A Late Review of The $64 Tomato, in honor of My Friends Who Believe Gardening Is Good

Before Miss Edith left the world of bookselling, and was still a real-life, full-time gadfly, rather than the virtual gadfly she’s become, she had the pleasure of working alongside a young woman whose true calling was working with the soil. This healthy young woman, who hailed from the Midwest and had come East with her beau, worked part time at the bookstore while she looked for full-time work as a gardener or landscaper. She has since moved to the West Coast, where one is likelier to find jobs like this that keep the checking account healthy year-round, but in the year or so that I worked with this young woman, we had many amusing conversations about nature.

The young gardener was one in a long line of friends of mine: people with whom I have almost nothing in common, but who enjoys zinging her edges against mine. Much like my college roommate, The Blonde, the Young Gardener was an incredibly nice, well-adjusted person. She liked doing healthy, outdoorsy things; she rode a bike to work every day. She knew the names of plants – Latin names, I mean – and was good-humored beyond all reason. She had had a job, when in college, working at a Godiva chocolate shop, and as a result was capable of the finest, sharpest, most perfect gift-wrapping jobs I’ve ever seen. (She taught me some of her tricks, too.) I never saw her lose it in anger, though I did see her very, very sad… She’s much happier, now, on the West Coast, and I’m happy for her, though I must admit that I miss having her around. The Young Gardener and I had come to enjoy each other’s company tremendously, and while we’ve kept in touch of course, I sometimes wish she were around so that we could just do something boring like go to the movies together. We used to go to the movies together, sometimes. It’s nice to have movie pals, and I never have enough of them.

When the Young Gardener came to work at the bookstore, I asked her if she’d be willing to write blurbs for a book or two – just things she genuinely liked or thought were interesting. I thought her interests would give our shelves a little more variety than I was capable of bringing, since Miss Edith is something of a one-trick pony when it comes to books. I suggested she have a look at a book coming out soon, The $64 Tomato, because it was about gardening and because I expected it to be getting a fair amount of publicity anyhow. The Young Gardener took the book home and read it like a good girl.

Now, Miss Edith’s position on gardening is that it’s all well and good for those who like that sort of thing, but that Miss Edith is not one of those people and never will be. I like gardens when they’re someone else’s. I wish I had a garden – but I also wish that, if I had to have a garden, I’d be wealthy enough to be able to have someone else maintain it for me. I do not derive massive cosmic pleasure at the thought of home-grown tomatoes, zucchini, or beans. I hate the work, for one thing. But also, I believe that my true gifts lie in knowing where to buy the lovely tomatoes, zucchini, and beans that other people, who do like to garden, have their goods for sale. I am happy to spend money at farmer’s markets. I do not want to farm. I feel that gardening is like knitting or sewing or any number of wholesome enterprises: it’s lovely if you know how to do it and you like it. But economic growth, and urban living, is predicated on the notion that consumers – that’s Miss Edith – are happy to pay people for their services – the gardeners/farmers, the people who knit sweaters, the people who sew clothes. If everyone grew their own food, we’d be living in the Middle Ages again. Personally, I don’t see the appeal.

Notarius and I actually have a small backyard. It is a disaster. In the first two or three years that we lived here, we (mostly he) tried to make the backyard a nice place. He built raised beds. I planted flowering bulbs. I bought seeds for us to grow. I planted the seeds. None of this effort was successful and eventually we got sick of it and now the yard is overrun with weeds and is mostly a kind of ugly parking space that gets very muddy in bad weather.

Periodically Notarius points out that we need to have this space worked on. Someone – a professional landscaper – should be hired to flatten the space and resurface it. Notarius would like to see some lawn back there. He has visions of a tiny urban garden, a little jewel of a green space where he can relax. I look at the space and think, “It would be so lovely if we could brick over the whole thing, and then have a few planters with, say, flowering bulbs.” (I’m big on flowering bulbs ever since I realized that with bulbs, you plant them once and leave them alone and they’ll do their thing year after year. I love irises and daffodils; and how convenient that you only have to plant them once! So much better than those goddamned marigolds. I hate marigolds and the fact that you have to do them every year just gives me more reason to hate them.)

