Grow tomatoes, don't be a world-class jerk

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Our tomatoes, last week

How to grow a tomato
How not to be a world-class jerk

How to grow a tomato

Plan in winter
Plant in spring
Tend in summer
Eat in autumn

Of course, it doesn’t actually ever go like that,
it goes more like this:

The planning in winter is ideal, the mind-image perfection.
The planting in spring gets delayed because of climate-change-odd weather.
The tending in summer is complicated by other commitments, more enticing than watering, pruning, weeding.
The eating — well, that happens, regardless; the culmination of bounty or scarcity, whatever the fruit on the vine. 

Whether red and sun-ripe or green and brown-paperbag-prayers, 
the tomatoes find their way to my enjoyment, alimentation, appreciation...
inspiring the seeds, already, of next year’s crop.

***

How not to be a world-class jerk

It’s simple: 
Be kind. 
Be nice. 
Be polite.  

Don’t be mean; it’s nasty. 
Don’t tell us who to trade with; that’s our decision, always. 
Don’t call our official languages a trade barrier; it shows your ignorance of our history and your disdain for our culture. 

Beware…
the seeds you plant today —
we’ll weed the worst;
we’ll snip the shoots; but 
we’ll tend those that feed our spirit; and
we’ll train the stems we choose — those that tie us close
from coast to coast to coast. 

We are Canada:
one country, 
holding nations, 
holding peoples,
together across the seasons.

Inspired to gather and plan, already,
for next year and the next and on into the future,
et en français,
the world-class jerk choking on our poussière.


NOTE: For context about who the world-class jerk might be, watch Prime Minister Mark Carney's eloquent news-conference response to the 11th-hour rupture (by Canada) of the recent Canada-US trade talks.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.


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