"The sun that shines through the mauve, check - patterned petals of the autumn crocuses on the front lawn ripens our tomatoes. This is the pride of our year. To have grown a row of tomato plants in the open, one with forty -eight fruit tumbling heavily down on it, and the rest with nearly as many! They are beautiful in their dripping clusters, with their musty acrid smell. It will be a race now between the September sun ripening them and the autumn frosts smiting them. Already I take off those fruits that have turned a dull yellow, that they may redden in the sheltered sun in our windows. It's so difficult to find the dividing line in one's garden between utility and beauty. If things are eatable they are supposed to be only useful, if they are flowers they must be needs be merely decorative. But our tomatoes are lovelier than most flowers and and if we only have to tell the truth we must say that we only grow vegetable marrows and scarlet runners for the beauty of their blooms. To eat they are dull, but to look at they are disturbingly lovely. On the other hand beautiful though sunflowers are, I doubt if we should always aim at having them in our garden if it were not to provide, with their ripened seeds, an autumn delicacy for the tits". ~ an extract from 'Four Hedges' by Clare Leighton.
