This is a frenzied time of year. Trucks heaped with grapes barrel down the highway, coworkers lug garden surplus into the office for sharing.

Yes, the earth is bountiful in splashy ways, but let’s not forget those for whom the harvest is writ small. I speak of the man who wanders into his garden after work and emerges with no more than a dozen cherry tomatoes and a handful of raspberries.

That man would be me.

While my harvest is a modest thing, it’s a smashing success compared to the many years when our tomatoes consistently failed to thrive.

Theories abound. Too much shade. Too many repeat plantings on the same soil.

This year, Cheryl had enough. She relocated the tomatoes to a sunny but desolate patch of dirt that had always given the appearance of being unsuitable for anything but succulents.

She rerigged the drip irrigation, bringing water to the Sahara, and made sure to fertilize.

Her efforts made a huge difference. Only two of six plants immediately withered and died. Two others seemingly grew fine, but produced next to nothing. A fifth yielded a decent number of red cherries, but the flavor wasn’t the best.

That left us with one spectacular plant, a yellow cherry whose golden orbs explode with sweetness when popped into your mouth.

I nominate this plant to be the National Tomato, its seeds disseminated far and wide so that happiness can descend upon the land.

I harvest daily. It’s the happiest thing I do. For even one tomato to reach flavor perfection without anyone noticing, only to shrivel and go uneaten, would be a crime against nature.

Do I eat while harvesting? Of course. With tomatoes this good, I am able to redirect all my germ phobias regarding swine flu.

What I don’t eat in the field, I present to Cheryl for dinner. These cherries are my love offering.

Cheryl glows with appreciation. Although she did the hard work of preparing the soil and putting in the baby plants, she’s a poor harvester. She admits as much. Without my doggedness, much crop would be lost.

Knowing she can rely on a daily harvest, Cheryl has reworked the dinner menu. If a dish doesn’t celebrate the just-picked garden tomato, she won’t make it. Because of the golden cherry tomato, we eat like kings ... and queens.

As I noted earlier, we also have red raspberries, which we all know are the king of the berries. They cost a fortune in stores, although, quite frankly, the flavor often isn’t there.

Raspberries have more than one harvest peak. The early ripening was decent, but an unacceptable number of berries never plumped fully. My water conservation efforts had backfired big time.

I ratcheted up the water allotment in August. The berries in the next cycle were much juicier.

Just as Cheryl has tweaked menus to glorify fresh tomatoes, I’ve reoriented much of my eating to spotlight raspberries. Without much effort, I’ve made breakfast, lunch and dinner raspberry opportunities.

As with tomatoes consumed in the field, I don’t wash my berries. I consider them much too delicate. Water would only dilute the sweetness. I plop them on cereal, yogurt and ice cream as is. If microscopic critters and their progeny are lurking, I prefer not to think about it.

As satisfying as it is to be harvesting two crops, Cheryl regularly exclaims how wonderful it would be to add wine grapes to the mix. She speaks of ripping out our front yard and putting in vines. Others have done it, she says.

The audacity of her desire floors me. What’s the yield of a postage stamp vineyard? What swill are we capable of fermenting?

Growing grapes is part of the Napa Valley zeitgeist, Cheryl said. It’s also Biblical, something that the “virtuous woman” does in Proverbs.

I am not the virtuous man. I am the lazy man. I prefer the half-dead lawn to vines. The neighborhood deer don’t eat lawn.

Kevin can be reached at 256-2217 or Napa Valley Register,  P.O. Box 150, Napa 94559 or kcourtney@napanews.com