The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Ga

" ... you grow things, and the deer, groundhogs, beetles, and webworms eat them, and you eat what's left." - Wm. Alexander "A hundred pounds of apples is a lot of pandowdy." - Wm. Alexander For me, mind you, pizza is the perfect food. Especially cold for breakfast with a glass of milk. My wife, on the other hand, nags me to get my fifty daily servings of fruit and veg. Ok, ok, some shreds of onion and mushroom wouldn't spoil the Meat Lover's Deep Dish Feast, but I wouldn't dedicate ten years of my life to growing stuff like author William Alexander unless pizza grew on a vine. THE $64 TOMATO is Alexander's fun tale of the fifth decade of his life, which he spends battling deer, beetles, webworms, squirrels, groundhogs, weeds, caterpillars, opossums, and fungus to bring the produce of his home garden in the Hudson River Valley into the kitchen to feed the family. It's a love/hate relationship that sometimes interferes with his day job as the director of technology at a psychiatric research institute. Three elements of THE $64 TOMATO elevate the narrative well above the ordinary. One is William's engaging self-deprecatory humor. He's not afraid to reveal himself as an occasional idiot, as when he contemplated managing his meadow with fire, an action plan narrowly avoided only after noticing that the National Parks Service caused the evacuation of Los Alamos Laboratory after losing control of a "controlled burn" in New Mexico's Bandelier National Monument. The second is the self-realization of the limits imposed by aging and a herniated spinal disc as he reaches 50: "I felt a little dizzy. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. I wanted to have an affair. I wanted to be young again." Just turned 58 myself, I can relate. The third is the esoteric knowledge gained while laboring at his hobby and imparted to the reader, the best example being the chapter on growing apples, "No Such Thing as Organic Apples". Did you know that apple blossoms need to be cross-pollinated by a different apple variety in order to set fruit? Perhaps the book's greatest failing is that no pictures are included. However, this deficit is easily remedied by going to the Web site address comprised of this volume's title followed by ".com". I tell you, even I was impressed - but not so much that my fruit and veg is coming from anywhere other than the supermarket.

I wish I had lived next door to William Alexander during his garden adventures to watch them first hand. This book is almost as good as being there. It's an easy and entertaining readthat gardeners and non-gardners alike would enjoy as Alexander weaves the glories and mishaps of his garden together. Favorite story: Superchuck.

What makes gardening a great hobby or an overwhelming passion is the promise of perfection. The road to a perfect garden starts years in advance with planning, plotting, and prodding and no guarantee of achieving the success that seems so attainable during the dead of winter. William Alexander's book "The $64 Tomato" has captured the essence of the quest and has done so in an extremely hilarious, often laugh-out-loud manner. If your passion is not gardening, it is still easy to recognize the fine border between an activity and an obsession in his bright and humorous memoir relating his adventures from buying his Hudson Valley home and planning the initial gardens to his struggles with landscapers, tools, earth, animals, family, and himself. This well-written tale of gardening adventures describes Alexander's efforts to contain his horticultural plans and ambitions, occasionally shared by his family, with the reality of taming rocky, clay soil, electrifying the garden to fend it from the deer and groundhogs, and gathering and storing of the produce. Alexander's witty self-deprecating look at the horticultural process and his personal commitment to achieve a perfect garden makes a very enjoyable read. For any of us who have ever planted a garden with the expectations of seeing and smelling beautiful flowers and eating tasty, delectable vegetables or fruit only to see the ravishes of rabbits, groundhogs, and deer empathize with Mr. Alexander's yearly ordeals. Yet, he also knows the joy of the earth and we understand that this may be what drives all gardeners, the feel of the earth in our hands, the look of a perfect tomato or strawberry, and the understanding we get another chance next spring.

"The $64 Tomato" at first glance may seem to be simply a gardening book. However, once you take a glance inside, you'll find William Alexander's story a funny and insightful tale of the author's ongoing attempt to gain a modicum of control over his fate - in Alexander's case aptly represented by his own backyard garden. "Tomato" is as much about the struggle of a man with his nature, as man against nature. Whether trying to outsmart an alpha groundhog (which Alexander, with an appropriate, if not appreciative, nod to a formidable opponent, names SuperChuck), or contending with bizarre contractors(one of whom bears a striking resemblance to the actor Christopher Walken) or reassuring his wife and kids of his sanity after wandering through his garden in January, Alexander keeps us asking "Is it really right to be so entertained by someone's angst?" and "Why am I laughing out loud when he is hurting the most?". In between all of this, we learn fascinating facts about the food we usually take for granted. For instance, Alexander informs us the tomato originated in Central America with the Aztecs, was hauled off to Europe by Cortez and the conquistadors, returned 300 years later to the New World with the colonists, and was finally promoted to culinary prominence by none other then Thomas Jefferson. "The $64 Tomato" is both a funny and thought-provoking examination of how much emotional upheaval, consternation, and struggle we willingly endure in pursuit of our most cherished pastimes. In Alexander's case, it's so called "weekend" gardening." Whether you are into gardening or just an observer of people and their foibles, "The $64 Tomato" may not compel you to rush out and buy a hoe and wheelbarrow. But it will undoubtedly leave you thinking about your own favorite obsessions and compulsions in an entirely new light.

For those of us who putter in gardens, William Alexander has done a good thing. His book "The $64 Tomato" blows the roof off home gardening. If this were a reality show, the title would be "Backyard Gardening: EXPOSED!!!!" But thank goodness, this isn't television. A craftsman with words, Alexander writes with a light touch, delightful bursts of humor, and the wisdom of a man who has done some things in his life and learned from them. A full complement of characters, human and otherwise, populate the book: Alexander's long-suffering and loving family, a spooky handyman who looks and acts like Christopher Walken, a crew of exasperating contractors, and a menagerie of groundhogs, deer, Japanese beetles and sod webworms. This latter bunch, Alexander's nemesis, is infuriating--and hugely entertaining for us onlookers. They defy Alexander at every turn. They come, they see his garden, and they conquer. Most gardening books are earnest, reassuring adult versions of "The Little Engine That Could": you can do it, you can do it. They assume a universe of order and control and endless amounts of time. Alexander will have none of it. His book is about labor, rapture, folly, joy, stress, sensuality, sweat, violence, despair and sex. Sounds a lot like life. Or reality TV. For anyone who has every planted a tomato seedling in freshly turned earth on a bright spring day, Alexander and "The $64 Tomato" deliver a bountiful harvest.