Look at this brave little Crocosmia. All his friends stopped blooming weeks ago – months, even – and here he is, blossoming like it’s midsummer.
Brave flower!
Images
That’s it?
So much anticipation. The chopping of a full gallon (measured post-chopping) of tomatoes. The stirring. The mouthwatering aroma. And… One lone pint of (incredibly delicious) tomato soup. Oh, and 1/2 pint that the kids and I will eat for tomorrow’s lunch. Note to self: don’t use cherry tomatoes for soup.
Time for tomato soup!
I’ve had a hankering for a tomato basil soup lately, and with all our tomatoes ripening like crazy, I decided to make enough to can. I’ve been picking and refrigerating them for three weekends, and now I think I have about a gallon – enough to use the recipe I found at pickyourown.org, a site I’ve found extremely useful over the past year. I can’t wait to taste it! I’ll admit to being a bit nervous, though. Tomatoes have to be pressure canned, and I haven’t used a pressure cooker for that purpose (I use it for water bathing jam and pickles) since I was in high school and closely supervised by my mother or an aunt. Sofie has been sleeping more dependably the last few nights, so I’ll do the canning part after the kids are in bed. Pressure canning takes a bit of focus, something I’m a bit short on at the best of times, and for safety I’d rather not have small people underfoot. This should be exciting!
Evening Tomato Harvest
This evening I had a small helper while I picked tomatoes. The plant you see sprouted on its own around June in a vacant section of a wheel-shaped garden, and since it wasn’t competing with anything I had planted, I let it grow. It has large orange cherry tomatoes with an extra-vivid flavor. What a delicious accident.
What you can’t see is the main tomato bed, in another wedge of the wheel-shaped garden. Every time I go out to pick tomatoes, I am reminded that sometimes a good piece of advice is worth doing a little extra work. This spring, as I was excitedly transplanting my very first baby tomatoes, my mother-in-law – visiting from Alaska – suggested tactfully that I might consider spacing them farther apart. “Sometimes tomatoes can really take off. They can outgrow their space quickly. These look a little tight to me.” I had already dug their holes and put the seedlings in. They looked so delicate and innocent, I simply couldn’t imagine them burgeoning into rebellious space hogs. And I was deep into transplanting strawberries. I didn’t want to replant the tomatoes. So I chose to believe they would remain staid and obedient.
They didn’t, of course. Now, each time I harvest tomatoes, as I tunnel headfirst into the vigorous vines and fight for a handful of bright red fruit deep in the thicket, I remember: “Sometimes tomatoes can really take off.”
Maybe next time I’ll listen.
A Bright Ray of Hope 