I Live for This Time of Year

My motivation for making it through each winter?  The fact that homegrown tomatoes roll around in the summer.  Hand to God, if you gave me a choice between ice cream and tomatoes, I'd pick the maters.  And they are comin' on strong in the garden.  These are just the cherry tomatoes I picked last night.

I will likely eat this whole bowl by myself.  The good thing about that is that I don't have to worry about getting enough fiber during tomato season.  The bad thing is that I don't have to worry about getting enough fiber during tomato season. 

Pickin' and Grinnin'

Our garden is growing like crazy, and I’m really surprised given the summer we’ve had. We might as well be living on the Equator. We’ve had something like forty days above 90 degrees. We’ve hit 100 on several days, and for part of last week our heat index hit 120 degrees. Oh, and it has rained so little that I don’t even watch the weather forecast anymore. I just make plans and assume it’s going to be sunny, dry and armpit soaked hot. A lady picked a chair next to me at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast the other morning and joked that she would sit next to me since I smelled good. I told her to get a good whiff while the getting’ was good ‘cause in an hour or two it wouldn’t be pretty. And I was serious. It’s been so hot so long, we’ve all gotten a bit used to being sweaty and smelly. A bit. Not completely. This means you tall man at the grocery store.

Thanks to a lot of watering, our garden has managed to survive, even though our grass died a merciful death weeks ago. Our next water bill will likely eat up one semester of Teen Angel’s college fund, but girlfriend will just have to go without textbooks that first year as the Hula-gen’s refuse to live without homegrown tomatoes. In fact, we live for homegrown tomatoes. We talk longingly about them in the winter and pour over seed catalogs during the cold months. Heck, the Stark Brothers catalog is our favorite bathroom reading material. Aside from Reader’s Digest.

Come spring we plant several varieties of tomatoes and count the days until the first ones ripen. Then our summer is spent building meals around them. We’re the Gump’s of the tomato world. We got your chopped tomatoes, your fried tomatoes, sliced tomatoes, tomato salad, tomato soup, tomato salsa and on and on and on. We eat many meals that are comprised solely of tomatoes and corn on the cob and Lordy, we do love the BLT’s. All that sodium in the bacon makes Mama J.’s feet swell though, so we have to limit those somewhat.

When it first became obvious the hot dry spell was here to stay, we were worried the garden would die a premature death, but it’s doing fine. Really fine. From far away, it looks pretty good.

But up close, you can see how tall everything is. I should have put Hubby next to these plants for perspective. He’s 6’4”, and the plants are way above his head.

The thing you can’t really tell from these pictures is that most of these plants outgrew their stakes a long time ago, bent over and have grown almost all the way back to the ground. Hubby got out a ladder and tape measure the other day and estimated one plant to be about thirteen and a half feet long. Other than a really good dose of nitrogen when he first planted the garden, he hasn’t used any chemicals on them. I think they actually benefited from the shade that takes over the garden in the afternoon, giving the plants a break from the blazing heat. The end result is that tomatoes are ripe for the pickin’ every day.

They hide underneath leaves.

And burst out of the tops of the plants. My favorites are the cherry and grape tomatoes.

Hubby likes the big ones. Such a man thing.

Tomatoes aren’t the only thing we’re pickin’ either. Our pepper plants are five feet tall this year.
The cucumbers have taken over the windmill.

And the cantaloupe plants just sprouted five more melons. Yee haw!

Our watermelons played out after just two melons. Sniff. But the blackberry, blueberry and raspberry bushes we planted are growing nicely and should put forth some fruit next year, along with the new grapevines.

It may be hotter than Guam in western Kentucky, but the bounty from our little vegetable patch is keeping us happier than pigs in sunshine. The Hula-gen’s and tomatoes go together like…well, like peas and carrots.

Old McDonald's Got Nothin' On Us Except A Few Chickens

The Hula-gen’s have a garden again this year. It was a little in doubt as we still have a long way to go until we get our yard in order at the new house. You should hear Hubby whine about the terrible shape of our grass. And the crabgrass! Oh, the crabgrass. Anyway, we decided to make time to till up a corner of the backyard, build it up and fertilize it for a garden. ‘Cause the reality is, we can’t live without a fresh supply of homegrown tomatoes in the summer. While tomatoes aren’t the only thing we plant, there is a direct correlation between our happiness and the amount of ripe tomatoes we consume between June and October.

