Self-Portrait Friday...

The garden has been very generous with tomatoes this year. It seems like every day there's a bushel ready to be picked. I'm constantly thinking of all the different things that I can make with these vine-ripened, carnelian jewels.

I fell asleep after a picking session earlier this week. The smell of the tomato plants was still heavy on my hands. As I drifted off into dreamland, memories began to surface. I remembered my grandmother's garden behind the big white house. James (my cousin) and I would steal the Tupperware saltshaker, the plastic yellowing from age and the blue letters worn away by use. We would hide in between the rusted metal structures holding up the fuzzy-leafed tomato plants. We'd pick tomatoes right off the plants and enjoy them with a sprinkle of salt. This was the taste of summer.

Memory soon gave way to fantasy...

Suddenly, the plants began to sprout their canary-colored blossoms by the hundreds and within the span of seconds, began to develop fruit. Each plant began to bubble with more and more green knobs that swelled and reddened as I looked. Soon the garden was flooded with a sea of red-orange orbs. The tomatoes multiplied beneath me without end. I looked around, but my cousin was missing and I was alone, atop the pile. Still the tomatoes abounded exponentially. The big white house seemed so small and was swallowed up by this ocean of produce. I noticed that I was no longer the child of my memories, but the adult I am today... still holding on to that old saltshaker.