Last summer, I did not plant a single tomato seed. In fact, I didn't plant anything at all. This was a particularly wrenching decision, because that very spring I had been sent several packages of tomato seeds saved and stored by my good Internet-friend Finny.
She lives in California and actually farms for a living now, but this was before she was a farmer and she had an amazingly prolific and well-cared-for backyard garden from which she got impressive quantities of tomatoes. And then she saved the seeds. And then she packaged them up all pretty in little special envelopes with photos on the front of each variety and description of the fruits.
It was all very efficient and exact and totally not the way I do things. Finny's a nice friend to have.
But then I didn't plant anything. So the seeds sat in my freezer, patiently waiting until I got off my ass and had a garden again.
This spring, I did. Thanks largely to Cubby's enthusiasm for planting tomato seeds, we started quite a few in the spring and got the plants in the ground in due time. A. had to surround them with fencing to keep away the aggressive deer, and they set quite a lot of fruits.
Then we moved. All those poor tomatoes, abandoned at the very cusp of ripening.
However! All those trips A. has been taking back to Blackrock, while challenging for me, do result in him bringing back large quantities of produce from the garden. The MiL certainly can't eat it all, so every time he comes home, he brings me something from the garden.
When he pulled up yesterday, he unloaded a box of tomatoes and an entire Styrofoam cooler totally full of basil.
I spent about 45 minutes this morning making at least two quarts of pesto, and then I roasted the tomatoes with a head of garlic (also from the garden at Blackrock). They were almost all Finny's tomatoes, which had traveled in seed form from California to Blackrock, grew in the garden at Blackrock, and then traveled from Blackrock to the Canadian border.
They look pretty good after their long journey, don't they?
Of course, a box of Finny's tomatoes must be made into Finny's sauce. So they were. And it was good.
Can you plant in the new garden? Not now of course, what with the extreme cold coming, but the boys certainly do like to plant/harvest. May be a pot garden in the basement.
ReplyDeleteToo bad Cubby and Charlie couldn't be traveling back and forth with A., harvesting and running around Blackrock with the MiL until school starts, with you and toddler at the new home. Dream scenario, I know, but a really good one.
Aww man! I miss my own tomatoes, too! Though I am glad someone is growing them because I'm certainly not going to get a vegetable garden in the ground at our crazy place for, like, ever. Next summer though - you can have your own garden again, yes?
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