Bidding Tomatoes Goodbye

Sunday morning.  Early October.  The topsheet on the bed is as crisp as the air outside, inviting burrowing underneath the suddenly too-light summer duvet.  While it's not quite frost season, it's time to cut the garden back, bring in the bougainvillia, fortify the birdfeeders.

Breakfast is an easy choice.  The last of the season's tomatoes are on the kitchen counter, lovingly chosen yesterday from amongst the farmers' market baskets and trestle tables.  Beautifully misshapen and scarred, they bear no resemblance to the artificially red and wooden too-perfect orbs that pile abundantly in the supermarket.

I bite into my warm toasted tomato sandwich, mayonnaise and salt mingling with the impossible-to-describe sweet tartness of my tomato treasure.  The long winter is ahead and I'm already counting down the days until next August's harvest.