Cheap Airfare Ticket - Summer Harvest

Warm fruit, sweet, i bite again and my mouth is filled with glorious. A taster of bounty, a nibbler, i am a forager. But she knows that my duties in the garden will take a little longer than expected, mawmaw is waiting for the green beans I am to pick for lunch. I taste sunshine, luscious orb, juice runs down my chin and within the core of this plump. I bite deeply, red and round, ripe.

Smiling and shaking her head, " she cries. "Youngin' you eat more 'an you pick!

They fill a plate, slices so large, creamy Golden Yellow; delicious, beautiful, sweet golden streaked German Stripe, meaty Beefsteak, mawmaw will slice them and put them on a platter and we will feast upon large. Fat and juicy, they are warm and bursting. I choose a few extras and place them in my basket.

I close my eyes and eat more slowly - savoring. Bacon fat, un-ripened tomato, pepper, salt, but sweetness comes through as tongue and palate work in harmony to wrest from each morsel every nuance of taste: corn meal, they are a little bitter at first bite. Of fresh air, of red, they fill my mouth with the taste of green. I crunch into warm juice-filled ambrosia. Prepared as a surprise, fried green tomatoes. I question with raised eyebrows and dig in. Gives me a wink and passes a plate filled with golden fried circles, pawpaw says the blessing. We sit and join hands.

Soon dinner will be ready. I listen with rapt attention. Mawmaw talks about food and its preparation. I like these times of intimacy. We sit in the metal rockers beneath the ancient oak tree and shuck the corn. And platters piled high with vine-ripened tomatoes, biscuits and jam, leftover ham, gravy, mashed potatoes, i have picked corn for the evening meal of fried chicken. Evening approaches.

Onion and olive oil, garlic, rosemary, with diced tomatoes, which my son prefers during the week, or a lighter sauce, garlic and wine, basil, flavors of oregano, neither sweet nor bitter; hearty, i pass on this legacy to my husband and son with "Mama Spaghetti" made with my own tomato sauce: slightly spicy and rich.

Joined hands around the kitchen table -- repletion -- redemption, the promise of large platters of delectable fruit, surrounded by the smell of green, they remind me of hot summer days in the garden. Preparing vegetables and sipping iced tea. . . Squeak of the chair as Mawmaw takes her only ease of the day, squeak, the squeak. Of creaking metal rockers rusting on a leaf dappled yard, of sunshine, today tomatoes remind me of summer.