STORYTIME TAPESTRY

The Newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world

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Special Treat ??“ Vance Agee

Oct 2, 2005? 

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Tomatoes

By Vance Agee

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Each spring we plant tomatoes,? 

A dozen plants or two.? 

I don??™t know why, We just do.? ? ? 

This year June came and went? 

And we had planted none.? 

Before we knew each day was night.? 

And no tomatoes did not seem right.? ? ? 

But I don??™t know why.? ? 

Perhaps the empty space? 

A space within ourselves?

To plant, water, and to care,? 

Perhaps that loss too aware?? ? ? 

We finally planted some,? 

On Saturday, July one.? 

And now the garden??™s right,? 

A full and happy sight.?  ? ? 

I think I know the reason why.? ? ? 

Sakura cherry blossom song? 

Repeats each season short or long.? 

Tradition great or very small,? 

It matters not the least at all!? ? ? 

Each custom not to live? 

Life itself will not forgive.? 

An empty space we must fill? 

Or that space some spirit kill.

So we finally planted some

On Saturday, July one.? 

And now our garden??™s right,? 

A live and happy sight.? ? ? 

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Tomatoes.

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2001, 2002, 2003, 2004

N.B.

2005?

IN!

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Our Garden?  Our Souls

By Vance Agee? ? ? ? ? 

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When we first moved into our house in 1977 in the Town of Lewiston, New York,?  we discovered that the previous owners had tilled a 30??™ by 70??™ area for a?  vegetable garden.?  Many people have home gardens that large, but this was a new?  experience for my wife and me??”and not unwanted.?  My wife had grown up on a dairy farm outside Blairstown, New Jersey, and my dad had come from a long?  line of preacher-farmers in central Tennessee (feed souls and bodies).?  We had?  gardening in our blood??”or should I now say, DNA. We were soon to discover?  the limits of DNA and the need for experience!? ? ? 

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That winter we bought and seeded 100 peat ???pellets??? with various varieties?  of tomatoes, not as many as on the catsup jar, but quite a few.?  We knew that?  some would not germinate, but we put them all under ???grow??? lights.? ? ?  They all germinated.? ? ?  That spring, we, a married couple yet without children, had 100 tomato plants?  to put out.?  Now before we are judged too harshly, I must defend our?  understanding that 100 producing plants were too many for us.?  However, I am a?  Type A?  personality and am always backing up everything.?  Before computers, I always?  had an extra of anything important.?  Now I not only back up all my computer files, but I even take two Hi8 camcorders to special events.?  But back to tomatoes.? ? ?  I felt certain that some, perhaps many, of our plants would die, either from poor weather, animals, bugs, our mistakes, and whatever??”just a fact of?  life.?  Are there not laws about chance??  Therefore, to take no chances, Type A planted all 100, plus numerous other vegetables from squash to corn. (Radishes, by the way, are a lot of fun.?  They come up quickly, and you have something to eat right away from the garden.?  Fast success.) But I knew that some tomato plants would die, and that was acceptable, because I had extras.?  I had?  back-ups.? ? 

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? All 100 lived and produced.? ? ?  We took up a new hobby: canning.

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Years have passed.?  Our garden gradually devolved.?  When our daughter was old?  enough, we put in a 28??™ above ground pool and a swing set.?  There went half?  the garden space.?  Tomatoes??  Yes, we planted tomatoes every year, but only two dozen, and they all did live.?  Bet on tomatoes.?  Invest in tomatoes!? ? ?  Then came the spring of 2000.?  We packed our daughter and brought her back?  from her sophomore year in college. (That is an interesting experience, requiring three vehicles.)

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We were busy, and it rained and rained.?  May came and?  went.?  June came and went.?  And for the first time since 1977 we had no tomatoes?  (and since our garden had devolved to basically only tomatoes, no garden).? ? ? 

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Something seemed very wrong.?  Disturbing, unsettling, disquieting, even?  depressing.? ? ?  On July one we planted tomatoes.?  Crime, wars, horrendous weather and other?  pestilences rage on in the world, but our little world is better, because now I?  can feed the tomatoes and the mosquitoes who live near them.?  Why better?? 

