Did your tomatoes come in this year? Yes? A bountiful crop? That’s too bad, because wastewater from cooling the giant AI data centers being built all over the country has gotten into the national aquifer, and the flesh of tomatoes is particularly adept at soaking up microplastics and neurotoxins. Best to let them rot on the vine this year, or better yet, dig a pit and bury them, just to be safe.
Kidding. None of the above is true — there is no such thing as a “national aquifer” — though at this point it feels like anything is possible, in the bad news department, after a summer of serial tornadoes, massive wildfires and nightmare glacier-melt flash floods blasting mountain towns. Plus wars in Iran, Gaza, Ukraine and probably a few places I’m forgetting.
Meanwhile the same ongoing opera buffa plays out in Washington, where paying attention to any specific jaw dropper — wait, he told a lie? — seems an act of raw naivete. I wouldn’t be surprised if the president declared a crazy trade war with our good friend Canada, slapping it with a 50% tariff that it would immediately slap back on us, then rename Lake Ontario “Lake America” in a fit of toddler pique that had people all over the world shaking their heads in a blend of amusement, pity and disgust.
Oh wait, that really happened.
Back to tomatoes. Records are spotty, but for the past five years it’s been a sorry sight at my place — hard little green spheres of shame that never ripen. To make matters worse, it’s been a perpetual tomato-palooza over at my brother’s house. He would meet me for lunch with a grin and a shopping bag filled with ripe red beauties, any one of which would have made my season. I tried to convince myself that he merely stops at a farmers market and loads up, just to stick it to me the way only a little brother can. But I know his wife is tending the garden back home, so I cannot suggest deception.
“What’s Japanese for ‘tomato shame’?” I asked. My sister-in-law is from Osaka.
“Tomato no haji,” he said.
I distracted myself by focusing on the Japanese word for tomato — tomato — which seems odd, since the fruit came to that country in the 1600s with Portuguese traders. So how did Japanese tomatoes end up tagged to an English loan word name? The short answer is: They didn’t. Both Japan and the United States borrowed the word from the same source. Tomatoes are thought to have originated in South America, probably Ecuador or Peru, then found their way to the future Mexico, where the Aztecs named them tomatl — kind of cool that, magically transported to Tenochtitlan in 1400 and hungry after a morning building pyramids, you could ask for a fresh tomato and have a reasonable expectation of getting one.
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I was forced to give up on growing tomatoes in Rogers Park, as it's the squirrel capitol of Chicago & those rotten, useless rats with bushy tails would take one bite out of each ripe tomato, thus ruining it!
ReplyDeleteThe only good squirrel is a dead squirrel!
The squirrel plague is in Ravenswood too. I hope they choke on the one bite they also take out of my tomatoes....
DeleteThe phone company repairman who had to replace my entire phone line years ago told me they replace more lines in Rogers Park than any other neighborhood in the city due to the rotten useless rats with bushy tails eating them up!
DeleteWe had some nice person poisoning them years ago, but it do any difference. I had a neighbor that trapped hundreds of them & released several miles away & that didn't make any difference either.
I had a few come down my chimney into the basement through the open draft diverter on top of the heating boiler, until & completely covered it in half inch rat mesh. I have a video of one running around in circles trapped there. it either managed to get back to the bottom of the chimney & died there or was cooked when the boiler turned on. Some day I will open the clean out & see how many bones are there of other rats with bushy tails that fell down the chimney!
Are they gray, brown, or black squirrels? The black squirrels seem to proliferate like...well...rabbits, and they drive out the gray and the brown ones. No, this is not some racist joke...it's exactly what has happened here.
DeleteI'm typing these words 42 miles from the campus of Kent State, which was known for its black squirrel population, decades before it became infamous for Four Dead in O-hi-O. Somebody brought some black squirrels down from Toronto, which is the only other place I have ever seen them in great numbers. They took over the campus, and then the whole town.
Apparently, they migrated north and west over time. A number of years ago, a few began showing up in my Cleveland neighborhood. First a handful, then more and more, and now they totally dominate. They have pushed out the browns and the grays.
They must eat all the food...and the tomatoes, because they are sleek and fat, while the other colors look bedraggled and skinny. And yes, there have been "there-goes the neighborhood" memes and cartoons, because of the color of their fur.
Any creature that is black has a hard time. Black dogs are shunned in Asia, and are sometimes used for food. Black cats in the U.S. and the U.K. are the last to be adopted. And of course, a lot of insects are black, but they would probably be despised if they were green, pink, or purple.
same here on the squirrel nibbling
ReplyDeleteMr. S: Off topic/ you've often mentioned your Mom's ancestral roots, what of your dad's ancestors? Hope they were here a longer time and not caught up in the Holocaust. Was he of Polish roots too?
ReplyDeleteNo. His father was born in the Bronx and, honestly, my father never spoke of his grandparents. His mother was born, I think, in Austro-Hungary and came here before World War I.
Deletethanks for the reply
DeleteIn those days A-H, covered what would later be Yuguslavia and Czech, too, etc. , as you know.
So you might be part that or regular Austrian or Hungarian.
Yugoslavia.
DeleteCritters made growing a vegetable garden impossible for me, but I missed the tomatoes. This year, I put pots of tomatoes on the top step of my back porch and it worked! I am finally harvesting cherry tomatoes. We've got chipmunks, rabbits, possum, deer and squirrels here. Some meadow voles and house mice, but no rats. I am going to try to construct an elevated planter in the narrow space between my house and driveway next year, to expand my opportunities.
ReplyDeleteTonight I'm making a Cherry Tomato Tart. It's a recipe I found in the SunTimes Taste section (Lynda Balslev, Aug 25, 2021) and it's become a family favorite as well as one of the most frequently shared of all my recipes. Tomatoes are halved and roasted on a puff pastry sheet with Gruyère, Parmesan, thyme and oregano. The results far exceed the effort, in terms of presentation as well as taste.
Sounds like you need better plants to start with, Neil.
ReplyDeleteYes, Miracle-Gro is wonderful. Organic gardening is virtuous and great, but if you want basketsful of beautiful produce, it's the only way to go.
ReplyDeleteAs far as ancestry, I knew very little about my family history till I did a DNA test. I found cousins of all colors and religions, far outside of my insular group. I also determined that contrary to my suspicions, I was not a foundling.
Miracle Grow is very good.
DeleteMy grandfather planted only tomatoes six or eight of them right across the front of the garage in the backyard.
ReplyDeleteHe would eat them like apples and man we had a lot of them that's where my love of the tomato came from and man I really love them nothing like fresh off The Vine various varieties little salt man heaven
There were good years and bad years with the harvest but he seemed to know how to nurse them through and we always got some tomatoes sometimes they weren't as delicious I'm not sure about soil pH or what kind of nutritions to put on them but this year ours came pretty good as well but they weren't bad last year so various factors the skill of the gardener the variety the weather it's a roll of the dice.
Nightshades aren't for everybody.
ReplyDeleteyes, I like eating them like apples too on the big ones or the cherries, pop them like candy
ReplyDeletethat's from ABC World news on the previous comment
ReplyDelete