One of the delights and rewards of gardening is garden gluttony eating fruits and vegetables straight from the bush or vine. The cherry tomatoes I ate by the handful today were warm from the sun and sweet as candy. Earlier in the summer I pigged out on raspberries that went right from the bushes into my mouth, again warm and sweet.

I just returned from a visit to another garden where fall raspberries were just ripening again straight into the mouth. In fact this is the moment when I realized new meaning for the expression “hand to mouth.” In this case, hardly poverty and subsistence, but luxury and indulgence.

It’s difficult to choose the most prized “hand to mouth” food in the garden gluttony menu; blueberries are right up there. But homegrown peas eaten from the pods in early summer are a true delicacy, too. They are less common, as few people bother with the fuss of growing them. I grow them mostly to eat in the garden, a reward to keep me at the tedious gardening chores.

Growing up in the fruit belt along Lake Ontario north of Niagara Falls, I remember climbing the sweet cherry tree out back with my younger brothers, where we would balance precariously to reach to the furthest branches for the prized cherries before the birds got them. I’m sure my mother allowed this wonderful adventure because she realized it was easier than picking them herself. She also taught us how to pop the grapes into our mouths by pinching and slipping the skins off the Niagara and Concord grapes, leaving a trail of skins on the ground next to the vines. Again she put no limits on quantity consumed!

But things got even better. When I was about seven, Dad left his job as an Extension Agent and became a fruit farmer. The immediate and most obvious change was the introduction of a pick-up truck in our driveway (we didn’t move to the farm). We got to ride in the back!

Bushels of fruit came home in the truck. I can remember the peaches huge, fuzzy, brightly colored and juicy. Again no limit, except I remember the fuzz being irritating. Mother laid creamy, luscious pears out on newspapers in the basement to ripen. And then the apples arrived, so many kinds we hardly got excited. Mother made every apple dessert imaginable.

But in addition to the fruit there was a corn garden. During the season, Dad brought corn home every night and Mom presented huge, steaming platters to us five children. My two older teenage brothers had appropriate teen appetites and now I appreciate how relieved Mom was that she could fill them up on corn. I think I can remember dinners when that was all we ate, along with platters of tomatoes. Who needed meat and potatoes!

All this abundance and bounty wasn’t quite as wonderful for my mother who canned enough produce to feed the family all winter. Peaches ripen during the hottest days of August. We knew enough to stay out of the way when the canning days were in progress a hot, horrible job. The kitchen looked like a steam bath! Grandma sometimes came from far away to help. But Mom seemed proud of all the jars of peaches, pears, and tomatoes stashed away in the “canning closet” in the basement.

When we asked her what Labor Day was all about, we got the line about how that was just a contrived day of luxury for people who didn’t really work. Dad and my older brothers spent Labor Day at the farm harvesting peaches. That work didn’t look so bad to me my brother got to drive in the trailer loads of peaches.

One year we three little kids were taken to the farm during sour cherry picking a day off for Mom. Dad plunked us by a loaded cherry tree with branches drooping to the ground, and he showed us how to pull off the clusters of juicy red cherries he said something about picking clean and not leaving any and was gone. In no time it was obvious that this wasn’t fun. Sour cherries aren’t great eating from the tree. Furthermore the cherry juice was sticky and got all over our hands. Then it began running down our elbows...ugh!  We probably lasted an hour or so, but it seemed like a very long morning. I think we were taken down to the lake to swim and clean up at noon.

Back in the old days while we practiced hand-to-mouth garden gluttony, we were playing hard all summer long, and all of us were skinny from the non-stop exercise and stuffing ourselves with fresh from the vine fruits and vegetables.

By Anne Krantz, Tree Steward & Master Gardener