Mid-August Growing Dome Report

The tomato plants are loving inside the Growing Dome, basking in the heat and repaying us with fruits both sweet and tart. I ate my first Amy's Sugar Gem tomato yesterday: sweet and worth waiting for. More about this tomato later as they ripen.

The cucumbers are doing fine, too, and I may have enough for some small batches of pickles. Time will tell. So far we are keeping up with the eating part, but this last harvest may move us into preserving mode. This is The Year of the Tomato. We had eleven plants, with one that looked peaked and puny that I pulled out last week, so now it's ten.

Those heirloom tomatoes in the center of the basket are Cherokee Purple which were my dad's favorites. He loved to slice one up to show off its odd interior and offer it to unsuspecting friends. His long time friend Sal said, "Earl, that tomato looks rotten!" But after being persuaded to have a taste, he was a convert. Cherokee Purples have a rich, sweet flavor that is addictive.

A friend of the Sangre de Cristo Growers group  brought about 70 seedlings to one of our spring meetings.  I homed in on that Cherokee Purple plant and the rest is history. I am grateful for generous people, yes, I am.

When I was a 12 year old kid, I was always looking for jobs to do. I taught other kids how to play the ukelele for 25 cents a lesson, and one summer my brother and I painted house numbers on curbs in our neighborhood and beyond. Our hands were black and white for a long time.

Anyway, this all links up to tomatoes, eventually. I loved having money of my own, so I would walk to the Woolworth's lunch counter at the Orange County Plaza, peruse the menu and buy myself lunch. A favorite was a tomato stuffed with egg salad.

So that's what I had for lunch yesterday.