Daunting Pictures of Tomatoes

Have you seen them? Those pictures of tomatoes that they have in the glossy gardening catalog? They are so luscious and red, not a fleck of dirt, not an indentation of birds feet to be seen. Perfect in size and color the vegetable pictures in magazines almost scare me away from gardening rather than inspiring me into planting a garden! The photos of neatly trussed up tomato vines all tied in the correct places so that the little bunches of tomatoes hang perfectly balanced, don’t have much resemblance to the picture my tomato plants make!

I have to wonder about the photos, the perfect picture of the perfect tomato. How were they grown? Were they grown in normal soil? Was normal liquid fertilizer from the garden supplies store used, or something more chemically based to ensure a bumper crop of tomatoes as proudly displayed in the gardening magazine photos? Perhaps the photos are airbrushed making the tomatoes into garden supermodels!

My Real Tomato Picture

It’s already late summer and the sun hasn’t been kind to my tomato plants. I’m desperate for sunshine to ripen them into the glossy red shown in the photos in my seed catalogs. Leaves hang limp, not strong enough to stand up and tower above the other vegetables in the vegetable patch. The tomatoes are just starting to peek out from their yellow flower frame – green baby tomatoes, not yet ready for the world. Slowly, I watch as the fledgling tomatoes emerge and present themselves. My camera takes picture after picture recording their progress as the tomatoes turn red. Actually they turn a kind of red, more orange than red really.

My tomatoes will never measure up to the photos in the magazines, but they do taste just as a tomato should!

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