It’s August, and the garden season is in full swing. Out in the country, it seems most yards have a dedicated plot or even an entire field full of carefully cultivated fruits and veggies. This is the time of year when kitchen counters and even dining room tables hold the bounteous overflow waiting to be eaten immediately, preserved in freezer bags, or canned in rows of glorious glass jars lined on a pantry shelf. I am no different. Every year, for years now, I, too, have sown my front yard with seeds and seedlings alike, carefully planning in the hopes of a bumper crop to eat and share with friends and family.

I wasn’t always this way, however. My mother loved gardens, and as long as I can remember, she was to be found either at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and her stash of seed catalogs, or out in the yard, digging, weeding, watering, or gathering. There were many spring nights when she would be out tilling up that rocky, red clay streaked Tennessee dirt In the last light of the sunset. She always tried to get me interested in her love of plants, and I suppose when I was little, I may have been cheerful enough and even mildly helpful at times. My teen years, however, were a turbulent time for everyone, and every attempt she made at coaxing me outside to assist in the garden or on the farm was met with great resistance, and even outright hostility. I was a lazy and volatile teen, and when my poor parents tried to institute a family hour on Sunday afternoons of working together, I made them so miserable they finally gave up.

It pains me, both as a grown daughter full of regrets, and as a mother raising three of her own, to admit my behavior. I fought tooth and nail to be relieved of that simple hour of weeding the garden, chopping encroaching thistles, or picking up the ever renewing crop of rocks that spawned in every field or garden bed after even the lightest rain. Everyone knows that weeding or rock removal in TN feels as futile as emptying the sea with a thimble, but still necessary if you want to claim any corner of land as your own and pretend control of your surroundings. Thistle chopping still elicits the same angry response in me as it did years before, so I avoid it whenever possible.

Back to more modern times, sorry. We southerners have to tell about eleven stories just to get to the point of one, but I do like to think that’s part of our charm. I have a garden now, and though I am able to get help from husband and children, largely the work falls to me to maintain the rows and beds I plant. Sadly, I still retain old habits of indolence and irritation, and anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that I am an ambitious planner, but greatly lack in follow through. I have big dreams, but I am still working on the responsibility for making them come true on my own part. So, this is the story of the tomatoes of intention.

My mother passed away last Fall; in fact, it will be a year in September. This spring, my dad allowed me to come over and pull up all of the raised beds she built in her meticulously planned out Potager style garden, and install them in my own haphazard plot. My family and I fought red ants, rocks, and the fun of trying to level ground on the top of a hill to put the beds together in a way that was pleasing to the eye and allowed for the maneuvering of tiller and wheelbarrow. Untold field buckets of dirt and bags of purchased topsoil later, and we were in business. We drew plans, ordered seeds, and bought tiny plants to be arranged in rows and blocks.

I love to cook and eat, and my talented and saintly friend “B” taught me to can my produce to preserve what I grew for meals in later months. Everyone knows you cannot beat homegrown for superior flavor and texture, and what is the star of almost any Southerner’s garden? The one plant that can be found in everyone’s yard, whether in containers or rows. The plant that is most watched for disease and pests, and the fruit of which can cause bouts of anxiety as we watch for ripening with the greatest amount of patience we can muster? Nothing more than the humble tomato. Once thought to be poisonous, it has been embraced in the South as the most anticipated fruit of summer.

I do not have to write an ode to the superiority of a garden fresh tomato, as far better writers than I have covered that subject to near exhaustion. Everyone in the Tennessee Valley and beyond is capable of coming to near blows on the subject of the best way to eat them on a simple sandwich. Most agree it should consist merely of bread, mayonnaise, and a thick slice sprinkled with salt, but it gets downright ugly after that. The type of bread, the brand of mayo, the addition of pepper or a leaf of basil is as tender a subject as any that come up in Sunday morning sermons.

Now, I suppose average folks plant a few seedlings very carefully, perhaps in a small square bed, or lovely container on their patio. Not here. Up in these hills, and down in the valleys too, it’s perfectly normal to plant from 30 to 70 little green branches in rows and along fences. I’m no different. I think I was hovering around 40 at the first planting, and I will admit to a later addition of around 10 more. In light of my mother’s pretty geometrical raised beds, I decided it would be pretty to put them in tomato cages and sow flowers around the base for an aesthetically pleasing plot. Off I went to the local lumber and garden center, where I lay down serious cash for sturdy Made in America tomato cages. I also put small iron posts at the ends of some beds and strung hay twine for support in a fit of ill advised folksy recycling.

