Tomatoes Over the Fence

Rosa Delgado was seventy-three, and her vegetable garden was the pride of Linden Avenue. Almost every summer, her tomatoes won first prize at the county fair.

Then the Sharma family moved in next door, with their fifteen-year-old son, Dev, and his basketball. The ball flew over the fence into her garden at least twice a week. Each time, Dev knocked on her door with an embarrassed smile, and each time, Mrs. Delgado gave him the ball back with a cold look. "If it breaks one more plant," she told him once, "I'll keep it."

In July, Mrs. Delgado had to fly to Phoenix for her granddaughter's wedding. She was going to be away for ten days. Her friend Carmen usually watered the garden for her, but Carmen was out of town too.

On the morning she left, Mrs. Delgado saw Dev in his driveway. She didn't want to ask him, but she didn't have a choice. "Dev," she said, "would you water my garden while I'm away? Every evening, not in the afternoon. If you water the plants in the hot sun, the leaves will burn."

Dev looked surprised. "Sure, Mrs. Delgado. No problem."

She gave him the key to the garden gate and a long list of instructions. Then she got into the taxi. She didn't really expect him to remember.

Two days later, a heat wave hit. For a whole week, the temperature was over a hundred degrees. In Phoenix, Mrs. Delgado saw the news about the heat back home and worried. "Unless somebody gives my tomatoes extra water, they won't survive," she told her son. But she didn't have Dev's phone number, so there was nothing she could do.

Back on Linden Avenue, Dev was taking his job seriously. When he saw that the leaves were turning yellow, he looked online for advice. He started to water the plants twice a day, early in the morning and late in the evening. Then he tied some old bedsheets to sticks and made a roof over the garden for shade.

When Mrs. Delgado came home, she hurried to the garden. She found her tomatoes alive and healthy under a strange roof of colorful sheets with superheroes on them. Every other garden on the street looked brown and dry.

Dev came over, a little nervous. "I hope the sheets are okay," he said. "I read that shade helps when it's this hot. If you don't like them, I'll take them down."

Mrs. Delgado looked at the sheets, then at the tomatoes, then at the tall boy in front of her. "Dev," she said, "where did you learn all this?"

"The internet, mostly," he said. "And your list. It was really long."

For the first time that summer, Mrs. Delgado laughed.

In August, she took her best tomatoes to the county fair, as usual. But this time, the card next to them said: "Rosa Delgado and Dev Sharma, Linden Avenue." They won first prize. And after that, whenever the basketball landed in her garden, Mrs. Delgado threw it back over the fence herself.