Beseeching the tomato gods

Whoo-hoo!  David rototilled and readied the tomato beds!  Now all we have to do is sacrifice a lamb, vestal virgin, or Henry to get a good crop this year.

Garden hopes

Hoping to avoid blight this year, we bought all our tomato plants at Russell's.  They had a great selection and what a selection of everything garden-related.  The complex itself is gigantic, a place we could not take VA without losing her or spending a jillion dollars on all the garden/kid/toy/art merch.

Henry was pretty good, sleeping or nursing -- yes, I whipped out a boob while walking around.

Just and Unjust War

Virginia: "Mama, why does that damn woodchuck keep eating our vegetables? What are you putting on the garden? Why is it fox urine?" 

I am ready to make an IED, plant it in his shed, and blow that sucker up. 

He nibbled everything, but I was able to harvest these for dinner.

Collateral Damage

Virginia is becoming adept at identifying vegetables and flowers.  I love her stance here -- it's just the kind of pose a landscaper conferencing with a client might strike.

She and David are assessing woodchuck damage to the peas.

Au naturel

Virginia reeeeally likes being naked, and she loves watering the garden.  Why not marry the two interests?  Henry isn't such a big help yet, but he's willing to go along for the ride.

I am surprised how large the garlic is!  No tomatoes in yet, but we're getting there.  We're pretty surprised how much we've done given the new baby.  Just makin' it, but makin' it!

5/23/10

Little Miss Eve is modeling the broccoli rabe we harvested today.  Virginia planted, watered, and cut it, but she refused to eat it.  It was pretty bitter (maybe we let it get too big?)

Gardener, cook

Virginia surprises me with her interest and her ability to help in the kitchen.  Here she is making a strawberry-balsamic dressing to finish the salad (pears, goat cheese, greens) we made with the lettuce she helped plant!  Hurray!  The first garden meal of the year.

Reneges

It sounds crazy, perhaps, but I think this year's garden will be easier to manage. How do I figure? One thing is Virginia is so helpful and interested in gardening. She may not plant seeds in perfect rows, but she doesn't annihilate the garden when she digs around. She asks, "Mama, can I dig here?" She loves using her garden tools and giving the plants drinks with her Wonder Pets watering can.

Another thing is her swing set. David and some friends are coming by tomorrow to build it. We've figuratively built it up so much getting Virginia ready for spring and Henry that it can't but disappoint us all. Nah, she'll love it. I just hope David can get it done before rain or a surprise arrival by Hank the Tank makes it a June project.

But back to the garden. David's post below is well-intentioned but misinformed. I don't remember agreeing to so many reductions. We are simplifying the process by buying most of our seedlings, but the variety is still a priority for me. Okay, so maybe we are reducing the number of tomato plants, but Virginia and I have already planted swiss chard, arugula, scallions, parsnips, and carrots. She and David put in lettuce, too.

Henry -- in my fantasies -- will be easy, sleeping under an umbrella while VA's swinging and we are working on staking pole beans. I also fantasize about maternity leave: three days home each week to work on house projects (what?? a clean house again???) and yard work.

We'll see, we'll see.

Return of the Gardeners

Another year, another blog post.

In less than a month, we'll add a Henry to the list of Lincoln Street Bernsteins, but for now it's just David, Camille, and Virginia...and we're doing some gardening. Last year's garden was a big disappointment--we never quite mustered the energy to prune or trim or fertilize or even water. The plants took over, the tomatoes contracted some horrible blight, and we failed to harvest a good half of the vegetables that grew. After a certain point, we just sort of...gave up. There was just too much going on with Virginia and... uh, there was something else, right? No? That was it? We're blaming the whole thing on Virginia? Okay, there it is: last year's miserable garden was all Virginia's fault. Well, that feels much better!

