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(I haven’t made a picture of today’s lush harvest–please imagine the fat red globes with the bright eye of your imagination.)

There is nothing in the whole of the wide world as delicious and magical as the first tomato of the summer growing season. And when I write “tomato” you need to know that I refer to full-sized ones, not salad toms or tommy-toes. Blessed Juliette has already given us some of her sweet fruit and the little golden tomatoes at the women’s garden are gleeful in the amount of their fruiting.

I was cleaning up 1/4 bushel of apples–readying them for the freezer and from there to the cider press–when I thought I’d check the summer garden to see if the cucumbers and beans had sprouted after our recent days of rain. (The cukes have, the beans have not.) And what to my wondering eyes should appear but an apronful of warm Black Cherry salad tomatoes and the first of the Early Girls.

Most people who love tomatoes have their own opinion about what constitutes perfect ripeness–I am no exception. The Early Girls are exactly the right combination of redness and firmness.

And tomorrow I will eat them with some rough sea salt, and a side of sliced cucumbers.

Blessed be the First Fruits of the season.