First fruit

I crashed into the house on Monday as I arrived home from work. Our front screen door loses its hydraulic abilities whenever the temperature rises above about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and my shoulders were loaded down with too many bags for me to bother with keeping it from banging shut.

Steve leaned around the refrigerator and peered out of the kitchen and into the living room, where I was shedding bags one by one. "Have you been out to the garden lately?"

"Not since yesterday," I said. "I didn't have time to go out there before work."

"Then come and see," he said. "There's something new."

He took my hand and led me out the back door and down the steps to the yard. "Just look," he said. "You'll see it."

I peered into the tangled thicket of tomato plants, which are now producing blossoms at a terrific rate. There, hanging at the end of a small stem on the Big Beef plant, was a harbinger of what's to come.

"It's a baby tomato!" I cooed. "We have an actual tomato!"

The tiny fruit is a long way from picking—it's on one of the two large-tomato plants—but it was a little validation that we must be doing something right.