hello, Steve!

So what can I say about Steve. Steve is beautiful, Steve smells amazing, Steve makes me smile. Steve has fuzzy parts and round parts and tasty parts. Steve is my cherry tomato plant. And Steve is all the little cherry tomatoes on the plant. Ok, Jennie's lost it, you must be thinking. Yes, perhaps she has. Especially since she's referring to herself in the third person.

But back to Steve. Steve? Yes, I had a little bit of crazy and back in May when Steve started producing baby Steves, I mentioned that I wasn't going to get too attached and name each individual tomato. Not too long after that, my friend Ms. J was over and I was showing off my little tomatoes and she called them all Steve. And well, it has stuck. In my mind that particular plant and all the tomatoes on the plant are all Steve. My roma tomato plant doesn't have a name, the strawberry plants don't have names, the eggplant doesn't have a name, etc. But Steve. Well, there he is.

And when I came home, I photographed the beauty that is Steve, picked my first baby Steve, took photos of baby Steve, showed off baby Steve to Witchy who promptly decided she needed to eat baby Steve, photographed Witchy and baby Steve, and then, finally, ate baby Steve.

Eating the First Tomato of the Season feels like a sacred act to me. This is a tomato that comes from a plant that has been loved, the plant comes from a seed that came from a plant that was loved. There is a lineage of love and labor and sunshine and rain and toil and dirt and hands and bugs that have all been blessings that over time have resulted in one perfect, bite-sized, red orb.