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The Fifty Dollar Tomato


Tinker

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The Fifty Dollar Tomato

My small plot of land cleared and tilled.
Potting soil added and tilled again,
groomed with enthusiasm and sweat
then deeply watered making ready.

Just fifteen dollars for plants then,
twenty-four dollars for the soil,
twenty for towers, plus the tax,
about fifty bucks, total debt.

Starters need sun, water and toil,
fog from the ocean, not great help.
Still I attempt to sow my own,
anticipate growth and relax.

My favorite food without yelp,
home-grown, succulent tomato.
Small green orbs promising, prolific,
waiting for turn to the red zone.

Growing season beats staccato
nearing the end and yet I've willed
the fruit to transform, change steady.
Finally, one red-ripe tomato, terrific!
                    ~~ Judi Van Gorder

Verse Form: Domino Rhyme

~~ © ~~ Poems by Judi Van Gorder ~~

For permission to use this work you can write to Tinker1111@icloud.com

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I love all kinds of processed tomatoes (tomato sauce, salsa, etc.), but fresh tomatoes repulse me. I probably have an allergy to them. (Why else would they trigger the gag reflex?) I read on wiki that processed tomatoes contain significantly less of one component (some kind of alkalide IIRC) than fresh tomatoes, so maybe that's why I love processed tomatoes and hate fresh ones. I wish I liked them. I wish I loved them. I never could enjoy a BLT or a caprese salad sandwich because they come with tomatoes. These days I order caprese salad sandwiches whenever I want ... without tomatoes!

Tony

 

Here is a link to an index of my works on this site: tonyv's Member Archive topic

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My granddaughter Allexa agrees with you.  She loves spaghetti with marinara sauce, her favorite dish yet picks fresh tomatoes from her salad.  I've never understood it.  Homegrown tomatoes to me are an addiction.  When in season I eat them with eggs in the morning, in salad or on my sandwich (whatever kind) at lunch and yummy sliced tomatoes with my dinner.  I eat cherry tomatoes as a snack.  Even though it is difficult to grow them myself because of my proximity to the ocean, I usually try to grow them anyway.  I have a good friend who gives them to me from his garden and I have a client who brings boxes into the office.  Since my friend grows a different type than my client, I take them all.  And I have now gotten 7 red tomatoes from my own plants with more to come, which is another species (developed for those of us closer to the coast).  My friend lives only 8 miles inland from me but he is down in a pocket and he has no difficulty growing them at all.   Home-grown are so very different from the tasteless things that pass for tomatoes in the super market.  Yum.

~~Judi

~~ © ~~ Poems by Judi Van Gorder ~~

For permission to use this work you can write to Tinker1111@icloud.com

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  • 2 weeks later...

"without yelp"

 

I love you.  :)

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