by Kelly

I sit snapping beans

in evening heat, thinking of

my grandma’s garden.

by Kelly

Summer is wrapping up. So too is the growing season.

While it’s especially hard for me, a Minnesotan who knows that winter is just a few months away, to say good-bye to the heat and humidity, I am at least able to acknowledge that summer’s end brings a delicious bounty of garden produce.

There are few things in life so grand (as far as I’m concerned) as a ripe tomato picked from your very own vine and drizzled in olive oil. I was thrilled, therefore when I stumbled upon a series of haiku in praise of the tomato.

The haiku were penned by Lori Writer, who writes for a Twin Cities food-obsessed web site called Heavy Table.

Her tomato haiku link to recipes suggesting new ways to use up your bumper crop. This one, in particular, stood out to me:

Tomato ice cream
sounds ghastly. But, tomato
is a fruit, you know.

Writer’s tomato haiku are actually a year old. I stumbled upon them because I was reading a more recent post by her in which she put together a collection of haiku praising the cucumber.

Like her tomato haiku, her cucumber haiku link to recipes suggesting various ways to eat all the cukes your vines have produced.

But I happen to like her introductory cucumber haiku the best:

Glorious August.
Long days, borealis nights.
Cukes, by the bucket.

And even though summer’s heat seems to have passed me by (fall has come on with a vengence here) I can’t stop myself from thinking about the recipe suggested by this cucumber haiku:

Lemonade Chiller,
tart and sweet. Leaves you cool as
any cucumber.

by Kelly

we check the progress

of our first cucumber — its

growth is magical

by Kelly

young tomato plant

hints at what’s to come — I bend,

sniff and smell August

by Kelly

I’m done protecting

this Miami Beet mani —

time to get planting