This weeks Maynard's Milieu
from the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel

Happy Mother's Day!

May 7, 2008

Summer’s No
Bummer With An Early Girl

Pressure.  Come Sunday decisions are to be made that will determine the quality of life in the summer ahead.  Yes, it’s also Mother’s Day, that time of the year when we take Mom to lunch, give her a gift, say “thank you” for giving us life and then, those distractions aside, finally get on to the day’s important agenda.  Because Mother’s Day, according to the gardening intelligentsia, marks the official start of the “home grown” tomato season.  

Ain’t nothing in the world that I like better than

Bacon, lettuce and homegrown tomatoes

Up in the morning and out in the garden

Pick you a ripe one and don’t get a hard one. 

So sang Guy Clark on “Home Grown Tomatoes”, his musical salute to this oh so delicious cousin to the potato and turnip. Guy didn’t overstate the case. It’s bacon, lettuce, a slice of home grown tomato plus a sliver of avocado, all slathered in mayonnaise and crammed between two slabs of toast that causes scientists to search for the secret of eternal life on earth just on the chance heaven is devoid of this summer time delicacy. 

Put ‘em in a salad, put ‘em in a stew

You can even make your own tomato juice

Eat ‘em with eggs, eat ‘em with gravy

Eat ‘em with beans, pinto or navy 

Tomatoes are guy food.  The various hybrids even have rugged he-man type names.  Tomatoes are not a sissy plant like the thorny rose. Roses, with monikers like American Beauty, Dream Come True and Rainbow Sorbet, are so foo-foo.  Tomato hybrids man up with names like Beefsteak, Burger Master, Big Mama and Super Tasty.  Even so, there still remain politically correct landmines out there in the world of tomato selection.  Is a gender discrimination action in the works when one prefers Better Boy to Early Girl? 

Plant ‘em in the springtime—eat ‘em in the summer

All winter without ‘em is a culinary bummer 

True tomato aficionados never confuse the hothouse variety we’re forced to endure all winter long with the homegrown red orbs of goodness.  Hothouse tomatoes are “Two Buck Chuck” or Brian Griese while the homegrown goodies can only be compared to a Willamette Valley Pinot Noir or John Elway.  Sure, the hothouse varieties save us from nine months of tomato celibacy, but the thick skinned imitations with their cardboard like innards really exist only to hold the fort until the homegrown season arrives in all its glory. 

Home Grown Tomatoes, Home Grown Tomatoes,

What’d life be without homegrown tomatoes

There’s only two things that money can’t buy

And that’s true love and homegrown tomatoes. 

So this weekend is “Super” Sunday for tomato fans. In this year’s tomato draft I’m leaning toward Early Girl as my first round selection.  True, Better Boy and Gurney Girl promise better taste, I’ll pick up one of each in the later rounds, but Early Girl promises to bear fruit in just 63 days.  That means BLT sandwich city arrives July 13.  Better stock up on mayonnaise, one wouldn’t want to run short.