What I Learned About Writing from a Tomato

I am a gardener. And I’m a writer. So naturally, every day from 9 to 5, I am wracked with guilt and mild self-loathing. When I am outside in the garden, I feel guilty that I am not at my desk, butt-in-chair, working on my next blog or novel. When I’m at my desk, I wonder what kind of idiot willingly sits in a dark basement on a beautiful gardening day.
Recently, though, I had an epiphany. Rather than be at war with myself every warmish day, I decided to think about this internal conflict in a completely different way. Why not “write” while I’m gardening?
How’s that you say? Haven’t I mentioned that I write novels? Not about roses or rutabagas?
Once I opened my mind to it though, I realized all the essential elements of a novel are there in the garden. The life and death struggles. Helpful companions and diabolical adversaries. Bold characters that hog the sunlight and secondary characters content to live in their shadows. I began to see the narrative arc that begins in spring with the struggle for life, followed by the triumphs and tragedies of summer, and finally, a satisfying ending—or a disappointing one— in the fall, depending on the skill of the “author.”
Armed with this revelation, I came to my garden one morning with new eyes. As I weeded beneath a “Roma” tomato plant, I paused to consider what it had to tell me. Instantly I was transported to a small patch of garden in the backyard of my Sicilian grandmother on the West Side of Buffalo. I remembered how she favored this fleshy cultivar for the Sunday sauce we could smell as we came up her front walk. So I added a section to my novel about grandmothers and this beloved Sunday ritual.
As I continued with my creative riffing, I began to think about the tomato as a character—how it dominates the home vegetable garden, needs constant attention, and can’t share a bed with either corn or potatoes. But like many complex characters in literature, I knew the tomato, like Severus Snape or the Frankenstein monster, was misunderstood long before it was loved. I did some research.
For many years in early America, the tomato was avoided, even shunned, because of its family history and physical appearance. A member of the deadly nightshade family, some thought the tomato was poisonous and possibly used to summon werewolves. Others of a more puritanical bent believed the succulent, red orb was too sexy, possibly an aphrodisiac in disguise. It wasn’t until the mid-1800s that respectable gardeners finally accepted the tomato as a character they wanted in their garden. Now this Casanova (it still bears the sobriquet, the “love apple”) has a starring role in many of our favorite meals.
And so I’ve learned to come to the vegetable garden with a writer’s mind. The stories are there. All I need to do is bring my imagination along with my watering can.