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

People either love

beets or hate them. No wonder

we’re friends. We love them.

Here’s my newest beet recipe. Alison, you simply MUST try this:

Roasted Beets with Carmelized Onions and Feta

by Kelly

onions, celery, broth

sustaining, satisfying

chicken noodle soup

by Alison

a small tray of squash

by the side of the dirt road -

vegetables for sale

by Alison

Oh, Nappa Cabbage

too often I ignore you -

still, I am smitten.