07.27.08
First Tomato thieves.
Two and a half weeks ago our first tomatoes were reaching the peak of ripeness. The tomato plants share space in Daniel’s herb garden by the pond in the front yard. I watered the plants nearly every day and paid close attention to the soil moisture level. We have two each of three different types of plants, Better Boy, Better Girl and a dwarf tomato that is supposed to be larger than a cherry tomato but have the taste of a normal size tomato, and is supposed to bear its fruit early. All the plants went into the garden late because of Daniel’s hospitalization in the spring. It was of this last variety that the first of the summer harvest were to come, and there were three of them.
After lunch I went to the O & A Farms produce stand and picked up what I could to make a salad for dinner. I stopped at the local Giant Food store and picked up a pound of organic fresh baby greens and a head of green cabbage. These last ingredients weren’t available at the produce stand. When I returned home I washed the produce I was going to use and began to make a tossed salad with romaine and red leaf lettuce, green cabbage, baby greens, sliced cucumber, yellow zucchini, red and green bell pepper, and one half of a red onion cut into quarter inch ringed slices. Then I peeled two fresh carrots and cut them into sticks. All the ingredients were as fresh as possible, and all were prepared by hand.
I put the salad in the refrigerator and went out to check on the tomatoes. They looked perfect, but I decided to wait to pick them until just before Daniel was due to come home from work so they would be at their peak of freshness. I had boiled a half dozen eggs that morning that were sitting in a bowl in the refrigerator chilling. I would add them with the tomatoes. Then I made a balsamic vinegar dressing with extra virgin olive oil, fresh basil from the herb garden and dried oregano, marjoram, and tarragon. I put that in the frig also to chill. Then I placed a bottle of Yellow Tail Shiraz on the kitchen counter to open when I finished the salad later on so it could breathe.
I had thought to pick the tomatoes the day before and add them to the last portions of a tossed salad I had made two days earlier, but I decided to wait one more day when I would be able to add them to a freshly made salad. At 5:30 that afternoon I went out to the herb garden and the tomatoes were gone. Now there’s a fence around this section of the yard because of the koi pond, and I was in and out between the house and front yard all afternoon. While I was inside, I was in the living room which overlooks the front yard from the time I had last checked on the tomatoes. I know it wasn’t a four legged creature that wandered into the yard and stole them, and I don’t think it was a bird, but I’ll never know. There is evidence of moles in the front yard, but these tomatoes were a good twelve inches off the ground, so I can’t believe the moles ate them, and besides moles eat earthworms. Who our tomato thief was I’ll never know, but I was madder than hell over it. I had one tomato left over from my last shopping trip so that’s what I had to use. I cut it up and added it along with three, quartered hard boiled eggs.
Well today when I was out at the herb garden, two of the small tomatoes I have been watching were ready to pick. I took photographs of them a few days ago when I was shooting the dragonflies by the pond, and there’s a great photo of them taken just after a rain below We were going to have leftover chili from the day before for dinner, but I wasn’t about to lose out on fresh tomatoes.
When it was dinner time I went out to the garden to pick these two tomatoes to be eaten by themselves, a mouthful each really. When I bent over the plant to pick them, the larger of the two had a bite taken out of it the size of one third of the tomato. Needless to say, a few expletives flew from my mouth. I took the tomatoes into the house, washed them off, cut around the missing segment, cut the remainder in half, and Daniel and I each ate our portion. It was d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s. I’m saving the other one, the smaller of the two that is the size of a cherry tomato, for later. It’s sitting on the kitchen window sill, safe. If you don’t hear from me tomorrow, you’ll know I came down with some dreaded disease.
Oh, and the chili was better today than yesterday.
O.P.W.
