A sobering realization set in this week. If I were a squirrel, I would be one sorry critter.

How can it be that a creature with a brain the size of a cashew can have the sense to store enough acorns for an entire winter and I can’t even manage to freeze enough vegetables to make it through autumn?

Truth is, as much as I love gardening, I dislike preserving. On hot August days, when the garden yields great abundance, the thought of slaving away over a hot stove, blanching, peeling, packing and canning is easily banished from my mind. It’s a lot more appealing to indulge daily in the produce, eating little else but fresh cucumbers, beans and tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes.

In September, when the whole family gathers together to pull up the tomato and cucumber vines, gads of fruit are found hiding under the foliage. The children throw the over-ripe tomatoes at each other for amusement. As I’m laughing, a thought creeps into my mind, and I quickly snuff it out. But it’s too late: The thrifty Yankee in me hears the little phase whispered. The little phase that will come back to haunt me.

What a waste. Shoo, words, shoo! I don’t want to hear you.

With February dawning, that practical sentiment quickly crystallizes in my mind. Oh, to die for a homegrown frozen vegetable! To taste a crisp and tangy pickle!

What was I thinking?

With the passing of mid-winter this week, the old saying “half your wood and half your hay by Groundhog’s Day” came to mind. Half your tomatoes? Half your zucchini? Pffft!

Half of zero is zero.

In the grocery store the pasty looking tomatoes make me want to weep for my own folly.

“The tomatoes in my garden were so juicy and sweet this summer,” I say somewhat frantically to the unwitting stranger beside me. “It is such a downright sin to imply that these things belong in the same botanical family!”

She smiles graciously, and carefully moves away, eyeing me warily as I clutch the tomato like a mad woman. It occurs to me that people with no tomatoes in their freezer cannot afford to criticize grocery stock, so I slip The Thing into my cart and throughout the rest of the store chirp at my girls, “Don’t squish the tomato!” “Look out for the tomato!” “Would you PLEASE stay away from the tomato?”

A moment ago The Thing was a vile and offensive imposter of the Solanaceae family.

Now it was a sacred object to be treasured and feared.

One of my sweet little cherubs pointed out: “But Mom, you said that thing felt like cardboard. You can’t really squish cardboard.”

That little morsel of logic makes no impression what so ever on me: “DO NOT SQUISH THE TOMATO!” I repeated. “And by the way, no tomato throwing next year. OK? That’s wasteful!” A crazed woman, I make my way to the checkout to pay for my prized Thing.

Squirrels sometimes hide their acorns multiple places, so, acting on this information, when I get home I rummage through the depths of the freezer. Past the seeds stored for spring. Past the frozen fruit. Past the eight turkeys my husband purchased on his annual pre-Thanksgiving “better-load-up-while-they’re-on-sale-for-48-cents-a-pound” runs.

Fingers frozen and heart sunk to my toes, I slump beside the wood stove in utter depression.

“Hey, look on the bright side!” my husband says, attempting to revive my spirits by handing me a seed catalog that arrived in the mail. “We still have half of our turkeys!”

Pfft!

Diana George Chapin is the NEWS garden columnist. Send horticulture questions to Gardening Questions, 512 North Ridge Road, Montville 04941 or e-mail dianagc@midcoast.com. Selected questions will be answered in future columns. Include name, address and telephone number.