First Batch

Well, after twenty years of marriage, I finally got up the courage to make my first batch of jam.  I’ve been putting it off all these years because I was afraid that somehow, I would manage to poison my family with homemade jam, despite having watched my mother make jam for years.

And I have to confess that it wasn’t so much that I suddenly worked up the courage necessary to make the jam.  The truth is, this morning, as I tucked fourteen quarts of blueberries into the downstairs freezer, I discovered several quarts of last year’s strawberries. 

I had to get rid of last year’s fruit to make room for this year’s.

And throwing it out was not an option.

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Whisked Away

We had our first pickup at our local CSA the other day: Dandelion greens, lettuce, collards, arugula, bok choy.   And we got to pick a pint of strawberries which we ate—still warm—right in the field.

In my own garden, my peas are up; several varieties of beans and cucumbers, too.  The carrots are just starting to put in an appearance and yesterday, I planted an Egyptian Walking onion my friend brought me from her garden. 

My strawberries are ripening, but, despite the fence I’ve got around the garden, the rabbits have found a way to reach them, to steal the succulent red berries and leave the empty stem dangling from the vine.

It looks as though strawberries won’t be available—to my family at least—from our backyard garden this year.  

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Costumed

Two weeks ago, we stared the garden.  In the raised beds we planted cucumbers and four varieties of beans.  We planted popcorn, too, from the crop of a friend.  We tucked tiny seeds—tomatoes and onions and herbs of all sorts—into peat pots and set them in the front window of the house.  And then we waited.

Every morning, when I come downstairs, I check outside to see what’s growing in our little garden.  Have the peas sprouted overnight?  The squash?    Every morning, I see nothing except for the stalwart strawberries—leftovers from last year’s garden.

I take my coffee and check the little rows of peat pots catching the eastern sun slanting through the window.  Nothing there, either.

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Of Birdsong and Eggplant

I wake to birdsong: a five note trill that bounces up a fifth before repeating.  Sometimes, the bird drops down the scale and and bounces once or twice on a low note.  I rise, intending to learn the name of this bird who so willingly sings outside my window.

The sun is becoming more generous.  The wind is gentle and warm. 

Our seeds arrive in the mailbox bringing a sudden joy to the day.  Squints tears open the bag, begins separating “his” seeds from mine.  “Mom, they sent us eggplant.”  His face is disgusted.


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Baseball Gardens

The holidays are over.  The Superbowl has come and gone.  That mountain of snow in the parking lot of Home Depot is a pile of black sludge.  A thin layer of salt perpetually frosts the cars; the roads; even, occasionally, my best pair of black slacks.  The house is cold.  My feet are cold.  Winter, it seems, has lost its sheen.

“Pitchers and catchers reported the other day,” my husband says hopefully, pulling away the curtain and frowning at the gray sky.  I nod and return my attention to the UPS truck pulling up outside our house.  I open the front door.  The driver goes to the side of his truck, grabs a huge box and skates his way up our icy sidewalk to present me with…

“Whatcha’ got there?”  My husband points at the box.
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Fenced In

It’s a beautiful, cloudless day.  The temperature is in the high forties and is expected to be in the fifties all next week.  My husband made his annual trek to the garage attic this morning, handing down posts and fencing and plastic containers.  This afternoon, after the sun begins to warm the back yard, Squints and I decide to put the garden fence up.

In this high-brow neighborhood, it’s a low-brow affair: Ugly metal fence secured with white twine to green posts hammered into the ground every three feet or so.  And I keep telling myself, as I do every year, I want to grow more; I want to do more; I want to have more land. 

I pause in my hammering and watch Squints tying the fence to a post.  Outside Cat pounces at the fence and grabs at the twine.  Squints laughs and cuts a new piece of twine.  “You’re not going to get over this fence, Cat,” he says.  “No more messing in the garden.”  He pauses.  “Hey, Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“Think I have any strawberries yet?”
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Pizza Cookoff

“Listen to this recipe, Squints,” I said.  “No-knead pizza dough that keeps in the fridge for days.  Tastes like sourdough.”  I began reading from the recipe printed in my Mother Earth magazine. 

