Ahh... Sweet Beautiful Fruit

This is my tomato plant. I love my tomato plant. (Thanks again Kathy Bils for my live gift!) I know, silly thing to love but I guess I'm just funny that way. Well, maybe funny isn't the right word. Maybe quirky is a better word. So I'm quirky. I love certain smells. I love the smell of really old books, of clean babies, of cilantro fresh from the water spray in the produce section, of fresh garden basil, of my sweet husband clean out of the shower, and one more that I can think of is the smell of tomato leaves growing on the vine. I love to rub the tomato leaves and then smell my fingers. All of these smells to me are so comforting. This is only "part" of the reason I love this smell. I remember once being in the garden with my mom and picking tomatoes. She handed me two and told me to rinse them off with the garden hose and bring them back to her. When I brought them back she handed me one and then she bit straight into hers. I quickly followed suit. No salt, just plain sweet tomato. Almost every time I smell that different from any other smell smell of the leaves I go back to that memory with my mom. I do of course love tomatoes. For Anita's birthday present, well one of her presents, I gave her a tomato fresh off my vine. I know any other person would look at me funny but Anita completely understands what this means. (And no you haven't missed her birthday but she was here this past weekend and so we celebrated early) So many memories wrapped up in tomatoes and that's only some of the reasons I love this sweet fruit. Growing tomatoes in my back yard is the quintessential meaning of homemaker to me. No really I am just kidding but I do feel like I am so blessed when I see the first little buds starting to form and then the buds turn into little green balls and then they grow and grow and grow. Then when you think you can't stand to wait any longer they start to turn color and they become deeper and deeper in color until at that very last moment they turn into that fabulous rich red. It almost kills me to leave it on the vine an extra day to let it really get sweet but I do because I know, it will be then, that the fruit is the sweetest. Ahh I love tomatoes!