Waiting for the tomatoes to ripen

I am waiting for the last of my tomatoes to ripen. The plants are still bent over with the weight of dark green fruits and I need for them to at least start to pale – because once they start to pale there is a chance they could ripen, hung upside down in a dark corner of the shed. The nights and mornings have turned cooler here and so I was worried that the time had passed. So I started conjuring up images of bottles of green tomato paste, pesto and even green tomato jam, along with, of course, the famous “fried green tomatoes”.

But it turns out I was anxious without necessity. Tomatoes will continue to ripen up until the first frost hits (but don’t let it hit the tomatoes) – actually, a plant guy in Vancouver even claims to cool days of autumn are actually helpful in producing rich ripe tomatoes from those paling green ones – boy, I hope he’s right – but there I go again, questioning wisdom.

I worry about something, look it up, find information that tells me not to worry, and then worry about whether or not the information is correct.

It’s this thing I have about wanting to know “for sure”, to be correct, no error.

Where did I learn to worry about knowing “for sure”? It shows up everywhere – do I have enough petrol to make it to the end of the journey? Is there enough food for the guests, am I sure that’s the right size? Whenever there can be a question about it, I’ve got the question.

Now, to be sure, this is not a pervasive anxiety that is debilitating – I don’t get frozen, unable to move, worrying so much about knowing “for sure” that I don’t act – but it seems to me I sure do waste a lot of time checking and wondering. But I don’t run out of gas, there is always enough food and things fit.

And the tomatoes are going to ripen, or they are not. Either way, they are still going to be good (especially now that I “know” all the recipes I can make with green tomatoes). But that was going to happen anyway, so I do wonder what I could have done with all that extra time. I wonder if I could have put it to a better use. I guess I'll never know “for sure”. Perhaps I could look it up somewhere.

Thom