Last Tomato, First Snow

On Tuesday, I sat down on the patio in the blinding sunshine, all by myself, and ate the last homegrown tomato of the year.  I ate it on a big slab of toasted ciabatta bread from Moxie, a new bread place down the road that has THE BEST BREAD EVER.  It was slathered in olive oil and dusted with salt and pepper.

It was unfortunately just a good, not a great, tomato.  I think I should have eaten it a couple of days earlier.  It was a Mortgage Lifter, picked from my best plant of this season.  Very Excellent Husband Don thought he might have it on his veggie burger the previous evening, but I got all Chicken Little possessive and said, “I bought the plant, put it in the ground, watered it and picked the fruit.  The last one is MINE.”  (Sorry, honey. I’ll try to share better next year.)

Maybe I was a bit giddy from my last tomato lunch, but sitting out there on the patio I was stunned by the blueness of the sky against the leaves, each struggling to be the last one on the tree.

Or maybe I was mesmerized by the sky since I knew the next day I would wake up to this.

Yep.  The first snow came sneaking in during the middle of the night.  I went out to check on everyone before I went to bed and could tell they knew it was coming.  There was a restlessness, a staking out of sleeping space in what for the first time seemed like a very crowded shed.  I didn’t turn the overhead light on, relying on the glow from my lighted cap to see how everyone was situated.  Tia and Junie B. have decided the upper part of the shed is theirs in the nighttime, and the goats are adjusting.

Even though it seemed like they knew it was coming, the snow still seemed to be a shock to some.  After I let Napoleon out of his nighttime home in the garage he ran outside like he usually does, excited to give his lovin’ to the hens.  When his feet hit the snow and he did a 180° and he ran back into the garage until I shooed him out.

Brandy and Jessie braved the snow to grab a few leaves that had lost that last-one-one-the-tree competition.

Last tomato, first snow—all within less than twenty-four hours.  Whew.  But that’s one of the best things about living in Colorado.  There’s always something new right around the corner.

**Shared at Simple Saturdays, Our Simple Homestead, Homestead Hop, Maple Hill Hop, (mis)Adventures Monday and From the Farm**