Call Me an Optimist—Jobs Are Like Tomatoes?

One of my two “girls,” a tall productive yellow cherry tomato plan, bit the dust in early September. Her offspring were delicious. The sister plant with its plump red cherry tomatoes is nearing its demise. Both plants lived fruitful lives, enjoying the sun, enduring storms and cold nights, and delivering 100s of wonderful little tomatoes.

We popped them in our mouths raw right off the plant, we added them to vegetable and pasta dishes, and we sautéed them with leaves from our basil plants. They joined our stir fry meals and topped fish fillets.

As the two plants aged, they developed leaf spots and hosted spiders who strung their webs from stem to stem. They stopped being pretty. At one point, my husband pointed to them and declared they were done. No more of the little green gems were going to turn to red or yellow, he thought. “Time to cut them down.”

Call me an optimist. I wasn’t ready to give up (seems to be a lifelong trait of mine)…and it turned out I was right. We had at least a dozen more ripening tomatoes after the initial death sentence.

Now that their season is nearly finished, I look forward to planting their cousins in the spring. We had a good run together. It’s been great.

In a way, it's similar to leaving or losing a job you liked. It was a good run, but now it's time to move on.

[If you’re new to One Tomato at a Time, please check out these earlier posts on planting and tending my “girls.”]