Running Hot, Then Cold

It was so hot on Monday (100+ degrees),  all I could think about was winter. Not just the mamby-pamby winter of the West Coast either, but deep winter.  With refrigerant. 

From the freewrite that night:

Winter echoes

Eaves plip, drip into soft snowdrifts

gritty along the crest,

The creak of ice over black branches, the

tight squeak of snow compressed under red boots

portals to our discontents.

And now, four days later, it might not  break 80 degrees.  No wonder our tomatoes are going nutz. During the three day heat-blast, several of our green tomatoes were cooked right on the vine, squishy and soft and warm. Ruined and sorta gross. And many more were sunburnt, semi-circles of crisp skin along their shoulders stretched paper-thin over green pulp. Don’t know if those will ripen or are permanently wrecked. Maybe it’s time to find some green tomato recipes.

Sigh.

I should say though, that the tomatoes in the straw-and-compost sandwich bed are in the best shape. Slow, of course, just barely coming in, but tasty. Fortunately, they get some late afternoon shade, so they weren’t heat damaged.