The beauty of the first big harvest (even if it comes at least a month late due to weird 2011 weather!):

Even in a bad year, home-grown heirloom tomatoes are overwhelming in September:

Tomatoes are my favorite food, so many of my Summer meals look like this:

And when the harvests start to decline, it isn’t even all that sad:

Eventually, the summer garden plants need to be removed to make way for the winter garden. Ideally, I get a chance to do it before the first frost when there are still green tomatoes. This year, the last harvest of the summer was the week before Thanksgiving.

This is what happens when a Southerner marries a Californian with a garden (fried green tomatoes aren’t a side, they’re the main attraction in a dinner salad!).

And, of course, I pickled most of the green tomatoes for later enjoyment.

Last night, December 1st, we ate the very last of the ripe tomatoes from the Summer garden (stored in the fridge after the last harvest).

And now, it’s nothing but leafy greens, brassicas, and making our way through the winter squash ’til next summer.