Summertime.  Tomatoes ripening on the vine.

Pink and purple eggplant flowers have become black globes overnight.  Tomatillo husks that began as paper lanterns are heavy with fruit, pulling branches to the ground.  Peppers emerge as the last of the spring flowers wither and die.

The surface of the ground is cracked, baked by the sun and parched by the drought that replaced the pandemic, yet the soil remains moist and thick with worms below.  The kale somehow holds on, long past when it should have turned to seed.  Catnip is in full flower, much to Oliver’s delight.  Bees and butterflies flitter this way and that. Grapes have become fat with juice.  Strawberry flowers have given way to ripe fruit, hiding under dark green leaves to be plucked and quickly eaten as I pass by trimming branches, gathering fallen leaves, pulling weeds, harvesting. 

But it is the tomatoes that tell me summer is here.  First the yellow flowers, adorned with rough leaves and decked with fine hair.  Then the fruit appears, a pea that quickly becomes a marble then a golf ball as it grows.  The fruit hangs like ornaments on the vine, glimmering shades of green that will ripen into yellows, oranges, pinks and reds.

First the cherries - orange Sun Sugar and purple-black Chocolate Cherry clusters already beckon. Soon the yellow and red striped Old Germans will appear, along with orange Azoychkas, bright red Firecrackers, purple Paul Robesons and more. Whatever the variety, tomatoes taste of summer. Sweet, tart, juicy, firm. A scattering of sea salt, a curl of basil, a drop of olive oil is all that is required. A bit of bleu or a thin slice of mozzarella if you must.

A few months ago the beds were becoming sparse.  A couple rows of carrots and kale left over from the winter, a scattering of Dutch shallots, and the patch of garlic that I’ve written about before.  (The garlic is mostly done now.  Curling scapes burst into flowers that dried and floated away; their purple-striped bulbs now hang in the cool of the crawl under the house.)

Now the beds are filled with green again.  Tomato plants that were just inches tall a few months ago tower 6-feet high.  Eggplants and peppers planted a foot or more apart crowd one another for space.  Basil plants grow tall and flower, resisting my attempts to cut them back and gain another week or two of their fragrance.  The strawberry plants have spread to cover the soil, while the oregano and sage overflow their beds. Cucumbers climb their trellis, searching for the sun. Grapevines reach out from the arbor, curling tendrils wrapping around whatever they can find.  

Most mornings and evenings I wander down to the garden, camera in hand, just to see what has changed.  Amid all this cacophony it is sometimes difficult to see.  So I sit awhile, and just look around.  Soon enough, something catches my eye.  The more I sit, the more I see.  A grouping of fruit hanging off the vine.  A cucumber just beginning to emerge behind a flower.  A single tomato framed by branches and backlit by the sun.  Once a subject or composition grabs your attention, you can’t help but go back and look again.

Capture it today, because it will be different tomorrow.  And next week.  By next month it may be gone. So pay attention while it lasts. There is joy in watching it grow.

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Thanks for looking. I hope I’ve whet your appetite. If you want to see more, check out the Garden gallery on my website.