August, September and even some of October it's tomatoes. All day, every day, tomatoes. Go out to the garden and pick a bucket of tomatoes. Have tomatoes with every meal. Chop them up and put them in the freezer for later. It's one of my favorite times of the year.
I have an old fashioned little part of me that yearns to be a farmer. To work with my hands, till the earth, and eat the fruit of my labor. There's this desire for simpler times, fewer concerns, a smaller world. My city-loving-self would never actually allow me to pack up and move to the country, so I satisfy my homesteading dreams with a little 10x20 garden plot in our backyard. There I can kneel down and get my hands dirty, labor and sweat, and harvest a return
It's amazing just how much we can get out of that little plot. Especially considering I did about 12 hours of gardening this summer.
 |
| Red and Yellow Jelly Beans |
 |
| Roman Candles |
 |
| Some sort of pepper. Sorry pepper, I forgot your name. |
 |
| Heirloom Beef Steak |
 |
| Indigo Rose |
 |
| Green Zebra |
 |
Summer Squash
|
How we eat our tomatoes: in salads, bruschetta, BLT's, caprese, salsa, and of course, tomato sauce. My very favorite tomato sauce recipe is
this one from one of my favorite food blogs, 101 cookbooks. It's easy, it's fast, it dirties few dishes, and it's delicious. I've used the same recipe with red tomatoes and the results were equally agreeable.
 |
| Salsa makings |
 |
| Freezing Prep |
Our first summer in this house Alex and I planted a raspberry bush. Just one. And that first year we didn't get a single raspberry. The next summer we got a handful, but not much. We had heard that raspberries are supposed to spread like weeds. So we waited expectantly for a bumper crop. This was our fourth summer here, and the raspberry bush has finally begun to spread. More shoots came up this spring bearing little white blossoms that would turn unto fruit. I think it will be several more years before I will be making pies or batches of jam. But this year for about 2 weeks straight I could go out each morning and pick just enough raspberries to have on my yogurt.
Some fruit comes right away, you plant and harvest in the same season. It's easy, which is not a bad thing. And then some fruit requires patience. You plant and tend and toil, and bare seasons go by before any fruit is seen. But when it does come that fruit is so sweet.
I think you know what I'm talking about.
