Garden Tomatoes - MMMMmm

                Harvest season is almost over in these parts of the country. We’ve become so used to green house and transportation technology presenting us with fresh vegetables all year that we tend to forget the foods of the season have a time limit . . . except for garden tomatoes. Yes, we can get tomatoes all year long, beautiful perfectly formed red globes. Still the exclamation from August through September rings loudly as we sink our teeth into sloppy, artistically formed, scarred and deeply colored clowns of the harvest  – “mmm there’s nothing like the taste of tomatoes from the garden” we exclaim.

                The thing about garden fresh tomatoes is the metaphor for the garden itself: from early summer to the intense heat of late July, early August, tomato plants grow tall and wide singing sweetly, showing their delicate yellow blossoms soon to turn into little green shiny balls.

As the new green fruits grow larger and fatter, we hopeful gardeners begin dreaming in anticipation of all the harvest. Green beans come on quickly and soon scream at us to get out there and harvest! We eat the sweet first fresh strands and store the rest. Beans are gone as swiftly as they come,  while those puffy tomato plants continue to grow bigger with still green globes. Sniffing the air with their pungent fragrance, we linger on anticipations of summer meals decorated with a plate of tasty, very tasty, sliced tomatoes. Not yet. Wait. Wait. We are taunted by their beauty and the memory of that luscious taste.

Then sometime in mid-August the green becomes painted with pink, light orange, soft red, and suddenly, BAM! Tomatoes! Eat eat until you never thought it would happen but you get sick of them. C’mon eat! Soon they will be gone. And so they are.

                Yes, they are canned and frozen and combined with other great flavors into sauces and salsas. Yes, we can buy some pretties at the grocery store all winter long. But too soon, the mouth-watering fruit that tantalizes all our senses even to the kinetic dribbles down our face and arms are done. With much sighing, we rescue a few of the lingering green ones and stretch them out on an available window sill in October for one more chance to absorb that succulent flavor. Ahh. 

Hope you enjoy other garden stories in A Homestead Decade, How Crunchy Granola Changed My Life, Amazon Kindle (also good to read on iPod and computer), cheap - $2.99.