Sweet September

I've been recently inspired to blog again by reading Clare Leighton's Four Hedges (re-published by Little Toller Books): a gardener's delight which wonderfully weaves together words and worms...

After an unwelcome wet and windy squall blew in at the end of August, causing a hasty retreat from open-air camping to sitting indoors watching the rain streaking down the window pane, we’ve been treated once more to sweet September sun. And if this lovely, late reprisal of summer makes us feel blessed, it seems even more appreciated by our tomatoes: well watered by those rainstorms and now drenched in days of warm sunshine from dawn ‘til dusk. It’s hard to remember, now, those four weedy little seedlings, received gratefully free of charge from a plant stall on the market, which then offered so little promise in the way of growth, never mind fruition, that now are burgeoning with profligate abundance against a south-facing fence. Each plant has clusters of more than fifty fecund fruits that suddenly seem to be ripening  as we watch them; look away and there’s another, and another - ripe and red and ready to be picked. For a time it’s enough just to appreciate their fine, vine, visual appeal, to eat with our eyes: perfect globes that glow with such warmth and vitality; shining from within; each one covered in delicate, shimmering golden hairs only visible in the sunshine. But each evening, in the gloaming, before the creeping evening shadows reach the garden gate, it’s time to pounce and pluck.  Held against the nose momentarily, the smell is heady and pungent, a green fragrance that takes me by surprise; a forgotten pleasure, an illicit aroma. Then popped whole into the mouth, thin skin bursting easily to release soft pulp and sweet juice, still warm from the sun, as if the ripening just reaches its climax in the moment of consummation. Tomatoes, any fruit or veg, have never tasted this good: impossibly delicious. Because we grew them ourselves and waited, because they’re eaten garden-fresh and sun-warm in the moment of picking, because this September’s lingering sunshine is so sweet and sumptuous? Whichever way, I'm slowly savouring each one of them while I can...