Conventional is a word that I don’t associate with me. I have, throughout my life, had more success when I have taken a slightly unconventional route. That includes the path I took during the first year of being a widow and starting on the slow and painful journey of discovering what my husband had been truly like. A lot of the time I was in a fog, functioning, but not fully there.
For reasons like most things in my life, I have yet to figure out why I did it, but I announced I wanted to grow things. What, I had no idea, but I wanted to grow something. It was a fresh beginning and I could visualise small green shoots of a new life, my new life.
A neighbour, who had been very supportive, coming to check on my son and myself on a regular basis, happened to be someone who was a good gardener. It was she who bought me some tomato seeds and helped set them up so that they could propagate. Over the course of that first year, I did grow some carrots, some herbs, a couple of peppers which the birds liked and some potatoes. However, it was the tomatoes that kind of took over my life and were the most successful and plentiful.
The Early Days
I had the tomato plants all over the house including in the bedrooms.
My son’s bedroom windowsill
My bedroom windowsill
Finally outside
Eventually the plants became strong enough to go outside. Luckily, my landlord had left quite a few pots and canes that I was able to use.
Tomato plants outside
Tomatoes Galore
They were pretty prolific, but for one reason or another they didn’t ripen that well outside so I ended up having plates of tomatoes ripening around the house.
Ripening tomatoes
And so they continued
As the summer faded into autumn, there were still some of the plants that were producing flowers and tomatoes. Rather than dispose of them, I brought them into the house. For several months, I had tomato plants in pots in the house. They became very long and straggly, but still kept producing tomatoes well into 2016.
The last of the tomatoes
There was something very therapeutic about growing tomatoes during that first year. I tended to them and nurtured to the very end. They gave me something else to focus on, I was able to relax and take my mind of how to get through each day.
I haven’t grown anything since from scratch. Instead, the house that my son and I are currently living in has an apple tree. It seems to produce apples, a lot of them every couple of years. Two years ago they were a good size. This year they are tiny, I have no idea why. Next year, we’ll just have to see. I have no idea if I will grow tomatoes or herbs, or even have a house with an apple tree again, but I will never say never and I still have some herb seeds that one day I attempt to grow on windowsills. What I will say is that for someone who considered herself the opposite of green fingered, I did manage to grow an awful lot of tomatoes!