We got our first ripe tomato yesterday.
I know, I know — this is not newsworthy. People have been growing tomatoes since forever. But you have to understand: I genuinely did not think this would work.
I planted the starts in May, when the soil was still cooler than it should have been. Then we had that weird cold snap in early June that turned half my pepper plants to mush. The neighbor’s cat decided my raised beds were his personal bathroom. Emma “helped” by watering the tomatoes approximately seventeen times in one afternoon.
And yet.
Yesterday morning, I walked out with my coffee — before the heat got unbearable, because July in Kentucky is Not Messing Around — and there it was. One perfect Cherokee Purple, heavy and warm from the sun, with that deep burgundy color that makes grocery store tomatoes look like a sad joke.
I picked it. Washed it at the outdoor spigot. Sliced it right there on the porch railing with the little knife I keep in my garden apron.
Salt. Nothing else.
Thomas Jr. wandered out in his pajamas, still half-asleep, and I handed him a slice. He ate it without complaint, which from a ten-year-old boy is basically a standing ovation.
“It’s good,” he said. Then: “Can we have bacon with the next one?”
We can, buddy. We absolutely can.
There’s a quote I think about sometimes, attributed to various people so who knows who actually said it: “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”
I think about my grandmother’s hands in this same soil, all those years. I think about what I’m building for Emma and Thomas — not just food, but the memory of food. The knowledge that things take time. That failure is part of the process. That a warm tomato eaten standing in a garden is worth more than anything you can buy.
Next year I’m trying heirlooms. Tom says I’m getting ambitious. He’s probably right.