He wrinkled his nose and grabbed his Bon Appétit.  “My recipe sounds better.”   He listed the various toppings: bacon, some cheese I’d never heard of, arugula, Brussels sprouts…

Squints has gotten to the point in his cooking where he considers himself an expert—certainly he considers himself a better cook than I: He’ll offer to add some spices to a soup I’ve been working on all day or he’ll tell me that I might add a bit of salt to the lentils.  Sometimes I find this endearing.  Often it irritates me. 

“Well, we should just have a pizza cook off,” I said.  “All week.  Then we’ll know who’s got the better recipe.”

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Detachment

I see that the temperature is supposed to go down into the forties tonight.  This morning, I threw open the windows to chase away the heat and the humidity that has hovered in the air since May.  The flies appear to have been listening to the weather forecast: A group of them has taken up residence in the kitchen and I find it fair sport to chase them with a dishtowel.  It’s a battle I often lose.

A couple of days after I lost the War of Tug with Destructo, my eye started flashing—a quick burst of lightning that disappeared immediately.  The flashing began on an inconvenient day: the day of Filibuster’s photo preview: The studio owner greeted us warmly at the door and seated us upon a plush velvet couch before a gigantic movie screen.   She dimmed the lights.

My eye flashed.

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Two Miles and Twenty Cents a Gallon

I saw him behind plate glass as I exited the bank: one-third of the way up the window, a four-inch long praying mantis.  Perhaps he was checking on interest rates.  Or maybe he was just grasping on for dear life, still in shock from the earthquake or in preparation for the upcoming hurricane. 

He must’ve been reading the papers or listening to the radio: Everywhere, people are being cautioned to ready themselves; to have food and water and travel plans worked out.  I have made no such preparations, although I did fill up the gas tank at the local—expensive—BP yesterday.   My usual trick is to just put a couple of dollars into the tank at the pricier place then limp as quickly as I can into the station two miles and twenty cents a gallon away.  I told myself, watching the dials spin wildly behind the glass, that I ought to fill the tank now, just in case.  But the truth of the matter is I’m too lazy to stop for gas again so soon.

* * *

Thanks to the library book sale, Squints is the proud owner of thirteen cookbooks.  He’s got one on desserts featuring Cool Whip in every recipe; a casserole book that employs Campbell’s Soup on each page.  And, although we have no pot, he picked up a book on fondue.  But there are a couple of promising books: Street Foods shows how to make food popularized on the city’s streets: Philadelphia cheese steaks, corn dogs, pad Thai.  And the sandwich book looks interesting: For lunch yesterday, Squints made me a double-layer banana peanut butter sandwich with cream cheese and an interesting concoction of brown sugar and cinnamon topping.   While I proclaimed it delicious, I decided to split it with V.  Filibuster eschewed it entirely, claiming to be full, despite the fact that she hadn’t yet eaten.

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Fragile

“Do you want some chicken feet for the dog?”  The owner of the farm where we’d rented our cabin nodded at Destructo.  “We’re slaughtering Thursday.” 

“Do you do the butchering yourself?”

He gave a satisfied nod.  “We used to pluck by hand until we were able to make a plucker.” 

Although the farm was hundreds of miles from home, we found we shared a connection: The owner sold wool to a highbrow place near our home; a sterile place whose shoppers, I was sure, wouldn’t give a moment’s thought to the farm and the people and the animals that had produced that wool.  Thus connected, we were invited to gather the eggs from the chickens just outside our cabin; to visit the turkeys and the pigs and the sheep.  We could pet the goats and the horses used to plow the fields.  We were free to milk the cow, provided we got up early enough.  And, of course, the hundred acres were ours to explore.

And we explored with abandon: We passed a hundred-year-old farmhouse and went on to the pigpen where baby durocs no bigger than our—admittedly fat—cat ran round the pen en masse while their mother looked on wearily.  A pasture down, there was another pig, sequestered from a lamb and a couple of horses by a wire fence.  Drying on a wooden fencepost was the horned scalp of a goat.  Here and there, where the rocks would allow, were patches of garden: Scallions and tomatoes and lettuces to the right; Further down the path a bed of peas and green beans, still in season in August.

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Flirting Over Blueberries

When the first blueberry hit me, I assumed it had fallen from the branches.  It was a good crop that year.  The berries were as big as my thumb and so blue they were nearly black; all I had to do was run a hand along the branch and the berries would practically leap into my container with a rain of satisfactory little thumps that grew fainter as the container became full.  The branches were heavy with berries. The ground was littered with berries.  It was no wonder that one would land upon my head. 