The plan with this year's garden is to scale down our ambitions. We're going to do a couple of things well, and that's it. The first step is to abandoned our grow lights. We may grow some vegetables from seed, but only if they can be planted directly in the ground. It's just too darn hard to care for the seedlings on a daily basis, and three out of four days just doesn't do it--too many plants die. Instead of the absurd number of tomato plants we had last year and the year before (up into the 20's, I think), we are going to have twelve. That way suckers can be picked, the plants won't be competing for sunlight, and watering won't take half an hour. We'll do beans, but fewer. Cucumber, but fewer. Squash, but fewer. Everything, but fewer! I feel lighter just saying it.

The garlic, planted last fall, is already on the loose, sprouting four new leaves (??) in the past two weeks. Between those rows, Virginia and I planted lettuce and mixed baby greens. So yes, the gardeners have returned, though whether we're triumphant is of yet to be determined.

Littlest Gardener

Virginia hanging out (for the third time in a day) in her pool, watering the amaranth. She's actually pretty helpful -- doesn't pull out weeds or non-weeds. She's a keeper.

Underway

The spring has, at last, settled in. AMEN.

Well, because of Ms. Virginia's arrival, gardening isn't the same leisurely activity that it once was. Even getting the seeds started is something of a race against time--not so much against the warming temperatures, but against the astonishing backlog of household chores and necessities. The taxes must be calculated, the leaves raked, and the clothes sent off to Goodwill.

The tomatoes, however, have been hatched, and all but one of the pods is boasting fresh life. We're ten days away from the time we planted the seeds, and they seem to be doing well. The secondary leaves are just beginning show, though the stems seem a little on the leggy side. In another week or two, we'll start one of my least favorite process: the Thinning.


The Thinning. There comes a point where only one plant is allowed in each pod. You (well, I--Camille always seems to be busy) have to go in with a pair of scissors and snip away at the weaker plant. As someone who has never been tall, I always have a tough time with this, and I inevitably allow one or two of the smaller guys to prevail.

Anyway, this is where we are in our planting. A lot of the other seeds are going to be planted directly in the ground.

Garlic Discoveries

So this was fun: I entered a garlic recipe contest sponsored by NPR. My recipe for crab cakes was chosen in the top three, and they featured the recipe on the site.

After listening to the original program, I assumed that all the recipes had to have green garlic, which I'd never used before. I'd put scapes into my crabcakes, so I thought they might work. Serendipitous to the entry, I found a whole patch of green garlic in last year's site! So now we don't worry about "wasting" our precious crop.

Our regular garlic has done fabulously this year -- it's already four inches high. This morning I put compost all around the plants and then planted lettuce in between.

Beets go in today too. It's a gorgeous sunny cool day -- and we have a kite to fly later today!

Horse, Of Course

The top photo is the organic horse manure compost we bought from a local(ish) farmer. It's chunky, but smells great (meaning has very little horse smell). The bottom photo is the compost after we ran the rototiller through it. We changed farmers this year because the stuff last year was pretty woody -- although, admittedly, it did work great.

back on track!

We're back on track with gardening. Our seeds came in late, but we weren't quite ready to plant anyway. David's paint-dot system might actually keep us organized (or, at least, keep track of which tomatoes are which). Our young friend Jonathan helped up plant this year, and he did a terrific job -- and learned a little bit about math!

Virginia will be "helping," no doubt, and we're planning lots of vegetables around her -- and around the (YAY!) deep freezer we got from craigslist.

Helping Hands

Oh, Miss V. has really taken to gardening (with some breaks for sliding, of course).

I hope horse manure compost isn't bad for toddlers. She ate a little. Maybe it'll build her immunity? Farm kids are supposed to be healthier and anti-bacterial-slathered-kids because of their early exposure to a variety of microbes.

Let's hope.

Marriage & Compromise

David's been patient with me these last four years. I can get a little too ambitious with garden plans ("Let's grow 17 different types of yellow tomatoes and have a huge tasting contest with the neighbors!"), which is fine (and, he admits, exciting to a degree), but I don't have the organizational skills to implement consistently my grandiose plans.

So we'll have the 17 tomato plants, but I'll lose all the little stick label-things marking the pots, and we have to plant them willy-nilly and guess at their names. Or we'll have nine bean plants but I'll get occupied and forget to cook them for a week and they'll have to be thrown out. Or we'll plant them so close that everything gets contaminated with some claustrophobic mold.