This garden isn’t as big as the old one, but that makes it more manageable. We have 21 tomato plants this year, instead of the usual 35. I think we’ll still be okay. They’re coming along nicely, thanks to the abundant hot sunny weather we’ve had lately.

In fact, they’re noticeably bigger than when I took this picture about eight days ago. We have some small green tomatoes on the vines, so the wait for the first juicy bite is officially on. Those PVC pipes you see are Hubby’s watering system. He shoves a pipe into the ground next to each plant and uses the hose to regularly fill each tube with water. It’s a slow watering system that seems to work better than sprinklers and soaker hoses.

The garden also includes cucumbers and bell peppers. We skipped the squash and zucchini because our next door neighbors planted enough of that to feed Somalia. They shared their first squash with us yesterday. It goes on the stove tonight. Have I mentioned how much the Hula-gen’s love fresh produce? I absolutely love wandering out back and putting together dinner with whatever is ripe.

The thing that surprised me though, was Hubby’s fruit kick. I think he spent too much time on the pot with the Starks catalog ‘cause before I knew it he had ordered all sorts of fruit trees and bushes. He planted watermelons and cantaloupes. Yum.

Along the edge of the yard are three, count ‘em three grapevines. See the one in the middle?

That’s the one I’m looking forward to sampling. It’s a white seedless. There is also a red seedless and a concord. It will be next year before we yield anything from them, but they’re budding out nicely.

We figure we need a trip to the local vineyards to see how they prop up the vines. Really.

There are three apple trees.

AND we have two raspberry bushes, two blueberry bushes and two blackberry bushes. You’ll have to imagine what they look like since I forgot to take a picture of those. By July of next year I should be able to make a variety of pies with whatever is blooming in the backyard. I find that very exciting, but then I’m easily excited.

The thing about the garden that amuses me most is Hubby’s windmill.

He dragged it from the old house the other day despite some concerns that it might be a little ragged looking to bring to the new house. He loves that old thing, as do I, but was worried that our neighbors, many of whom are very picky about their yards, would be uptight about it and think it looked bad. Since I generally don’t care what folks think, I prodded him to go get it. Three days later, we looked next door, and our neighbors had purchased their own windmill, and it was gaily blowing in the breeze. Hee hee. **** Drive will never be the same now that we’ve arrived. We may have everyone there growing tomatoes before it’s over. Walking the dog at 5:45am in Crocs and holey pajamas though? Probably not.

How does Your Garden Grow?

I haven't written about the garden this summer because I've been so consumed by the remodeling nonsense. We've still been gardening, though. In fact, our 40-something tomato plants are working hard to produce all kinds of fruit. In fact, we're in the middle of our peak picking. It usually happens a little earlier in the season, but the weather has been strange this year, and the glut happened about a month later than normal. Better late than never, I say. Goodness knows it didn't hurt the crop. This was one day's worth of picking last week.

Yeah, I know. It hasn't slowed down, either. We pick about that many tomatoes two or three times a week. We have beautiful grape tomatoes.

So many we pick them and snack on them like potato chips. Which is okay until they reach the lower part of your colon.

And we have the bigger tomatoes.

They're everywhere.

They make fabulous BLT's, of which we've had many this summer.

Why do we have some many plants? Because we enjoy trying different varieties, and we are tomato nuts. We sit around in the winter and wax nostalgically for a good juicy summer tomato. What do we do with all of them? I can some for soups and chili in the winter months. Mama cans some, too. In fact, she took all of the sixteen gallons of tomatoes in that first photo, canned some of them and shared the rest with six other families. Six! That's awesome. We give them away to neighbors, friends, family, the ladies who work at the drug store. Basically, anyone who wants them, needs them or allows their arm to be twisted when we're begging people to take them. We just enjoy growing them and sharing them. Oh, and eating them.

This is the last year we will grow tomatoes in this backyard. Hubby has a new garden spot picked out at the new house, which has a huge backyard. We'll have a whole new big space to practice our farming skills. Ha! And a whole new bunch of neighbors to pawn those maters off on.

How Does Your Garden Grow

Psst. Come a little closer. I have something to tell you while Hubby's not around. If you haven't been coming to this site long, there's something you should know about the Hula-gen's. We love tomatoes. In fact, we are tomato nuts. As in welcome to our tomato patch. All fifty plants.

