Dear Heirloom Tomato Plants,
I really appreciate the small offering you sent me today. The single paste tomato and three cherry tomatoes were quite tasty, albeit rather small. Since they are the first tomatoes from our garden this year (well, I did snack on two cherry tomatoes that I found yesterday, those really were THE FIRST) I can't fault you for only producing these few, small specimens.
However, taunting me with almost a dozen huge, softball size green tomatoes for the past week is really too much! That one on the end has surpassed softball and is moving onto volleyball status. My mouth waters with the thought of Fried Green Tomatoes, but I vow that the first real tomato from this garden, "as God is my Witness!", will be RIPE and RED (or pink, depending on the cultivar). Every day I check up on them, worrying that local squirrels or chipmunks will have moved in and done the unthinkable: taken one bite out of every fruit. I can't stand the thought! I lay awake at night plotting the demise of those cute, furry-tailed rats, but they always seem to outsmart us. I keep hoping the dogs being five feet away will help, but they aren't much interested in squirrels--I think I feed them too much for that.
Darling Plant, I suppose you will one day soon have them all turn red (or pink) all at once so that I run around like an idiot trying to harvest them all. It will probably be pouring rain that day, too. Then of course I'll have to find a home for all those lovely, tasty globes, because even I have only so many fresh tomatoes I can eat in one day. You are devilish in your plans, I must say.
So you continue with your (evil) plot to wear me out--I'll wait for you to ripen, I will wait. While I wait I will slice the Vidalia onions and make the garlic mayonnaise, because I know that in the end, in the end I will have a tomato sandwich.
Your Loving Gardener,
Sally
that survived the intense heat and lack of rain this summer. The first melon was the size of a baseball and rotted before I could harvest it. This one that I took off the vine this morning is a nice icebox size and only has a small spot on the bottom where it got a little too much moisture during the last rain. It is a 'Moon and Stars' heirloom variety.
morning take: pink tomatoes (some still a bit green but delicious fried) banana peppers, jalapeno peppers both green and red, and said watermelon. I'm planning on pickling the peppers with some okra we got from a neighbor. The watermelon we'll have for desert tonight. Should all be dee-licious.
