How's this for a twist of irony?

I took some pasta al forno to my lawyer friend today, and as it turned out, she had brought in some veggies from her garden to the office, of which she gave me a sample. Never has a woman given me her zucchini! Me, who is known in some circles as Vinny Zucchini, got "squashed" by a woman! She's one sweet tomato, I can tell you that.

I made a tomato

Tonight, I enjoyed my first apartment-grown tomato. I hadn't grown anything since losing my home (and garden) to the ravages of divorce and other factors. Back when I was an avid gardener, I used to grow as many as 30 or more different vegetables--yes, my garden was huge. Anyway, I used to say it then and I was just reminded of it--home grown tomatoes are almost like a different vegetable when compared to store-bought. The colour, texture and flavour is incomparable, mine possessing a deeper, richer, red colour, meatier texture and like I alluded, a taste that absolutely excites the taste buds.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend growing tomatoes indoors, though. This was my first try at doing so and it was rife with obstacles and the yield will be extremely scanty. It never occurred to me that I need to manually pollinate the plant (nature never figured that one day mammals would attempt to garden indoors, I guess) until most of the blooms had sprouted and faded. I had to move the plant several times a day in order to expose it to sufficient sunlight and nature also didn't help out in the watering department, forcing me to keep a watchful eye and act accordingly.

Still, the act of slowly and lovingly nurturing something and watching it flourish into a beautiful thing was very rewarding. Eating the son-of-a-bitch was even more rewarding. It's pretty much the same with rearing children--except without the rewarding part.

Stay tuned for my recipe for "tomato and cucumber salad".

I'm a father!

Since I no longer have a vegetable garden (it stayed with the house and my ex-wife), I bought a single tomato plant for my apartment, mostly for company. Having been an outdoor farmer all my life, it never occurred to me that tomato plants require pollination in order to sprout tomatoes. When it finally dawned on me, more than a dozen flowers had appeared only to wither away "childless".

I carefully formed a paper towel (I wasn't about to buy a whole box of Q-tips for any plant) into a point and "sexed" the few remaining open flowers. I did this once a day for about four days. It was looking pretty futile and I thought I had missed the window of opportunity, the flowers having already reached menopause and unable to bear fruit.

I waited a couple more days to see if I could avoid having to put the plant out of my misery. Yesterday morning, right after I got up, I went to check out the barren plant. I gave it the once over and was about to take it away to destroy it when I thought I saw something. I took a closer look.

It was hiding behind the flower, almost indiscernible, but there it was--a tomato! I was the proud father of a bead-sized tomato. There was much rejoicing last night. As many as one beer were drunk. And if that weren't enough to make my year, today, the lil feller is already almost marble-sized. But that's still not all--he has a little brother!

Sure, between the plant, the new pot and the soil, these two tomatoes have cost me about $6.50 apiece, but buying a couple of tomatoes in the store for fifty cents just doesn't give you the thrill that fatherhood does.