"Tomato Chair in August", mixed media by Kerry McFall

Back in May, I planted broccoli and  lettuce in my little raised bed, and carefully positioned tomatoes under my newly-painted pink “tomato chairs“.  Finally, I have been able to harvest half a dozen marble-sized tomatoes from a jungle of long-leggity vines.  Even if I don’t get another single tomato, the burst of warm flavor from those few was worth every moment of weeding and watering and tying twine and  fussing!  In the intervening four months, a fence went up, the pot of basil was cut back several times, an eventually I pulled down all the broccoli and lettuce trees to give the tomatoes a bit more precious sunlight (I say trees because I let them go to seed just out of curiousity, and they were taller than my head when I finally tired of the experiment!)

Now August wanes, and our allotment of a few hot days (99 degrees!) is behind us apparently.  Crickets are beginning to make themselves known (odd that they don’t sing until summer is nearly done here in Oregon…), nights are cooling to 58 the minute the sun sinks, dawn is slower to arrive with each passing morning.  Such a short summer.