Friday, September 9, 2022

Re-gifting the tomatoes

As I've mentioned before, I start heirloom tomatoes from seed in my greenhouse in March. I keep about 70-80 seedlings for my own use and give away another 40-50 to friends, most to one friend in particular.

We keep tabs on how my babies are doing. Usually I have a good crop and he has a good crop. This year, between deer, varmints and drought, my garden has sucked. His has not.

When I was complaining about my harvest, or lack there of, he said: "My wife's coming by your place tomorrow, want me to have her drop off some tomatoes?"

He didn't mean it as a punch to the gut, but I felt it. Sure, technically they were still my tomatoes, but he raised them. It would be like giving up a baby for adoption, someone else raising them, and then dropping them off at your house again when they turned 18. Okay, poor analogy, but you get my point.

I swallowed my pride and said "yes."

It hurt. But they tasted good so the hurt didn't last long.

My garden has picked up a bit since then, was probably a couple weeks behind him, but we still probably won't have enough to do much as much canning as usual this year. We'll see.

As we Minnesota Vikings fans are fond of saying: "There's always next year."

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