Fruit of my labor

Well here it is folks: My first homegrown tomato- Oregon style.

Now, it would be too easy if that was the end of the story. And especially since this is my first ripe produce of the season, there was some excitement.

Or rather, lack of excitement. Let me explain:

On Sunday mornings I do my grocery shopping and this past Sunday as soon as I got home, I went to check on my prize tomato. This tomato is the tomato that started it all. It has been featured on 2 previous blog posts and it has been the first to turn even the slightest color of red.

Well, when I got to the backyard on Sunday morning it was missing! My little blob of red tomato was nowhere to be found. I looked closer hoping that maybe a ground squirrel had chewed it off or a robin had flown off with it in her beak. But no, the tomato was cut off the vine with scissors or a knife.

I tried to play it cool, but I was pretty sad. I had assumed the risk of planting vegetables in a semi-public garden and thought it was possible that an animal would eat my produce (fine with me) or that some person might come along and pick it.

Well, later in the day, one of my neighbors came up to me and told me that she had my tomato. She had seen one of the neighbor kids walking around holding it. She had saved the day by playing tomato police and keeping it safe for me. In the child's defense, he is probably only 5 years old and his mom also has some tomato plants in the back garden so he may have been confused.

Then last night he delivered one of my smaller tomatoes to my door. It was still very green, but it started to turn red today. It probably wasn't ready to be picked yet, but at least it ended up at my door.

I ate the first tomato on a sandwich with hummus and romaine lettuce and I will probably eat this little tomato tomorrow for a snack. Strangely the first tomato didn't taste any better than a tomato I would buy at the store, but it was still pretty fun to eat something that I helped grow.


I can't wait to get an earlier start on my garden next year!