She could have called it a bad year. In dollars, it was a bad year; she had spent money on trays, irrigation repairs, soil tests, and fuel and earned nothing worth entering as revenue. Yet she had a notebook full of observations, a handful of labeled envelopes, and a clearer sense of what would have to change. Before the first frost, she carefully collected seed only from selected fruit, recording the plant and its traits separately. She set the envelopes on a high shelf in the pantry where mice could not reach them and wrote a final line beneath the season's notes.
First year: mostly mistakes. Some worth keeping.
Winter gave Mary Ann plenty of time to consider whether she had been foolish. The back field froze hard in December, and snow collected in the tracks where the cannery trucks had crossed the access lane. She repaired the fence above the garden beds, covered her tools against weather, and brought the saved seed envelopes inside a tin that once held Walter's fishing tackle. When the work was finished, the house grew quiet in the way it always did after the last outdoor chore of the season.
She used to dread that silence. Walter had been a man who could sit comfortably through an entire evening without speaking, but there had been another person in the room when he did it. Now the silence had no edges. She sometimes left the radio on while cooking and pretended she had forgotten to switch it off.
One evening Evelyn called from the feed store and asked if she wanted to come to the church supper. Mary Ann almost refused out of habit, then looked at the seed envelopes lined beside her notebook. She realized she had turned down nearly every invitation that had come her way since the funeral. "I'll bring potato salad," she said, surprising Evelyn and herself.
At the supper a few people asked about the tomatoes. Frank Dillard wanted to know whether she had finally persuaded the cannery to pay rent. A schoolteacher named June Palmer asked whether the yellow one Mary Ann had brought to the feed store had a name, because her daughter had eaten two slices and asked for more. Mary Ann had to admit it did not. That answer embarrassed her less than she expected.
"Then call it something," June said. "How will I know what to ask for next summer?"
"I don't even know whether it'll be the same next summer."
June nodded thoughtfully. "Then I'll ask for the surprising one."
The remark stayed with her. She had spent the first year trying to make the seedlings behave, as if success meant getting them all to grow into the same sensible plant. But there was a different possibility: the differences themselves might be worth studying. That was not the same as assuming every odd tomato was a treasure. It meant being curious without confusing curiosity with a guarantee.