9.02.2007

Christmas in September


Our old house was just a couple of miles from downtown, but the previous owner was an avid gardener who had carved out planting beds perfect for a vegetable garden, so the place was a little like green acres in the city. Bryan decided we should try our hand at growing tomatoes, so he began pouring over seed catalogs to pick just the right varieties for our climate.

Pregnant with Audrey, I walked into the house one afternoon, sniffed the air and insisted there was soil somewhere inside. I inspected every corner until I found a little egg carton of seedlings that Bryan was nurturing through the winter on top of some cabinets in the kitchen. Needless to say, we figured out an alternative spot for the seedlings, and that summer we ended up with more amazing tomatoes than we knew what to do with. We ate tons of them straight off the vine, sliced open and sprinkled with a little salt, and brought bags of tomatoes to neighbors that we didn’t even know…just walking door to door giving them away.

Sadly, our current house doesn’t have an ideal spot for a vegetable garden, but our very nice neighbors invited us to split their weekly produce co-op. Every Saturday is a little like Christmas morning, as we wait to see what’ll be in the box... It’s always the perfect amount for our family, and it enables us to eat things I might not normally buy at the market.

I still miss those tomatoes though…

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