this love is garden-fresh

When summer arrives, I feel the world around me let out a collective sigh of relief. The season of relaxing, vacations, barbecues and notoriously…the season of love. My love letter addressee? The garden-fresh tomato.

My dear garden-fresh tomato,

You aren’t always available to me, but that’s okay. You require a lot of patience, but I’ve got the time. I remember seeing you, red as a ruby and tied to a flimsy pole by a recycled shoelace…that’s when I knew it was love. The Queen of the Garden, wearing your little green leaves like a crown. You oversee all the dirt dwelling crops as you stay fresh up on your vine. When you are plump and ready for harvest, the sweet fragrance from your breaking steam smells of freedom and mortality at once. I know our time is short. When the sun goes down on your season, I’ll wait patiently for your annual return.

Love,

The peculiar lady in love with a fruit

If I were to write a love letter to a tomato, it would go something like that. With love, comes sacrifice; and my dear garden-fresh tomato is a martyr for my gluttony.

Now, the ways in which I enjoy the tomato are most important. A good old bath in Ken’s Italian dressing? Classic. Eaten like an apple with a generous helping of salt on every bite? Yes…but the absolute prizewinner of most iconic summer food? A garden-fresh tomato sandwich.

It’s worth noting that the garden in question did not belong to me or my parents. We were thieves in the night for these tomatoes!

Wouldn’t that add a real twist to the story...In reality, I was lucky enough to grow up next door to my grandparents as they worked their collective magic in that garden. There were the most beautiful, custard-yellow daffodils that lined one side. I would pretend it was a fairyland and watch bees collecting sweet nectar from the lot. I would help Pepe till the soil (careful to avoid contact with any earthworms of course). I would hand him little ribbons of ripped cloth, bread ties and shoelaces as he secured the tomato stalks to anything with a straight spine he could find for free. Meme would come outside and talk to the plants while she picked dead leaves and bugs off of them (like a motherly orangutan). I think the tomatoes especially liked this attention.

Fast forward to now, my dad carries the gardening responsibility quite well. When I visit in the summers, we are sure to enjoy a few garden-fresh tomato sandwiches together. Here is how the scene plays out:

Dad picks the perfect tomatoes off the window sill and says in his dad-liest voice “Can’t get ‘em like this at the grocery store…” I join him in the kitchen for an afternoon snack. As he cuts the tomatoes, I watch closely to pick my perfect slices. Never the ends. Always the ones that retain their juicy insides…“Dibs!” I steal the knife to lay a thick layer of Cain’s mayo on both pieces of my wheat bread. I carefully place my tomato slices and dust them with salt and pepper. I get a tickle in my nose and fight a sneeze. I look back at my acidic masterpiece and get ready to devour.

Some people will argue for a BLT instead. “But BACON!” And to that I say, it’s simply the science of subtraction. Take away the bacon and lettuce to find a whole new host of flavors you didn’t know were there. It has the salt, the fat, the carbs, and the fresh juicy fruit of the garden. This all in harmony creates a truly iconic summer sandwich.

Love is patient, love is simple, and this love is garden-fresh.