Julie Zickefoose: Nature Artist & Writer
The Imperative Tomato
Man. If I don't have 75 pounds of tomatoes in these bags and boxes, I'm a bell pepper. I pick and pick and every time I peer into the underbelly of a tottering plant, there are more, paired, clustered, splitting, rotting, waiting. Barely waiting. My little daughter Phoebe tiptoes amongst the fallen vines, picking cherry tomatoes the color of the sun. Sungold. The best tomato in the world. And therein lies the dilemma. I cannot let them fall, to rot. I must do something about it. The imperative of the tomato, at work
I start with a double-handled shopping bag, a big one. It fills, and overflows. I rummage through the garage for cardboard boxes. Ditto. Carrying the overloaded bag to the front stoop, it splits and spills 25 pounds of tomatoes all over the porch. Juice and seeds run across the wood, and I realize that the canning party I'd planned for tomorrow morning just started this evening. Rats. "I'm sorry about the tomatoes, Mommy," Phoebe says sadly, wiping seeds off her feet. Me, too. "Oh, well, honey, they'll get smashed up in the pots anyway when we cook them. You want to pull some basil leaves for me?" The living room fills with the sharp aroma of fresh basil as Phoebe carries an armload in, spreads it on newspapers, and begins to remove the leaves, painstakingly, one by one. She's only four, but she's a tremendous help to me.
I look at her, her red head bent over, chubby hands carefully cleaning each stem, and am filled with love and thanks for this magical little companion. Every gardener should have one.
It's always so much more work than I tell myself it will be, this canning. It sneaks up on me, like an orange tomato turning red. It's as if the tomatoes have a plan for me, and I never see it coming. I walk out to the garden of a fine summer afternoon, and bang! I'm enslaved. The tomatoes hang there, mocking me, daring me to ignore them. And I can't. I am utterly in their thrall.
I launch into the project, singing. Such a fine garden, such lovely fruit. And, for the first couple of hours, I'm happily enslaved. My nine-month-old, Liam, careens around the kitchen in his rolly walker, waving a spatula hung with jar rings, making a merry clatter. This is kind of fun, I think. And then it hits me. I always forget that there are jars to be washed, that the tomatoes have to be scalded in boiling water so their skins will peel easily, that I have to saute the golden and green bell peppers with onion before adding them to the tomatoes. OK, I'll forget the sautéing. I'll just throw it all together. It barely makes a difference. Finally, two hours later, I have all the ingredients in the pots, bubbling away, and I collapse in a chair. Liam has long since dissolved in tears and been put to bed. I've blown the baby's nap on canning. Ah, well. Come winter, when I hear the hiss of a newly-opened jar and smell the aroma of fresh tomatoes and basil, I'll remember the hours in the kitchen, and wish I could be that warm again.
Everything points toward fall, though it's only mid-August. A fine, weepy rain falls on the meadow, that's a tapestry of goldenrod, purple New York ironweed, and spots of Queen Anne's lace. A worthy import from Europe, Queen Anne's lace. It spangles and sets off the colorful flowers. Yesterday I found a gray hairstreak butterfly, curiously still, on a lace flower. Peeking beneath it, I found an assassin bug, exactly the same whitey-green as the flowers, contentedly sucking the hairstreak's juices.
The hummingbirds still buzz around the feeders, but there are perhaps a tenth as many. My nectar output slows from a half-gallon per day to a mere cup. That's a mercy. Filling and washing the feeders had become a real job. Still, I feel a pang, for I know how much I will miss them and all their sticky, nectary mess, the instant the last one splits for Costa Rica.
That's it, in a nutshell. Fall is coming, fall is here, and I'm just not ready for it. But I'm too attuned to the signs of winding down in all nature to ignore it. The vireos and tanagers that cavort in the treetops every morning I know to be birds of passage. The odd least flycatcher appearing out of nowhere, the summer tanager that tries out a few bars of song and then moves on. The sneaky cuckoos, the little juvenile red-headed woodpecker who clung to our telephone pole, all brown streaks and smart military bars on his wings; all of them migrants. The wheeling flocks of waxwings and starlings, full of grayish young birds. I look up from my writing, and the treetops are full of eastern kingbirds, 20 in one sweep of the binoculars. They're waiting out the gentle rain, bickering and flitting, flashing white tail bands. Why do they all raise such a lump in my throat?
Like the birds, I respond to the shorter days, longer nights. They get temporarily swollen gonads (sounds like fun!); I get a lump in my throat. The little rush of hormones helps to send them on their way; sends them chasing each other through the yellowing grapevines; puts a song in their throats, however whispery and quiet. I just get melancholy. The quiet trill of a tree cricket in the coloring sumac makes me think of Martha's Vineyard in October, of cockleburs in my shoelaces, of loves lost but never forgotten. And yet I would never pass a year without the mellow wine of autumn to sip, however melancholy.
I suppose it's best that I get back to work. The tomatoes are beginning to stick, and there are jars to be washed. It'll keep my mind off the coming winter, I guess, and I can eat the fruits of my labor in January. Canning's not so bad, after all. I say it every year. 
