Full Solarium

My solarium is packed full of all the flowerpots from the front step, the back step, and in front of the garage. Geraniums and petunias are blooming as is one agapanthus. I even have cherry tomatoes growing in one pot. Not sure how those got there.

Some annuals, such as coleus, are leggy and woody, and i don't expect them to last long. I take cuttings in order to root them.

As much as i like to keep old plants, some plants have a short lifespan. In order not to lose them completely, i keep taking cuttings.

Death is certain. The time of death is uncertain.

Fire Fly Cherry Tomato

My favorite cherry tomato this summer was Fire Fly, an All-America Selection for 2019. This blond, pale yellow tomato surpasses even my very favorite Sungold.

I'm just now harvesting my very last tomatoes. Alas, the tomato season has come to an end, as we must also.

I'm taking training at hospice to become an Advance Directive volunteer. But first, i need to update my own directive for the end of my "season" here on earth.

When tomato season ends, i simply pull the dead tomato plant out of the ground, and store away the tomato cage. When the season of a human body is coming to an end, the decisions are not so simple.

Have you filled out your Advance Directive? Named your agent? Given them instructions for what to do when you can no longer speak for yourself? It will be so much easier for you and your family if you take care of this.

Late Harvest

photo from www.quickcrop.ie

We are leaving for vacation tomorrow, which means giving all the vegetables in the refrigerator away. Finding a home for the red peppers was easy. I sun-dried one rack of Sungold cherry tomatoes. I decided to keep my 6 red cabbage, ranging in size from small to smallest.

In order not to have any leftovers, i cooked up the smallest cabbage tonight with some homegrown onions and the only remaining apple. Delicious.

When it comes to the end of our own season, we will be harvesting the mind we've been training all these years. The untrained mind may be unpredictable. The trained mind, the mind accustomed to mindfulness, has a much better chance of viewing the ending of the season of the life more calmly.

The seasons change.

Two Months Worth of Tomatoes

Cherry Tomatoes from One Plant

Frost is coming so i'm harvesting the very last of the cherry tomatoes--from one plant. This is the single plant that i blogged about on September 17. It turned into a jungle as it clambered down a stone wall. (Think: heat!)

What abundance! That's 2 gallons of tomatoes from one plant--in October! I smell like tomato leaves.

We are a month away from Thanksgiving, but i am feeling very grateful for this overflowing harvest.

Cherry Tomatoes for Breakfast

A cherry tomato plant grew in my compost pile. Two months ago, at the first frost, i picked the (mostly) green tomatoes and brought them in to the kitchen, where they've been ripening ever since. My sweetie fries a few tomatoes for breakfast every morning, so he's almost at the end of our surplus. Good thing, because the tomatoes are beginning to wrinkle.

It brings us great joy to still have a summer harvest as winter begins, in earnest, tomorrow. A taste of summer. A taste of joy.

Lucky Mouse

While meditating in the dark at 5 a.m. the other morning, i heard a little nibbling noise in the kitchen. I had been seeing chewed cherry tomatoes on the kitchen counter, but that morning i saw a half-nibbled sungold cherry tomato at the back corner of the stove. It was too big for somebody to haul into their hiding place.

My sweetie put out 4 mousetraps with his usual gourmet treat of a raisin and a dab of peanut butter. Next morning, no snap-traps were sprung, and more cherry tomatoes were nibbled. He tried adding half a tomato to each trap. Next morning, the innards of the tomatoes were missing on all 4 traps. Oh! What a delicately dining mouse.

The old hav-a-heart mousetrap was soon sitting on the kitchen counter, and within an hour, someone was rattling around inside.

Every morning i take a vow not to harm living beings, so my sweetie takes on the role of hunter in our house. This doesn't seem quite fair, but he is adamant about no mouse in the house.

Sometimes, we joke that we give the mice a choice: snap-trap or hav-a-heart. This mouse really did take the hav-a-heart way out of our house and enabled us to have--and feel--our hearts. Even when it comes to annoying, noisome little critters.