I also like to give away our bounty to friends, but he's the one weeding and picking suckers and mowing, mostly, so he gets the grunt work and -- because I am the one handing out the results or cooking them -- I get more of the glory.

I rarely admit my (best-laid) plans gang aft algey, but he knows he's right.

But here, publicly, on this here blog, I will capitulate to his sober and sensible plans, forswearing my intractable imagination, and will choose fewer varieties, work with more precision and attention, and plant the seedlings a little farther apart.

But...um, I'll claim a little spot down in the way-back-yard for my "experimental garden."

Signed, digitally,
Camille Napier Bernstein
(stubborn to the last)

Back from the Compost Heap

One of my favorite photos

So wait, you're telling me that we haven't updated our blog in nearly a year? And that we didn't make one crummy posting during ALL of last year's garden.
"That's unacceptable!"

Well, I agree. I will say that we DID have a garden last year, though it did not receive the love and attention that past gardens had enjoyed. I blame Virginia and a protracted job search. One of the distractions was significantly more enjoyable than the other. We did, however, cultivate a garden in the summer of 2008, and I am willing to call it a moderate success. Our tomatoes thrived, our garlic was weak, and everything else in between did pretty OK. I'll take it!

Camille and I (and Virginia, of course) are back, searching through piles of organic seed catalogs, trying to figure out what we want. I am determined, after years of feeble protest, to push my agenda for a smaller, more orderly garden, this year. Frankly, even without VA, Camille and I have been overwhelmed by gardens past. Once the heat hits, there's just too much to do, and a lot of the doing never gets done. As a result, the zucchinis aren't harvested on time (they turn woody), the carrots aren't thinned (creating strange mutations due to lack of nutrients), and tomato suckers aren't pinched off (which leads to more tomatoes...that are lacking in serious glucose, or whatever). So this year, with four gardens under our belt, I say...downsize. A little.

We really are excited this year though. Life won't be so crazy, and Virginia will be able to toddle around, digging up worms and eating fresh fruits. It's going to be GREAT. I am most looking forward to growing tomatoes and eggplant (so pretty) and peppers for Camille. I am also excited to plant a few flower varieties, but that's mostly so I can take photos of them.

Okay, we're back!

We interrupt this blog for an indeterminate span of time, because of a growing baby (and her blog).

The garden this year is likewise growing (sans weeds!), but the trying to do the blog too is overwhelming us.

Garden Girl

We are, at long last, back in the garden. We received our seeds in the mail about a month ago, but we're late getting them started this year -- no surprise with other distractions!

The temperature is only the low 40s, and there's a little bit of ice in the raised beds, but we were able work the soil and to use some of our homemade compost. The garlic is coming up -- new this year, we have some sort of red garlic -- and we actually found some parsnips that we can eat!

We also found some beans from last year -- well beyond edible -- when David was rototilling. The rototiller broke, somehow, but some of David's kids claimed their dads could fix it. In the meantime, we'll just tone our arms with some good ol' fashioned manual labor.

Virginia woke up in a new place in her carseat/carriage (this happens to her a lot) -- the garden! She demanded to be pushed around -- fussy girl -- so only one of us could really work after about 20 minutes. I love the pictures of her here; she seems to be telling David a story about something really, really tiny that she had to squint to see. You can also see soil on her head and blanket where her parents tried to adjust her clothes while wearing their dirty gardening gloves.

The macabre photo of a GIGANTIC dead raccoon is the creature David found that must've been hit by a car and stumbled back into our yard to die. He gave the poor thing a proper burial.

--Camille

End of the Harvest

 
I can't believe we have so few photos of the garden from this fall. I found this video from sometime in November. The most recent photos are from early September! We've been busy growing a baby, I guess. We have scads and scads of pictures of my belly (with the garden in the background), but no garden.

We did get the garlic in -- just in time -- and planted great deal of it. You can never grow too much!

