Sweet Million

This morning I walked out on our balcony to see that our tomato plant was now stretching more than a foot above its stake. The sprawling Sweet Million cherry tomato seems bent on living up to its name; it sends out new branches every few days and is increasingly pregnant with tiny green orbs.

This tomato is the behemoth of our balcony garden, outshining our other attempts to augment our lack of a back yard with khaki-colored plastic pots. The companion tomato plant dwindles in a neighboring pot a mere quarter of the size of its gigantic cousin. Two pumpkin plants poke up near the railing, small but determined—despite their lack of vines, they already have buds (which my farm-boy husband informs me are the male flowers, first to appear but full of only pollen, not fruit, potential). Behind and to the left, tiny melon plants wiggle in the breeze.

As I pollinate tomato flowers with my fingertip, I'm reminded of my parents' vegetable garden back in Wisconsin. We had one every year--a black-earth sprawl bursting with vegetation to feed a family of ten and weeds--so many weeds yanked from the ground by me and my siblings. Oh I hated it--hated the shivering dryness of the dirt on my hands and bare feet and the endless, shadeless rows always waiting expectantly--ironically, as much as I now long for something more alive than this balcony fading into muted gray wood grain. Oh how things change...