Killing the Tomato Plants As Self-Love Practice

when saying no is perceived as a violence

I wanna tell you about the Parable of The One Thousand Tomato Plants I Killed Last Week, and what it’s been teaching me about boundaries and people-pleasing.

As it has gone for the past three Springs since being initiated into my accidental farmerhood by way of pandemic projects, I find the garden is the best place to learn the secrets of the universe. 

So lemme not keep these secrets to myself.

(One day we will wax together on the Parable of The Cucumber Trellis, who’s ass-kicking lesson speaks of the role of STRUCTURE as a deep ally to creation, and the chaos that ensues when you don’t lock in your support system before the arrival of your mac daddy fatty cucumber baddies. But more on that another day. )

We shall speak instead of the kitchen shears I took out to the garden on Sunday, and the great decimation of vivacious new life raring to GO that I swiftly enacted. 

Let’s back up for context. 

Accidental Pandemic Farm year one:

My sweetheart’s dad, upon whose land said farm experiment exists, is a SOIL NERD.

Certified freak, seven days a week. For a decade he’s been dirt wizard tinkering out in the yard, layering truckloads of old, spoiled produce, procured from the assistant manager at Aldi’s he wrangled a backdoor deal with, along with wood chip dump loads delivered from his guys the tree chippers.

The yard is a seven layer dip fudge sundae stack of composting goodies that I’m telling you has turned soil that was once blood red Georgia clay into soil as black as coffee grounds. 

That good good gold. 

Everybody in the family hates it but the worms are ecstatic. 

So anyways I, freshly unemployed, was invited to come over and play in the dirt, sneezed some seeds on the ground, and everything went absolutely bonkers with a verdant fury. This was the year I learned the lesson of the aforementioned Cucumber-Trellis-Structure-Necessity teaching. I lost count, but I think we produced close to 500 cukes that summer. Boggling.

This brings us to the tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes specifically. Every year there is an unfathomable volume of volunteer tomato plants that pop up, thanks to the previous year’s super abundance of fruit that don’t all get picked, thus depositing their soggy little seed sacks back into the soil. And then we get the cycle of about 40 to 50 new tomato plants arising from each lil forgotten and decomposed cherry bomb drop from the year before. If just 20 tomatoes get left behind, we’re talking a thousand freaking long and leggy delightful and hopeful plants, tryna make their merry way in the world.

Last year, they got me. 

I spent so many hours and much sun-drained energy trying to RESCUE and SAVE, transplanting as many plants as I could all over the garden. The long and short of it is, they don’t like to be transplanted, they didn’t do that well, I was tired, and then I still had a fuckton of tomatoes to deal with.

At the time, I was participating in what I thought was CARE WORK. I care about life, I care about plants, I want everyone to thrive and certainly survive so no ‘mater left behind no matter what DAMMIT. 

Looking back, this game plan was actually in the same line of thinking that gets me into trouble in my social life and relationships. Putting the needs of others before my own needs. Moreover, not even pausing to consider the cost and consequences on my time, energy and resources before launching into here-I-come-to-fix-the-problem and save the day and just generally be dazzling, helpful and so damn likable...

But this year was different, baby. 

Last Sunday, standing over the roughly six inch tall fever clusters of fluffy gals scattered in front of me, I made a different decision. I asked Gavin to bring me the shears. He gulped in a kind of reticent horror. I chose one plant to save every few feet and everyone else around it HAD TO GO, cutting at the stalk rather than yanking it up, so as not to disturb the root structure of the one being saved. We’re serving big Sophie’s Choice energy around here. 

My pal Lucy, the first farmer I knew for real, used to tell me this Wendell Berry line that I love so much and can never remember precisely, but the paraphrased version goes like this:

The gardener carries no greater love for the rose bush than when the knife is in hand. 

Pruning and weeding out is perceived as a violence but is actually an act of love.

As I held fistfuls of tomato seedlings in one hand, and snapped the scissors open and closed on the possibility of their existence with the other hand, I thought of myself straddling this inner line of violence and love. Feeling the gravity of both being true at once.

I thought a lot about this work as a metaphor for my growth in boundary-setting and healing from people pleasing. I realized that my previous over-efforting to save as many plants as possible was less about wanting 50 tomato plants to care for, and more about avoiding the alternative of saying no. Saying no is hard. Cutting down life is hard. 

As my dance and life mentor Sybil says, Everything wants to grow. 

It is everything’s prerogative to grow, but just because it does doesn’t mean it has to or should.

Cutting the tomatoes was, for me, an act of healing a chronic discomfort with saying No, thank you, I’d rather not. 

People socialized as females are often socialized to defer. To please and appease the dominant energy in the room and whoever is out here growing the biggest and loudest.

This year, I decided to prioritize my own time and energy while also bowing down to the remarkable abundance of life on this planet. Both can happen at once as it turns out! I can say thank you, I love you and close the door at the same time! Saying no is not wrong. Saying no is not monstrous or antithetical to life. 

What we say no to makes space for what we really want to say yes to. 

The yeses we GET to be in touch with when we aren’t deferring to someone else’s yes.  

Chop, chop, baby  🖤

✴ what else ✴

Ok let's talk platforms real quick.

This letter is the LAST edition of the newsletter known as LET'S MAKE A FLOW CHART. 

She's getting a revamp. 

I'm moving my writing over to the ever-sexy, ultra-promising land of Substack, where all hot newsletters hang out. 

Nothing changes for you. You will continue to receive my writings in your inbox, no need to resubscribe. 

The difference is that each newsletter is archived like a blog on the Substack site. Which we like. Very fun, very practical. 

And slightly evocative of my livejournal days circa 2004. Shout out to that wild west era of unhinged and hormonal early internet expression that I'm really always trying to get back to. 

Look forward to seeing you over there! Which will also be here, in your email tab!

I have a podcast episode coming out soon where I was interviewed by the breathtaking delight that is Mary Grace Allerdice on her podcast home-body. We talk about Grief Threads, ancestors, and the magic of textiles. Stay tuned for that sweet nugget. 

I'm also cooking up my own podcast in my cauldron over here! The excitement is big. 

Details forthcoming. 

Until then, stay sane and not too sweaty, sweeties. 

photo: Jamie Hopper