Enjoying it while it lasts

A quick reminder to get the most from those juicy late summer tomatoes

Welcome to Making Time. Helping you find more joy in simple, everyday pleasures. I write about seasonal eating, building a garden, and a slow life in rural Oregon. If you’d like to follow along, you can subscribe for free.

I have a little wooden basket I keep on the kitchen counter in the summer, so that I can grab it along with a sharp pair of pruners at any time. I pick it up and head out to collect some food for lunch.

It’s been a mild summer, so the tomatoes have just started to ripen. The ones I harvest are a bright scarlet, deeply ridged and firm in my hand. I put a few in my basket along with some basil and a few golden nasturtiums. In August, I garnish everything with flowers that I can.

It’s the middle of a Tuesday, and the list of things I need to do by the end of the day feels daunting. Part of me resisted even coming outside, the part that deeply believes that one day I’ll feel caught up if I only work hard enough.

Luckily, a wiser part of me prevailed, at least for now. That part knows that summer is moving quickly, and that each summer will feel quicker than the last.

And the tomatoes. You can only taste a tomato like this for a short time each year, a matter of weeks really. They’re still warm from the sun and there’s the sharp green scent of tomato leaves on my hands. They taste like nothing else, because they taste like summer.

I eat a slice off the cutting board with a little sprinkle of salt, and for a moment, I feel a twinge of sadness that they will be gone soon. There is nothing like a summer tomato, and I’ll need to wait another 11 months to experience one again. It’s almost painful, how fleeting it all is.

But that is the most wonderful thing about them: that they taste like summer. They aren’t meant to last forever. They carry within them, in their specific smell and taste and color, the memory of summer. They are of their own time and place, just as we all are.

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