SUMMER HARVEST

Oh, no one should be impressed at the title.  The reality is far less than what is implied.  Our total food plantings this year were two tomato plants.  In addition, we have a blueberry bush in a pot.  These two foods represent two of our favorite flavors.  We never get too many tomatoes, especially home-grown ones, in a season.  Well, almost never.  There was the year, not too far back, when we planted five tomato plants and they all bore heroically and we were giving tomatoes to our neighbors, our friends, our family doctor, and finally resorted to making home-made tomato sauce for pasta.  But within reason, we do enjoy tomatoes and have been known to eat them with three daily meals upon a good season.  This year, we planted only two tomato plants, one a slicing tomato called Beefsteak and one a cherry tomato.  The cherry tomato is seemingly invincible, with the earliest imaginable blooms and a continual supply of sweet, delicious fruits even with the horrific heat we are now experiencing.  The Beefsteak tomato has produced far fewer fruits in number, but the first one we harvested weighted one pound fourteen ounces - that's very nearly two pounds.  And oh, my, was it lovely to eat.  And the next ones harvested have been equally delicious, just smaller.  That same heat, you know.

As to berries, well originally there were two blueberry plants in the same huge pot, because we understood there needed to be two different varieties to produce berries.  One of the plants died last year, but blueberries make pretty bushes as well as berries, and the remaining plant has lived valiantly on, making a nice plant, blooming last year and making one or two berries, and we thought, well, that’s the last of those.  Then this year the blueberry bush bloomed again and then berries set, and the other day we harvested a full dozen berries, with more not yet ripened.  And we scrupulously divided the dozen berries and ate them, every one, and they were delish, too.  So either our original information was wrong, or an itinerant bee pollinated the flowers.  We neither know nor care.  We’re just enjoying the home-grown fruit and keeping a sharp eye out for the birds.  Birds, you know, like berries too.