Miracle Growth.

Our next-door neighbor V has three baby tomato plants in her yard..... "free from a friend," she told us. She laughed at the word free because the little plants have already cost her nearly $50.00 at Lowe's for "farming accessories."

First, she had to buy three large pots to put them in-- she didn't want to plant them in her backyard because she thought her dog would just dig them up and eat them. After all, the plants smell like tomatoes... her dog eats anything that smells like food. (Plus a lot of things that don't even remotely resemble any sort of food item.) Then she had to buy special potting soil so the plants would thrive and produce enough tomatoes to last the summer.

After that, she needed those round wire cages so the plants would have something to support them as they grew taller. Around the cages she would need chicken-wire, to keep out squirrels, rabbits, raccoons, possums, and any other critter that happens to find its way into her yard. Do skunks eat tomatoes?

She was proud as could be yesterday when she showed us her tomato plants and all the accessories that had to be bought to help her free plants along. My husband asked her if she remembered to buy "Miracle Grow"-- she hadn't.... which meant another trip to Lowe's, and more money for those plants which didn't cost her a penny in the beginning.

So there I was this morning, in Kroger... they had a display of vine-grown tomatoes. Perfectly red, round, delicious-looking tomatoes, complete with the green vine still attached. Now... wouldn't it be funny for V to find those pretty little tomatoes sitting in her perfectly tended pots holding her baby tomato plants? I couldn't resist.

Before I brought the groceries into my kitchen this morning, I took three of those tomatoes with the longest vines and walked over to V's side yard and placed one red tomato against each stalk of her tomato plants. If you didn't look too closely, the tomatoes seemed to be growing right on those little baby plants.

I didn't hear V's car when she came home this afternoon.... and I didn't hear her laughing in the driveway, but I know she did, and that was enough. When I saw her after dinner tonight, she told me "It's a miracle! Those plants of mine are just magic! I found one tomato in each of those pots, even before a tiny yellow flower popped out on the vines! I'm going to be a farmer after all!"-- Then she said she knew it was me right at the start..... "Who else would go to all that trouble?" she said.

No trouble at all. Those perfect little tomatoes made my day.