Home grown tomatoes sliced and diced to be included in green salad—how delicious! The moment I bit into the first tomato tidbit, I was transported to many, many years ago when I walked through fields to the country schoolhouse I attended. On Fall days I would purposely traverse my mother’s garden because bordering the path she planted tomato plants that bore little yellow tomatoes. I would pick a handful and put them in my lunch box so that I could eat them for lunch (that was before schools had hot lunch programs).
After school I would travel that same garden path and pick two or three sun-warmed tomatoes. One bite and the juice would explode in my mouth-yummy! I’m sure my mother had cookies ready for a snack after a day at school but it’s those little, sun-warmed tomatoes that I remember.
The natural growing season in northeastern Nevada doesn’t lend itself to great gardens without a tremendous amount of work and I don’t yearn to spend the needed amount of time and expense necessary. However, our four tomato plants have done well by us, furnishing delicious bites of summer bounty to salads and accompanying cottage cheese.
This morning there was ice on the towel that I had thrown over one tomato plant. As long as our daytime temperatures stay in the high 60’s and into the 70’s I will continue covering the tomato plants so that the remaining fruit can have as much chance as possible to begin ripening. As the temperatures lower, however, I will pick the green fruit and put them in newspaper to ripen in the house.
Funny about that memory—I hadn’t thought of Mom’s little tomatoes for years.
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