Grape Tomatoes

I've come to a deeper appreciation of grape (cherry) tomatoes this week. I grow them specifically to sun-dry them. I like their firm meatiness. As i sliced hundreds of cherry tomatoes in half for the food dryer, i eventually noticed that the grape tomatoes are, by and large, stemless while about half the Sungolds still have their attachments (their stems).

What about our attachments? Sometimes we can detach from the mother ship (or mother plant) or any situation in our lives and go on to the next moment.

But sometimes we are still carrying our attachment to what was said in yesterday's meeting or what was done (or undone) last week. We cling to these sorts of attachments and can't shake them off even though we know it would be a whole lot better for our mental health if we could just "let go."

Let go of our guilt or the opinions we keep raking over or the hurt which is creating sorrow or distress for us.

If the grape tomatoes can just let go, can I?

The Sweetness of Sun-Dried Tomatoes

I have an extravaganza of cherry tomatoes, so i cut them in half to "sun-dry" them in my food dryer. In fact, i grow the meaty grape cherry tomatoes expressly for drying rather than eating.

These sun-dried tomato chips are packed with enough flavor to make your tastebuds stand up and say, "Hooray!"

As we condense our meditation into concentration, the essential "flavor" of attention is experienced as sweetness.

I store the sun-dried tomatoes in plastic bags in the refrigerator, so that some cold winter's evening i can taste the sweet flavor burst of fresh tomatoes.

More Tomatoes

Tomatoes! I've got 'em :)
I have the most abundant crop i've had in years. And i have fewer plants.

Oh! That was hard--to stop buying tomato plants.

The cleaning lady gave me 5 sungolds--THE best cherry tomato i've tasted. 2 died, which left me with the perfect number of 3. Sungolds sprawl, so 3 is quite sufficient.

I also planted 3 grape (cherry) tomatoes. Because of their meatiness, i sun-dry the grape tomatoes so i can have the flavor-burst this winter. (I gave the rest of the 6-pack to a friend.)

As usual, here in the North Country, i planted Jet Star, a small but early tomato, just to hedge my bets.

The cleaning lady gave me 5 Opalkas. (She grows only heirloom seeds.) A.K.A. The Polish Torpedo, these are BIG meaty paste tomatoes.

I bought a handful of other plants, and then i stopped.

Now 6 cherry tomatoes and 18 other tomato plants may sound like a lot to you, but some years i squeeze in 36.

Knowing how much is too much, i restrained my impulse for more.

And yet, now that's it's August, i do have "more" tomatoes than usual :)

Photo from best-tasting-tomato.blogspot.com

Reducing Cherry Tomato Stress

It's cherry tomato season. Even though i have learned to limit my plants--3 sungolds and 2 grape tomatoes--i still harvest dozens every day. OK. I admit--at the last moment, at a plant sale supporting a youth program, i bought 3 pale yellow "cherry" tomato plants whose fruits are the size of golf balls.

This is the price of desire, that little voice that says, "Oh, i'll just have one or two more." Three months later, what do you do with a burgeoning crop?

I could complain about it as if it's someone else's fault that i'm overwhelmed by little tomatoes. But complaining is a form of aversion, and i really don't want to water those seeds of unskillful words--whether spoken aloud or silently in my mind.

I could give my extra cherry tomatoes away and practice generosity. That would be watering the seeds of skillful action. And i could have the joy of knowing someone else will en-joy them.

Here's what i actually do: i sun-dry the cherry tomatoes. Two racks of them are in the food dryer right now. My homemade food dryer is powered by 4 100-watt light bulbs. I've heard that you can "sun" dry tomatoes in a low oven (200 degrees) overnight, if you leave the oven door cracked.

You might call this approach making lemonade out of lemons. It's one way to reduce the stress of way too many cherry tomatoes.