Each year we plant enough tomatoes to feed a starving country. It's really Hubby's project. Teen Angel and I are just the hired help. He carefully orders his seed, fertilizes the ground and plants his different varies every year, and then Teen Angel and I eat the bounty. Somewhere in there we weed a little and pick a lot, but mostly we just eat the produce. Big Boy's, Big Bertha's, Better Boy's, Fourth of July's, Sweet 100's. We have just a little bit of everything, and we love them all.

The three of us spend weeks anxiously awaiting the first sweet morsels. And then we spend two months giving away tomatoes to friends, family, neighbors, church members, strangers, people stranded on the side of the road and anyone who stands still long enough to fall for the line, "Here hold this." I chop tomatoes, can tomatoes, freeze tomatoes. I make salsa and bisque. It's tomato, tomato, tomato around here for weeks. But the real fun comes before the fruit ever ripens because, Hubby has a real competitive streak, and it's a race between him and our 86-year old neighbor every year to see who can grow the first tomato of the season. Try as he might Hubby always loses. And he's going to lose again this year because you see, this is what his plants look like right now.

By the way, that pvc pipe is his watering system, which is actually very effective but looks kind of goofy until the plants get bushy. Our plants are pretty and have some blooms.

But a few are small because we had to replant about a third of them due to too much rain at the beginning of the season.

Hubby takes great care in how he plants, where he plants, how he fertilizes and how he waters. And the neighbor? Well, he just tosses his stuff out there in no particular order and ends up with this.

A mere twenty feet away from Hubby's little bushes are three foot tall leafy green plants that beat the socks off of anything we have. And our neighbor already has little green tomatoes dangling from his vines.

But don't tell Hubby though, because he thinks he still has a shot at winning. And we're going to let him believe that because she who mocks Farmer Hula-gen won't get to sample the first ripe tomato from our garden. We also won't tell him that our neighbor gives me those tomatoes that Hubby thinks comes from the grocery store in late June before ours ripen.

Reason #6 That I Hate Autumn

It has been sixteen days since summer ended, and I’m still not over it. Give me time. I’ll work through it. In the meantime I’m mourning the loss of these.A mere three weeks ago, I was still picking tomatoes. Ruby red, juicy tomatoes. God’s gift to the dinner table and the reason southern women wear funny hats and dig in the dirt. And now? They’re gone. Sniff. All. Gone. I can hardly stand it. Now I’m faced with months of those squishy, mealy things the grocery store likes to pass off as produce. Are you feelin’ my pain? Tell me I’m not alone in my grief.

We had 37 tomato plants this year. I know that sounds like an insane number, but the Hula-gen’s love tomatoes. We’ve had as many as 70 plants in past years. We make whole meals out of tomatoes, and we love BLT’s. Remember this? We’ve been known to wipe a freshly picked mater on our shirt and eat it whole while standing in the middle of the garden. When Teen Angel was little, I would often find her hidden in the middle of the plants, with a mouth full of cherry tomatoes and juice running down her chin. We plant them with great care each spring, wait for weeks for them to ripen and then fight over the first ones. The person to swipe the first one always pretends like he didn’t. For weeks we savor their juicy goodness, eating them daily and sharing them with the neighbors. Fourth of Julys, Super Sweets, Big Berthas, Sweet 100’s and luscious grape varieties.
It’s a smorgasbord of acidity.

As September starts to wane and the plants wither, we begin hoarding the remaining tomatoes. We reluctantly pull up the plants as they die, until we’re left with just a few, straggly bushes.
Isn't this sad. This picture was taken two weeks ago, and these plants will go this week. There simply isn’t anything left to pick, and the frost is coming soon. In the refrigerator bin are the few homegrown tomatoes left, and they’re quickly going bad, but we can’t bring ourselves to throw them away.

My heartbeat quickened two weeks ago when I wandered out to the compost pile and found this. If you look closely, you’ll see a tomato plant that sprouted from tossed tomato seeds. It wasn't pretty, but it was green and full of blooms. And when I looked closer I saw this.
Oh my goodness for heaven’s sake glory be in the morning hallelujah brothers and sisters it was small, green grape tomatoes. A gift from God in a big pile of…well, you know. We rejoiced in our luck and watched those little guys turn. Late last week Teen Angel picked a handful of maters off that little plant, and they tasted like gold. With more little green tomatoes simmering on the vine we anxiously waited for them to turn, thinking we would have tomatoes until the end of October if we could keep the frost away. And then, it happened. It’s almost too horrible to speak about. While I was away at work the tree trimmers came to take down a tree in Papa T.’s back yard and came through our yard to get to it. I came home and..and…and..found…this….
My little plant…splat. Squashed. Smashed to smithereens. Dragged to its death. A victim of a big fat bucket truck. Sniff. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

Yee Haw!

