Tomatoes are wonderful, and along with sweet corn are the most evocative flavor of summer. Gastronomes will start hauling out their elaborate recipes, but tomatoes are still best savored by simply biting into them warm from the sun. But the tomato's fame does dishonor to a less fabled but no less abundant fruit of August, cucumbers. This is the time when three or four plants, innocently stuck into the dirt in late May, have completely carpeted one end of the garden plot and are producing green torpedoes at a pace guaranteed to exceed all human attempts to find reasonable uses for them. The squash and zucchini plants are finally shriveling in the heat, having done their part to embarrass the pessimists who think planting more than one of each is good husbandry.
Green beans are past.
Carrots and beets are done. Eggplants are feeding the Colorado beetles. Ripening corn is sweetening the raccoon's dreams. Tomatoes are here, but cucumbers are the king of the August garden and will remain so until you get fed up and rip them out with a pitchfork.