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Gardeners may know this already.? ? ?  First of all, our garden is now a happy sight.?  A living sight.?  We have?  added to life!?  But it is more than even that.? ? ?  I hear in a favorite song of mine, the Japanese Sakura Sakura, the Cherry?  Blossom Song, a haunting but beautiful cycle of seasons and years.?  The cycle of?  the years and the centuries is always the same and always different, but within it lies the secret of time and life itself.?  We do not need to understand it logically, but just accept and value it dearly.?  Once established in the cycle of years, each custom, each tradition (whether tomatoes or something else),?  must be guarded and repeated.?  It is these traditions which bind us to the cycle of the centuries and to the cycle of our own lives.?  Not to plant our tomatoes left a void, not just in a few square feet of soil, but in our hearts and?  our spirits.?  Empty spaces in our spirits are signs of dying.?  They must be?  filled.? ? ? 

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On July one we planted in our souls.

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Vance Agee, July 2000? ? ? 

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P.S. We had a full garden in 2001, 2002, and again in?  2003.?  Tomatoes connect us to our past and our Universe.?  P.S. 2 We did have one in?  2003 and 2004.

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Vance G. Agee

vgagee @adelphia.net
About Me:

I was born in Buffalo, New York, a few
decades ago. I was a lonely only child.
However, my mom read to me: the KJV Bible
cover to cover, Pilgrim's Progress, and
numerous books. Between four and eight
years old, I lived at

inFort Erie, Ontario. I loved Suzanne Bevan,
blond hair and bangs and recently wrote a
poem about that. Great people there!
I then attended School 54 in Buffalo and
the Martin? Luther? School,where my favorite
subject was Church History. I would write
the assignment and then read for fun! I
attended Buffalo? Bennett? High School inBuffalo, a great school then. Out of 2000,
I was often among top 10 and sometimes I
would be number one on the honor roll, with
a 99% average. I was valedictorian 1/400,
but hated the SAT's. The school failed to
measure my I.Q.,because I maxed out their
group test. Basically, I hated school,
but learned to play the game, because that
attention was one of the very few things
which made me feel some self worth! I
had the problem of being interested in
nearly every subject and having no idea on
which to finally concentrate for a life's
work.

I attended and became valedictorian at
summa cum laude from Houghton? College in
our NY Southern Tier. I spent one summer
in Europe and one at Middlebury College,VT. I was asked back for two years as an
interim instructor. There I met my wife,
Kathleen. For two years I taught atPhil-Mont? Academy in Dresher nearPhiladelphia, PA, took courses at Faith
Theological Seminary, and loved working
retail at the old Gimbel's Department
Store in King of Prussia, PA. Then we came
to Pembroke? Jr-Sr? High School in Corfu, NY,
where I taught five years and led two
student tours to Europe. I earned my M.S.
in Ed. from SUNY at Brockport 4.0, and
moved to the Town of Lewiston near Lake
Ontario, NY, to become an assistant
principal at Lewiston-Porter C.S.D. for
nearly 25 years. I built an international
exchange program that included:Minsk, Belarus; Germany, Australia, Canada,France, Japan, Spain, and Venezuela! I took
the students to Belarus, Germany, andAustralia, and later a small group to theU.K. I also had a cable TV show and
produced student video movies!

I took all courses at 3.8+ for a doctorate
at SUNY at Buffalo on a Presidential
Fellowship (1/100/6840 grad students --
top 5%), but a 13 page survey was a problem
in completing a dissertation!
I retired from Lew-Port in June of 2001,
fairly disgusted with school
administration. I have a red belt in
karate, used to bench 265 (I weigh 155),
and always loved working with students.
I did complete a "distance doctorate". For
a time, I worked in real estate and did
retail again at the Boulevard Mall in the
Kaufmann's Men's Store (part of the large
May Company). My daughter has both a B.S.
in Management from Buffalo'sCanisius? College and an A.A.S. summa cum
laude from the F.I.T.
in Manhattan. She works for Calvin Klein,
and I love to visit her in NYC and at herBrooklyn? Heights apartment. I love to
write for both print and Web, to do video,
and have numerous other interests. I was
recently hired at Bishop Timon -St. Jude
H.S. in South Buffalo, as their Latin
teacher. I am grateful to many Internet
lit. sites and to all my readers!!!