My cup, or rather, my Tupperware container, runneth over with tomatoes, bite-sized beauties that sing with summer sweetness. Even the big slicers, so heavy they bring the branches to their knees, are at least recognizable as tomato-flavored, although they can’t compete with their dainty counterparts for sugar. Best of all, I can pick all sizes daily from the overflowing plastic pots in my backyard.

I know this sounds trivial; after all, thousands, maybe millions of people grow tomatoes at home every summer. But for us it is an astounding accomplishment. Last year our four plants yielded one tomato. My husband documented this with a photo showing a red pinpoint in the center of my palm.

The secret of this year’s success was to wait until night temperatures were in the fifties and start with large plants showing off yellow blooms to hint at their real power, like weight lifters demonstrating a bicep curl.

We brought five home, lined them up in a sunny spot, and started to dig into soil that responded like concrete, which is how the typical layers of clay that we call dirt here react to a shovel. Night temperatures then dropped back into the forties. “Let’s replant them in plastic tubs,” my husband said. “They’ll stay warm and we won’t have to jackhammer the hardpan.” This approach in combination with August and September sunshine worked.

Thanks to a suggestion from a friend, every day I cut cherry tomatoes in two, slide one half onto a toothpick with a small, fresh mozzarella ball and a basil leaf and add the other half for symmetry.

Recently, I learned that tomatoes have more to offer than flavor. A report in the March 7, 2011 Science Daily says, “Eating more tomatoes and tomato products can make people healthier and decrease the risk of conditions such as cancer, osteoporosis and cardiovascular disease…” But I associate the shapes, colors, and textures of my tomatoes more with poetry than health, which is why I love “She Spoke of Tomatoes” by Judith Hougen, a delightful homage to her mother and her mother’s tomato gardening rituals. Read this on Hougen’s website, www.judithhougen.com/writing/secondThingIRemember.html and you, too, will start to think of tomatoes as “sexy,” and “gorgeous redheads.”

In a homegrown tomato you can have it all, aesthetics, nutrition and the memory of sweetness to hang onto until next summer.

Ann Oxrieder has lived in Bellevue for 35 years.  She retired after 25 years as an administrator in the Bellevue School District and now blogs about retirement at http://stillalife.wordpress.com/.