Magic Beans

Two summers ago, I let my boys dig a huge, Holes-inspired pit in a grass-free corner of the yard. There, after several days of shoveling, they unearthed, to everyone's general disgust, a damp, reddish wad of moldy, foul-smelling cotton that had once been a pair of men's briefs. Fruit of the Loom does not, apparently, produce fruit of any sort when planted. As a matter of fact, if you take almost anything you own, bury it in the dirt, dump water on it day after day, and expose it to summer heat, all you will get for your trouble is rust, decay, and stink.

But apply the same brutal treatment to a handful of seeds, and the results are quite the opposite; those seeds rise, glorified, from their soggy graves to become all things pleasant to the eye and good for food. How is that possible? Who would have believed it? And having believed it, how could we ever grow tired of seeing it happen?

Our fourth season of gardening is nearing its peak, which means my sense of wonder at the garden's transformation is also nearing its peak. Every time I return to survey the bounty that has sprung from the ground behind our house I marvel: Where did all this come from? Granted, we have a few bare patches where slugs or birds or beetles have done their worst, and a few other empty squares where some much-anticipated herbs never so much as raised a tiny green flag before they surrendered to sad mortality.

But for all the unforeseen failures, we have also discovered unforeseen blessings; there are places where tomatoes and squash and even a cherry tree volunteered to grow where we did not plant them—surprise gifts whose flavors and colors will remain a mystery until we see the fruit ripen. We also have brilliant red, ruffled poppies and hollyhocks that popped up unbidden in the middle of the lettuce, and I could not bear to remove them. Their cheery flashes of color have certainly been worth the loss of a salad or two.

So while the results of our work in the garden have been inconsistent they have always been rewarding. Just discovering the newly emerged seedlings in the spring is a kind of reward. But harvest time is, doubtless, one of the most unsullied delights of the year.

What other time would it be possible to eat outside without bringing anything with you from the kitchen? Red-purple raspberries literally fall into my hand before I can pluck them. Sweet strawberries peek out shyly from under their leafy tents. Fat green snap peas dangle from their curling vines, quiet and camouflaged, waiting to be discovered by the careful eyes of hungry boys. And what sensation, I ask you, can rival the seedy-sweet explosion in the mouth from a sun-warmed yellow cherry tomato that has traveled less than two feet from the vine to the lips? Then afterward, the bright, greeny smell of tomato vine on my hands is as close to eau d’été as I have ever found. This is the season that raises distant memories of Eden.

Once the back yard harvest begins, it is easy to forget the work that went into forming these fruits. We may have spent hours digging and composting and weeding and watering and slug-smashing, but when those ripening tomatoes first appear, they still seem miraculous. And in many ways, I suppose, they are miraculous.

What logical connection can there be between those tiny, pale, dried up seeds that we started with and the exuberant, branching, fruit-heavy greenery that is taking over our garden today? In May I could carry them all in the palm of my hand. But in August I am hardly able to tame the tomato jungle they have become, even with the aid of ropes and cages and sharpened steel.

And the sunflowers! Those humble little seeds that litter the ground at every baseball field in America are capable of rocketing into the sky and bursting into massive solar blooms over our heads. It almost defies the imagination. Wherefore these horticultural fireworks? I have two of these green and yellow giants standing sentinel over my back garden at this moment, and although I planted them there, I cannot explain their regal existence. How could anyone deserve this? What a transformation! Beauty for ashes! Edible sunlight! Water in excelsis! O brave new world that has such produce in't!

Knowing what we know, how is it that we are able to casually stroll through the farmer's market without our awe-struck jaws dragging on the pavement? How can we shuffle half-heartedly around the grocery store, cringing at the price of melons and failing to recognize them for the hefty spheroids of botanical wonder that they are? How can we bear to pass by an August garden without stopping to sing loud alleluias at the sight of every unaccountable tomato?

The truth is, dear Jack, that every bean is a magic bean. A splash of water can turn one of those dry, unassuming legumes into a fairy tale stalk that will ascend, spiraling and twisting toward the heavens—and almost overnight. What person in his right mind wouldn't trade his only moo cow for a marvel such as this?

