At Random for April 25, 2008
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According to a recent national report, interest in nature among Americans is on the decline.
That probably wouldn’t have surprised the late Washington Post columnist Henry Mitchell, who worried before his death in 1993 that technology was distancing people from the natural world.
But Mitchell didn’t think “getting back to nature” was the answer — at least in the popular sense of heading to the country for 40 acres and a mule. He knew that wasn’t practical for most of us.
With wit and humor, Mitchell argued for a more modest goal: a nation where the average Joe could have at least enough ground for a few tomato plants.
All of this came to mind a few weeks ago, when I returned from lunch to find one of Dr. Bill Smith’s tomato plants near my keyboard.
Smith, an accomplished gardener and the father of the late Advocate columnist Laurie Smith Anderson, is a Johnny Appleseed of summer tomatoes, growing starter plants from seed each spring and leaving the extras with friends.
Each year, as the young plants arrive in the office like a litter of puppies awaiting adoption, at least one seedling finds its way to my desk — the first leg of a journey as routine and complex as the migration of mallard ducks.
The next stop is the stoop near the front door, where I water the plant for a week or so while making excuses for not putting it in the ground. And then, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, my eyes wander toward the window, where I spot the little plant and remember that next to an old car perched on cinderblocks, the surest sign of household indolence is a tomato plant left too long in its little peat pot on the porch.
So I slide the plant from its pot and prepare a place where it can spread its roots, which reminds me that the compost needs to be
stirred, the garden needs weeding, and that my shovel could use a few swipes of the whetstone to sharpen its resolve.
As a small garden chore sprouts a dozen digressions, the minor matter of planting a tomato becomes a blessed afternoon of occupations in the clear light of spring.
Invariably, to plant even a small thing is to connect with a hundred other marvels, a truth affirmed in “The Little Prince,” a classic children’s story by Antoine De Saint-Exupéry. After the prince travels far and wide in search of wisdom, a friend points the prince toward the rose he’d tended back at home.
Care for a tiny, tender plant, the author seems to say, and you might begin to see your place in a world that needs nurturing in other, larger ways.
Or so I thought to myself as I tucked a slender vine into the ground, hoping to grow a few tomatoes, and perhaps a little wonder along the way.
Advocate editorial writer Danny Heitman contributes “At Random” to the People section each Friday.
