Tomatoes are ripening on the window sill

For perhaps the first time in decades, we have tomatoes ripening on the kitchen window sill. The sight of them takes me back to my childhood, to the house where I grew up, where in the summer there were always a few tomatoes sitting on the kitchen window sill, slowly turning from firm, mottled green to bright red and succulent. Those tomatoes came from the backyard garden that was as much a part of the changing of the seasons as the extended daylight or the breath-sucking heat in the pre-air-conditioning South. Tender, young tomato plants would be dropped into small holes made by a hoe in the furrows of plowed ground. A dipper full of water would moisten the soil that would be scrunched up around the tender, green stem. In a month or two, leggy tomato plants would begin bearing their fruit, in a long row between the prickly okra and the butterbeans. The reddening fruit would be laid upon the window sill for final ripening, conveniently accessible whenever someone wanted a sandwich for lunch or a side of vegetables at supper. The extra tomatoes would be scalded, peeled and canned into Mason jars by my mother, providing tomatoes from the garden all winter long.

The three fat tomatoes on my window sill today come from cast-off tomato plants my son and his wife had no room for in their yard, so we found a couple of corners of our flower garden to plant them. Three of the four plants turned out to be cherry tomato plants, and I've gathered handfuls several times to garnish a simple salad. The fourth plant has borne heavy, sandwich-size tomatoes that have tended to burst through their skin as they ripened. We took to bringing the tomatoes inside while still green and intact so that they would ripen without bursting. It has worked and, at the same time, has reminded me of the miraculous transformation of fruit from too-green and too-firm to just right without any connection to its source of nutrition or water. Light streaming through the window (not even direct sunlight in this north-facing window) ripens and colors the tomatoes until they are ready to eat, providing one of summer's consummate pleasures — a fresh-from-the-garden tomato sandwich.