Summer never tasted this good

By Staff
Scot Beard
There are many great things about the summer that I love to experience each year.
Baseball, fishing, vacations, fireworks and barbecue are all great, but there is one summer tradition that tops them all – eating the first ripe tomato from the garden.
The flavor of a tomato fresh from the vine is unbelievable.
I would describe it for you, but I do not think my powers of description could do it justice.
I love tomatoes and I eat them all year. Unfortunately, I cannot grow fresh tomatoes all year.
During the winter I am forced to purchase them from grocery stores, where the producers pick them early and allow them to ripen on the way to the supermarket.
The result is, technically, a tomato.
However, the tomatoes you buy in the store lack a depth of quality and satisfaction that is available with the homegrown variety.
It is like comparing a rusted out 1967 Volkswagen Beetle to a 2009 Lamborghini. Both cars will get the job done, but one performs better and has much more style.
My wife, who is even more fanatical about tomatoes than I am, and I planted our first tomato plants this year.
We waited impatiently as the plants grew slowly.
When the first flowers began to appear we got excited.
A few weeks later we noticed several Cherry tomatoes on one plant and a hand full of Roma tomatoes on another. Finally, the Big Boy tomato plant produced its first fruit.
We were still waiting for them to ripen for what felt like several weeks and forced ourselves to satiate our hunger with the lesser quality store-bought variety.
We returned home from our Fourth of July celebration in Huntsville to find a single cherry tomato on the verge of full ripeness.
I pulled it off the vine, rinsed it and split it with my wife.
I never should have pulled that tomato off the vine.
Although it was not completely ripe yet, the flavor was exquisite.
It only made my hunger for fresh tomatoes worse. I have dreamed of making a tomato sandwich – lightly toasted bread, mayonnaise, a dash of pepper and a few thick slices of tomato – since placing the plants in my garden.
Now that I know how good the tomatoes will taste, the wait for the others to ripen is a nightmare, but the idea of having to go back to store bought tomatoes in a few more months is torture.
Why does summer have to end?