I know that the baby will consume our minds and arms, but I hope we still make time for the garden. I suspect much of the work will fall to me, as I will be home until April 7th. I look forward to planning where we will plant this year and what seeds we'll order, all good chores for cold winter days. David did most of the hard labor last year, owing to my exhaustion and restrictions on my movement, so it's only fair -- and it will feel good.

Our favorite baby outfit has a garden theme. My sister-in-law Laurie gave us two cute onesies with tomatoes and garden implements. I can't wait to get Virginia in them. I bought the next size up, too, because I didn't want her to outgrow them!

Right now, our only green thumb activity is forcing blooms on the bay window. I'll snap some shots soon, and then again after the holidays when the amarylis go on sale.

-- Camille

Zucchini Bread and Zucchini Quiche

Like most people, we had an abundance of zucchini in our garden, so we had to use it in creative ways. I have to share this recipe (at the bottom) for zucchini bread. I can almost always depend on Cooks' Illustrated to provide the best, most researched, most fiddled-with recipe for practically anything. The book The Best Recipe, given to us by Marnie for our wedding, is my go-to book for: - cinnamon buns - cheesecake - beef burgundy - quiche - roasted chicken - turkey for t-giving - etc

In just a little over a year, the proof of this book's worth is evidenced by the number of sticky/flour-y/and stained pages already mucking up the book.

The only two recipes that haven't gone well were the chocolate chip cookies. David said they lacked something -- butter flavor once, a brown sugar depth another time -- and he's always right about chocolate chip cookies; the other recipe that recently failed was Chicken Tikki Masala. It was tasty, and David liked it, but I felt it had twice the amount of fresh ginger and cardamom. I had our neighbor Jalpa taste it. She is Indian-American and a good cook, so she was able to identify the problems.

Anyway, the recipe for zucchini bread was not only delicious, but beautiful. Other breads took on a dark tone, but this one was bright yellow and green. The process was lengthy -- shredding the zucchini and letting it drain -- but worth the effort, and I used the juice in some spaghetti sauce. The zucchini monster I used was larger than New England Patriot Teddy Bruschi's forearm, so it made two large loaves. I added the olbigatory chocolate chips to David's loaf and kept mine pure (no nuts, even, though they would've been good).

Zucchini Bread Recipe

• 2 cups all purpose flour, plus more for dusting pan
• 1 lb zucchini, washed and dried, cut into 1-inch pieces
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup pecans or walnuts, lightly toasted (optional)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup plain yogurt
• 2 large eggs, beaten lightly
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 6 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled
  

1. Preheat to 375. Grease and flour 9x12 loaf pan.
2. Shred zucchini with 2 tablespoons sugar in 12-15 one-second pulses. Transfer mixture to colander over bowl and allow to drain 30 minutes. (You can also shred with box grater.)
3. Mix flour, nuts, baking soda, powder, and salt in bowl.
4. Whisk together remaining 1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons of sugar, yogurt, eggs, lemon juice, and melted butter.
5. Squeeze zucchini with towels, and stir in yogurt and flour mixture until just combined.
6. Add to loaf pan and bake 55-60 minutes until golden brown and knife comes out clean.

A couple weeks ago, I made this quiche and added zucchini to offset the bacon. (Yum, bacon.) It also looked prettier that way -- especially after adding more fresh herbs and our cherry tomatoes.

How food looks is almost as important as its nutrition.

--Camille

Late Bloomers

Our flowers weren't a complete failure, and David has been interested in documenting up-close flower shots. He printed a bunch of flower and vegetable shots for his classroom. I want some now too!

--Camille

Perambulations

Okay, so these pictures weren't from our garden, but they are inspiration for our flowers next year. We walk regularly in the neighborhood down the street, and although most of the houses are the same style-different color, we do like the passels of kids running around and sharing yards. Everyone we have met has been nice too. Our last encounter was with a man who saw me bending over these plants while David squatted down to take photos of the bees.

The man didn't see David, he said, so he walked over, having seen I was pregnant and in a weird position in his yard. "I got worried something was wrong with you. I hoped you weren't going into labor." Me too!

Two other neighbors came over and we chatted about the neighborhood and flowers while David snapped away happily.

