This summer, I have enjoyed getting my hands dirty by helping my parents tend the garden. For the first time, we planted tomatoes, and as August has come and gone, it has been sweet to reap the harvest. Homegrown tomatoes...nothin' like 'em. (And we men need our lycopene...so I figure, why not eat 'em up?)
The words of Guy Clark's Homegrown Tomatoes have been sung throughout the Cleveland home and garden for the past few weeks, and rightly so...
Ain't nothin' in the world that I like better
Than bacon & lettuce & homegrown tomatoes
Up in the mornin' out in the garden
Get you a ripe one don't get a hard one
Plant `em in the spring eat `em in the summer
All winter with out `em's a culinary bummer
I forget all about the sweatin' & diggin'
Everytime I go out & pick me a big one
Homegrown tomatoes homegrown tomatoes
What'd life be without homegrown tomatoes
Only two things that money can't buy
That's true love & homegrown tomatoes
You can go out to eat & that's for sure
But it's nothin' a homegrown tomato won't cure
Put `em in a salad, put `em in a stew
You can make your very own tomato juice
Eat `em with egss, eat `em with gravy
Eat `em with beans, pinto or navy
Put `em on the site put `em in the middle
Put a homegrown tomato on a hotcake griddle
If I's to change this life I lead
I'd be Johnny Tomato Seed
`Cause I know what this country needs
Homegrown tomatoes in every yard you see
When I die don't bury me
In a box in a cemetary
Out in the garden would be much better
I could be pushin' up homegrown tomatoes
Ohhhh, I miss my parents' garden.... There's just nothing like a ripe tomato warmed in the sun. Mmmm, nothing at all.
Posted by: April | September 01, 2006 at 12:02 AM