coolest spots" in the woods across the street, he comes over whenever he sees me gardening. He doesn't yell from across the street. Not like the other kids. Instead, he sits down on the driveway and talks to me better than most adults I know. Maybe I like him because he's actually interested in my tomato plants.

--How do you like them today?, I'd ask.

--They're really coming along, he says.

I ask him about his walks in the woods, and if he sees anything in there he likes as much as tomato plants.

--Yeah. I like all the different trees. I try to guess how old they are, and if they've ever been hit by lightning.
We talk about geography. He tells me he wants to go to Alaska, to ride a dog-pulled sled. I tell him I dream of meditating at the base of a mountain outside Katmandu, Nepal. I have to tell him where that is. I concede that I'd have to go there in our winter, because I don't trust anyone with my tomato plants in the summer.

We retreat to my porch, to the iced tea jug. Not even five minutes go by and the neighbours start their yelling.

--That's no good for your plants, J.B. says.

I agree. --Can you hear them from your house?

--No, but when I walk by, sometimes I think they're going to kill each other.

--Do you think it's 'cause they don't have tomato plants?

--Could be.

It's a hot day, and we devour the iced tea. A pot clangs in the neighbour's house, and a woman shrieks. J.B. looks at me.

--Sure is great iced tea, eh? I say.

He nods. Two more loud thuds are heard. The baby wails louder.

--Too bad about Mr. Swanridge, J.B. says, trying to hide his uneasiness about the commotion. We have discussed Mr. Swanridge before.

--Have you seen him lately?

--Yeah. He looks awful. He's getting fatter all the time.

--Have you seen anyone looking after his tomatoes?

--Just once. But I think it was the grass-cutting guy.

--How do you suppose he keeps his plants looking so good when he looks so bad?

--Maybe they're all he's got.

--You might be right.

We each drank one last gulp. The noise next door had died down suddenly. J.B. and I looked at each other but neither said a word. But we wondered what happened that made everything quiet.

As J.B. leaves, I tend to the matter at hand. One of the cherry plants has a drooping vine. It's an inch from the ground. I grab a wood stick from my shed and hammer it into the earth, about two feet deep; deep enough so that any commotion from next door or anywhere else won't budge the vine, once I've secured it to the stick with a pink cloth. I never tie the cloth too tight, for fear of restricting the plants breathing ability. I didn't used to use pink necessarily, until one day when I noticed the plant that was bound by a pink cloth seemed to have spouted red cherries more quickly and abundantly than any of the ones bound by differently coloured ones. So I started using pink exclusively.

Mr. Swanridge died the last week of September. Heart attack, due to his increasing obesity. The day I heard, I walked by his house. There were a few people standing around his porch, and some other alongside his house. No one was near his tomato plants. Stepping a few feet onto his back lawn, I notice they hadn't drooped one centimetre. There were many big red ones on the vines. The cherries are lagging behind, I thought. I glanced at the small crowd. No one was watching, so I walked forward and snatched the largest red tomato from its stem, and placed it gently in my pocket. I intended to eat it later, by itself, as a fitting tribute to Mr. Swanridge's ability to maintain a beautiful tomato batch, despite his declining health.

Two weeks later, on a Tuesday October afternoon, there was a commotion of a different kind next door. A police-woman had been by the day before. Something about a neighbour repeatedly reporting child abuse. That day, two policemen came by, along with a social worker. The woman yelled. I was out back, taking my tomato plants out of the earth. I was nearly done when the commotion started. Good thing, I thought, because the plants had been subjected to enough turmoil. I didn't want their last moments alive to be beset with discord. They'd done well this summer, but I couldn't help but wonder if, had the atmosphere been more serene, would their yield have been more plentiful? I sat on my front porch, to see what would be done by the police and the social worker. A short while later, the man of the house came out with cuffs on; one cop in front of him, the other behind. His head was bowed down. The cops shuffled him into the back of the squad car. They drove off. A minute later, the social worker was coaxing the woman with the baby in her arms through the door.

--Don't worry. We're going to do all we can for you, the social worker repeated, but the woman kept sobbing, and apparently didn't want to go anywhere. Finally, the social worker got her into the car, and they drove off.

I retreated back to the smoothed over ground where my plants had been, wondering about the neighbours I never knew, and if they would get the help they needed. Would they ever be a caring, nurturing family? I soon began thinking about the tomato plants I will plant here next year. Will they be able grow in more peaceful surroundings? Or will they require the stubborn resistance to produce the freshest, ripest tomatoes despite the clamour that has beset them? In one last moment of reflection, I flipped some loose earth over the packed down earth that lay where the plants had grown. It was my way of thanking the earth for its part in the growing process. I proceeded to carefully break up the plants, preparing them for bundling, the haul to the dump site, and eventually and inevitably, to the afterlife.