Yes, yes, I realize that we did a lot of work to make this garden happen. Yes, we scraped a few shins and pinched a few fingers as we built the beds and worked the soil. Yes, we did battle with weeds and slugs and birds and heavy clay and cold nights. But even with all our hard work in mind, we hardly seem honest to claim the harvest as our rightful reward. What did we do—really—to deserve this bounty? The answer, ultimately, is nothing.

The very strength to carry a garden spade is grace. Fertile soil? Grace. Sunlight? Grace. Rain? Grace. That magical transformation of seed into seedling? Grace. From seedling to vine? Grace. From vine to flower? Grace. From flower to fruit? Grace. The hands to pluck and the mouth to taste? Grace. And that transformation again from fruit in the mouth into the strength to carry a garden hoe? Again, grace. What do you have that you did not receive as a gift?

This evening, after we say grace, I plan to eat it. I plan to fill my glass with water that has been turned into wine and to fill our plates with piles of fresh-picked magic; with resurrected seeds; with fairy-tale fruit; with crisp, green, sweet piles of amazing grace.

The Birds and the Bees and the Flowers and the Trees

I have done some writing in the last month. Honest. As a matter of fact, I've written more than usual during the past five weeks. But unfortunately, all those words weren't coming together into any proper shape, which is why editing was taking far too long. I felt like I was sculpting jell-o. So rather than publish the formless, strawberry flavored blob I've been chiseling away at, I thought I'd be better off sharing something a bit more concrete to ponder instead.

Here, therefore, are 2,000 "words" from my photos this week:

October Fruit

They shall still bear fruit in old age; They shall be fresh and flourishing...

— Psalm 92:14

Another year of my life has drawn to a close, and with it, another growing season. The tomato plants, once pregnant with summer's bounty, now sag dejectedly in the muddy ground, heavy with green fruit that will never mature. The icy night air has faded their once-bright flowers into a pale yellow translucency—an annual picture of the fruitful might-have-been. October has again caught them unawares.

* * * * * * * *

Three weeks ago, when my 91-year-old grandmother fell and ended up in the hospital, none of us anticipated a prolonged recovery. She had hit her head, and she was weakened by the injury, but the bruise would heal, and she would be well again soon. She has always gotten well again. Hers has been a long life.

But a life, to be called "long," must have an end; eternity is not a span that can be measured. And so it seems that this long life of hers will, after all, have an end as well. She is home again and has regained some of her strength, but I can see that her October has come. In spite of this brief Indian summer, the first frost has already taken its toll. She complains of the chill in the air, and her limbs are more frail, her hands less steady.

* * * * * * * *

Last Friday, I spent the lunch hour with my sons at school. We passed the potato chips among the five of us and talked amid the din of a hundred children laughing and joking and shifting fidgety legs; of a hundred children crunching apples and unwrapping sandwiches and rummaging in brown paper bags. My own little boys bounced and squirmed in their seats, talking over one another, giggling at trifles, filled with a surplus of energy that could not be contained within their small, robust frames.

That entire lunch room was a fresh battery, charged with electricity waiting to be released. If I were to spend a full day in the company of so much youth, I imagine I would gather an electrical charge of my own. I felt as though the room might burst—that those walls, like my own bulging body, were pregnant with life about to break from its confines. And at noon, the room did, in fact, give birth to a hundred electrified children rushing outdoors to play. The clock's hands converged at the number twelve with a clap like thunder.

I have seen these children zipping down plastic playground slide, their hair standing on end. At the bottom, I stretch out my cold hands to catch my sons and pull them up, and as we touch, their lightning fingers burn my own; at that startling moment, that point of contact where we two distemporaries collide, something ignites.

On a dark October night, we could have seen the spark.

* * * * * * * *

As my two youngest sons and I entered the nursing home after lunch, my gait was slow and plodding, heavy with my long-awaited child. I felt that I, too, could make good use of the abandoned walker sitting just outside the front door. Passing through the hallways, my children ran their dimpled fingers along the handrail, hanging and swinging and skipping from it, using that would-be crutch as the bar of a jungle gym. They leapt past each open doorway, never noticing the frost-bitten forms lying on inclined beds just inside those rooms; never seeing the hundred color-drained faces bowed over half-eaten meals in the quiet cafeteria.

