How’s your garden this summer?

Last night, I decided to make a Chicago dog.

I had all the essentials lined up on the counter: a hot dog and bun, relish, peppers, sauerkraut instead of pickle, celery salt, and tomato.

The tomato was supposed to be the star of the show.

Earlier this summer, I decided to turn my brown thumb into a green thumb. A local nonprofit, Growing Gardens, held its annual vegetable plant sale. I came home with a single Beefsteak tomato plant. I repotted it, gave it fresh soil, watered it faithfully, and watched it take off like it had discovered its life purpose.

Every day I checked on it.

Every day it got bigger.

Eventually, one tomato emerged as the chosen one. While a few other blossoms appeared, the plant seemed determined to pour all its energy into producing a single magnificent fruit.

Today was harvest day.

I picked the tomato and admired it for about 30 seconds before noticing a blemish on the bottom. No problem, I thought. Tomatoes get spots.

Then I cut it open.

Half the inside had spoiled. It looked like a melanoma had taken over the fruit. The plant had spent weeks concentrating all of its resources on one tomato that had gone bad from the inside out.

I trimmed away the damaged sections and salvaged what I could. The remaining pieces made it onto the Chicago dog and, to be fair, tasted pretty good.

Still, I couldn’t help doing the math.

The tomato plant, $9.

The pot, $14.

The potting soil, $10.

That means the tomato on my Chicago dog carried an investment of $33.

Even by Boulder standards, that’s an expensive tomato.

Of course, gardening isn’t about return on investment. If it were, nobody would do it. Gardeners spend money on plants, soil, cages, hoses, and tools, then celebrate when they grow something they could have purchased at the grocery store for 99 cents.

Yet next spring, I’ll try again.

Gardening is an act of optimism. I planted the tomato because I believed that with enough sunshine, water, and patience, I’d harvest a bumper crop. I hoped for a basket of tomatoes. Instead, I got one expensive tomato with a tragic flaw.

Wall Street investors chase quarterly earnings reports. Gardeners stare at a few blossoms and convince themselves that next year’s harvest is going to be spectacular.

My first tomato may have been a financial disaster, but I’ve already caught myself checking on those remaining blossoms.

That’s how gardening gets you.

No matter what happened this season, there’s always another tomato growing somewhere on the vine.