November Tomatoes and Tea

In the middle of the summer, George and the children cut the tops off of dying tomato plants and put them in jars of water to root. The table stayed busy hosting rooting tomato plants. When one set was ready, they planted them back into the ground, cut more and tops and kept going. 

 The story goes deeper than rooting tomato plants. When we were at UGA, George collected heirloom brandywine tomato seeds from an ethnobotanist. We grew them and lost a ton of those starts to neglect, chickens, weather, etc. We planted the last of the seeds only to watch the plants wither through the summer from the heat and nasty pests.

 The transplanting worked and huge green tomatoes appeared in September. By the end of October we were harvesting tomatoes and saving seeds. We've been eating fresh tomato sandwiches for lunch in mid November! Amelia gathered the last of the green ones before the frost and we keep vigilant hoping they will turn red. We've a good batch of seeds now and hope they will come full circle in the spring.

And when the afternoon chill settles and the fire is cracking, we all stop to rest and read and respond to slowing down to the cooler tempo November brought to us. I stumbled across this lovely tea at Trader Joes. It will be this year's smell and taste and memory of the holiday we spent waiting for baby.