first cricket

The first cricket of the year is chirruping outside my window this evening.  According to old farmers' tales I learned while in exile in the midwest, that means 90 days from now we'll have our first frost.  In my experience, that is actually pretty accurate, give or take a few days. 

It's hard to think about frost when I'm still nursing under-watered tomatoes and wishing they would (a) grow big enough to make growing them worthwhile, and (b) ripen before sometime next year.  Meanwhile, everyone I know who gardens is inundated with baseball-bat sized zucchini.  I went to the eye doctor a couple of weeks ago, and he gave me one to take home, he said he was running out of people to give them to.  It's being one of those weird growing seasons.  I'm kind of glad I didn't bother to plant zucchini this year. 

Now, I'm in no way a gardening fanatic.  But I do love fresh tomatoes that have never seen the inside of a grocery store.  In my microclimate, across the street from the ocean, cherry tomatoes seem to fare better than larger varieties, though I had a really good crop of Romas a couple of years ago.  Problem with cherry tomatoes is, I eat them like fruit, and never get to do anything with them (like cook, or other equally innovative things).  I have a similar issue with blueberries, in fact.  They are fruit, of course, and I can easily wipe out a pint of them (especially if they are Jersey Blues) in one sitting.  So the three pints I bought last weekend didn't last long enough for me to make muffins or pancakes or anything out of them. 

Sigh.  And then in just 90 days or so, winter will be upon us (ok, so I'm exaggerating, but I'm trying to make a point here), and there won't be any tomatoes except the plastic-tasting grocery store kind, and no blueberries at all.  Does that justify guzzling them while they're still here?  Darn right it does!