Friday, January 16, 2004
Tomatoes
I love tomatoes, but they're so expensive. Like, $2.99/lb certain times of the year. So I planted some tomato plants this past summer, figuring I would grow my own damn crops. I was so excited. I imagined I would be eating bushels and bushels of tomatoes in just a few short months. All those tomato recipes I had prepared...
Oh, what hubris! My three plants produced a total of five edible tomatoes the entire summer. And it was mainly due to these fat disgusting bastards. They kept eating my plants the whole summer. And those mutha humpas can eat. They start as little tiny things and then suddenly, it seems, they get FRICKIN HUGE. If you get close enough, you can actually hear them chewing. But I don't get too close. I'm afraid one will leap from the plant and burrow into my ear canal. And I wouldn't be able to get it out because they'd be too quick! Finally it would settle deep in my skull and feast upon my delicious brains. Ugggh, the hideous sons of bitches. So they ate my tomato plants all summer, and other tomatoes would just die for no reason and parts of the plant would just shrivel up. Maybe they were sad because they were in pots. But they were in big 12 gallon pots. And I watered them every other day. Fertilized every week. They had no excuse.
Anyway, it is now mid-winter and the tomato plants are still alive, clinging on for dear life. It is only 50 degrees, but they don't like it. Producing little shriveled tomatoes that get all moldy and die before ripening. And something still appears to be eating them, although I find no caterpillars. Sigh. It wouldn't hurt so much if I didn't like tomatoes so much. Take what you will from that and apply it to any aspect of LIFE. Do it now.
Now, with whatever aspect of life you are thinking of, take with you this lesson: instead of nurturing and loving something in the hopes that it will one day produce something great, just go to the supermarket and buy one that's already firm and ripe.
A horrible lesson, you say? Indeed it is. Indeed it is.
Oh, what hubris! My three plants produced a total of five edible tomatoes the entire summer. And it was mainly due to these fat disgusting bastards. They kept eating my plants the whole summer. And those mutha humpas can eat. They start as little tiny things and then suddenly, it seems, they get FRICKIN HUGE. If you get close enough, you can actually hear them chewing. But I don't get too close. I'm afraid one will leap from the plant and burrow into my ear canal. And I wouldn't be able to get it out because they'd be too quick! Finally it would settle deep in my skull and feast upon my delicious brains. Ugggh, the hideous sons of bitches. So they ate my tomato plants all summer, and other tomatoes would just die for no reason and parts of the plant would just shrivel up. Maybe they were sad because they were in pots. But they were in big 12 gallon pots. And I watered them every other day. Fertilized every week. They had no excuse.
Anyway, it is now mid-winter and the tomato plants are still alive, clinging on for dear life. It is only 50 degrees, but they don't like it. Producing little shriveled tomatoes that get all moldy and die before ripening. And something still appears to be eating them, although I find no caterpillars. Sigh. It wouldn't hurt so much if I didn't like tomatoes so much. Take what you will from that and apply it to any aspect of LIFE. Do it now.
Now, with whatever aspect of life you are thinking of, take with you this lesson: instead of nurturing and loving something in the hopes that it will one day produce something great, just go to the supermarket and buy one that's already firm and ripe.
A horrible lesson, you say? Indeed it is. Indeed it is.
