October | 2011 | Gladsome Lights

Seventh Grandson showed himself to be a boy after my own heart this morning, as we were out picking vegetables before the rain came on strong. First the tomatoes. It didn’t surprise me that he liked popping most of the fruits he picked into his mouth.

But the pole beans were just as much to his liking. He even dropped the tomato he was working on so as to attend to the job of getting the beans off the vines and quickly into his mouth to savor and munch on for a while. He didn’t spit them out, either.

When the rain began in earnest we had to come inside.
But there were Grandpa’s drums to play.

For hours Scout played with his tool-themed birthday presents: a put-put weed-whacker and a lawnmower, saws and a drill and more.

And at lunchtime he asked for one of the decorations from last night’s tool box cake that his mom had made, the chocolate pliers.

Here’s a representative sample of the best of our tomato harvest this year. It’s way better than nothing! The large “grapes” are Juliet tomatoes, the yellow are Sun Sugar, and – look! There are even five Green Grapes, which I put in the front of the tray close to the camera. The rascals didn’t arrive till today, the last day of September, and they may be the entire crop.

My favorite this year might be the Persimmon, which are the large orange tomatoes. They are the largest of any we got; even the Better Boys, supposed to be Beefsteak-type, were tiny guys, indistinguishable from the Early Girls and New Girls, both of which were few and scrawny.

But I made a cherry tomato salad, and think I’ll do some soup, too – both recipes I made up in a better tomato year. And those Juliets will be perfect slow-roasted!