I often stop by the Ace Hardware store on my way home from work. In a small town like mine, it’s the place to go for everything – I read the Magnolia Home paint chip stories, buy lightbulbs and birdseed, and even once when I needed a wagon for a book talk where I was selling books, I went in to get one and the Ace man took the box to the back and put it together for me so I could go straight to my event. He’s also the man who taught me something about my tomato plants……..
Tomato Suckers
if I were 30something
I’d be out in the yard
planting a garden in the earth
but I’m not
I’m too old to bend over
and pull weeds
so I bought container gardens
ready to go, ready to grow
containers, potting soil, plants, cages
I bought them ready-made
as inexpensively as
I could plant them myself
.
……but my favorite part is the
Ace Hardware man who
loads my plants and teaches me things
don’t forget to pick the suckers off, ma’am
he says, loading each one carefully from
the cart into the back of my RAV4
you’ll need to look between the stems
in those pockets and find the suckers
that sap the life away from the plant
sucking all the energy from the tomatoes
he pointed at one of them and then
grabbed that sucker and pulled it off
flung it down onto the pavement
I had three of the four plants
went back for the last
I heard him telling the cashier
about those suckers
here’s one you can use to show her, I offered
placing it on the counter
he went to work, teaching the young lady
how to tend a container tomato
I smiled as she peered into the plant
taking careful notes of the learning
from the Ace Hardware man
who says he learnt it all from an old farmer…..
…….and them’s the best teachers of all.
Common Threads 