We have some of these sedums(?) in our side yard, and they are quite popular with the bees. Maybe there isn't a virus killing all the fruit pollinators; maybe they are just bored and want to change menus.

These morning glories (?) were open in the evening, so I'm guessing I got the name wrong. We need something like this wrapped around our sad rusty mailbox. Problem is, it's buried in the pavement, so I might need to fashion some sort of split barrel around it to get some plants and color. I'm also hesitant because any flowers we had in the front yard have died because we are never out there to water. Maybe we'll be more conscientious next year. After all, 2008 is the year of the flowers at the Bernsteins'.

These pink geraniums -- I think I got that one right! -- scream for attention. They remind me of high school girls -- vibrant and fresh.

A bonus shot: the Franklin Conservation land on our walk. It's all around us. Our swamp in the back yard is great for animals, but it's not picturesque, and it's difficult to walk through. This scene always pleases us -- all year round.

Tomato Jam

I've been eager to make an old-fashioned condiment: tomato jam. It is a mix of tangy (from tomatoes and lemons), sweet (sugar), and umami -- earthy -- from the pickling spice. I've seen recipes for lamb and tandoori chicken that use it as a condiment.

Our unlimited supply of currant and sun sugars were perfect candidates for the experiment -- and soooo pretty. Picking this batch (left; one day's haul!) might've been the first time the sun sugars have made it into the house. Usually we just eat them off the vine.

The recipe in my home preserving book said to blanch them first, to remove the skins...can you say "not worth the effort"? That drudgery sucked the fun right out of the process, so I ditched the step after the first 20 tomatoes.

Meanwhile, I boiled sugar and water and lemons, and a tea ball filled with pickling spice. I didn't have cheesecloth, and this was my solution -- a good one, until I needed the tea ball afterwards. The sugar created a seal on the ball and made it impossible to open, even after a soak in clean hot water. I tossed it out. (I am out of my loose tea phase anyway.)

Next came the tomatoes and some serious boiling time. So pretty, so fragrant! David, who had been skeptical about tomato jam, came in to the kitchen several times to investigate and comment on the aroma. The recipe didn't call for it, but I added 1/2 a package of pectin to help set the jam.

Finally, I ladled the hot jam into itty-bitty jars -- always a mess, even when Clumsy Camille tries hard -- and boiled them in the canner for 20 minutes. I worried that setting would fail in the jars that tipped over a little, but all seemed well 24 hours later. I love the satisfying, shy, little "pop" of the jars when they seal on the counter.

And here's the final product! We had ours on salmon -- delicious -- and a week later I ate it on crackers with manchego cheese; still later (but not the same night!), I spread it on samosas. I gave a jar to Jalpa, our neighbor who runs the market across the street, who said that her mother (who makes terrific Indian food) loved it. It reminds me a bit of tamarind sauce, so I was pleased with the report.

--Camille

Fit for a Zombie

We don't know what genetic accident caused this tomato's deformity, but we dubbed it "The Brain" -- fit for a zombie's distinguishing palate.

We documented its growth from flowering infancy to succulent death and showed all of our visitors our freak show baby.

The Brain lived an honorable life, brave to the end, when it was featured member of our dinner, shrouded in balsamic vinegar.

At left is pictured (lovingly presented by Farmer Dave) our most ribbon-worthy tomato. This prettier cousin of The Brain is a German Pink variety. (Yeah, it makes me feel a little weird, too, to know that the German Pink is the most genetically "ideal.")

--Camille

Wasted Toms

David told me to make notes on which tomatoes we will grow next year. One of them won't be tumbling toms. While they might do well in a hanging basket, we weren't thrilled with the flavor. Although they are advertised as "sweet, like you expect from a cherry tomato," we found them a little tart and dry. These poor plants suffered the worst of the fungus blight, owing to their leaves' proximity to the soil; interestingly enough, the tomatoes still ripened after all of the leaves were dead -- just not to a flavor we cared for much.

I'll pick the rest of them this weekend and make tomato jam. If they do well, maybe we can find some room for them on the deck next year.

