Tucking In the Tomatoes, or, Never Can Say Goodbye

In an effort to keep our tomato plants going, I've been tenderly covering them with blue plastic tarps whenever the temperature falls below 40º F (which has been nearly every night for the last month.)

Why take all this trouble when there are so many good green tomato chutney recipes out there? Call it dogged determination - or perhaps just desperation. Our tomatoes flowered and fruited so late this summer that I simply wasn't willing to give up on them. (We waited all year for them, after all. And I refuse to buy supermarket tomatoes.)

So far the special treatment seems to be working. Under this...

...we have this:

And under this:

...can be found these little jewels:

Thanks to the tarps, our 'maters have made it through 3 frosts (though the last one did cause a bit of freezer burn to the outermost branches - I should have used a double layer of plastic). And, perhaps because of the cold, these late tomatoes are the sweetest, least acidic I've ever tasted.

There's no frost in the immediate forecast, but it's bound to come again. What will I do when it does? Perhaps I'll give up - pick all the fruit that remains and start surfing for salsa recipes. Or I may keep fighting - with my blue plastic armor - as long as I possibly can.

Because it's awfully nice to have a bowl of these sitting around:

Tell me why

Is it so

Don't wanna let you go

I never can say goodbye

No no, baby

I never can say goodbye

Clifton Davis

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