We turned a corner, and boldly centered at the end of the long hall sat an old man, directly facing us from his wheelchair.  His unflinching gaze was fixed upon us as we worked our way toward him. His crooked, unclipped fingers grasped the arms of his wheelchair, while the oxygen tubes in his nostrils made a rhythmic pop and hiss. He breathed with a sound like Darth Vader. I made eye contact and then looked away, pretending to instruct my kids on how they should behave when they saw my grandmother, although I had given them the same reminder only moments earlier. And when I looked up again uneasily, those aged eyes had not wavered from their point of focus.

As we drew nearer to him, my sons, too, became aware of his unnerving presence, and they fell back, hiding behind my legs. He stared us down. Would he let us pass? I tried to slip casually by him with nothing more than a quick hello. But as I turning my eyes again to my sons, his gnarled hand rose from its resting place and, with a suddenness inconsistent with his shriveled state, he jabbed a pointed finger at the center of my protruding belly, his ridged fingernail pressing into my flesh as if testing the ripeness of a large fruit.

Did that moment of contact leave him with a sensation of warmth? Of an electrical charge shocking his chilled limbs into life? Perhaps some sort of strength did flow out of me, but even the vigor of nascent life does not have the power to raise the dead.

Life and death were colliding, and my burning skin was caught in between.

"What's this?" he demanded like a gatekeeper demanding a password. I laughed nervously and stammered something about having another baby in there, but the man had already shifted his attention downward. "Hellooo," he crooned. "You are our favorite kind of visitors." I smiled feebly and told the boys to say hi—something I had hardly wanted to do myself. And I did not rebuke my son when one of them ignored my instructions and merely gaped.

I felt tempted to gape myself.

We moved on down the hall to meet with my grandmother. I could still feel the sting on my belly where that withered hand had touched me.

* * * * * * * *

Another birthday has arrived, and I have much to be thankful for in remembering the year that is gone. Every October brings reasons to celebrate, but it also brings reasons to consider my own mortality. This northern growing season is painfully short, and those sun-loving tomato plants never do reach their full potential before fall arrives. They could have done so much more—born so much more fruit—if the cold had not set in just yet. Not just yet.

But while I survey the frost-stricken garden and look back on the harvest that was, I must remember how much this growing season has given to me. And I can see that even now, among all those withered plants, not a branch is barren. Their fiery red fruit is gathered up, their feeble limbs now limp and unable to rise. They are weighed down. But with what?

At the end of my own growing season, at the end of my own painfully short life, is this the sight I want my time-worn self to see reflected from the mirror? Will I recall with joy the fruitfulness that was mine? In that final October, when I reach out my hands to touch the young, and I again feel the startling heat of that spark, may I  see In the light of that momentary fire that, although my weakening limbs are weighed down—they are weighed down with still-forming fruit.

'Til Death Do Us Part

Ten years ago today, as I slipped into my new white shoes, I already knew that I was about to take the most important walk of my life. It was not the longest walk. It wasn't the most strenuous. It wasn't even the most scenic. It was, to put it bluntly, a walk into certain death.  Before I took my first nervous step through those double doors, I knew that this short stroll would be the end of me. When it was all over, I would be somebody new. I would have a new name. I would have a new identity, a new title, a new head, a new walking companion. That brief trip from the church foyer to the end of the aisle is the walk that overthrew my existence without even causing me to break a sweat—twelve deceptively easy steps to a total transformation. With the mere exchange of hands, of words, of rings, my life as I had known it was ending. Before God and hundreds of witnesses we made those solemn vows—'til death do us part.

Death? Must we bring up that subject at such a happy occasion? As it turns out, we must. Weak vows bring weak joy. Ours is a bond that only death may sever.

Nevertheless, we had anything but death on our minds as we drove off into the sunset after the reception, and death seemed a lifetime away as we set up house in the afterglow of our honeymoon. But at some point during the weeks and months that followed, "married life" began. In the midst of our newlywed euphoria, it was a shock to wake up one morning and realize how human the two of us still were. While so much changes—truly changes—in the course of a half-hour wedding, a good deal remains unchanged. We are new people now, right? So why do all our old sins and habits and selfish desires keep resurfacing? Although I knew that we were giving up our former lives to begin our new life together, it had not fully sunk in that I would have to die to myself again and again and again in everyday life once the ceremony had ended. Giving up our lives for one another did not end at the altar.

