Andrea FabbroThe plant, Chaz “The Miracle” Bartholomew Willoughby (more commonly known as Chucky B. Willows) was born in September 2024, when he was scooped from his compost crib and brought inside of Dubya D. Forty Willa D. to overwinter as a strange, spindly houseplant. It was a fool’s errand, of course, for who had ever heard of rescuing a volunteer tomato seedling at the end of the growing season? Surely there would be no reason to do so, right? Well, pointlessness was precisely the point of plucking the plant from the putrid pallet.
It didn’t take long before he outgrew his small black plastic container, which was meant to house seedlings 3 or 4 inches tall, but it would be an absurd few months before he would move into his penultimate pot, his new pants, as it were: a green plastic pot, medium in size.
Of course, he outgrew that pot even quicker than the last, it seemed, as if finally having room to stretch out his stifled roots spurred a growth spurt so rapid, he just about measured the distance between Mackinac and Macquarie Island!
And yet, there he remained through the winter and spring, as ’24 turned into ’25, a sickly ghost of the summer, his yellowy pallor mitigated only by the odd sprinkle of Trifecta slow-release or bone meal, which would cause him to sprout children (affectionately known as his “suckers”) between his main stem and his branches.
It took some doing, but Chuck finally made his way into his final pot!
