By Pravin Trivedi

They have to be good tomatoes. Really good tomatoes. Maybe they are the elephant variety, like the garlic from that town in California. Gilroy, that’s the town. But really, why fifteen dollars?

Well, since it may be a long story, I might as well start now. We downsized our living requirements from a seven bedroom house to a two bedroom condo. A little cramped, but my wife and I did get to see each other’s faces a lot more during the day.

Apart from complaining about the lack of room for my never-ending projects and honey-do lists, there was one thing that was bothering me a lot. We had no garden! I could not plant any tomatoes or vegetables. It was the one thing I enjoyed in the big house. I wound up spending my spare time chatting with the neighbors and visiting the local bars until I came up with the solution. I got some clay pots and made my own mini garden on the 8 feet by 10 feet wooden deck in the rear of the condo. We found that it was not forbidden by the articles of the condo group. And two or three people could still squeeze onto the deck and sit.

We had stored last summer’s plant equipment in the basement for the winter. It looked like the plant supports, diggers, gloves and fertilizer were not going to be needed this year. But with my procrastination, I was late in getting around to doing anything. So, it was end of July before I got my plants in the pots. By mid-August they were two feet tall. While my friends were complaining daily about how many tomatoes they were having for salad, I only had six yellow flowers on each plant.

Discussing my garden became a taboo subject in the house. We finally had two tomatoes, one on each plant. They were green in September when we went to visit my sister. My wife had warned her not to talk about my tomato season. When we returned one tomato plant had been knocked flat on the deck by the wind. The other tomato was still green. I picked that tomato, wrapped it in newspaper and left it in the kitchen drawer. We forgot about it until Christmas when it finally turned red. The total cost this year – fifteen dollars! What an ROI!

Can’t wait till Spring.