The Heirloom Garden – Part 2: First Fruit

The Smoky Black ripened in February.

Bronwyn and Lena had planted ten of the forty-one seeds in a sheltered corner of the walled garden. They had tended them for six months. They had staked and watered and talked to them. Lena had moved to Hobart in October, to a tiny flat above a bakery, and came to the garden every morning before work.

On the first Saturday in February, the first tomato hung on the vine, dark purple-black, ribbed and glossy, heavy as a fist.

"Oh," breathed Bronwyn.

"It's real."

"It's beautiful."

"It's yours."

"It's ours."

She cupped the tomato in her palm. Her eyes were wet. She had never cried over a tomato. She did, a little, in the afternoon light, with the sun warm on the old brick wall and the bees droning among the beans.

Lena cooked that evening on a camping stove in the garden. She sliced the tomato thickly, drizzled it with oil and salt, and laid it on a plate with a scatter of basil. They sat on the wooden bench under the apple tree and ate it with their fingers.

It was smoky, sweet, deep and rich, with a faint taste of woodfire and summer. Bronwyn closed her eyes.

"It's exactly how she described it."

"Who?"

"My grandmother."

"Then she was right," said Lena.

The sun slid behind the hill. A pale moon rose. Fireflies of a different kind, small bats, flickered over the beds. The garden smelled of tomato leaf and warm earth.

"Can I ask you something?" said Lena.

"Yes."

"May I kiss you?"

"Yes," said Bronwyn, softly. "And if you say stop, you must save the next seeds with me."

"I'd save them all."

Lena kissed her, juicy and sweet, a hand rising to cup Bronwyn's cheek. Bronwyn kissed her back with a slow, trembling warmth, her muddy hands in Lena's hair. The garden hummed in the dusk. The jar of seeds sat on the bench, refilled, glowing amber in the last of the light.

When they parted, both of them were smiling.

"Green?" asked Lena.

"Green," said Bronwyn. "Very green."

There are three hundred seeds in the jar now. The label reads: Smoky Black. Saved by two.

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