For those of you who read the title of this blog and saw my name as the author, I'm sure you're thinking I had a change of heart and now appreciate the "love apple" and all its glory. Nope. Sorry. I still don't like eating raw tomatoes. But someone in my family does. That someone is Willow, my 15-year-old beagle:
 |
| Hi, I'm Willow. I'm a tomato addict. |
Each spring, Willow gets her own tomato plant in a container on our back patio. By the end of the season, this plant is looking pretty ragged, since she sticks her face in it about 30 times a day and knocks it over all the time. When the plant blooms, her face is yellow with the pollen. She often has a faint odor of tomato. And no, it rarely fruits, since she picks off anything green in desperation to eat tomatoes. The ground of our patio is littered with green tomatoes.
In order to feed her appetite, we also plant tomatoes in our garden. Her favorites are Sungold. And my little beagle can tell when the tomatoes are ripe. They say dogs are colorblind, but not Willow. She knows when they turn orange. A few nights ago she was outside just before bedtime and she started to bark. No, she wasn't barking at neighborhood cats or rabbits--she was barking at the ripe tomatoes. She wanted to eat them.
 |
| Willow and the glory of Sungolds. |
We have a tomato plant on the back patio from a client's yard. I am trying to determine if my city water changes the growth of the plant. It also had a large green tomato on it, about the size of a softball. For some reason, we didn't think Willow cared about this tomato. She was happy stuffing her face in her own patio plant and eating the ripe Sungolds from the garden. We were wrong.
The softball-sized tomato was just starting to turn color. And that's when Willow, in the stealth of night (around 8:30pm), picked it off and ate at least half before we caught her. Willow! A partially eaten, mostly green tomato in her jaws. And she had never been happier. She was awfully proud of herself.
Honestly, I've never known a dog to be so passionate about a fruit. I could understand if the plants grow Pup-a-roni, but Willow clearly thinks that tomatoes are better than any manufactured dog treat out there. And I love her for it.
 |
| I love tomatoes! |