I dream of them every winter when the grocery store offerings are pink and crunchy and lacking in flavor.

We plant the seeds or buy the tomato plants, water them, guard them from tomato worms, wait and watch. Then the first ones ripen.
They are special, celebrated, savored.

Come late August, some garden plants have been burned by the stretch of hot weather, but my tomatoes keep growing and producing fruit. Sometimes a glut.

Right now I have piles of them on the kitchen counter. Various colors and sizes, from pear to beefsteak, yellow, orange, red, even purple.

So far I’ve made BLTs, salsa, pasta sauce, salads, including caprese. Nice that the basil is still doing well at the same time as the tomatoes. Oh, fried green tomatoes, too. See the old blog postings for my recipe.

I’m trying not to get tired of them and take them for granted. It won’t be long until the fresh garden produce will be a memory once again and instead of weeding, it’ll be time for shoveling snow.