Hey grandpa! What’s for supper?

Fresh Silver Queen corn cut from the cob and cooked in its own milk, fresh cracked pepper and lots of real butter. So tasty the juice will run down your chin. Homegrown green beans straight from Pa’s garden. Cooked slowly for three hours with salt, pepper and a little dab of bacon drippings. So tender they’ll melt in your mouth.* Roasted garden vegetables: sweet onion, farmer’s market eggplant, red pepper, zucchini and squash. Drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with kosher salt and fresh ground pepper and grilled until juicy and singed on the edges. Tastes so good it’ll make you smack your granny. And three varieties of homegrown thick sliced tomatoes; juicy, sweet and full of goodness. You’ll need a spoon to catch all the juice and a rag to wipe it off your chin. Add a side pan of sweet cornbread slathered in butter, some fresh green onions and cold sweet tea and extra chairs at the table ‘cause the neighbors will all come runnin’. Yum, yum.

Have I mentioned I love summer? Of course, I have.

*My theory is why dirty up another bowl when you can serve it out of the pan.

Proof We Have No Shame

This is how the Hula-gen's do BLT's.This is why no one in our house is getting his cholesterol checked in the next few months. Man, I love summer. Have I said that yet?

Moooovin' Into Summer

Hula likes summer. She likes everything about summer, even the pit sticking humidity. Hula especially loves summer foods. She likey a lot. In fact, her diet right now consists mainly of this.And this.
And some of these.

A few of those.
A whole LOT of this.With a side of this.

Bunny Tales

Psst. Come a little closer. I want to show you something. It’s the latest family to move into our neighborhood. They’re kind of reclusive, so I had trouble snapping their picture. In fact, they come out only on Sunday mornings. They like to run, play and romp in our garden, and they think we don’t see them, but we do. We watch from the bedroom and bathroom windows for minutes at a time laughing at their games. We haven’t officially met these guys, so I call them Flopsy, Mopsy and Peter Cotton Tail. Here’s Flopsy.
And here’s Mopsy.
We’ll get to Peter in a moment. Mopsy is the smallest and a little too trusting…for a young bunny anyway. I got right up on him before he noticed me and froze.
And then he sat there for a long time, never moving a muscle or blinking an eye. We stared each other down for probably thirty or forty seconds before I twitched and he ran. Darn skeeter. Mopsy’s mama probably would have picked him up by the scruff of the neck, toted him home and put him to bed without any chamomile tea had she known how close he let me get to him.

Now, Mr. McGregor didn’t like rabbits in his garden, but the Hula-gen’s have never minded. Each year we get a litter of bunnies that sets down roots in our yard and sticks around long enough to raise its babies. They eventually move on, but for a while we get to enjoy their antics. They chase each other around the tomato, pepper and cucumber plants, roll in the dirt and jump over each other, making us laugh and giggle at their games. They are hilarious when they think they’re not being watched. They have never been a problem…until now….until Peter showed up. This little fellow has nerve because while I stood ten feet away from him he reached up and did this.
At the time I thought he was nibbling on a cherry tomato so I didn’t get too bent out of shape. I have gads of those. I can share a few. But Monday when Hubby went to pick the first big ripe tomato of the season…the one we’ve anxiously watched turn from green to pink to red over the last few weeks…the one we planned to slice and share and celebrate over…the one that marks the beginning of tomato season…glorious ruby red juice down the chin tomato season…HE FOUND THE WHOLE SIDE EATEN OUT OF I!. Hrump! Now, it could have been the birds, but I suspect it was Peter. I hope for his furry sake it wasn’t, because I really don’t want to have to choose between my bunnies and my tomatoes. Cute vs. homegrown delicious. What’s a girl to do? For the love of Pete Peter, don’t make me get the rake. Not that I’d do anything but shake it at him…maybe....I mean after all, it was just one tomato. But did it have to be the first? All I can say is it’s a good thing he’s cute.