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homegrown tomato
Sunday, January 7 2001
In my breakfast this morning, my cheese sandwich included slices of tomato from a vine growing entwined with the boxed bougenvilla out on the front stoop. It says something about the climate of Southern California that my first homegrown tomato is ready for eating in January. Soon after Bathtubgirl moved out back in August, I first noticed the seedling tomato emerging as a volunteer in the other planter pot on the stoop. I transplanted it to its present location and carefully coaxed it into an embrace with the larger bougenvilla. It has subsequently grown to about seven feet in height, flowered multiple times and produced at least a half dozen fruits, only two of which have turned red enough to harvest. It's not the healthiest tomato plant you could ever hope to find, troubled as it is by a white spot that eventually whithers every leaf past its prime.
After I was done with my sandwich, I made sure to put some of the leftover seeds into the other stoop planter pot. I like the idea of having a multi-generational strain of tomatoes accompanying my genome on its journey through time.
It was a lazy, sleepy Sunday. I finally got out of the house in the afternoon and bought myself a burrito down at Tacos Plus. I found myself wanting the streets to be like New York City and fill with pedestrians of every type, walking, yes walking to destinations near and far. But the geography stubbornly remained West Los Angeles. Most of the people out and about were Hispanics waiting for the bus. Nobody seemed to be walking anywhere except the lady with bruise-colored lipstick walking her tiny black foxlike dog. A gentleman struck up a conversation with her as she waited to cross Ohio Avenue, and she said the dog was a girl. I noticed the dog had little grey whiskers around her mouth, an indication that her youth had already passed.
What were people doing hanging out in the Starbucks? They looked like intelligent people; some even looked stylish. Weren't they concerned about their friends possibly seeing them in there? When presenting their menus above the counter, Starbucks doesn't even use chalkboards featuring the funky handwriting of the coffee girl who does it best. That's not a real coffee shop! That's not atmosphere! That's not community! (This is not New York.)
But I can harvest my tomatoes in January.
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