If you’ve ever picked up a gardening book or magazine, you’re sure to have read an article about how beneficial making compost is. Everything you read is true – compost is good for the environment, good for the soil, etc. etc. True, but, honestly, at this point, a tad boring.

But what is exciting about compost happens every year in my garden right about now – a surprise grows and ripens. One year I had huge pumpkin vines twined on the chicken fence and a ten pound pumpkin hanging two feet off of the ground. This year these tomatoes appeared. The best part of this surprise, this gift, is that I don’t remember ever buying tomatoes that look like this. But somehow, the seeds found their way into my compost, then into my asparagus bed (!) and then, ignored for the entire summer, the plants yielded these stunningly beautiful golden-striped, absolutely delicious, best tomatoes I’ve ever grown.

Anyone know what they are?