I mostly throw them into salads, but I have been known to stand at the kitchen counter, storage container of harvested seeds in one hand, spoon in the other, and just shovel them straight into my mouth. It’s not every day that one has the opportunity to take an action that is simultaneously so decadent…and so healthy.

For lunch today, for example, I tossed a couple of handfuls of baby spinach leaves with garbanzos I’d cooked earlier in the week, leftover roast chicken, and a shocking number of pomegranate seeds. I drizzled sherry vinegar and really good olive oil over the top, hit the mixture with some sea salt, and even eating at my desk felt extravagant. Every single bite included at least one pomegranate seed, and it was delicious.

Pomegranates can be intimidating. I hadn’t tried to open one before moving to California, but this fruit can totally be conquered. I’ll direct you over to a post I wrote this week for BlogHer, which features not only links to some great, photo-heavy tutorials, and some solid recipe links, too.

The time is short, folks. Get your pomegranate on before the season ends!

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• Bring the salad

But I have a bowl of heirlooms on my kitchen counter right now, because it’s July, and even if Bay Area weather is gloomy and ever-so-non-summerlike, it’s still tomato season just on the other side of the Oakland Hills. And even when I’m not eating tomatoes, I sure do think an awful lot about them.

Though I know this information isn’t going to be helpful to those of you who don’t live within striking distance of San Francisco, I wanted to invite you to join me at an event where everyone will be thinking a lot about tomatoes: About the labor rights issues around the growing of those tasteless balls of cardboard you find in most grocery stores, about research on tomato varietals happening at the University of California, Davis, and about heirloom varieties grown in this area of the country.

It’s the July 26 edition of Kitchen Table Talks, which are held once a month to talk about issues related to our U.S. food system. Registration for the event opens this morning, and it’ll be held at Viracocha, at 998 Valencia Street at 21^st Street, in San Francisco. Doors open at 6:30 pm (and there will be food! And wine!), and the discussion begins at 7 p.m.

Hope to see some familiar faces there, and if I haven’t met you but you spot me in the crowd, come say hello! I’m always excited to meet a few more of my kindred tomato spirits.

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You might think I’m talking about the change in seasons, but the problem has nothing to do with the rotation of the Earth around the Sun. No, no. This is closer to the kind of problem I might have been able to avoid had I the right set of gardening skills.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed the tomato plants were no longer just browning from the bottom up, as they have been for most of the season. In fact, they were also developing spots. Mildewy, fuzzy spots on almost every leaf.

For a moment, I despaired. This was, in fact, before I’d managed to even get a single tomato to ripen, so I had this flash-forward to pulling out all the plants, no harvest whatsoever, which would also mean, so far this summer, absolutely no harvest from this container garden at all. I’m still rolling with stunted basil and sage, after all, and scrawny single baby lettuce leaves barely worth watering, much less eating.

This, I must say, is not my most successful gardening season ever.

But then I decided to just wait it out. I’m sure there’s some kind of remedy for the blight on the plants. There probably is something I could have done in advance to avoid it (and I’d love suggestions if you’ve got ‘em). But at this point, I’m pretty much focused on just keeping each plant alive long enough to harvest at least one tomato off each plant. I’ve had success with one, there’s a nearly-ripe tomato on another, and there are green tomatoes on the third and fourth.

And when I’ve gotten what I can off the plants, I’m going to tear them out and start over, this time with an eye toward what actually grows in this strange, strange climate out here.

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This wouldn’t ordinarily be a big deal. After all, it is still tomato season in California. I’ve been breakfasting on tomatoes since they showed up at the markets this year. In fact, this time of year, it’s not odd in the slightest for me to have more tomatoes on hand than I could possibly eat before they burst, ripely, in the bowls where Fatemeh and I store them.

But these? These were the first two tomatoes off my plants in the wine barrels.

No, really. The first two tomatoes I managed to half-assedly nurture to health in California. It was a momentous occasion, people. In fact, it was, perhaps, the best possible way to kick off a Monday.

Were they the best-flavored tomatoes I’ve ever eaten? No, they were not. They tasted like they’d been stressed throughout their growing season, as they have been. And they were awfully runty. But you know what? All things considered, they were pretty damn good.

It seems only fitting that I’m writing this post on my apartment patio, sitting with my feet propped up next to the card table that served as my back porch table for so long in Iowa City. It’s a warm, summery night here, which has been a long time coming after an unusually foggy summer. I think I just got a mosquito bite or three. And I’ve got a glass of Templeton Rye on the table next to me. There’s much the same in this scenario as two and a half years ago, and yet, there’s so much that has changed.

So, sure. Maybe I didn’t have tomatoes in July like I would have had in Iowa. But sometimes? Even if it requires a wait, life gives you exactly what you need, just when you’re meant to get it.

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But getting ready to attend Burning Man requires a lot of attention to detail, which meant I paid essentially zero attention to the tomatoes, and then headed out to Black Rock City without dealing with the heavy branch.

When I returned, though, the branch was fine. A little stressed, but fine. So I continued with the laissez faire approach, until a few days after I’d gotten home.

That evening, I came home from work to find the branch drooping even more precariously than usual. And of course, it was in no position to stake it.

String, I thought. I need to find some string to tie it to the stake.

I began tearing through our apartment like I was being chased, searching drawers and closets for anything resembling string. I checked my wrapping paper stash for ribbon. I considered dental floss.

And then I pulled open the drawer where I keep every extra button that has ever come with any item of clothing that I have ever bought. They’re all nicely organized in a zippered plastic bag, but do I actually ever sew buttons onto clothes? No, no I don’t. Instead, I collect them in a hidden museum of Outfits I Have Known.

But in the bag was a smaller bag with a coiled chenille thread, apparently once the backup thread for a sweater that has long gone to Goodwill. String!

And this is how my tomato plant got outfitted in chenille. Don’t ever tell me my plants can’t make a fashion statement.

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Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

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Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

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The plants look better than they did. There are still yellow leaves, but not nearly as many as before. The basil has started growing again. And the bean plants have started putting out a couple of runners.

But everything still looks sickly and sad, and though I have myriad yellow blossoms, there are no tomatoes fruiting yet. In fact, there are a few yellow blossoms that have taken suicidal dives into the sand below the pots.

This is not how I define success.

I have some excellent ideas on how to remedy the situation from a certain tomato doyenne in Tennessee, but haven’t made to any store that sells the right stuff (including a garden spray bottle) to actually try out said remedy. That’s going to have to wait until next week, for any number of reasons, many of them starting with B and ending with LogHer. I’m spending the rest of the week and weekend in New York City, slinging back martinis with the rest of the Lady-based Blogerati, and doing very little thinking about gardening and yellowing plants.

But when I return, I have to buckle down and figure this out. Now that I’ve tackled the water deficiency, it is clear to me that something else is missing, and that something else is, most likely, some sort of plant nutrient.

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The Cottage Industrialist’s monthly calendar highlights seasonal produce and recipe ideas to put those seasonal fruits and vegetables to their best use. And best of all? It’s a free download. Just find yourself a color printer and start putting these whimsical pages to use.

Only January through June is available right now, but the rest of the year should be posted soon. So go! Download!

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Gardeners, plant and nature lovers can join in Green Thumb Sunday every week. Visit As the Garden Grows for more information.

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