The second berry hit me squarely in the back with uncommon velocity, as if the berry hadn’t fallen off the bush, but rather been shot from it. 

Or…had it been thrown?

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Hard Labor

So on Tuesday, my husband and I lassoed Squints and V into helping us with our yearly service at our community garden.  For the second year in a row, Filibuster escaped the event, as she had to go to work. 

We pulled in and parked.  In the distance, we heard the tractor in one of the fields.  D, one-half of the farm partnership, met us at the barn, wearing sandals and a floppy hat.  She was deeply tanned and, I could tell, deeply happy with her circumstance, despite the long hours and the backbreaking work her job required.

We heard a car on the gravel drive.  D nodded.  “There’s the rest of the work party.”  A man walked up eagerly, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder.  “They’re coming.”  His wife and daughters approached at a more leisurely pace, as if not so sure about the whole thing.  The daughters had long, thin, tanned legs and were carefully made up for the occasion.

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Raspberry Season

We got a call from Filibuster on the answering machine this morning: She can’t retrieve voice mails from her cell phone.  Worse, the ATM refuses to dispense any money to her.  Apparently her PIN is too long.  Filibuster is a great believer in strong passwords.

I call the bank and they ask me how long PINs are supposed to be in Europe and I tell them I really don’t know: the last time I was in Europe there were no debit cards.  They place me on hold.  They transfer me twice.  They tell me to go to a branch after the weekend is over.  They tell me there’s no way they can change her PIN for me.  They give me a number for Filibuster to call, but I cannot reach her and if I leave her a voice mail with the number she won’t be able to get to it. 

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Picking

 

Well, after looking at too many colleges, Filibuster has finally whittled her list down to about six schools.  But this afternoon, oh, around three o’clock, once the mailman pulls to the curb, that list’ll be shot to hell.  Because as soon as she hears the mail truck pulling up to the curb, her ears will perk up.  And as soon as the mailbox is shut with a little clink, she’ll be out the door. 

Oh those college brochures.  Those colorful brochures that promise success and internships and glory to their graduates.  Those brochures that make kids—parents too—feel so important and special.  They mention famous people with pretty smiles who’ve made Much of their lives.  Honors colleges and double majors and study abroad programs so exciting.

And all of this, of course, goes back to the strawberry patch where I am most at home.

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Preserving Memories

I drive to the school and pick up my daughters after their final exams.  Over lunch, I tell them I want to pick strawberries.  They sigh.  Summer has just started for them.  They want to relax. 

Just an hour, I tell them. 

They tell me they hate summer.  All this picking, picking, picking. 

I tell them it’s a short season—Strawberries don’t last. 

The room grows heavy with silence and resentments.  We eat our sandwiches without speaking.  The jubilation marking the end of the school year has passed.  No words are exchanged on the drive to the patch.  No radio plays to cover up the tension.  I find myself wondering why I bother.  Is it worth all this?

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Memories Lost

            “How about this one, Mommy?” 

I looked up from the clump of coreopsis I was weeding.  My eight year old hopped barefoot on the blacktop driveway.  Clutched against his chest was the vase I had inherited from my grandmother; cut blue glass bleeding into clear.  Almost certainly an antique. 

Every time I arranged flowers in that vase, I would run my thumb along the side, thinking that Grandma's hands had touched the exact same spot.  The vase held more than flowers.  It held my memories of my grandmother: The way she bought her first pair of jeans when she was in her fifties.  How she took her coffee with a cup and saucer.  The way she sang in the car after she and my grandfather had taken my sisters and me out to Ponderosa.

But who can resist the smile of a child, especially one’s own?  “OK.” I returned to my weeding. 

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Committed

February and I’m busy planning my garden, leafing through the seed catalogues, circling more vegetables than my yard can hope to accommodate: Tomatoes and carrots; onions and lettuce.  But not asparagus.  Never asparagus. 

Asparagus is a commitment to place: After planting, you have to wait three or four years before first harvest.  And I am not committed to this land.  Oh, my husband and I have cared for it well enough, maintaining the house, mowing, trimming, putting in flowerbeds.  But I do not love this land: My heart, my soul belongs to the country. 

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