Over the last week I picked a bowlful of cherries - cherry tomatoes, that is, saving them for Sunday night's dinner. Here's how it went: Bake the garden's only eggplant to date, scoop out the innards. Sautee a load of garlic and onion, add all the tomatoes, let them crack, squish them, let their sweetness flow. Add the softened eggplant, a scoop or two of pasta water and finally, a large handful of fresh basil. Serve on penne. Wow! Dinner tasted like a mouthful of garden. Meanwhile, bad news for my tomato patch. A knowledgeable friend has diagnosed verticillium wilt, a soil-borne fungus that attacks more than 200 different plant species, including - unfortunately for me - tomatoes. (Some others - eggplant, beets, cucumber, peppers, watermelon.) My tomato leaves have been turning yellow, not just at the bottom, which usually happens when the weather turns hot and dry in August. This year, they're yellowing all over the plant. So far, the tomatoes are fine, but eventually, the fungus (which enters the plant through the roots) blocks water and nutrients and the tomatoes starve to death. I've already lost one plant and several others look sickly. The fungus behind all this (or below, as it were) loves excessive moisture such as we've been having and stays in the soil a long time. The only way to combat it, my friend and other sources say, is to surrender: Plant tomatoes elsewhere for 4-6 years and buy verticillium-tolerant varieties. You can find a list online ('Celebrity' is one) or check the plant tag; it'll say VF for verticillium and fusarium, another wilt. And be sure not to compost your infected plants. So there you have it: the sublime (last night's dinner) and the ridiculous, coming to a garden near you. As if we haven't have enough bad tomato news this season!