Lessons on the Vine - My Teacher the Tomato

It’s midwinter and I am in a strangely entwined relationship with a tomato vine… let me explain. 

In the spring, I plant tomatoes in the little back yard vegetable garden I have created at our current home. These grow beautifully here, and when they are ripe, they even taste salty like the sea air. The ocean is only about a kilometre away from where they’re planted, and I am convinced that the sea air they breathe makes them taste so salty. 

I planted a whole bunch of tomatoes in spring (September) and had lovely tomatoes all throughout summer, and then cleared out the tomato vines as they began to die back in the autumn (March/April)…. All except for one, one tomato vine hadn’t produced a single tomato during the summer, but was now looking really healthy, all the others had begun to die back, but she had suddenly begun to grow, so I left her, thinking maybe she’d give me one or two tomatoes just before winter. 

She didn’t… but she kept growing, and I just couldn’t bear the thought of pulling her up I'd formed a bit of a connection with her by now and enjoyed just sitting with her and having a little chat, observing the lessons she was bringing for me, so I left her to grow. Then suddenly in the dead of winter (mid June) she began to produce big beautiful tomatoes, I left them on the vine for a few weeks expecting them to fail and die back but they just kept coming and kept growing, so eventually on my birthday in the first week of August (the wintery-est part of winter) I harvested the green tomatoes brought them inside and within a week they were turning bright red and were by far the best tomatoes I’ve ever grown - which isn’t saying much as I’m certainly no expert, but my little garden has produced some bloody delicious tomatoes over the past two years. 

The tomatoes from the teacher vine.

So what? You may be wondering at this point. 

Well, the “what” is what this resilient tomato vine is teaching me, it’s in the deep layers of communication and connection that can exist between me as a woman and her as a tomato plant. 

Let me explain, for those of you who aren't familiar with me or my work and are still reading this ode to the tomato vine... I am a Sophianic Animist, which means that I not only believe that all organic life is embued with and woven from the organic light matrix of The Mother (Gaia-Sophia) but I have profound physical and viceral experiences of this belief, it is not a faith based belief, it is a lived and experience based practice, on top of that I am also a highly sensitive empath so I tend to anthropomorphise pretty much everything which makes it easier for me to have conversations with non human beings like plants or stones and of course the tomato vine in question, she is a teacher to me and I am her grateful student.

Here's the “what”:

It’s okay to take your time, to not bloom or produce in the ways or at the times when others do. 

It’s possible to be planted in the “wrong” place and still create something wonderful. 

It’s possible to do things at the “wrong” time and still create something wonderful. 

It’s possible to be isolated from others, to bloom and grow and produce on your own and still create something that others can be nourished by and benefit from. 

Teachers can come in many forms. Beauty, love, respect, support, and communication are available in more ways than we can imagine, and lessons can be learned from everything and everyone.

These may not sound like profound teachings, nor are they things I didn't already know. What makes them profound to me is that they came at a time when I really needed them, when I needed these truths reflected back at me and when I just needed a friend, a teacher to remind me that I too can be like this tomato vine.

I hope someone who needs to be reminded of these truths will stumble across my words, or perhaps I should say the words of my teacher, the tomato vine, and that they will be exactly the reminder you needed, as they have been for me.

I encourage you all to go have a chat with a plant – they truly are the most extraordinary teachers.

Love from the Bog

Isa