By Jerry Hall
Daily Record Columnist
— Birding teaches one to be persistent. For example, I barely missed seeing a resplendent quetzal on a trip to Costa Rica, but I persevered and finally saw the bird on a trip to Panama.
Similarly, I bought two topsy-turvy tomato planters last year and eagerly anticipated cascades of red, ripe tomatoes growing upside down on my backyard deck. Unfortunately, things did not work out and I harvested a sadly sparse crop.
But I recalled how perseverance pays off, not only in birding, but in other endeavors.
Thomas Edison had hundreds of failures before coming up with a workable electric light bulb. He said his tries weren’t failures, they were just ways not to do it.
Clyde Tombaugh, an American astronomer, looked at 20 million images before finally discovering Pluto.
Milton Hershey was a fourth-grade dropout who was fired from his job as a printer’s apprentice. He opened a candy business. It failed. He tried a second candy operation with the same result. Undeterred, he opened yet a third candy factory – which failed.
Did he say three strikes and I’m out? No, Milton, on his fourth try, founded the Lancaster Caramel Company. His caramel recipe was a big success and he later sold the company and started the Hershey Company. The rest is chocolate history.
So, inspired by others who shoved adversity aside and strolled on to success, I am prepared to try again. I will again plant tomatoes in my topsy-turvy containers, hoping for a bountiful harvest.
But of even greater import, I have discovered the Giant Tree Tomato.
This stunning development exceeds even the amazing tomato-potato plant which grows tomatoes above ground and tasty, plump red-skinned potatoes below.
Let me share a few of the amazing attributes of the tree tomato as outlined in my Gardeners’ Choice spring catalogue: “60 pounds of tomatoes from one single plant! Giant Tree Tomato zooms to an amazing 8 feet tall in just 3 months! Amazing super-species. Looks like a fruit tree — produces bushels of tomato clusters summer to fall. Basket after basket of juicy, mouth-watering beauties. Up to 2 pounds each — so delicious, so succulent, just one sliced-up tree tomato covers an entire slice of bread. A super-growing tree that zooms high as a man in just three months!
Wow. I guess you can see why I am so excited. (Dotty wondered why there is only an artist’s illustration of the Giant Tree Tomato and no photograph — but she tends to be skeptical on these things. She even thought the tomato-potato plant seemed odd.)
But as someone who has traveled the oceans and trekked over hill and dale to find the quetzal, and as someone who has been sorely tested by the topsy-turvy tomato planter, well, for me this is just another challenge. Another test of persistence.
I have ordered two plants.
Milton Hershey would understand.
