missing in action

my grandfather had an amazing garden. when we visited in the summer, i would go out with him in the early mornings to water. he'd be wearing overalls and we'd skirt past the outbuilding to the patch of green on the edge of the property. to me as a little girl the garden seemed huge. they grew corn , beans, tomatoes, beets and carrots. one of my jobs was to shuck the corn and snap the beans into a bowl for cooking. they also had fruit trees .i remember my grandmother peeling peaches and canning cherries.

i've had a small garden of some sorts since i bought my first house. over the years i've experimented with different things- beets, carrots, corn, tomatoes, herbs. one year i got a volunteer spaghetti squash plant . i've never really had a plan ,i plant different things each year. except for the tomatoes. i love growing different kinds of tomatoes. the more varieties the better. my mouth waters at the thought of a blt with homegrown tomatoes, italian bread and tomato salad, tomatoes with balsamic vinegar. mmmmm.

this year i planted 5 different kinds: black prince, early girl, miniature yellow pear, miniature pear, and another full sized yellow. in error i planted them really close together .gazing out the kitchen window, it looks like a tomato forest .i've faithfully pinched the extra vegetation to let sun get to the fruit. i have an amazing crop coming on. the girls love to go out to see how many are ready and love to pick them. after wincing at the number of unripe fruit sacrificed to letting them explore and learn, finally i've managed to help the kids determine when its time to pick- when they are red like clifford or yellow like the sun.

each evening i go out to inventory and harvest the crop for the day and eyeball the next days perfect pick. i started noticing that there were fewer than i thought there would be. one morning i went out and i KNEW i had left a nearly perfect big yellow the previous evening to harvest. it was gone. so i thought i must be imagining it. this happened several times before i discovered the source of the missing fruit.

buster. the fifteen year old golden retriever who doesn't see well and barks at shadows can smell a perfect tomato from inside the house. i caught him gobbling down one of the achingly beautiful early girls that i had planned for lunch. i had to laugh at the site of him with seeds at the corners of his mouth and a happy look on his face.