Last night after processing the above mountain of tomatoes with a proportional ratio of raw garlic, I went to yoga.

I shook hands with the yoga teacher, whom I had never met, and spotted the woman next to me through various poses as she did me. It wasn't until about mid-way through the practice as I began to glow from exertion that I realized my hands smelled pungently and distinctively of raw garlic. Like I had been ingesting the stuff whole for weeks.

As the teacher twisted me into a broken facsimile of full pigeon, I kept thinking, he's going to forever think of me as Stinking Rose.

I spent a good part of July cussing out the tomatoes, convinced I was going to have to pay people to take my jars of green tomato pickle relish (like I know from green tomato pickle relish).

Happily, our reticent fruit decided to ripen up and today we are burdened with so many plump, red tomatoes that it's a tad overwhelming.

"It's too bad it all comes at once," Mitch said.

"Yeah," I agreed. "Too bad Mother Nature doesn't check our calendars."

Monday we had gazpacho (sans the weird egg business described in this recipe). Yesterday, apple/rhubarb cobbler from produce Mitch scored in Westcliffe. Today, Pappa al Pomodoro Soup (has the added benefit of using up some of our fresh basil and sage). Tomorrow, more spaghetti sauce and another rhubarb thing (open to any and all suggestions). Friday, maybe a nice caprese salad?

We're scrambling to keep up with our slow food!

They are a perverse lot, tomatoes. One minute you're shouting at them to ripen up, the next you're begging people to take them before they decompose into pools of red gore.

This week faced with a basket of soggy beauties, I decided to make spaghetti sauce. But being mid-week and and lacking the fortitude to blanche, peel and seed tomotoes, here's what I did:

Recipe--Peels-and-all Spaghetti Sauce

1 dozen fresh tomatoes, cored and halved

5 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

1 onion, chopped

1/4 cup olive oil

Red pepper flakes, a healthy pinch

1/2 cup chopped, fresh basil

3-4 Tbs of tomato paste

Salt to taste

Directions: Sautee garlic and onion in olive oil until translucent. Add red pepper flakes. Turn heat down to low and add tomatoes. Stew for about an hour, leaving the pot uncovered to allow sauce to reduce. Stir in basil and tomato paste. Grind to bloody pulp with an immersion blender.

Bon appetit!

Sometimes when we hike, I try to think of new ways to describe what we're seeing. For example, how do you paint a picture in words of quaking aspen leaves that fits but isn't cliche?

Aspen leaves are like the coins on a belly dancer's belt? Uh, no.

The vellum sound of aspen leaves, trembling? Better.

Shimmy shimmy shake shake? You see where I'm going.

But how would you describe the taste of a tomato? A good one?

OK? Ready, set, go!

Diener heirloom tomato

At last!

Yesterday I read on the Internets (so take this with a grain of salt) that you can speed tomato ripening by pinching off new flowers. While this curtails additional fruit production, it apparently gives the plant the boost it needs to ripen fruit. Since the heirlooms have become the locus of my anger management strategy, I happily snapped off their pretty flowers.

"Take that, you Jolly Green Giant, you producer of tough, meconium-colored fruit." And that!"

Snap. "You bearer of baseballs, You grower of smug, organic relish. Come fall you'll be compost!" Snap.

Anyway, made me feel better.

Above, you'll see a plant in total compliance. It's impossible to capture the sheer size of this acorn squash, which now threatens to invade the front yard. It's producing perfect curcurbits at an impressive rate. This is a plant, which knows how to please.

We're dreaming of warm squash soups and satisfying purees, though there's nothing like a piping hot, butter-and-maple-syrup-baked squash with a splash of bourbon.

Except a warm-from-the-garden tomato freckled with pepper.

Cherokee Purple Pole Tomatoes

Because this is Colorado, we spend the year eating California tomatoes that taste like wallpaper paste, wet, pink and mealy. So it is with great hope, anticipation and faith in the future that we plant tomatoes hoping to stack our sandwiches and punctuate our salads with the warm, salty taste of homegrown fruit.

We have enjoyed a blissful summer. Our neighborhood mercifully escaped the shredding hail that made coleslaw of my mother's roses and hammered farms and gardens across the Front Range. Mornings have been so temperate and cool that I don a sweatshirt most days to chase the morning chill. Rain has fallen regularly and like a benediction, fattening our yellow squash and prompting unprecented production from the usually recalcitrant basil plants.

But the tomatoes...our Roma's leaves have withered and yellowed as it squeezes out its sparse, small offerings. The slicers--finally--are trending a wan red. Tomatoes hang everywhere, like fat green moons, taunting us with their firm, verdant flesh.

The heirlooms are particularly egregious. All giant and viney and self-righteous, started as seeds by a neighbor, so ultra local and organic...and green!

Look at them. The Cherokee Purple Pole, Diener and Amy's Sugar Gem. They look like they're smiling, their round, olive faces mocking Mitch's efforts not to water too much or too little, to tether their wildness to stakes, allowing just that much new light to touch their shiny flanks.

Jerks.

Meanwhile, we wait.