In the summer of 2021, Pastor Ali teaches me how to prune tomato plants.
“The trick,” she informs me, “is to remove the suckers.”
The suckers grow between the stem and branches of the tomato plant. Shoots that grow there cannot produce tomatoes, but they can steal nutrients from the rest of the plant. I spend the next half hour searching for little leafy sprouts in the plant’s green forks.
Pastor Ali is new to my church, and I’m one of the first congregants she asks to help in the garden. She’s in her mid-forties, about five feet tall, stout. Her tiny stature masks the fact that she’s a powerhouse: a former EMT and physical therapist, called to ministry with the unhoused. Although I’m twenty years younger, her energy inspires me. “I once had to tackle a man during communion,” she tells me one day, nonchalantly. “He was having a bad trip.” Somewhere along the way, a gaggle of nuns taught her to garden.
Our garden plots are tucked away behind an old church building converted into a kitchen for local homeless shelters. It’s hidden in plain sight, really. There are ten garden beds, seven of which are tended by the church.
Lois joins us most Saturdays. Her husband died during the first months of the pandemic, and she still carries him in a glint in her eye. Lois is a tall, thin, and graceful elder. But Ali and I discover that we can sic her on a patch of weeds like a rottweiler. After she pulls up an entire bed of invasive mint, slick with sweat beneath the D.C. sun, I jokingly name the garden plot in her honor. When we suggested she take a break, Lois shook her head until her greyish curls danced on her ears.
“I’m not done yet,” she said. “There’s still more to be done.”
One Saturday, Ali and I release Lois into the garden while we paint steppingstones. Lois disappears into the tomatoes and pole beans, and we don’t see her again for two hours, when she emerges with everything weeded and harvested.
That’s how I learn that grief is a kind of vigil. A pair of pruning shears carried alone, while sympathetic friends watch from beyond the garden fence.
***
A typical morning at the garden goes like this:
When I arrive at 8:00am, Pastor Ali is finishing her daily prayer call. When that call ends, we eat dew-kissed cherry tomatoes straight off the vine. Pacing around the garden, hands on our hips, we plan out that day’s ministry. Sometimes lettuce needs harvesting, or kale needs planting. Trellises need to be adjusted as cucumbers and tomato vines spread. Always, always, the plants need watering. At 9:00, some of the older church ladies arrive, and we work until 11:00.
Holy mysteries abound. We discover watermelons growing along the window well by the garden hose. We find baby bunnies snuggled in their nest between rows of lettuce. The miracles quickly spill into other parts of my life. I find chives growing along the sidewalks of several streets in my neighborhood. When I go on my evening walks, I absentmindedly chew on the green stalks.
As the summer wears on, the mix of torrential rainstorms and unrelenting heat causes the tomatoes to swell up into fantastical shapes. Some look like puffy carrots, some are just lumpy, some become little tomato pyramids. An entire plant gets root rot, black splotches spreading across the bottoms of ripening fruit. Still others split open, spilling their nightshade guts into the dirt.
“It’s okay,” Pastor Ali whispers to the unshapely survivors, the tomatoes left behind. “You’re still beautiful and delicious inside.”
***
Autumn comes, as it always does.
The cucumber plants are the first to stop producing, but the tomato plants persist. Pastor Ali, Lois, and I harvest the basil and throw ourselves a pesto making party. It feels like a last hoorah for our summer of gardening. Shortly after, the towering sunflower, a favorite among the pollinators, shrivels and falls over.
I feel autumn sinking into my bones. One morning in September, I wake at 5:00 a.m. from a dream about my dead friend. Unable to sleep again, I bolt from bed and spend an hour wandering my neighborhood. I’m trying to find a single familiar constellation through the trees. The city is not ideal for stargazing under the best conditions, but the sun is beginning to throw its light up from the horizon. I can feel the world around me lighten, notch by notch.
Above the nursing home a block away, Orion is visible. I follow Orion’s shield, or rather, where I know the shield to be in the washed-out skies, to find his perpetual foe: Taurus, the bull. My eyes instinctually search for the Pleiades, the star cluster that sits like a bunch of flies on the bull’s back. I can just make it out in the haze of light.
When you look at star clusters like the Pleiades, it’s best to look out of the corner of your eye, instead of straight on. There’s science behind it. By looking from the side of your eyes, you allow more rod cells to pick up the distant light. You have to look away, ever so slightly, to see it all clearly.
Grief is like that.
As All Saints Sunday grows ever closer, I struggle not to cry in church. I know I’m not the only one. One week as the service ends, I follow Lois up to the altar rail. She doesn’t notice me, but when she bows her head to pray, I do too. When she rises to leave, she meets my gaze with glassy eyes and a soft, surprised smile.
Pastor Ali and I hack the sunflower carcass to bits one morning, before the others arrive. Quietly, we dig a trench and bury the seeds. This is the greatest alchemy of the Earth. With any luck, this season’s death will beget ever more flowers.
- Tomato Triptych - August 20, 2022