#*&!!$% Garden!

I've called my garden several names, garden of despair, deer salad and names not for delicate ears. I now regret having said those things. My garden is making a late season surge and is producing the most interesting crop of tomatoes and peppers ever ripened in the brief history of that little plot of land. At the beginning of the year, the deer happily consumed most of the first crop of delicate little tomato flowers and top growth of about 3 quarters of my tomato plants. They left the pepper plants alone. It took a long time for the plants to recover and begin yielding fruit. I didn't realize my lack of patience and appreciation for my recuperating garden until I referred to a newly ripened burger hybrid as one of my "precious" tomatoes, the first nice thing I'd said about something my garden produced all year.... All of you Lord of the Rings fans, stop snickering.... It was then I realized that I was spoiled by the success of last years garden (a little over 100 lbs. of tomatoes).

The above tomatoes were purchased from the local farmers market, this 10 pound batch from Kinman Farms for 4 dollars. At the height of production of last year's garden, I was getting this much about every 2 days. I was spoiled, spoiled, spoiled. I made batches and batches of salsa and Cathy and I ate the sweetest yellow cherry tomatoes in the world with our lunches every day.

My first full sized tomato ripened early this month. All of the other tomatoes have been cherry tomatoes and medium sized yellow tomatoes that were volunteers growing out of the compost pile! The scarcity of tomatoes from my garden early in the season had an unexpected effect on the way I enjoyed them. It wasn't that I was particularly thankful for my small bounty, I was way to ungrateful for that. I tasted them like I would taste a first glass of wine, looking for subtleties and underlying flavors. I doubt that I've ever tasted a tomato more thoroughly than these early tomatoes that were few and yes, precious. Not precious because I couldn't get garden tomatoes, I could get them by the ton. It's because I wanted tomatoes from my garden. from the garden I tilled and amended... with... you know, the stuff you amend gardens with. Some were sweeter than others, some a meatier tomato flavor, and some with an herb taste in the background, but all particular and appreciated. If my garden had yielded 4 or 5 pounds of tomatoes a day would I have noticed that? Obviously this blog entry isn't just about tomatoes, but trying to grow tomatoes has taught me something important every year. You can learn something every day, you just have to pay attention. I've learned not to be so impatient and to be grateful for all that I have and all that comes my way....... Despite my whining about my garden, the below picture is this morning's yield.