Guy Clark Tribute Post

Well, there ain't nothin' in the world that I like better
Than bacon and lettuce and homegrown tomatoes

Up in the mornin', out in the garden

Get you a ripe one, hey, don't get a hard one

August 19th means it's practically September.  Where do the days go?

Big kids start school around these parts in a week's time, and, sadly, tomato season has just about passed us by.

Back in June (when life seemed a little less hectic than it has in the last 6 weeks or so - more on that soon), Piercy Joye and I were checking our vegetable garden regularly for produce in the mornings.

Plant 'em in the spring, eat 'em in the summer
All winter with out 'em's a culinary bummer
I forget all about the sweatin' and diggin'
Everytime I go out and pick me a big one

We planted far too many tomato plants this spring, and paid for it by having a vegetable garden so jungly that it was hard to harvest the crop we produced.  We had mortgage lifters, cherries, romas, heirlooms, and a couple other varieties among our always prosperous and varied pepper plants.

Now you can go out to eat and that's for sure
But it's nothin' a homegrown tomato won't cure
Put 'em in a salad, put 'em in a stew
You make your very own tomato juice

Most mornings, after enjoying some of these luscious tomatoes with our daily scrambled eggs (yes... every morning we eat eggs, you're welcome egg farmers of America, I have conditioned our child to be completely unsatisfied by a continental-style breakfast) we would head out back to check on the tomatoes, to see which had ripened up nicely for us.

You can eat 'em with eggs, eat 'em with gravy
Eat 'em with beans, pinto or navy
Put 'em on the side, put 'em in the middle
Put a homegrown tomato on a hotcake griddle

Who, however, can resist the sweetest homegrown snack in all of God's creation?  Not this girl, or her mother for that matter!  We would be lucky to make it in the house with any tomatoes at all.

If I's to change this life I lead
I'd be Johnny Tomato Seed
'Cause I know what this country needs
Homegrown tomatoes in every yard you see, yeah

Last week Greg picked what was to be the final collection from our tomato plants, and as soon as Piercy Joye saw that basket, she let out a shriek, dove right in, and came up smacking on a bright red cherry tomato.

When I die, don't bury me
In a box in a cemetary
Out in the garden would be much better
And I could be pushin' up homegrown tomatoes

Until next spring, tomatoes, we love you!

Homegrown tomatoes, homegrown tomatoes
What'd life be without homegrown tomatoes
Only two things that money can't buy
And that's true love and homegrown tomatoes