The little prince went away, to look again at the roses.

“You are not at all like my rose,” he said.  ”As yet you are nothing.  No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one.  You are like my fox when I first knew him.  He was only a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes.  But I have made him my friend, and now he is unique in all the world.

And the roses were very much embarrassed.

“You are beautiful, but you are empty,” he went on.  ”One could not die for you.  To be sure, an ordinary passerby would think that my rose looked just like you–the rose that belongs to me.  But in herself alone she is more important than all the hundreds of you other roses: because it is she that I have watered; because it is she that I have put under the glass globe; because it is she that I have sheltered behind the scree; because it is for her that I have killed the caterpillars (except the two or three that we saved to be come butterflies); because it is she that I have listened to, when she grumbled, or boasted, or even sometimes when she said nothing.  Because she is my rose.”

——

And he went back to meet the fox.

“Goodbye,” he said.

“Goodbye,” said the fox. “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

“It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.”

“It is the time I have wasted for my rose–” said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.

“Men have forgotten this truth,” said the fox.  ”But you must not forget it.  You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.  You are responsible for your rose…”

“I am responsible for my rose,” the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

 

From “The Little Prince”, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

And so there it is, simply.  That’s why the food we grow, even it isn’t the best in a blind taste test, well, it’s still the best because it’s ours.

And so, while our tomatoes might be suffering a severe case of blight, and we’ve stripped most of the leaves off, they’re still our tomatoes.  So we’re gonna go waste some more time on them, in hopes that we get to eat them someday.