By the middle of July, our apartment building had developed a tomato committee. Nobody had formed it officially, and there were no minutes, but several people had opinions and everyone knew when the next meeting was happening. It was whenever somebody stepped onto a balcony.
The whole thing started with one plant.
I live in Halifax, in a building where the balconies look into a shared courtyard. Mine holds two folding chairs, a broom, a small table, and a tomato plant my friend Hannah left with me while she was away for three weeks. She arrived on a Sunday with the pot tucked under her arm and told me it was “basically impossible to kill.”
I have heard that sentence before, usually shortly before killing something.
“Water it when the soil feels dry,” she said. “And give it some sun.”
“How much sun?”
“Normal sun.”
Hannah is a dear friend, but she is not especially interested in follow-up questions.
For the first few days I watered the plant and left it alone. Then a tiny yellow flower appeared. I sent Hannah a photograph because it seemed like the sort of thing a temporary plant guardian should report. She responded with six exclamation marks. I took this as positive feedback.
That evening, Mr. Chen from the balcony below called up while I was shaking crumbs out of a dish towel.
“Tomatoes?” he asked.
“That's the plan.”
“You need a bigger pot.”
I looked at the pot. It seemed perfectly able to contain the plant currently inside it.
He pointed at his own balcony, which had a row of containers so tidy that they looked like they were waiting for inspection. “Roots need room,” he explained.
The next day my neighbor Priya, two doors down, leaned over her railing and offered a completely different diagnosis: too much water. She said the leaves looked soft. I went outside and looked at them through my sunglasses. They looked like leaves.
By Friday I had been told to move the plant closer to the rail, move it away from the rail, add fertilizer, avoid fertilizer, and speak to it. The last suggestion came from a ten-year-old on the second floor who also recommended naming it Kevin.
I did not name the plant Kevin. I did, however, spend twelve dollars on a larger pot because Mr. Chen had sounded like a man who knew what he was talking about. Repotting turned my kitchen into a small excavation site. A surprising amount of dirt ended up in my socks.
When Hannah called that weekend, I asked how much she had originally paid for the plant.
“Four dollars. Why?”
“No reason.”
“Is it okay?”
“It's receiving a lot of attention.”
She laughed. I didn't.
The committee's next issue was the first green tomato. It appeared near the end of July, roughly the size of a marble. Priya saw it first and announced the news from her balcony while I was bringing in towels. Mr. Chen nodded like a man who had anticipated the result. The child downstairs asked whether Kevin had had a baby.
I took a photograph, not because it was beautiful but because I thought Hannah would want evidence of progress. In the picture the tomato is nearly invisible. Most of the frame shows a neighboring building and one of my socks drying over a chair.
Then August arrived with a few cool, gray days, and the plant slowed down. I stopped checking it every hour, partly because there was nothing new to see and partly because I had an actual job. Mr. Chen continued to check it on my behalf from below.
“Not red yet,” he called one morning.
“I can see that.”
“Soon.”
He said this several times over the following week.
When Hannah finally came to collect her plant, there were three tomatoes on it: one almost red, two still green. She looked pleased and a little confused by the new pot. I explained the committee. She looked down at Mr. Chen's balcony, waved, and got an approving nod in return.
“Do you want to keep one?” she asked.
“I think that's only fair,” I said.
She took the pot home. The next day I found a paper bag outside my door with a single tomato inside. There was no note, but Hannah texted me a thumbs-up ten minutes later.
I sliced it for a sandwich. It tasted like a tomato. A good one, but still a tomato.
That evening Mr. Chen saw me on my empty balcony and asked if I would be growing anything next summer.
“I was thinking maybe a chair,” I said.
He didn't laugh. He asked what direction the balcony faced.