With all the recent reports of tomato blight, I’m feeling pretty lucky. A disastrous attempt at composting combined with complete neglect miraculously turned into a healthy tomato plant! I planted Mexican sunflowers for the first time and didn’t know what to expect. I hate thinking something’s a weed and then realizing it isn’t after it’s been ripped out of the ground, although I have been known to take this to the extreme. I once nurtured a weed until it grew to 6 ft. tall! My neighbor finally said, “Hey, what’s with that big weed out front?” John just shook his head. He’d been telling me it was a weed for weeks, probably even months, but those wiry green leaves had convinced me it was a giant Cosmo. When I eventually gave in to the public scrutiny and mocking, the weed was so rooted that I had to hack it down like a tree and then dig up the roots! I never fully learned my lesson, and it’s a good thing because this somewhat lazy philosophy is about to pay off big time! The sunflowers came in beautifully, so I decided to spruce up their space. I started yanking at the weeds and quickly recognized the yellow flowers of a tomato plant. After a few moments of sheer confusion, it slowly registered that we had buried a mound of compost just before planting the sunflowers. We had a hideous pile of compost that was doing absolutely nothing, which I believe technically qualifies it as a complicated pile of garbage, so we made life easier and buried it. Those months of occasional flies, frustration, and strange smells are about to pay off in tomatoes – maybe even heirlooms! Who knows what was in that heap?
