An unseasonable pluck

We grow a random garden on the inside of our home.

From some angles, it looks like a hodgepodge – two pansies from the May Day basket our neighbor Diane left at our door, some spindly sprigs of grass from a preschool project, a radish that has gone to seed because no one wanted to dig it up to harvest the root.

With a little perspective, though, that plot is fertile ground for miracles.

There’s the pepper plant that made its way into the garden more than five years ago and grew stronger roots than anyone could ever imagine. That plant has weathered periods of dormancy and challenge, and it still faithfully produces spicy fruits that keep our lives and our guacamole colorful.

More recently, we’ve been experimenting with tomatoes, which have proven to be a real test for the younger people in our home, who would never actually eat a tomato (yuck!) but can’t help plucking them when they appear on the vine.

All gardens depend on the perfect timing of the pluck.

If you pick a tomato too soon, you waste the fruit and all the tender care that went into producing it.

But, if you wait too long, you draw nutrients from the main plant, and the fruit withers on the vine.

You’d like to keep that beautiful fruit safely on the vine forever because it looks so good and healthy there, but that’s not the point of vegetable gardening.

So, you plant, and you nurture and you water and you hope and, sometimes, you rely on the master gardeners to decide the pruning and the pluck.

Harvest season came a little early to our house, thanks to our indoor garden, and we’re hoping the perfect tomato growing there gets picked at just the right time.