As the old Jewish proverb goes, “Man plans and God laughs.” But nothing, in my experience, makes Him clutch His sides quite like hearing about my Mediterranean gardening ambitions.
Every winter, my horticultural memory performs a factory reset. I somehow forget the summer mornings when the thermometer climbs past 90°F by 8 a.m. and the plants wilt by noon. The brutal, arid wind that strips moisture from the leaves faster than I can water? Erased from my mind. What blight? And the way perfect fruit splits overnight after a thunderstorm? Never happened.
Come spring, I’m suddenly possessed, clicking “add to cart” on tomato varieties with names like 1980s cocktail bars: Pink Jazz, Green Zebra, Cosmic Eclipse. I picture multicolored bumper crops, fresh salsa, gazpacho by the gallon. Then summer comes – and I realize I’ve done it again.
This year, though, has been mercilessly humbling. My main crop tomatoes have staged a full-scale revolt: alternaria stem canker, fusarium wilt, early blight, sunscald – a textbook of tomato pathology. The black cherry plants have done well but, as I amply demonstrate, any fool can grow those. The others – those majestic beefsteak slicers I’d fantasized about serving with burrata and basil – stand just two or three feet tall, brown and half-dead. My wife, noting the paltry output, recently returned from the market with perfect, professionally grown beefsteaks. “Sorry,” she murmured, eyes averted, as she discreetly slid them into the fridge.
Enter Lolo, my Cavalier King Charles spaniel. One morning she fetched her harness and dropped it at my feet. The message was clear: “Forget about your tomatoes. Let’s walk.” Normally we stick to village alleys, a 15-minute loop at most. But on this morning, Lolo pulled with unusual determination, ignoring her standard diversions. She led us toward the river, through the gauntlet of dried spear grass, past some grumpy van-dwellers and deeper into the hinterland between villages.
After nearly a mile – just as I was about to protest – she stopped abruptly. Before us stood a garden from another epoch. The fence was low, decorative almost, as if the specimens inside were above both common theft and disease. A dozen or so tomato plants stood like Old Testament prophets: gnarled, magnificent, heavy with fruit that seemed to glow in the morning light. Marmande, Pantano Romanesco, St. Pierre, Oxheart – a living heirloom seed catalog, their stems thick as broom handles, leaves lush enough to mock my withered pride. The fruit-to-foliage ratio was nothing short of masterful.
Then I saw God, stooped among the rows, moving with the measured pace of someone who’s done this since before I was born. He wore espadrilles that had probably walked these rows since the Fourth Republic, and a straw hat. I waved awkwardly, but he just looked through me. I tried French; I think he spoke Catalan. After some faltering back and forth, he gestured vaguely at his tomatoes, then at a faded sack of something, and returned to his work – pinching suckers with 70 seasons of muscle memory.
Three days of casual village interrogation later, I learned that Pep was known locally as “the tomato specialist.” I returned to his garden for a second look and noted only simple inputs: chicken manure, horse manure, perhaps some bonemeal. And everywhere, the telltale, blue-green tinge of Bordeaux mixture – that copper spray I’d snobbishly avoided after reading too many organic gardening blogs warning about heavy metal accumulation. Not a weed in sight.
I reflected on my efforts – my soil, likely over-amended with bat guano, blood meal and desperation. These highly soluble nutrients, combined with our brutal heat and desiccating wind, had probably concentrated in the leaves through over-transpiration. My sporadic weeding had also allowed humidity to conspire with fungal invaders at the base. The old man’s soil, by contrast, was clean as a monastery floor, save for a few companion marigolds.
It’s too late for salvation this year. But next season I’ll follow his liturgy. Turns out God really does use Bordeaux mixture. And horse manure aged until it’s actually pleasant to handle. And decades of doing the same thing, correctly, without a YouTube tutorial in sight.
As for Lolo – well, I’ll resist trying to figure out how she knew the way to Pep’s garden, let alone how she timed her intervention so precisely. Perhaps, as in my occasional gardening triumphs, I’m simply mistaking luck for design.
This winter, horticultural humility will be my muse. Next year, I’ll focus on fewer, tried-and-tested varieties, mix up the Bordeaux mixture and avoid blowing half a month’s income on seeds just to preempt the January blues. The lesson, at least, is clear. Man plans and God gardens. And sometimes He speaks Catalan.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 22, 2025 World edition.
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