Home Grown Tomatoes

There’s really nothing like true home grown tomatoes from your yard. I love “Sweet 100’s.” They are the sweetest little cherry tomatoes ever and I grow a bush (or my parents do) every year, usually along the path between our houses so I can graze as I go by each day.

But once you have allowed yourself to get truly hooked on them, so much that no other tomato lives up to the standard, you have a small problem on your hands. Patience.

Now, with this high bar of excellence you have set for your tomatoes, no other tomato can even measure up. No, not even the hothouse ones or the ones on the vine! I don’t know if I will ever buy tomatoes at the store again. So what does that mean? Well, we only have them in late summer.

And then there’s the waiting…..

 

All those cute little green gems waiting to be ripened and gobbled! You can see if it’s going to be a great year or not. And those little green guys just look so cute… but they get ripe so slowly! Not that any of them wind up in the house or the fridge. I just love to stand by the bush and pick and eat as they ripen each day. I just need a bush for grazing! Cherry Tomatoes are great because they always have at least a few ripening all the time. I love it that they have all stages going at once. Like this image shows flowers, tiny green tomatoes, larger ones, reddish ones and lots of ripe ones. It’s the eternal cycle of life and lovely little sweet tomatoes!

“tomato tornado 1”

 

So, it’s actually not that bad because I get to eat tomatoes off my bush for a few months. It’s a good long season because we live in sunny CA and they are so prolific. By the time a few get ripe, more blossoms have appeared and every stage is represented along the way. A lot like life, I guess. We have many of our life seasons overlapping too. Many of us have aging parents at the same time as kids and grandkids. Many of us are juggling a job and a family and college! And we all go thru seasons and stages of life and relationships concurrently. I’m thinking it’s a little overwhelming at times and it would be nice to just do one thing at a time, but really, maybe not. Because if everything gets ripe at once, you can’t eat it all— there’s waste and overindulgence. And, if it all takes too long, you weary from the waiting. So just like the tomato lifespan, embrace all the stages of life and distracting detours and journeys we go through, often at the same time. Remember the sweet fruit of one facet of your life will sustain you until the other seasons mature and bring a harvest of joy. It does make for a chaotic look to life, perhaps, but it prolongs the seasons of plenty to help us endure the waiting.

“tomato tornado 2”

And remember, as long as it takes for all those little fruits to get ripe, it’s going to be so worth it. Because there’s nothing so great as home grown tomatoes and no where you can find them, except by growing them yourself.

#suzettesays #growcherrytomatoes #enjoyeverymomentoflife

Created with LumixG9, iPhone, Hipstamatic app.