Garden Angel

Tuesday will mark five years since Mom died. I think about her every day, but even more when the anniversary approaches. I'm fine (though I just spent a few minutes reading the post I wrote the day after she died and sobbed). 

I attribute any successes I have in gardening to three things: 

1. Asking Mom a lot of questions back when I was getting started
2. Trial and (a lot of) error
3. Pure dumb luck

Whatever it is, I'm still keeping my little balcony oasis going, and in the last few weeks, I've been using my time off from school to really spruce it up after a very rainy, windy winter. And for the first time, I decided to try growing a food plant that's not an herb. I bought a cherry tomato plant. 

This evening, I plucked off the first to ripen of five sweet little cherry tomatoes that are growing. It is perfect--not a mark, not a flaw. Bright red, and it has to be absolutely bursting with sweetness and sunshine.

Of course, I took a picture for Instagram. I wasn't thinking about the placement of my hand in the picture, only trying to get the tomato into lighting where the picture would turn out. It was only a few minutes later, when Maayan commented on the picture on Facebook, that I realized, my Garden Angel, who represents Mom, is visible in the picture, looking on.