Disclaimer #1: I love my husband dearly and feel blessed to have married such a kind-hearted man. Really.
Disclaimer #2: As punishment for the story I’m about to tell, I did not offer my husband his usual editing rights prior to posting this. This is my side of the story, but really, it’s the only side that matters.
My nightmare in the tomato patch.
After eight months of marriage, my typically flawless husband has finally found my “I-can’t-believe-you-did-that!” button.
The reason behind my recent fury is going to be very difficult for the average person to understand. But if there’s any outlet for me to rant and possibly get a little sympathy from someone other than my mom, it’s going to be here on my garden blog.
He wasn’t out drinking all night. He didn’t wager his paycheck playing online poker. I didn’t find a beef taco under the couch cushion.
It was so much worse.
He gave away… gulp… all our ripe tomatoes!!!
Big, beautiful, heirloom brandywine tomatoes in the hands of danger
The story began on Thursday night when I called home from the office to tell my husband that I would be, for the second night in a row, working around the clock in an attempt to meet a completely insane deadline. (Note to self: send blog link to bosses. Italicize completely insane.)
I immediately perked up from my compu-coma when my hubby mentioned that he was going to pick some vegetables to bring to his close friends at work (i.e. all staff and faculty in his school corporation) the next day.
Unenthusiastic, but trying not to appear selfish, I said, “Okay, but please don’t give away our tomatoes because I want to make sauce this weekend and I need all the ripe ones that we have.” I was looking forward to spending my Sunday barefoot in the kitchen, turning our homegrown tomato harvest into homemade awesomeness.
He replied, more or less, “Blah, blah, blah. There’re plenty. Blah blah blah. But Baby, I’m a giver. You need to be more of a giver. Blah.”
I said, “I’m serious. I don’t think you realize how many tomatoes it takes to make just one jar of tomato sauce.”
Friday evening I stumbled home from my 60 hour work day and immediately noticed that our kitchen, which typically has fresh produce protruding from every nook and cranny, was uncharacteristically barren.
“You didn’t give away all our tomatoes did you?”
“No. Not ALL of them,” he replied matter-of-factly as he handed me TWO of my heirloom tomatoes, undoubtedly saved from his free produce stand only because they were really big and really ugly.
Too tired to argue, I laid my head down on the kitchen table next to one of my thankfully ugly Marvel Stripe heirloom tomatoes, pouted for a minute, and fell asleep.
But when Sunday rolled around, I had regained enough strength to wage my battle.
While the tomato thief and I rummaged around the patch looking for the “plenty more ripe ones” he had promised, I wore a grimacing frown that every husband should fear.
I prodded for an apology.
Finally he said, “Okay, I’m sorry, but Baby, they’re just tomatoes.”
“JUST tomatoes?” I gasped. “These aren’t JUST tomatoes! These are the heirloom tomatoes that we started from seed on our window sill back in March, built a cold frame for in April, planted in our garden in May and tirelessly tended to through the frosts, storms, droughts and bug infestations of June, July, and August. These are the tomatoes that were to be the main ingredient, and a rather important one at that, in the homemade tomato sauce that I was to spend my day therapeutically smelling and stirring for hours and hours. This was to be the sauce that would forever dispel my pressurecookerphobia. ”
Never again shall these babies be mistaken as "just tomatoes"
When I saw I wasn’t reaching him with sentimentality, I tried to reach him with numbers.
“Do you understand the investment I’ve made in this tomato sauce already? I’ve spent $10 on seeds and supplies, $30 for a canning class, $40 on a blanching pot, $70 on a pressure canner and now I have two tomatoes to work with? That’s about $150 for a scant ½ jar of sauce! And you thought Bill Alexander’s $64 dollar tomato was ridiculous?”
We picked a meager 6.5 pounds of ripe-ish tomatoes that morning. I needed 30.
He said, “I’ll get you more tomatoes.”
“It’s not the same,” I sulked. And sulked. And sulked.
The incident has left me to wonder if I am over-reacting or if any gardener would feel the same hurt and fury if the harvest she has mothered for months is taken away? I realize that in the grand scheme of things, these were in fact just tomatoes. But in my world, they were far more than that.
A few final words to my tomato thief:
I’m sorry for breaking our agreement that you get to edit blogs written about your character, but hey, I also thought we had an agreement that you wouldn’t give away all the tomatoes. Truce?
Although I will forever contend that our homegrown tomatoes are not just tomatoes, I do thank you for the 30 pounds of substitutes that you brought home from your brother’s garden Sunday afternoon. I just hope he asked his wife first.
