Tomatoes and September

We had the bright idea of planting a few things earlier this year in hopes that we might find gardening fun and rewarding. It was cool at first… of course, the lettuce is always the first stuff to come in, and picking a bit of fresh lettuce for our salads was pretty fun. I kept things reasonably well watered… that is… before we had a child.

Now, the last thing on our minds is, “Did we water the plants today?” And not only that, but we planted the garden back when we actually planned for and cooked real meals for dinner. We’ve gotten into the habit these days of using the short time we have in the evenings to scramble together just enough to get us by… this allows us to go to bed as early as possible. In other words, sleep is the priority, not food. This means that even though I’ve had some really nice looking tomatoes on my tomato plants for a while now, I haven’t gotten the chance to go and pick them. Today, however, I decided I’d make a salad and use only the tomatoes from the garden. I picked a bunch… I was surprised at how many still looked alright. It’s really a testament to the kind British weather rather than my gardening skills. In any case, here’s the result :)… and the salad, by the way, was yummy.

Don’t they look good!

On a related note… summer is over here in Cambridge :(. Sadly, autumn comes pretty early in the UK, and even though we’ll probably have several more nice days, I’ve already noticed the autumn chill hitting the air. I was less sad about this than I normally am. Normally, I’m very upset that summer is ending.

This year, however, I’ve decided that September is actually a really nice month to be in Cambridge (or to visit if you’re looking to!). The weather is still fair, the leaves start to turn all sorts of really beautiful colors against the buildings, most of the tourists have cleared out, the students haven’t arrived yet… all in all, it’s just a very quiet, serene, picturesque place to be. Thanks be to God… for my kid and my wife, for the tomatoes, for the seasons, and for a pretty nice sunset tonight.