Volunteer (botany)

From Wikipedia: In gardening and agronomic terminology, a volunteer is a plant that grows on its own rather than being deliberately planted by a farmer or gardener.[1] Volunteers often grow from seeds that float in on the wind, are dropped by birds, or are inadvertently mixed into compost.

In March of 2022, I was growing lemon seeds in some dirt in my kitchen, and up popped another sprout, which I was hopeful might have been one of the cherry seeds I planted. . .but it turned out to be a tomato plant.

I didn’t bother to put the tomato plant outside until the end of July; too late for it to bear fruit, but it grew quite rapidly and sturdy. It was amazing to see it grow out of its dwarf state after being in the apartment.

The heat of the sun and my watering. . . it grew quite tall.

The tomato plant took a good snap in a late summer thunderstorm, but I was able to trellis it together; it healed for a few weeks but finally snapped again in another wind storm.

I took off the top half that had snapped and threw it in another grow bag that I was prepping with the intent to do plantings next spring.

The tomato snap took root in three places, and it has survived the rest of the summer without water, and it survived the first cold snap, and now, now in November, it is still out there, growing, without water or even the direct sun.

The vagaries that brought that seed to me to be sprouted.