Pick and eat fresh

 

Take a small cloth shopping bag, cut each handle at one end, sew the loose ends together with some dental floss, go picking. Risa has a basket in the bottom of the bag, also not shown, gloves and a garden knife.

We have looked at twenty-to-forty-dollar garden knives in the catalogs but there's no need for them. We pick up dull stainless-steel butcher knives for a buck apiece from St. Vinnies, shorten and sharpen them on the bench grinder, paint the grips red for findability, and leave them in the garden "mailbox" to be picked up when needed as we pass by. They are a little brittle for digging up dandelion roots, but we figure that's what our "Korean plows" are for. We splurged on those but you can make them from steel-necked trowels, just put in the bench vise and bend to a ninety degree angle.

The tomatoes are Cherokee Black heirloom, they came in earlier than even the Sungolds and have good flavor.