always a garden always tomatoes

My family lived in three different houses over the course of my childhood. Each had a wonderful garden planted by our parents. Each garden grew in size from one to the next.

Our first house was on Ballinger Street in Pittsburgh, PA., the house I consider to be my childhood home. I remember when my sister Peggy was born. It was on my sixth birthday. At first I wasn’t exactly thrilled that I would have to share my birthday with someone else for the rest of my life, but now I consider it an honor and something very precious. I remember the tomatoes from my mother’s garden — especially the little red and orange pear shaped tomatoes. I loved to pick these tomatoes as they just looked so beautiful mixed together in a bowl. I remember making ”art“ with them — arranging and re-arranging them up on a flat surface, eating them one by one until my masterpiece was consumed.

Our Dad built our second house on a two-acre wooded piece of land in Nottingham Township, Eighty-Four PA., where the garden quadrupled in size. This house being a custom-build allowed my parents the luxury of redesigning the master bath space changing it into a greenhouse. Over the next six years, our Mom perfected her skills at raising transplants from seed. I don’t have any vivid memories of eating or making art with tomatoes while we lived here, but do I recall the heavenly look on my Mother’s face when she enjoyed her favorite sandwich in the whole world — Miracle Whip and a thick slice of a just-picked Beefsteak tomato on freshly baked bread.

Our next move was to the farm where the garden grew even larger — and then too large. It became more of a dreaded chore than something enjoyable to me. While Peggy considers the farm to be her childhood home, I didn’t. I lived there for a little less than two years and I was completely against the idea of moving to a farm — I wanted to stay at our second house and in the woods that surrounded it. While I appreciated the farm, I just wasn’t cutout to be a farm girl. My memories of tomatoes from this time aren’t really positive. This was the time period in which my mom’s green thumbs were out of control and there were hundreds of tomato plants when in reality we most likely only needed twenty or so.

Fast forward to today. I visited the farm just recently were Peggy is growing eight tomato plants (and other great stuff, too) — and what a beautiful job she is doing. She has created a manageable sized garden in the space that always represented a space out of control and something unpleasant to me. My sister has given me a wonderful gift. For the first time in my life, I see this place, this beautiful farm, as my home. I can’t thank you enough Peg. :—))