It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Don’t be polite.
Bite in.
Pick it up with your fingers and lick the
juice that may run down your chin.
It is ready and ripe now, wherever you are.

You do not need a knife or a fork or a spoon
or plate or napkin or tablecloth.

For there is no core
or stem
or rind
or pit
or seed
or skin
to throw away.

-Eve Merriam, “How to Eat a Poem”

Sugar plums are in season, for a few short glorious weeks. My favorite weeks of the year.

It’s blackberry-picking season at local farms:

The pricker canes I kept meaning to have Jeff yank out have yielded wild raspberries.

(Every year, I forget that’s what those are. Every year, we never get around to yanking them out anyway… thank goodness. There’s nothing more satisfying than sending the kids out foraging for fresh berries to top Belgian waffles with, with a little homemade whipped cream on the side…)

And oh boy oh boy,
I’m about to have cherry tomatoes coming outta my ears.

Summer… is poetry. And I’m eating it all up.

 What foods mean summer to you?