First tomatoes

I will never win any prizes (real or imagined) for the first tomato of the season. Ever.

I just picked my first cherry tomatoes off on Wednesday and shared them with the Tomato Fiend and her father. They were super yummy. No photos, though. They were inhaled way too fast for pictures for posterity. I believe they were Sungold's but I'm not certain. They're heirloom and yummy, so it probably doesn't matter.

What I have become good at is buying a nice plant, planting it up nicely, forgetting to water it or stake it until I suddenly remember, then I water it and stake it, tape it up where it got snapped near to death by a windstorm (or the Wall O' Water collapsing on it as was the case this year), feeding them randomly, pinching out off shoots and then forgetting about them. Until I look out the window and a giant beast of a tomato plant (or three) has formed. Then, I get to reach into the mass on a tomato treasure hunt and pull out the ripe ones before the Tomato Fiend does the job for me.

Three plants: one cherry tomato (Gardener's Delight), one grape tomato (Pop In) and one beefsteak (Caspian Pink).

If I wait too long, the Tomato Fiend will strip the plant of:

• anything ripe and red
• anything not quite ripe and orange
• anything definitely not ripe, completely green, but it was crunchy and it was a tomato and she'll eat them however she can get them.

And she doesn't share. So if you don't beat her to them, they're gone!

Although as far as bad food habits go, I'll take this one. They are organically grown and apparently filled with a sweet, sweet drug that only she can taste. I think if you offered her a choice between a chocolate chip cookie (made by Daddy) and a tomato, she'd have a hard time choosing. And that? That's the way I like it!

Oh yes, we take our food seriously around here.