In other tomato tastings, the sun sugars won awards for taste, resilience, and prolificacy. My friend Margaret turned us onto these sweet, yellow babes. Every day we stand outside and, straight off the vine, pop them in our mouths like candy. I struggle when giving away tomatoes to friends and neighbors -- I want them to experience sun sugars, but I'm always measuring our own store. I don't want to run out!

We also loved the stupice, which may be due, in part, to their early appearance -- when we were earnestly desiring the first tomatoes of the season. They are a nice size for sandwiches and prolific enough that we don't need to eye each other suspiciously in those early days, checking each other's measure.

The black krim (in the back on left) are delicious and a little mysterious. How can a pinkish-purple bottomed and green-shouldered tomato be ripe? David still consults me before plucking one from the vine.

Yellow brandywines (middle large tomato) are mellow and beautiful on the vine, so we'll plant those again. We hope they do better next year, however: this year we've gotten only three!

I like having the big cherry reds, because they produce enough for sharing, but we don't need the currant tomatoes as well. I didn't care for their tart flavor off the vine. I suppose we could leave them for salads, but they are problematic anyway: their skins are thick but they still seem to split at the slightest watering. I like how they look, but we haven't the room for such vanity.

We haven't been too impressed with the bessers, so they'll likely give way to more pruden's purple plants. I might add a few new varieties to fill in the gaps: white tomatoes, orange pineapples, and whatever the seed catalog says is the absolute best taste: that'll take some research. Sun sugars will get two more spaces -- maybe where the tumbling toms were this year -- because I just can't get enough of them.

--Camille

Mendel Lives

I have my own little genetics-studying monk here.

David noticed that some of the cucumbers low on the vines were morphing into different shapes. Well, really one new shape: a crook-neck squash shape. These cucumbers happened to be next to the crook-neck squash, and they seemed to be cross-pollinating! They stayed green but got stripes on their plump bottoms. Interbreeding!

I checked online and oops! Garderners' tip: don't plant cucumbers next to squash because they will form hybrids that ruin the flavor of the vegetables. We haven't eaten our "squa-cumbers" yet, but they sure are neat!

We will change their location next year anyway, because the squash just needs more room than we are willing to give with the raised beds. Our patty pan squash plants have dominated the onions and cow beans. Right now we have pumpkins and gourds growing in the lower-40 field, so we'll just extend that and grow more varieties there. (I figure we have six years before we need that lower lot for David's football games with Virginia and Kids #2 [and #3?].)

We'll probably plant potatoes there as well -- unless we discover a new gardeners' tip suggesting otherwise. [Two minutes later: Yup, squash and potatoes can't go together; just found a website about companion planting. Dill and radishes are supposed to be good for squash.]


-- Camille

Coming Soon to a Stomach Near Us

We've got enough ripened tomatoes to branch out from sandwiches (although we've each had one already today). I made a four-tomato and cucumber salad.

We're having it with grilled skirt steak and our own potatoes with our garlic and rosemary.

Heaven.

I take back my aforementioned frustration with the potatoes. We'll move them next year to the lower garden, because they take up prime real estate (and look ugly growing), but they just taste too good to stop growing them altogether.

-- Camille

Summer Blooms

We haven't focused much on our flower garden, but we did plant some perennials and annuals for color -- and Stephanie, David's mom, designed a pretty little patch in the front yard.

There's always next year -- this yard is an ongoing project.

Fruits of Our Labor

In reviewing our posts, I am surprised I haven't mentioned food. Cooking with our own produce is half the reason we garden! Our goal this summer is to have a meal made completely with our own labor, but that's unlikely: the meal would be unbalanced, because we don't raise enough protein or carbs. (If only we'd gotten those chickens I wanted....) Still, more and more of our plates feature our own food.

