And so... it begins.

This evening, I had the first "real" harvest of tomatoes. Still not many but more than we could eat in one sitting. Behold!

Here they are in all their glory.

(sorry the color is a bit weird)

Varieties making an appearance this evening. Roughly left to right:

Mortgage lifter (heirloom)

Yellow Cherry

Amish Paste (heirloom)

Campbell's super secret- our fun tomatoes with a story from last year

Black Sea Man (heirloom)

Jaune Flamme (heirloom- I got seeds from a seed saving workshop last fall)

Jetsonic (hybrid)

In front of the Black Sea man is a tiny red tomato that is from a volunteer plant. I'm not sure what it is. Oh, and there are a few peppers that were sauteed for our evening burritos.

Not yet making an appearance on our plates: Amana Orange, Polish Linguisa and Black Krim

Spaz checks out the new produce.

Moments later, a cherry tomato became a toy before I was mean and took it away.

Black Sea Man

Isn't that the coolest tomato you've ever seen?!!!

It's kind of funny. I've been watching them and saying to myself- man, those are taking a long time to ripen. Then I had the "duh!" moment when I realized that they were the black tomatoes and wouldn't turn all red. Boy, didn't I feel dumb! And a bonus- not only do they look fantastic, they taste just as good. Mmmm.... Definitely a keeper.

Those and the Jaune Flamme... they are really tasty!

In other news, I finally made our cabin reservations for our vacation. We will be spending a few days in Branson, MO. visiting the Silver Dollar City amusement park. Our friend Mike works there and gave us tickets when he visited us early in the year so we thought we would take advantage of them. The children have all been asking about going so we decided to have one last fling before school starts. We will be staying in a log cabin at a campground associated with the park. Don't worry, we won't be roughing it too much. We've been there before. It is a fully furnished loft cabin with a kitchen, gas grill, fireplace and a jacuzzi. Oh, the hardship. We have figured out that it isn't really that much more expensive than getting two hotel rooms each night and we end up saving money because we can cook two meals there so only have to eat lunch at the park. Another bonus is that there is a free shuttle bus that runs from the campground to the park so we don't have to mess with traffic and parking. Plus, Mike can join us at the cabin after he gets off work and have dinner with us. It's a nice chance to catch up with him and free tickets into the park are definitely worth feeding him dinner a few nights.