Annual first tomato post

There is a reason that so many garden bloggers post their first ripe tomato. It is akin to the clouds parting and a celestial ray of buttery sunshine pouring onto the garden, a heavenly host singing in the background.

Yes. It is that good.

My first ripe tomato this year was ‘Bloody Butcher’. Despite its rather base name the flavor was transcendent, still warm from the sun. The later tomatoes boast incredibly rich and complex flavors but the first tomato is incomparable after a winter of store bought tomatoes or, worse, no tomatoes.

For me it marks the real, non-calendar beginning of high summer. A seemingly endless succession of languid afternoons, thick fragranced evenings and a parade of summer crops to be enjoyed and preserved.