If you've ever had a garden, you know the joy of finding that first ripe tomato! You pick it and savor that delicious nothing like a vine-ripe tomato taste and dream about the next one. Then, one day, you go out to the garden to find that nearly every tomato on your plants has ripened over night!! Now what? In my case, I ate tons of them then made pasta sauce and salsa for the freezer, canned tomato chutney and peeled and diced more tomatoes than I care to count to freeze for winter consumption - and I still had tomatoes!! That's where the neighbors came in. I went over and asked them if they'd like some tomatoes and they were thrilled to take some for BLT's, tomato-basil salad and countless other summer treats. These same kind neighbors willingly took some of my fresh tomato bounty for a few weeks until they ran out of ideas for using them up too. Then they seemed to always be gone, never answering their door when I rang the bell and leaving the lights off at night so I couldn't tell they had sneaked home undetected. Now, I'm back to square one - deciding what to do with my bumper crop of delicious tomatoes!!
The lesson learned from this experience is that I shouldn't have so many tomato plants next year. It's so hard though, when you're looking at those tiny little plants in the Spring. They just don't look like much at that point so I always convince myself that I need at least one more - or maybe two! At least next year I'll have this blog post to refer to when I'm deciding how many tomato plants to get!! Chances are I'll still have too many tomatoes again next year - but that's not such a bad deal after all!
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