my favorite time of the year

you can have santa claus. i’ll take tomato season. the most wonderful time of the year.

tomatoes

never gets old

i’m a latecomer to smoke bush. i’m sure it has been around forever, but it was only brought to my attention a couple of years ago. and as i have mentioned, it was love at first sight. now i know where every smoke bush is within a 10-mile radius of my home. like its cousin sumac, it changes almost daily from now through october. but it’s in its prettiest phase right now. pale pink and aubergine.i know the exact coordinates of this one. i’m not telling.

smoke bush in august

zaftig

as the daughter of a romanian immigrant, i was used to hearing a smattering of foreign words thrown into the chatter at holidays and family gatherings. we ate colac, egg bread, and sarma, stuffed cabbage rolls, and disappointed grandmothers proclaimed, “you hurt me to my heart.” as a result, i have often felt the most comfortable among the families of my jewish friends, who kvell and kvetch, and who would declare this full-figured, womanly, succulent dahlia as admirably zaftig.

giant dahlia

the unbearable beauty of radishes

twenty images into this fruit and vegetable series, it was an unexpected but delightful surprise to discover that the lowly radish is capable of transporting me with its modest and asymmetrical beauty.

radish

v.7

the very first version of this i fell in love. i knew cucumbers were going to be one of my favorites. but it wasn’t quite right. then we removed some of the curled slices. then we removed some of the round slices. then we varied the thicknesses. then we added some peel but it was too dark. then we removed the peel but it was too bare. then we added a thin pickle-shaped slice angled across the middle. then we scootched a few pieces closer to the center. then it was just a little bit better than v.1. worth it? totally.

cucumber