Don’t Stomp the Little Tomato Plant

Christmas is over. After years of experience, I’m no longer shocked how fast it passed, nor am I sad, as I used to be. I’m more practiced at seeing the beauty and opportunity of these quiet days between Christmas and January, to rest and reflect and nurture new ideas, hopes, and dreams.

Right now my ideas for the coming year are small seeds, like the one that started that little tomato plant in the photo. That little thing sprang up at the edge of a waist-high planter in which I’ve tried growing lettuce and spinach for two summers, and failed miserably both times. The past summer I grew sweet little cherry tomato plants in grow bags next to that planter. I figure the tomatoes I gathered from those two plants probably cost me about $75 a pint, considering all the money I put into the endeavor. Yes, my gardening efforts have proven to be spectacularly poor.

It was November when I first saw the little tomato plant. I stopped and stared. I guess the birds had dropped seeds from little tomatoes. They were better gardeners than I.

On Christmas day, which was incredibly warm, I saw that not only had the little seedling made it through weeks of no rain and a few cold snaps, but, at about three inches tall, actually had blooms, and–look close–a tiny tomato.

Memory of an analogy I read years ago sprang to mind: Our ideas, hopes, dreams, our very lives, are like tiny tomato seeds. Those ideas don’t look like much at the very beginning. In fact, our first (second and third) efforts at any endeavor may be terribly disappointing and not at all what we had in mind–the paragraph, essay, book we write doesn’t turn out at all like we wrote it in our dreams, so we bury it beneath the bed and never write another word. We speak up at a meeting and are so embarrassed by our clumsy expression of our views that we won’t risk trying that again. We crochet a baby blanket and the stitches are wildly uneven, so we won’t attempt another pattern. We fail two years in a row to grow vegetables in containers in south Alabama, and swear to give it up.

Don’t stomp on the baby tomato plant. “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand,” we are told in Zechariah 4:10. Give your hopes and dreams a chance to grow. Seeing what is right with your efforts is the best first response. And the second and third. You can build on what you did well, even a fraction well; when you see what worked, you can make it better. And give yourself encouragement. Encouragement is what brings strength and growth.

I’ve just encouraged myself so much that perhaps I’ll go out and cover that tiny tomato plant against the coming cold, simply because I admire its gumption. I’d like to see what it may grow into.

In the meantime, I’m making another stab at making a list of words, ideas, hopes, and dreams to guide me in 2024. (I avoid the terms goals or resolutions, because those words scare me.) I found great encouragement from the post The Importance of Language When Making New Year’s Resolutions on the Wise and Shine website, where the author points out the far-reaching effects of being specific.

Perhaps being specific is the first on my list of words, ideas, hopes and dreams for the new year.

“Be always at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let each year find you a better man.” —Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father

Happy, happy New Year, dear hearts.