We’re nearly at the end of summer, and what a wild time it’s been.
I’m not talking floods, storms, cricket or sunburn here. I’m not even talking summertime doof-doof boom tchk.
Nope. I’m talking tomatoes.
Because I’m a poet and I can mix my metaphors whenever I like, I’ll say the tomatoes have gone bananas.
Just like a slow-mo explosion, tomatoes are suddenly everywhere.
What began in late December as a dribble of green and orange is now a flood of Ferrari red.
Before Christmas, it was a special day when a little sour green tomato arrived.
Now we have baskets and trays and tables of them — they’ve taken over the kitchen and the verandah tables, and now we’re stacking boxes in the laundry. I now have to have a yoga session before I pick tomatoes because the arms and legs need limbering up before those awkward stretches and balance points on one leg.
Yes, we’ve made jars of tomato relish and sauce. Yes, we’ve eaten them on pizzas, toast, flatbread and biscuits and in tarts and pies. Yes, we’ve eaten them at breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper.
The Chief Gardener spent two days boiling onions and green tomatoes for a chutney recipe. The subsequent aroma cauterised my nasal hairs and prompted me to enter negotiations with the Ukrainian embassy to supply weapons-grade chemicals. The Chief Gardener insists it will taste wonderful. If not, we can sell it as a crowd-control face spray.
They keep on coming. Every time one of us goes into the garden for a tomato-pick, we return with a piled basket. I now need a Santa sack.
I have considered making tomato paste as a canvas primer to paint on, a tomato juice car fuel, and a recipe involving chilli I could hand on to my grandkids as Poppy’s Bum Buster. Things could get messy.
I thought the Italians were to blame for all this. I mindlessly assumed the tomato was native to Italy and eaten by the Romans, who smothered themselves in the juice of the red love apple during Bacchanalia festivals.
How wrong was I. It was the gold-crazy Spanish who gave the tomato to Europe and then the world when the swaggering conquistador Cortes found the Aztecs munching on them in Mexico and snatched a bag to take back to King Charles V.
The sensible English, along with the suspicious French and Italians, wouldn’t eat tomatoes at first because botanists placed them in the nightshade family and considered them poisonous. But everyone was quite happy to ingest that other South American import — tobacco.
At first, Europeans used tomatoes as table decorations until some brave soul decided to taste one. When the Italians joined in, tomato recipes, along with the vine itself, went berserk.
Now, tomatoes are grown on an industrial scale and in people’s backyards across the world. However, the problem remains of what to do with excess tomatoes at the end of the season.
I plan to invite the neighbours for a Spanish tomato fight where we can spend a whole day throwing the little red balls of blood-red juice at each other as a summer tension reliever.
That’s for the really loud pool party you held the other night when you got drunk and yelled until 2am. That’s for the doof-doof and the Fleetwood Mac at 9am. That’s for the barking dog at midnight. That’s for endless lawn mowing. That’s for banging the pool noodle on the concrete to send the screaming corellas my way. And that’s for the pink crepe myrtle blossoms that blow into my pool and clog up the skimmer box.
My neighbours can then take revenge for my champagne-fuelled late afternoon guitar concerts and loud dog conversations. Perhaps they don’t grow tomatoes — but I’m a generous bloke. I’ll give them all the ammunition they want to fire back at me.