Crop comes in

The tomatoes are starting to ripen at a respectable pace. In addition to the various kinds of cherry tomatoes, I know have my first Burpee Champion II. It is indeed the heavyweight of today's batch.

I am inordinately pleased with my tomatoes just because I got the silly things to grow. I find it hard, and the tomato failures of the past two years make this year's success (so far) enjoyable.

It does make me appreciate how easy we have it with food. I can stop by the local Hy-Vee and in a few minutes put together the ingredients for a nutritious and tasty dinner with ingredients from around the world - say Salmon, asparagus, brown rice and a salad. The fresh salmon might have been caught in Alaska or off Scotland. The asparagus might be from Mexico, or California. The rice could be from the Carolinas, or maybe imported. The lettuce would probably be a variety from California.

This is a meal that would have been impossible for most families to assemble most of the time when I was little. Back then, any salmon available in the store would have been smoked or in a little can. Asparagus was available only in summer, and only locally. Brown rice? What's that? And mom could have bought any kind of lettuce she pleased, so long as it was iceberg.

And then compare it to our pioneer ancestors, who would have had to catch and clean any fish they ate, grow any vegetables they cooked, and canned any they wanted to eat off season. And the idea of "lettuce" might have been hard to explain to them.

And even great great grandpa had a huge advantage of our neolithic forebears. He at least didn't have to fashion his own fishhooks out of rocks or seashells, and he could probably buy necessaries like firearms, cooking equipment, knives, and so on.

In historical terms, life is good.