Eleven that will not make it

"Whoever observes the wind will not sow; and whoever regards the clouds will not reap... In the morning sow your seed, and at evening do not let your hands be idle; for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good." — Ecclesiastes 11:4,6

There are eleven green tomatoes on the vines out there that are not going to make it.

I counted them this morning. I do this every year and I do not know why I count them. They are small and hard and pale and they are sitting on plants that have already decided the season is over, and the first frost will come somewhere in the middle of October and that will be that. Eleven tomatoes that started too late.

My mother used to pull the green ones and wrap them in newspaper and set them in a box in the cellar, and some of them would ripen and some of them would go soft and you never knew which until you unwrapped them in November. I have not done that in years. I do not have a cellar worth the name and I do not need eleven more tomatoes.

But I do not pull them either. I leave them on. That is the part I cannot account for. There is no sense in it. They are taking something from a plant that has nothing left to give and they are not going to finish, and every year I leave them there until the frost takes the whole thing black in a night.

The apples are coming on at the old orchard place down the road. You can smell it when the wind is right. Somebody's drops are going over, that sweet cidery smell that means fall is not coming, fall is here, and has been for a week, and I was not paying attention.

Ecclesiastes says whoever watches the wind will not sow. I have always taken that as a rebuke to the cautious, which is what it is. But this morning I read the second half, the part about sowing in the morning and not letting your hands be idle in the evening, because you do not know which will prosper.

Eleven tomatoes that will not prosper. The verse does not say pull them.

It says you do not know. And I do not know. Some year there will be a warm October and three of them will come in and I will eat a tomato in the last week of the month and it will be the best one of the year because it will be the last one.

That is why I leave them. I had to write it down to find it out.

Lord, I do not know which will prosper. Let my hands stay busy anyway.