Remember when I said I was more of a planner than an executor of said plans? This is where that becomes most apparent. I watered my little plants and gave them a nice dose of “miracle” food. Then the spring rains came. Those darned tomato seedlings turned into giant sprawling hedges that would have been suitable for protecting the princess in Sleeping Beauty. Those plants laughed at my tiny post and twine supports, and toppled those carefully sunk tomato cages in an enormous mass of verdant tentacles that kudzu would be jealous of. I lost any chance I had of putting back the fences that, in previous, smarter years, I had employed to keep control of the jungle. The best I could do was upright the cages and hold them there as my son sank solid 6 foot T-posts inside as a brace. Even then, some leaned like a certain Italian tower.

I was in tears. The weeds were interwoven and hidden under the canopy. I despaired of ever finding the first tiny tomato in the primeval forest that my tidy plans had become. An off hand planting of butternut squash got ahold of some ‘roids and overgrew its own trellis, eating a line of cucumbers, and grabbing onto the tomato cages closest to it. There are a few weeds here that I am convinced have the ability to grow the height of a man, quite overnight, and others where a three inch sapling has a root system that could ruin a foundation. If only I had weeded every couple of days like I knew I was supposed to. (See, it’s that follow through problem). I had intended this beautiful and possible Instagram worthy little area and what my own efforts had given me was something monstrous that was frightening the neighbors. There was even a stray cat that showed up for a few weeks that we never saw again. I’m pretty sure the weeds got it….

My son and I surveyed the problem, and started to make a plan. (see? I’m a good planner). We started pulling weeds by the wheelbarrow full and laying down old newspaper and straw to block new growth. I tried staking some of the tomatoes and rewinding errant vines of every sort back on their appropriate supports. The tomatoes saw my paltry efforts and gleefully began to ripen. Every gardener knows that first great joy in eating the beautiful red fruits, the object of year round longing. You enjoy a sandwich or two and slice them into salads. You may even share a couple with someone you really like that cannot grow their own, but not too many, because they are delicious and precious. The next week you start getting enough to make that first batch of salsa and perhaps can a few jars of sauce. Then it happens…

ALL of the tomatoes ripen at once. All 471 plants that you have because you were so giddy in the spring you forgot how many places you’d ordered them from. This is the point where the house doesn’t cool off because you’re running that canner in the kitchen a few hours every other day. Jars of chopped, whole (not me, but some people have the patience to stand there and watch jars boil for like 4 hours, but I don’t), crushed, sauce, salsa, and soup. You eat pasta, sandwiches, tomato omelets, and salads until your blood registers 45% lycopene. You start counting your jars and make phone calls or social media posts asking if the Piggly Wiggly has any more lids. You buy freezer bags and start rough chopping the tomatoes without even skinning them or reseeding them, because who has that kind of time anymore?????

The hornworms and caterpillars are taking their share and some of them are cooking on the vine in the July/August heat and the chickens are getting reealllll sick of tomato scraps. This loss no longer bothers you. The Roma with a nasty worm tunnel in it, stinking on the vine, gets thrown over the fence into the woods with nary a tear. All surfaces are covered in tomatoes, along with whatever else you planted. People have them on tables in their yard with a “FREE” sign on them. The okra has grown into giant prickly bats, because you know the grocery store has decent okra all year long, but tomatoes, they’re a whole different story. All the planning I’d made of beautiful, well cared for plants and no tomato wasted? Hahahahahaha, um, yeah, as I said, I’m a great planner….

It’s August now, I still have tomatoes on the counters to deal with (maybe tomorrow) and plenty still on the vine outside. I may even have about 10 young, 2-foot tall seedlings planted on a fence row, (I learned a little something at least) waiting for the intense temperatures to ease, so that they too can grown big and heavy with their own crop of tasty tomatoes. I have a whole plan for how I am going to preserve them and the recipes I want to make and share. It’s a great plan. I have such good intentions. In the meantime, here’s a few ideas you can make with your own embarrassment of tomatoes.

Thanks for reading, folks, and come back next Sunday and see whatever nonsense I’ve gotten up to. Feel free to share recipes and photos with me here of your own tomato deliciousness! In the mean time, stay safe, stay happy, and God bless.