Green Tomatoes...

My tomato plants are growing. Tumblers; planted from seed, nurtured on the kitchen worktop, planted out in sturdy plastic troughs troughs, and kept in a cloche until the weather warmed a little. They’re outside now, lifted to the light on a thick strong wooden plank, up against the heat retaining back brick wall, and just beginning to make little green tomatoes. I always grow tumblers; they produce such small sweet fruits, but it isn’t the fruit I grow tomatoes for really – it’s the smell.

Tomato plants smell so green. I love to gather up the leaves in my hands, hold my hands to my face, and breathe in the lusciousness of the rich, clean aroma. If I were a man prone to having imaginings then that smell could take me anywhere – the Amazon Rainforest, a summer’s meadow after gentle rain, a lush fern-lined pool deep in an evening wood. What a smell my tomatoes have, it makes me giddy, it makes me smile – and yes, they are just tomato plants; nothing added, nothing else, simply the smell of greenness.