Every mother’s day for the last 5 years I have planted 3-5 Tomato Plants anticipating the summer growing season.  It is a dream fulfilled and continuing that I have the ability to grow some of my own food and live on a budding homestead in Northern California.  Some years I stop at a local nursery the week before to buy seedlings and other years after the obligatory Mother’s Day brunch or rowdy kid filled stop at Starbucks to get my mom-latte, I stop to pick some up.

This year, nothing.  Too busy.  I hadn’t made the time and ahem, no one else thought to buy them for me.  No brunch or mom-latte either as hubby and 2 of my 3 littles had the flu.  A super fun time if you can’t already read between the lines.

I was feeling a bit miffed and disappointed.  A year without growing tomatoes I guessed as I will be again busy in the following weeks traveling with my new book Fierce Kindness: Be a Positive Force for Change.  I took some big breaths, had myself a little shake it off dance break and then a good loud “oh well” to shift my outlook.

Resigned to my tomato-less fate and contented anyway, I went to poke around the garden boxes which were in deep need of weeding after the wet winter, as at least I could seed some arugula.

Absorbed in my weeding I moved to one of the side boxes and gasped as I grabbed on to a healthy tomato plant!  I couldn’t believe it and even more amazing she had sisters dancing all around her in the neighboring two boxes- 50 some plants in all.

Melanie Salvatore-August is an author of Fierce Kindness; Be a Positive Force for Change and Kitchen Yoga; Simple Home Practices to Transform Mind, Body and Life, a yoga teacher mentor, a mother of three wonderful boys and lives in the SF bay area and virtually at melaniesalvatoreaugust.com