Will It Ever End?

The tomatoes just won't stop. I may end up with more sauce & salsa than I can use in three years. AND THEY ARE STILL SETTING FRUIT. I may still be picking by the time the first frost comes around. Plus, we got one pumpkin off the vine before the borer beetles got to work... August may be a little early for pie, but it seems that we have no choice!

Tomato Garden

It is well known that, if one plants six or eight tomatoes in the early spring, and then lovingly tends them, stakes them, weeds them and feeds them, by late August they will supply more tomatoes than the household can reasonably eat, and one will be canning & freezing & drying & generally trying to think of creative ways to use tomatoes.

However, I have discovered that if one plants six or eight tomatoes in the early spring, and then undergoes a difficult time wherein one's husband has a mid-life crisis and takes up with a twenty-something slut bimbo and eventually abandons the family, or some such nonsense, and one ignores the garden in favor of trying to salvage the marriage or dealing with the kids after he leaves or perhaps simply pulling the covers over one's head for a little while, and then one looks out one's kitchen window on a day in late August and thinks "Gosh, I really ought to get out in the garden and see if there's anything alive out there," the garden will supply more tomatoes than the household can reasonably eat, regardless of the astounding degree of neglect to which it has been subjected. The only difference seems to be that the tomatoes, having not been staked, will have sent out runners and will be growing in a big tangled mat that makes it difficult to avoid stepping on a few of the better-looking fruits. And quite a few will have been lost to rot or bugs, but it won't really be noticed in the abundance of the harvest. And there might be a few ignored zucchini that are as big as a well-grown Labrador, but I am calling them compost at this point.

So now I am canning & freezing & drying & generally trying to think of creative ways to use tomatoes.