Last week I was in the kitchen with one eye on a peanut butter sandwich in progress and the other on my cherub playing outside in the sandpit. The sun filtering through the kitchen venetians filled the air with floating glitter-dust. The cherub yanked the cat’s tail and it darted into the grass. I wondered if it were possible to be any happier.

The cherub appeared at the back door suddenly.

“Ma! Ma!”

I made my way over to see what all the excitement was about, and he reached out his closed hand towards me with an expression that said he was pretty much about to burst with pride. I thought he’d probably found a great rock or a fascinating stick. He uncurled his little 18-month-old fist to reveal his treasure…

It was a tomato. A small, hard, green tomato.

“No no no NO NO NO NOOOOOH!!!!!!!!” was my only thought as I flung myself out the back door, peanut butter forgotten, and raced to my precious tomato plants out along the back fence. Sure enough, there on the ground about a metre away lay an impressive collection of approximately fifteen unripe tomatoes.

I stood with my hands pressed to my face, staring in disbelief at two and a half months of watering, weeding and tending, until a very proud little person came and stood beside me, surveying the pile.

“Yep, there you go Mum,” he might have said, if he could speak in sentences, “Picked ‘em fresh, just for you.”

As I explained to him in my most solemn and convincing manner that green tomatoes were not to be picked, and we ‘put them back’ together, I noticed that being utterly exasperated while feeling love beyond words makes you feel intensely alive.

I’m sure it won’t be the last time I feel that feeling, either. He’s still got a baby watermelon to find in there yet.

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