Tiny Garden Treasures

This year my garden was a very sad little place. It began with poor planning, continued with very little care, and ended with paltry harvests (as almost always happens with gardens and anything else of any importance). BUT a happy, funny surprise: The ginormous, teeming tomato plants of two summers ago suddenly sprouted prodigy sometime in late August. Somehow seeds from those crazy plants finally germinated into the only plants who survived my neglect. And all September and half of October they were still giving me the sweetest most intense tomato-y tomatoes. I slow roasted pan-fulls of them with brown sugar lightly sprinkled across them. Then I experimented with the most awesome pasta sauces. Man, they were good. And I found that even taking a few handfuls of these little cherry tomatoes and pan roasting them with some other vegetables gave you this tiny, hot bomb of sweetness that I never would have thought of. It feels like I am exaggerating, but these tomatoes are other-worldly.

And though these poor carrots couldn't compete for my enthusiasm, they are my first crop ever of carrots which is exciting. And being Brad's favorite vegetable, he was pretty stoked with them pan roasted. He declared them most carrot-y and gave them a good raving to sort of baptize their one and only inaugural meal (-: Next year: planning garden is starting in January!