I had never fully considered how much of me was going to carry over into this new life. And nobody told me what a self-centered little pig I had always been. I didn't like letting go of my comfortable little routines. I was irritated that my plans might have to take a back seat to his plans. I wanted to make the decisions about how we spent my paycheck. This marriage business was not as blissfully painless as I had expected, and we weren't even talking about the big decisions yet—changing jobs, having kids, moving across the country. Living with roommates had been a cakewalk compared to this. I didn't make any 'til-death-do-us-part promises to them.

And that's precisely the point. Death alone may part us. But death, paradoxically, is also required to bind us together. It's death that makes all the difference.  

Death. It's a dark little word. But over the past ten years, we've grown to see more clearly how essential to a happy marriage death truly is. Many deaths. Daily death. Death in the little things. As my children have memorized, "Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." Love means a willingness to die. And die, am I thankful to say, we frequently did.

But if I was tempted to think I'd really died quite enough (thank you very much) for the sake of our happy marriage, I had no idea how much more I would be required to die to myself when the kids came along. The first weeks home with a newborn were, to put it mildly, a misery. If somebody had walked into my home and offered to take my firstborn child off my hands for the rest of my life, I would gladly have handed him over (and good riddance.) My busy job with regular hours, regular paychecks, plenty of positive feedback, and a fair dose of almost-instant gratification was hardly the best preparation for the full-time care of a newborn. Everything I'd enjoyed about my previous job was missing from this new one. The hours were wretched, the pay was nil, the feedback came in the form of screaming and disgusting messes, and I felt like I had nothing whatsoever to show for my hours of thankless toil at the end of each lonely day. I cried everyday for two weeks. And almost daily for some time after that. I'd never died like this before, and I couldn't imagine ever willingly doing it again.

But I was forgetting the end of the story: death is never the final sum in God's economy. When I lay down my desires, my needs, my hopes, my habits, my life for someone else, resurrection follows. And the resurrected life is, without fail, more glorious than the life that was laid down.

"Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit." It's so simple that even my children understand the concept after a season of backyard gardening. And yet, how many times have I buried a seed in the ground only to stand there staring at the lifeless dirt and thinking, "Well, that was a waste!" The first show of green always seems to appear at exactly the moment when I've given up checking for signs of new life.

Those women who hurried to the tomb in the early morning were not marching triumphantly with "Welcome Back" banners. They were quietly bearing spices to anoint the dead.

Resurrection is a simple truth I still don't always easily grasp. But in sacrificing so much that is valuable to me—my time, my sleep, my comfort, my career goals, my belongings—to my husband or my children (or anyone else, for that matter) I will and do receive far more than I have given. Every sacrifice is like a seed planted; in laying each one down, in every little death I die, I am declaring my belief in resurrection. In the Resurrection. And after each burial, while I may be staring blankly at what looks uncannily like mud—like dust and ashes—the eyes of faith can see the trees that will spring from that earth, their branches weighed down by the fruit they will bear. Tending a household is very much like tending a garden.

And now, as I wait for the birth of our fifth child, I am, once again, waiting for resurrection. (Is it merely coincidence that the words tomb and womb are so similar?) In times past, bearing children could literally have meant laying down my earthly life. But even today, there is no escaping the lesser sacrifices involved: health, comfort, sleep, looks, strength are given over for the sake of my children. This is my body broken, this is my blood shed for the life of another. The suffering of childbirth is a small reflection of the cross itself. But, as Christ on the cross, we endure it not for its own sake, but for the joy set before us. In laying down our lives, we take them up again, more blessed than ever before. Greater love has no man than this.

In taking that walk down the aisle ten years ago in my new white shoes, I was approaching the altar to lay down my life. But that life was raised up new and glorified. It was a death and resurrection that would begin a lifetime of deaths and resurrections. All that I gave up "before God and these witnesses" has been replaced by greater and richer gifts. Beauty for ashes. And so it has been with every death that my husband and I have died for each other, and then for our children, throughout the past ten years. And so it will be in the years to come—'til death do us part.

The Gym of Eden

Whew! My muscles and my back are very sore as I write this. I wish I could say that it was because I performed some great athletic feat, but no. I merely spent a couple of hours digging in the flower beds yesterday. In my defense, I did go beyond the ordinary weeding and instead hauled out the big shovel to excavate an inexcusable amount of invasive grass that had woven itself underground into a dense tangle of roots, some of which were as thick as my thumb and wrapping their evil tentacles around my tulip bulbs. It was hard work. But still, I feel like a sissy being this wiped out by a little spring weeding. (Oh to be able to take ibuprofen again!) Nevertheless, this is the good kind of sore, and my hands are the good kind of dirty.

