Did I make myself a BLT on toasted Italian with real mayo, salt and pepper, a little lettuce, some extra-crispy bacon and thick slabs of heirloom tomatoes from my own garden this morning for breakfast?  Why, yes.  Yes, I did.

If bacon is going to kill me,  I intend to eat enough to die very happy.

The nights are way too cold for the fall gardening I had hoped to do.  You just never know.  I think I will “close-up-shop” this week on all but the kale and spinach, the lettuces and Chinese cabbage.  My amazingly loving and energetic husband has been covering the tender green beans, peppers and tomatoes nightly because I just had such a great garden year, he didn’t want it to come to the abrupt end the weather seems to have sent.  He even heat-lamps them at night.  How sweet is that?

The result?  I have piles of tomatoes all over the place.  Because-they are not stupid, you know.  If the end is near, they become extremely prolific, fruiting and leaving their legacy and seed behind.

The fall tomato is still sweet

The autumn tomato in this zone?  Grows much slower, ripens at a snail’s pace.  The vigor of the August tomato has subsided to a more predictable, steady output.  I am tickled pink when I see new flowers on the plants – they refuse to go quietly and intend, though damaged by cold nights and shortened days and brittled by age, to stay fruitful until the last.

I love them for that.  I shall pattern my own life after the tomato.  Even if I get brittle and hobble and go gray and lose all my teeth – I intend to keep flowering and being fruitful.  :)

And that sandwich was so…what are the words?  You could not buy a tomato that tasty in an 8-state radius, I am certain of it.  It was really ambrosial, scrumptious, and just as delicious as the first fruits – maybe even sweeter.  Just like life…