The Tomato Whisperer

Yesterday, my beau called me while I was at work.  He had been mowing the back yard.
"You would not believe the tomatoes you have back here in your raised garden.  It's insane."

                                                                      ??

We put the raised garden together a couple of years ago.  I enthusiastically planted organic seeds and tended to it lovingly for roughly a month.  That's probably an exaggeration.  I did manage to see some sprouts.  I even got a green bean.  I plucked it from the earth, held it high and shouted "AS GOD IS MY WITNESS I WILL NEVER GO HUNGRY AGAIN!"  Then I ate it.  Standing right there in the garden.  Dirt and all.  The most expensive green bean of all time.  After that, something shiny distracted me, I abandoned all hope of making my own salsa and everything went to pot, or to seed.  Apparently, literally.

As I drove home, I laughed.  How about that?  I am the Tomato Whisperer.  The key is to walk by the raised bed with your hands over your eyes like blinders.  If they think you aren't looking, they'll grow.
I'll be able to make my own salsa after all.  Maybe spaghetti sauce too.  Homemade catsup?  Fried green tomatoes?  Good Lord, what I am going to do with all these stinkin' tomatoes?  Give some to the neighbors.  Start going to the Farmer's Market with my Miracle Tomatoes.  Should I charge more?  I'll write a book on Tao Gardening.  Then a cookbook.  I'll commercialize my spaghetti sauce: Tomato Whisperer Pasta Sauce.  It has a ring to it, doesn't it?

When I get home the first thing I do is go out back to inspect my long forgotten vegetable garden.  There are no tomatoes back there.  Nothing that even remotely resembles tomato plants.
I come back inside.  "Phil, honey, there are no tomatoes out there."
"Those aren't tomato plants?"
"No, the plant in the container on the deck that I'm currently ignoring?  That's a tomato plant."
"Oh.  Then what is that stuff in the raised bed?"
"It's a bumper crop of cilantro.  At least I think it's cilantro."

The lesson is this:

1) Only hard work will get you where you want to be.  Don't believe your own hype.
2) Until we take a more active role in our food (like oh, say, figuring out the difference between cilantro and tomato plants), Monsanto doesn't have much to worry about.
3) You also need cilantro for salsa.  It makes a nice garnish on spaghetti too.