I suppose that, after my last post, I should mention that the sunshine is definitely back. I'm pleased to report that the thermometer has been peeking its little head above the 70° line for a few days now. It's been lovely. And getting my vitamin D from the sky instead of from a bottle is, quite literally, priceless. I love spring—almost as much as I love summer.

A day this fine should not be spent indoors. This is perfect gardening weather and park weather and strolling-around-the-neighborhood weather. I'd be crazy to sit at a computer typing a blog post right now. Heh.

Having never been a member of a gym, I may not be qualified to say this, but I honestly cannot understand how gyms stay in business during weather like this. Physical therapy, of course, makes sense to me. And winter gym time make a little bit of sense to me. But when it's 73°, the sun is shining, a light breeze is blowing, the yard needs attention, and the birds are singing, getting your exercise inside of a big, boxy room lit with fluorescent tubes while plugging yourself into a pair of earbuds makes absolutely no sense to me.

Yesterday, as I did my squats and lunges with the help of a shovel, my soundtrack was a chickadee and a woodpecker. My workout partner was an enthusiastic two-year-old who could hardly contain his joy as I unearthed two fat beetle larvae, a snail, a beetle, a handful of worms, and an army of ants.  I got to chat with my next door neighbor. I said hello to passersby who stopped to admire the tulips. I had the satisfaction of separating the weeds from the flowers and preparing the ground for planting.

I was dive bombed by a hummingbird. No really. I was.

Is there anything so metaphorically rich as gardening? Is there anything so unpoetic as a treadmill? Is there any air so invigorating as this lilac-scented breeze? Is there any air so uninviting as the sweaty aroma of the locker room? Will somebody please explain to me how anyone of sound body and mind could opt for the latter?

Even if you don't have a garden—which we didn't for years—just running around at the nearest park seems far superior to anything I could be doing with a gym membership. And if you've got kids, I guarantee that they are dying to run around outside anyway, so we might as well include them in the fun.

It's spring! So get some sun. Get some dirt under your fingernails. Get some fresh air. And get some exercise where the lilacs smell stronger than the gym socks.

Hey, ho, the wind and the rain

"It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily.
"So it is."
"And freezing."
"Is it?"
"Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately."

This year, winter and spring seem to have shaken hands and reached some sort of compromise, granting each other the authority to intermittently take charge over one another's appointed months. Winter was unusually mild and green, but this week, spring is doing its best to pose as winter.

Freezing temperatures and a forecast of "possible snow flurries" greeted us this morning as an unwelcome finale to yesterday's trunk-snapping, flower-stripping winds—winds that turned the sky a sickly brown for most of the afternoon. Our yard is littered with the debris of Monday's gales, and the tulips are staring pathetically up at me with a uniform expression of exhaustion and defeat. In the glass of the living room window, I can see that my own expression reflects theirs.

Only in recent years have I discovered how much the weather affects my mood. It's hard to put a spring in my step when there is no spring in the air. If I let them, these blustery days can turn me into a real Eeyore— Eeyore living in a house full of Tiggers.

Dreams of a green, sprouting vegetable garden are not going to be realized anytime this week. Or next, judging by the forecast. The seed packets sitting on my counter all say, in their matter-of-fact way, "Plant in the ground after all danger of frost is past." All danger? That would give us, let's see, the last two weeks in August. Maybe. If it's a good year. I've seen frost on the Fourth of July.

So here I sit near a bright window, warming my hands against a mug of very hot tea, letting the steam rise into my face to clear my stuffy head and ease the disappointment of hope deferred.

The truth is that, living in northern Idaho, gardening is really a matter of playing the odds. It takes a gaming spirit and a sense of humor. What are the chances of snow in May? Are you willing to bet your crop on it? Ante up. And keep a spare ace up your sleeve. Wear your poker face. Don't let the sunshine fool you.

Sunny skies may have replaced yesterday's brown, but the cheery blue, like a squirting trick corsage, is nothing but a cheap practical joke; it lures us with all the illusion of springtime friendliness and then douses the unsuspecting optimist with a blast of chilly reality. Haha. Very funny. Where's my coat?

