First Tomato.

Not even July yet, and we're seeing the first cherry tomato, waiting for that moment when we pick it, sprinkle a little sea salt on it and devour it in one bite. I'll share. Maybe. There are many more where she came from, but there's nothing like the first home grown tomato of the season.

A city boy now, I grew up deep in the Southwestern Pennsylvania countryside, learned to care for vegetables, to till the earth and harvest lettuces. Last year, I decided to try my luck in my cramped backyard and from the first taste of homegrown nourishment, I was hooked.

This year we expanded from tomatoes and herbs and peppers to include zucchini and cucumbers, the zukes yielding two types of blossoms, boys and girls, one type to eat now and one to see grow into sweet green slender batons. We'll take the male blossoms and stuff them with goat cheese and a little chipotle, then fry them tempura-style with a raita on the side.

The three types of basil are liturgically resplendent, the tomatoes voluptuous, the chilies lazily dangling from strong, slender stalks and promising heat and sweetness. The mint, well, the mint has asserted itself from across the garden, but we keep at it, mixing it with the cilantro that we grew from seed and the Thai basil just coming into its own to put in our summer rolls of raw salmon and arugula. We'll make a dipping sauce of the chilie paste we made from last year's crop, some fish sauce, ginger and rice vinegar for what we have come to call, "sandwich night." The freshness and goodness fills our palates and feeds our desire to see new things grow.

The tarragon from last year looks as if it wants to be decorated for Christmas it's growing so thick (we have offered bunches to the B&B next door, but even they can't keep up)  and the red, yellow and orange pepper plants have blossomed, promising a late summer roast on the grill to be finished with olive oil and feta.

There is a particular type of character that longs to see green things grow. I confess that at my core, I am among those souls who wish every spring to drive my hands into dirt, to weed and water and harvest. I dream about it in Winter.

I cannot look at my garden and not think of my father, the man who compelled his sons to backbreaking work to feed their adolescent bodies. My family had not one garden, but two and they nourished us throughout the Summer and into Winter with the canning my mother and grandmother put up. We were never rich, but the wealth of eating something you had labored over is a treasure one never forgets. Everything is sweet and flavorful and filled with the good earth's love. If I was a religious man, I would say that one cannot watch God's creation turn itself every Spring to bounty and not be humbled.
My garden is modest, yet I visit it daily to weed, check its progress and congratulate the whole lot of them on our mutual good fortune.

So thanks, Dad, for this garden. And thanks, Mom, for teaching me what to do with all this. Each bite will illicit a memory, each memory a story, each story a treasure.

Comments

[Vavoom]

Daniel: This is the best post I've read in a long while. Your father has reaped what he's sown -- a wonderful family that appreciates all that he's done for them.

[Vavoom]

Make that "Your father and mother have reaped what they've sown -- a wonderful family that appreciates all that he's done for them."

[Maggie]

Beautiful post, Daniel. There's something special about growing your own garden vegetables.

Perhaps President Bush would be having less problems with the polls if all Americans had their own little "Victory" gardens...visions of the "Greatest Generation" who seemed to understand sacrifice and "growing" freedom and democracy.

Oh, do you also use that little trick I use on my tomato plants - I pick a large green one from each plant - it seems to get the others ripening faster.

I have also become a fan of "fried green tomatoes" since I started utilizing this speed-up process.

[Daniel]

I had never heard of that. It really works? Why do you think?

And Vavoom,
thanks for your kind words.

[Maggie]

Stressing a tomato plant is practiced by many gardeners...involves cutting back the roots.

I am too fond of my tomatoes (and too much of a coward) to attempt that. An old gardener told me to pull one green one off each plant (I think of it as gentle stressing)to set them turning.

Perhaps it's my timing (and they would have turned anyway), but I have had luck with the procedure.

Try it on one plant, Daniel. Or be very brave and do the root chop!

[Older Bro]

You're gonna make Mom cry -- again, but, as she said before, in a good way. :-)