True love, and …

I do not denigrate my up bringing, but suffice it to say that I grew up with a distinct lack of appreciation for vegetables. When I married Joanna, however, that changed and now I do not think there is an available vegetable that I have not tried and very few that I do not enjoy. One, which was a relative late-comer to my list of favorites is the tomato. Joanna has always grown them in our garden and she has, over the years, canned tomato sauce and whole tomatoes, much to the delight of all who have partaken of them at our table. Early this summer the generous folks at Village Acres Farm, a CSA out of Mifflintown, brought us some heritage tomato plants in partial exchange for a pair of weanling lambs. Each and every one of the plants grew well in Joanna’s raised beds and they began baring about a month ago and continue to do so, prolifically. If you had told me, thirty years ago, that one of my many pleasures would be to walk through the garden, casually pluck a cherry tomato from the vine and pop it into my mouth, I would have observed that you were nuts. But this is now true. We had a good bit of rain last night and things remained soggy at chores time. We are penning the turkeys in the garden this year, among a small number of fruit trees. As I was feeding and watering these birds I couldn’t help but notice a blaze of orange in the corner of my eye. Surely these beauties were pretty enough to warrant the trip back to the house for the camera.

It is not my intention to provide an exhaustive review of Songs of the Garden so please forgive this offering of just three of my favorites which relate to vegetables and to gardening. The first has its significance in the image above. With thanks to Guy Clark for this classic contribution to the canon.

And, of course, there’s Joanna’s all-time favorite which she says, in all seriousness, was (and remains) formative for her. Even this evening as I played it, she teared up … a wee bit. Forever thanks to Pete Seeger for this tranditional, and most beloved, favorite.