A Very Blessed Tomato Plant
By Michelle Fabio
How do you grow an 18-foot tomato plant?
Would you believe the answer just might be prayer?
Thrien Evans, 50, says that the oversized tomato plant outside his window begins to sway when he says his nightly prayers in its direction. He asks, of course, for “the Lord to keep it green.”
But it’s not prayer alone that has made this tomato plant so spectacular. Enter 90-year-old Ojetta Azalee Parker Smith, who shares the Georgetown, South Carolina garden space with Evans. In addition to tomatoes, the two also grow eggplant, cabbage, and collard greens.
From the outside they may seem an odd pair to tend a garden together, but the story behind their relationship is rather sweet (like the sugar cane they grow). Smith had been a caretaker for members of Evans’ family for many years; as Smith got older, Evans realized that “[a] woman at her age shouldn’t live alone.”
Evans brought over the now monstrous tomato plant in June when it was a mere six inches high with the stipulation that Smith harvest it.
And it’s still bearing fruit in November.
Whatever they’re doing, it’s certainly working.
(As originally reported by Johanna D. Wilson in The Sun News)
