Tomatoes

I awoke this morning thinking about tomatoes. It is early March and I want a real tomato. I don’t want one of those tasteless anemic imitations they try to pass off as a tomato in the produce section of my grocery store. I want the real deal – a vine ripened, home grown tomato.

Sadly, it will be close to four months before I will have the pleasure of plucking tomatoes from my own garden. I will eat the first ripened beauty standing by the plant with the juice from the sun-warmed fruit dripping down my chin. It will be the best tasting tomato of the summer. This will mark the opening of an approximately three month-long fresh tomato season when my kitchen windowsill, countertop, and refrigerator will be boasting the red fruit. I’ll have tomatoes for breakfast, lunch, supper and snacks; broiled tomatoes on toast, tomatoes sliced on sandwiches and in salads, tomatoes and basil and zucchini and eggplant. I’ll dry tomatoes, can tomatoes and give tomatoes to my friends and neighbors. Just when I begin to think I never want to see another tomato for as long as I live, the season will end. One night I’ll hear the weatherman predict the first freeze and I’ll run outside in my nightgown to strip the vines of even the green tomatoes. For days, or weeks if I’m lucky, I will hoard the remaining tomatoes like a miser and I will savor each bite, and then – they will all be gone.

For now all I can do is thumb through seed catalogs and dream of that day in late June or early July when tomato season officially begins.