Truthfully, I do know that spring is already here and that these cold days are nothing extraordinary. I have no doubt that warmer weather will be on its way here again soon. And in the meantime, I have a fire. And a warm mug. And guileless sunny faces all around me. The tulips are even beginning to look like they'll recover.

Oh, and we haven't had an earthquake lately.

Hello, Starling

March may still be a month away, but last month came in like a lamb and went out like a lamb, with nary a lion to be seen. While news of northeastern snowstorms and midwestern blizzards arrives on my doorstep, my doorstep is a balmy 43 degrees and basking in unseasonable sunshine.

My yard seems to think that spring is here already. The maple trees and the lilac bush are pregnant with leaves; early buds are growing round and plump all along their wintry stems. I saw the timid green tip of a tulip peeking from the wet earth like a periscope, as if to verify whether the war with winter has truly been won after so brief a battle. Cornflower seedlings have pushed their way through a blanket of soggy fall leaves, expecting to find daffodils and starlings in their midst.

Starlings did, in fact, arrive.

Last Sunday, as my family stepped out the front door on our way to the car, a flock (or a murmuration, I'm told) of hundreds, maybe thousands, was rollicking in the maple branches and among the spruce needles and along the power lines and in the blue air. They were chirping and hopping and flying in sudden bursts, pursued by unseen squirrels.

The sound of birdsong and rustling wings fluttered down on every side of us—snowed us under—and made us all freeze in our tracks (the only freezing to be found on that January day). The bare trees were unexpectedly alive—not with green leaves but with brown and black wings. It was like a scene from Hitchcock. Or, maybe, heaven. The baby, in my husband's arms, lifted both hands toward the sky and called out, "Daddy! Bird!"

Just as it seemed that spring was truly here to stay, and that life was overcoming death wherever we turned to look, a gust of wind—or the bark of a dog or a stifled sneeze or a rumor—startled those birds from their perches into scattered flight. They fled like an ill-prepared army abruptly set upon by hostile forces; their panicked company dispersed across the sky—all wings and beaks and furious flapping.

But then, a pattern began to emerge from the squawking chaos. Called to order by the quiet authority of some avian general (who?), they just as suddenly spun their tangled mass into a black sphere, and then unravelled again to be knit into neat rows and regiments—rank upon orderly rank of starling hosts. They looped in perfect formation—now east, now west, now dipping, now rising in synchronized flight. Then, as if satisfied by the success of their impromptu military exercise, their general at last gave a command that sent them speeding across the clouds to the Western horizon.

My sons' wide eyes followed them until they dropped from sight below the housetops, to settle in someone else's leafless trees and to interrupt the Sabbath quiet on someone else's street.

Maybe they stopped here merely to rest, on their way to perform great deeds. Perhaps we seemed to be fearsome giants, deterring them from the conquest of our front yard Canaan, and they are now cursed to roam the blue wilderness for another forty days. Maybe they were surveying the land from their power-line Pizgah. I don't know what Jordans they will have to cross before they can finally settle here. Perhaps they have Jerichos to topple before they can call our street "home." I do know that a week has passed, and the starlings have not returned. Not yet. But the tulip and cornflower, the maple and lilac, the lamb and the sleeping lion all whisper that they will.

They will.

The Last Enemy

I am pleased to report that I removed this post because it has been accepted for publication in the upcoming issue of Relief.  If you want to read the essay, I suppose you'll just have to purchase a copy when it becomes available. (Woohoo!)

Horticultural Whatnot

Fall has officially done its work on our yard.

This tree pictured above was in full , leafy green foliage the day before, and then the following morning, all its lovely clothing lay, as you can see, strewn upon the ground below--not leaf by leaf, but in whole, still-green, in-tact branches--as though in anticipation of a triumphal entry into the royal city. Most strange.

The maple has also begun to undress, but what I want you to see in the photo is what the maple leaves are resting on. Yes, that's right: grass! Our back yard is now sprouting leaves of grass fit to make Walt Whitman green with E.

Here are the frost-bitten tomato plants. We would likely have had about 30 more pounds of fresh tomatoes, had the warm weather held out a little longer (or started a little sooner this summer). But sad mortality o'erswayed their power. So I salvaged a few to ripen indoors on the window sill:

A little taste of leftover summer. Sweet.