The garden has given its all this year, finishing off the season with Early Girl tomatoes. I can hardly believe the last plant was only a tiny seed at the end of January. With loving care under grow lights, she grew to produce pounds of tomatoes. Yesterday, I harvested the last of them and got to work.
The gardens of Winterpast produced the following food with the help of two loving and quite crazy gardeners: cherries, apricots, plums, pears, watermelon, cantaloupe, cucumbers, pumpkin, eggplant, zucchini, Early Girl tomatoes, Cherry tomatoes, green onions, bell peppers, carrots, beans, snap peas, red onions, yellow onions, garlic, basil, chives, lavender, jalapenos, strawberries, zinnias, roses, bachelor buttons, calendula, snapdragons, peony’s, Black-Eyed Susan’s, Siberian Wallflowers, coneflowers, sunflowers, dahlias, iris, and probably a few things I forgot. All this was grown on 1/2 acre of a tiny oasis in the desert.
Earlier yesterday, Walmart’s aisles were lined with boxes of ball jars and lids. Bread and butter pickle spice mix packets sat quietly on the shelves. For some reason, Walmart missed the proper timing for these items. The Armenian cucumbers finished their season weeks ago, along with many other plants. On the high desert plains of Northwestern Nevada, the nights are chilly. This late in the season, I was lucky to pick a few more pounds of luscious tomatoes.
I learned to can while watching all the women in my family toil in very hot kitchens. With a family of seven, my mom spent hours and hours canning all sorts of produce to make sure we had enough to eat in the winter. Once a certain age, I was expected to prepare fruit and vegetables right next to her.
So, yesterday, I washed the tomatoes and then parboiled them. First boiling and then plunging them into cold water, the skins were easy to remove. Sliced and in a pot, they were boiled and mashed until the resulting pulp was ready for jars. Winter spaghetti sauce will be extra special, made from vine-ripe tomatoes grown in our very own backyard.
Yesterday was also the last day of our Master Gardener Class. On Friday, HHH and I will sit down to take our final exam. Computerized, the test will cover everything we’ve studied up until now. We need an 80% grade to pass on to the next class. I think the two of us will do just fine. Gardening is our wheelhouse.
While I worked with the tomatoes, a memory came back to me from a very long time ago. In the 80’s and 90’s, a gentleman named Garrison Keillor produced a radio show called “Prairie Home Companion”. Through his words, the imaginary Minnesotan town of Lake Wobegon was introduced to listeners around the world. My boys and I would sit around the radio and laugh at the stories, but the favorite of all favorites was “Tomato Butt”.
A brother. A sister. A hot day. A mom needing them to get out of the house and pick the tomatoes. And, the title. “Tomato Butt”. In your own mind, you might be able to tell a good story with only those bits of information.
If you can find Garrison’s stories online, they are worth a listen. Radio shows aren’t like they were back when life was simpler. Perhaps that is the exact charm of one Mr. Garrison Keillor. If you like “Tomato Butt”, listen to some of his others. The more you listen, the more you may want to put a visit to Lake Wobegon on your bucket list. If only it were real, HHH and I would visit there tomorrow.
Whatever you do today, find some radio shows or pod casts that are of interest to you. Listening carefully is a lost art. Give it a try.
More tomorrow.