In a fever of excitement having discovered that my tomato plants, my first ever attempt at growing anything since a sunflower in First Year Infants, have sprouted actual, actual tomatoes. Not only that but they are exactly the variety promised on the label. Mr Fitzpatrick, who grows nectarines and olives and all kinds of 'difficult' perennials is very cool about it, but I find it little short of a miracle. How does it know it's a tomato when it's out on the terrace sandwiched between a pepper plant and a jasmine? And how does it know to be a cherry tomato and not a plum or a beefsteak?
Enquiries like this generally earn me a lecture on Nucleic Acids from my friend The Scientist. If I really push it I also get Primeval Sludge and Darwinian Evolution 101. But that's not the point. The point is it's all so clever and elegant,
and if there's one profession that has daily reason to sense a Master Architect behind the scenes, it should surely be scientists. Who mainly cover their ears when the G-O-D word crops up. Strange.

Saw His Eminence the Patriarch cutting it fine for 10.30 Mass. Only in Italy are you liable to bump into a cardinal, flapping down the street in full ceremonial fig. I must say, Cardinal Scola can really wear red.
May 24th 2006