Garden Variety

When I was young, we used to say something was "just a garden variety _____" ~ meaning it was plain and ordinary and not much to comment on. The phrase crossed my mind this morning just as I was eating a tiny tomato our friends had brought us from her garden. We have tomatoes this year as well, just not in the quantity she does. And suddenly I thought ~

~ Garden variety? There is Nothing plain and ordinary about a garden variety tomato. Anything from the garden is So Much Better than what we can buy in the store. We cheer when the Farmers' Market comes to town and grieve its passing every October. Dean nurses tomatoes and an occasional squash in our high altitude, even having built a cold frame to keep things warm during cold mountain nights. All of it done with love and care in order to have garden variety taste in the summer and into the fall.

I have friends at lower altitudes who have really large gardens and harvest and can and freeze in order to have that fresh, garden variety, taste all year round.

Maybe this has always been true and we started using the phrase when freezers became popular and small farms and gardens were not as popular. They were so ordinary. Today we know better. They are wonderful and the vegetables grown in them are delectable and delicious. Which may be the very good reason why calling something "garden variety" has gone out of style.