Gardening Lessons from TV

Jess: Don't you want to know why he wants to plant tomatoes?
Winston: Is it because he wants... tomatoes?
Nick: This is my feeble attempt at a new beginning.

~New Girl, air date 4/24/12

Since starting this blog I’ve been hyper aware of all things garden related so I was excited to see a garden themed plot on one of my favorite shows, New Girl.  Basically lovable loser Nick decides to grow a tomato plant to deal with the fact that all his roommates are in happy relationships of some sort.  While his methods of tomato growing are slightly unorthodox (he spits water onto the plant and builds a super creepy scarecrow to deter the rooftop birds), it’s clear that he does care about this little plant doing well.  This isn’t the first time we’ve seen Nick base at least some of his self esteem on his ability to keep a plant alive.  Any fellow New Girl fans remember the whole Julia/cactus debacle?  I find it very interesting the level of importance he puts on this plant and how he is substituting its success for any other success in his own life.

I think a lot of us backyard gardeners also can get overly invested in the health and success of our plants.  There is something so satisfying about watching a huge plant grow from a tiny seed.  But conversely, if our garden is less than successful, we can get extremely disappointed.  Last summer the tomatoes at my parents' house got blossom end rot (just as gross as it sounds) and at least half of the tomatoes were ruined.  I was so bummed by this setback that I couldn’t really focus on all the other things in the garden that were growing so well.  I think farmers must be used to this kind of thing since they work on such a large scale, but for me it always feels personal. 

This year I’m going to try to be a little more Zen about how things are growing.  We will see how that goes!