My sourdough starter died and my lone tomato nearly ruined me financially and emotionally. How did domestic drudgery and hard labour become an aspirational aesthetic?
I have just eaten what may be the world’s most expensive tomato. It comes from a little region of Philadelphia better known for sports culture than horticulture and was cultivated by yours truly. I spent only a few dollars on the plant, but then I had to buy a tomato cage and a few companion plants to keep it company. Then I had to spend an ungodly amount of time watering it and hacking away at weeds. In short: I put a huge amount of emotional investment into that tomato. Was it worth it? Absolutely not. I should have just gone to Aldi.
Of course, the tomato growing wasn’t really about saving money, it was about saving my sanity. Earlier this year, my wife and I got a plot at our local community garden; buoyed up by this development, I decided to ward off existential angst by throwing myself into tradwife-adjacent hobbies such as gardening and baking. I don’t know if it’s possible to be a gay tradwife but, after Googling the subject, I did find a magazine piece entitled The Curious Case of the Bisexual Tradwife. Alas, I can’t tell you much more about the phenomenon because there was a paywall. There are a lot of walls to pay in this life and this one did not make the cut.
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