Friday, August 6, 2010

Happiness is....the first ripe tomato

When the day arrives for the first tomato to ripen on the vine, I experience a mix of bittersweet emotions. Bitter because I know that summer will soon be over, sweet because who can resist homegrown tomatoes? As organic gardeners we take special care to do everything that is best for both plant and environment, but the golden fruit - pomodoro/pomo d'oro - it always receive more attention than anything else.

Quando arriva il giorno in cui il primo pomodoro matura sulla pianta, sento un misto di emozioni agrodolci. Amaro perche' l'estate sta per finire, dolce perche': chi puo' resistere ai pomodori coltivati nell'orto? Come giardinieri biologici prestiamo molta attenzione a fare il meglio sia per le piante sia per l'ambiente, ma il Pomo d'Oro... riceve sempre piu' attenzione di qualunque altra cosa.

12 comments:

Jude said...

This is just lovely, and soo spot on! I realized, after my very first batch of organic home-grown tomatoes last summer (not this summer, alas), that I'd been eating supermarket fauxmatoes all these years :).

Julie said...

Oooh, do you have plans for that beauty? Or is it gone already?

K and S said...

still sighing over that beauty!

Rowena said...

Jude - I actually feel ill whenever I am forced to buy supermarket tomatoes. It's too late for me now....I can't ever go back to the tomato dark side after having seen the light!

Julie - all gone! I cut it into 8 wedges and divvied it between my husband.

Kat - sometimes I wonder if they got the fruit right in the Garden of Eden and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. But then a snake would have a harder time slithering around a tomato plant.

Faith said...

That is a very nice picture. Home grown is so much better.

Viooltje said...

Nice to be back and find lady Rowena, orgogliosa della sua pomodoro. And precisely as I am killing the time between housework and checking my stove where another delicious medieterranean dish is being made out of my very own tomatoes and peppers - 'sataras'. Even though just like you, I feel bitter, knowing that most of my tomato plants look more like scarecrows than vegetables, because this year, their carer was too lazy to apply some tea-tree oil fungicide and perhaps try to stop or ease down the potato blight.

Rowena said...

Faith - ha! That's what happens when a food blogger transfers her food stylist ideas to garden produce. Fancy fonts make it look even cuter too!

Viooltje - potato blight! This year I haven't experienced blight yet...and hope that it stays that way.

Juliana said...

Great picture of your first tomato...

thyme2garden said...

How nice to be greeted by a perfect-looking tomato on my first visit to your blog! It's an excellent photograph of what was probably a very delicious first tomato. It looks like it could just pop right out of my laptop screen!

Rowena said...

Juliana - thank you for the compliment...at the time of this reply, that St. Pierre has been one-upped by several others in the black tomato category. They are all mean competitors!

thyme2garden - I tell you one thing about tomatoes (mine anyway) that never fails to happen - whenever we decide to run off for a few days, they decide to grow like gangbusters and I come back home to a jungle of fruit. I wish I had neighbors who could appreciate heirloom toms!

Sue Swift said...

Yet again I've not managed to produce a single tomato this summer. One of these years ....

Racquel said...

Yum, there is nothing like the first fresh tomato. Hope you planned something tasty with this beauty. :)