My notion of a lovely yard – to suit this particular urban space, this particular humble house – really, truly, is a nicely bricked space with some artfully placed plants. I’d like to keep the massive maple tree that’s back there, for example. What I don’t want is plant life that we have to actually pay attention to in a serious way. Why on earth would we want a lawn? Lawns just need to be mowed. Wouldn’t a brick or slate space be nicer? You can drag garden furniture around without worrying about ripping up the grass. Children – and, ok, Miss Edith herself – could draw hopscotch boards and play at will. Try doing that on grass, folks. Can’t play hopscotch on grass.

We live within ten blocks of so many lovely greengrocers. We have no real reason to want to grow our own vegetables. I won’t deny that there are vegetables I could see wanting to grow, but these are things that I suspect we would not be likely to successfully. I wish I could have all the Brussels sprouts I want; ditto asaparagus, beets, and maybe artichokes, even though Notarius isn’t a big fan of artichokes. But these vegetables aren’t really what people think of when they think of home gardens.

Well. The Young Gardener really likes gardens, and thinks they’re a good thing. Her feeling about my feeling about gardens is that, well, I’m a little fucked in the head and unfeeling about it. Like, I just haven’t met the right garden yet. And the Young Gardener really enjoyed The $64 Tomato, as I thought she would… sold quite a few copies of it, too, bless her heart.

So last week I stumbled on a copy of it at the public library. “Ya know,” Miss Edith said to herself, “I really oughta read that thing.” So I added it to the rather considerable stack of books I was already lugging around, and I think I ended up taking a bus home because the books weighed so much I didn’t think I could carry them all comfortably.

I’ve now finished The $64 Tomato. Its author, William Alexander, is probably a very smart and good humored man. And I know that this book is beloved, not only by the Young Gardener, but by many many other people whose idea of a relaxing time is going out in the yard and getting dirty and weeding. Who think nothing of watering lawns. And let’s not even discuss the kind of people who invest in garden sculptures of the sort Alexander himself discusses – tacky, insane sculptures that serve no obvious purpose on peoples’ front lawns.

This book sums up, neatly and with a little bit of wit, and astounding financial accuracy, exactly why I hate gardening. The next time anyone asks me why I don’t want to garden, I’m going to refer them directly to William Alexander’s delightful little book, which I imagine will be a small classic in gardening literature for years to come.

I’m not sure Alexander meant to have this effect on me. I suspect that he wants his readers to chortle with identification; to turn to the wife, while reading, and say, “Hon, listen to this – he had that same problem with sodworms” or whatever the fuck disgusting little bugs someone had problems with four years ago.

I am not that reader. I read about the bugs and wanted to vomit. I heard about the labor and thought, “Dude, how is it you have nothing better to do with your time? Wouldn’t you rather take a nap?” And buy your lovely Brandywine tomatoes, your flowers, your green beans? The sense of community and joy I get from walking home from the store with my vegetables is, I think, just as palpable as the joy Alexander gets from breaking his back to eat a homegrown tomato. Which one of us is crazy?

Alexander’s book, I know, is not intended for me. But like the drug that’s developed for one purpose, and turns out to have a side effect that’s even more beneficial, I believe that The $64 Tomato has had a marvelous effect on me: it has made me entirely confident that I need not feel bad, not one whit, about not giving a shit about gardening. And to the many smug acquaintances of mine who insist on working on your gardens, and are so proud of them: better you than me, darlings. Miss Edith really, truly has better things to do. The $64 Tomato was one of those things.

That said, I realized today that if I’m going to install more bulbs in our scraggly patch of front lawn, I’d best get on the stick soon. Even Miss Edith is a sucker for lots of blue flowers popping up in the front yard in the spring...