Volunteers

Of course volunteering is good.  I'm embarrassed to say that I don't really do any volunteering, officially anyway.  I'm of the Woody Allen/Groucho Marx/Sigmund Freud Philosophy:  I don’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member.  So I don't belong to any clubs or organizations that would request my volunteering capabilities.  I am happy to volunteer my services to anyone who asks, however, although my talents are pretty much limited to writing, proofreading and editing. 

But the volunteers I am in love with today are not members of any organization.  They're not even people.  They're tomatoes.

I have three garden beds devoted to tomatoes.  This one, by far the most productive, is made up entirely of volunteers.  In other words, I did not plant any of these; they all sprouted up from the seeds of last year's crop.  Which is kind of interesting.

This bed, last year, was originally planted with peppers.  And then most of the pepper plants started falling over dead.  A little digging revealed the dreaded grubs.  This was the only bed infested with the little devils last year.  I saved whatever pepper plants I could, treated the bed with diatomaceous earth and neem oil, and left it alone.  A couple of weeks later, I had some leftover tomato plants, so I popped them in that bed to see if the grubs were still there.  Either I'd rid the garden of the grubs or they'd just moved on to their next incarnation, but the leftover tomato plants remained intact and produced some fruit despite not having any tomato cages to support them.

Earlier this spring, before I'd planted anything at all in the garden, I noticed the little tomato plant volunteers in this bed. I let them be.  And there they are, happy and healthy, uncaged and free-range.  At this rate, I expect them to be the first to produce that best of all summer fruits:  the Jersey tomato!

Volunteers will surprise you with their resilience, their determination, their generosity. And I'm not just talking about tomatoes here.  I love the spirit of volunteering, be it plant or human.