Home Grown

This is the time of year everyone (except one of my sisters) dreams of home-grown tomatoes. I did not fall for it this year! I did not haunt the aisles at the nursery for the perfect heirloom plant. I did not give up on inground planting and search for the best/new/magic above ground planter this year. I did not spend money on dirt. I will not watch and wait this year to get a meager return for a large investment. When did it get to be so difficult?

I remember mom and dad declaring a portion of the old arena as “the garden”. Just a few rows in some hard packed dirt, occasionally watered with a standard issue green hose and haphazardly weeded by bored girls in 100-degree heat. Nothing received special treatment and yet everything flourished. No purchased dirt, whatever old horse manure might still be in the ground and one of the two varieties of tomato to be had at the local feed store combined to produce more tomatoes than our family could use! 

I remember one extremely productive summer when mom decided to try her hand at home-made ketchup (seemed like too much work, cannot recommend) and she canned stewed tomatoes.  Plus, there were experiments with frozen and dehydrated tomato slices and rows and rows of tomato sauce in Bell jars. When storage jars ran out, fresh tomatoes were loaded into shopping bags and anonymously delivered to friends and neighbors.  The bags were just left on the porch with no explanation; we could not risk them refusing the gift. Now that I think about it, this might have been the summer my sister developed her aversion to this particular produce.

I really miss those summers.  Home grown tomatoes were more than just the taste. It was the smell of the plants in the hot sun, the feel of soil warm on bare feet, the laughter as my sisters and I dropped a bag on someone’s porch and ran away. I feel pretty lucky we grew up like those plants; rooted deep in country soil, sun kissed and allowed to grow a little wild.  

P.S. I have a porch, if anyone has extra home-grown tomatoes. Just saying.


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