Grandma Pelligrini’s tomato salad was a simple Mediterranean staple of garlic, basil, tomatoes, and olive oil. Ever since my first bite, I’ve loved tomatoes.

As my move from NYC to Baltimore neared, my dreams focused on my own garden yielding a tomato cornucopia.

I started my tomatoes from seed, moving plants through the house to keep them in the sun and away from curious cats. Then, I rigged a grow light station in the basement. I’ve seen my tomatoes go from sprouts to vines as tall as me. I added companion flowers to attract beneficial insects. I toiled over those seedlings.

When my first tomatoes appeared in bunches, young and green on the vine, I celebrated. But they remained green, and my anxiety grew.

Then, my older sister texted me a photo of her first reddening tomato. “Got some red!”

“I’m still green,” I texted back, feeling blue.

But then it happened. One morning during my tomato examination ritual, a tiny vague pink hue occupied the bottom of a tomato. It had been four weeks since the globes appeared on the vine.

“I’ve got red,” I shouted to my wife, who joined me in the garden.

“Yes,” she exclaimed, along with a high five.

Now, it was time to let these bad boys ripen out of control. I imagined all other tomatoes following suit—water, sun and TLC.

There was one more step on my wife’s agenda though: documentation.

While I pruned and fawned over my tomato plants, I noticed her out of the corner of my eye, taking pictures and fiddling on Instagram. She orbited the tomato plants and then alarmingly stuck her phone inside the tomato cages for a closeup.

My wife broke a rule of documentary: don’t interfere with nature. Imagine a horse giving birth or sharks enjoying a feeding frenzy—these are intense moments that the production crew could ruin if they get too close. Common sense: stay back and let it happen. This rule should apply to the delicate balance of a barely pink tomato. Or so I thought.

Well, as I continued to prune, I heard—about three minutes into my wife’s documenting—”oops.”

I didn’t want to look, but I had to. There was my wife, sheepishly gripping my barely red tomato plucked off the vine.

“I was turning it to get a better picture and…”

My first ever reddened tomato: ruined because my wife had to let her friends see it. My tomato, for her friends.

I suppose my wife was let off the hook when the tomato ripened a few days later. But part of me wished it didn’t ripen. Then she would have faced the consequences for her addiction to documenting everything on Instagram.