#23 Harvest

When she was fifteen, she had a homeroom teacher who planted tomatoes in little planters on the rooftop outside the music room. The school didn’t have a gardening club, and she never asked why he had the space to do so. During recess or lunch, there would always be a small gathering of students outside the hatch door of the rooftop. Curious eyes staring wide at the bounty of green plants in a usually inaccessible part of the school.

It took a while for the teacher to notice the kids (or perhaps he pretends not to notice first, high school girls are usually quite noisy no matter how hard they try to not be). When he does, he would get up from his composting or tending, pick some of the riper cherry tomatoes, wash them a little, and hand them out. The cherry tomatoes were bright and crisp, to look at and to taste, with a tinge of sweetness at the end of the acidity.

Growing things wasn’t really her forte. She can’t even keep a houseplant alive because she would forget to water it. For months.

Years later, she was lucky enough to still stay in contact with this teacher and he even gifted her a very round pumpkin-like winter melon and a bag full of long green pole beans. That evening, her family turned them into winter melon soup, complete with dried scallops and Chinese preserved ham. She smiled as she remember the conversations from the office about farming.

In a world where being able to feed ourselves and our family is dictated by money due to our reliance on imported food, where land is scarce, gardening can become the start to a revolution.

*****

I don’t know how accurate my memory is, but this is a real one.
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