One of the first meals we made was Easter lunch: crab cakes with cilantro cream, braised fennel, roasted potatoes, roasted beets and artichokes, and a salad, which featured our first lettuces, tender and sweet. (Only the herbs and lettuces were ours.) We grew winter density, pinetree, deer's tongue, tom thumb, mesclun mix, and amaranth, a grain whose leaves are a vivid pink (see left). One of the amaranth (which can also be used as ornamental plantings) is gigantic -- a blazing pink and yellow two-foot plant in the middle of our herbs. We plan on growing some in the flower garden next year.












Our scapes were next, and we ate them with red chioggia beets were grew on the back porch. [We also grew yellow mangle beets, but they were crowded and grew more slowly. Once they were ready, I witnessed a squirrel filching them -- and took a video of his munching because it was cute. We'll consider the donation a tithe to the animals, who have been relatively kind to our garden.] Later, we stuffed trout with scapes and lemons and grilled them outside, inspired by Finn, a prequel to Twain's classic that I was reading at the time.




We didn't grow strawberries, but I picked scads at a local farm and made strawberry pie and 12 jars of strawberry jam. My ADD got the best of me, and I failed to add the sugar and pectin in the right order, so the jam refused to set completely. When I've had it on pb & j sandwiches, I race to lick the sides of the bread before it drips on my lap. The taste is fresh and the color vibrant, but jam it is not, so I've been passing it out to friends as "strawberry topping" for ice cream or yogurt. You know, it's all in the marketing.

Observant bakers will note my lattice [above] is poorly constructed. I am not good with spatial puzzles, and I couldn't follow the drawings in the Cook's Illustrated recipe. As the picture above also shows, I also lost track of time and let the whole mess boil over on the stove. Thank goodness we have an electric range. I can't imagine how hard clean up would've been with the nooks and crannies of a gas stove.


Next on our table were our wonderful purple and yellow bush beans. I made pesto, too, for cheese ravioli and another salad with our cucumbers and lettuces. (The tomatoes weren't ripe yet.) My carnivore husband surprised me by being completely satisfied with this vegetarian meal. Usually, he begrudgingly eats what I serve and laments the lack of meat -- or, inexplicably, supplements his meal with chips. Yes. David is a chip fiend. I am not sure if he likes chocolate or chips better, but each makes an appearance daily in his diet. He's blessed with a rapid-fire metabolism, so he can get away with it.



Then came blueberries, eight pounds of them, and not a one from our own bushes (thanks, birds). Franklin has a blueberry farm smack dab in the middle of town -- 5,000 bushes strong! -- and I stopped in last Saturday after going to a yard sale. The $3.25 a pound they charge is a steal, especially since the experience is pure therapy: 8:30 a.m., 70 degrees, slight breeze, ripe fruit, twittering birds (knocking out half the crop, the owner told me), huge bushes that allow you to stand up straight while picking, and the soft murmuring of people amid the rows. I picked a pound and then drove right home to get David. We returned to pick seven pounds more, and I made a blueberry pie -- with a crumb topping this time -- and served it at board game night with friends. I ate the last piece last night with ice cream. Sigh.

There were many other meals, most of which we didn't photograph, but we made sure to document (in film and video) the pièce de résistance (and -- frankly -- the raison d’être of our garden): our First Tomato Sandwich.

There are hard and fast rules for its construction: dark pumpernickel rye, lightly toasted, generous amounts of mayo (Hellman's regular is the only brand), and several layers of thinly sliced tomatoes. Avoiding delays is important for temperature: you want to bite into the sandwich when the bread is still warm and the mayo melty; the tomatoes should never, ever, EVER be refrigerated.

The type of tomato can vary, based on availability and interest. In this case, we used stupice, because they were the earliest to ripen -- though I did have a second sandwich made of sliced sun sugars (tiny little things), because I couldn't wait torturous days for the other tomatoes to be ready.

David takes the chip selection seriously, which I appreciate (not when we are shopping, but later, when we eat). This year, he couldn't decide, so we had both Pringles originals and Fritos. Chips are nice (and we also had baked beans), but those are really beside the point. Later, when the tomato tornado arrives (we hope!), we'll get more choosy about tomato variety and we might even vary the ingredients (David adds cheese and I add slivers of onion). For now, though, we're aiming for the Platonic ideal.

--Camille