Harvest Time

The dahlias are all starting to show themselves. I could find out what their names are if I wasn't so damn lazy. But I am. I love the white tips on this one, reminds me of a french manicure, which I actually don't like on people much.

After we painted our last house pink (a classy pink, think: Monet's house in France) a neighbor told me I couldn't plant any yellow flowers near it since pink and yellow clash. Obviously that neighbor (who is SUPER sweet, by the way) is following some crazy rules for coloring that nature has yet to hear about. You'd think she wouldn't bother telling someone who has just painted her house pink with dark green trim that she can't mix pink and yellow, I mean, obviously I'm the kind of person who would wear white shoes after labor day.

I love the wild arm-waving appearance of this dahlia. I had to have it. It was a lot more expensive than the rest of them. It's actually a little bit more orange in real life.

Flower Bud is a shy bird who is showing every indication that she's going to start laying soon. For those of you who don't already know, she's a Barred Rock. I think she's our prettiest bird.

I grew five cayenne plants this year and I believe it was the perfect amount. I like to use ground cayenne (just a pinch or two) in almost every winter soup I make. Just enough to make our blood heat up, which takes the edge off of those cold winter days. I also like to use pepper flakes in a couple of my favorite pasta dishes. It's not like it takes a King's ransom to buy it in the store, but it's so easy to grow and so much more satisfying to stock the pantry from my own garden.

The jar of tomatos on the far left is filled with tomatoes that Lisa grew. She got enough huge luscious toms from her own garden that we were able to fill six quarts with them. We have canned a total of (I think) twenty one jars of tomatoes. (But split that in half between us and you will understand why I think we should can some more.) I look at these jars and I keep tasting tuscan white bean soup with diced tomatoes and swiss chard...


It's harvest time for so many people, so many farms, all across the world where it is actually the end of summer. It's also crush time for the wineries. Mark works at a winery in Dundee and is now putting in long hours to prepare for the harvest and crush of the grapes with the company he works for. This time of year makes "wine widows" out of the spouses of people who work in this industry. I don't envy Mark the long hours, yet I think it's exciting that he's a part of this wonderful process. His work is dictated by the seasons which is so much more natural than the jobs so many of us do. If he was reading this he would probably want to smack me in the head with a frying pan for trying to make it sound wonderful when in fact he really misses spending time with Lisa and their kids, and misses feeling rested. Luckily, he's too busy to spend time reading some poncey prose about harvest time.

Lisa and I have been tapping into the whole spirit of harvest time by continuing to stoke up the fires for the canning pot. When I first met Lisa I thought she was very quiet about her love of life. She doesn't run around shrieking about how cool it is that she has a grape fort growing in her back yard, which is the kind of thing I do. Now that we have been canning together for the last month, I have found out that she is just as spazzy as I am, she just isn't as loud as I am about it. It is so much fun to have someone who gets as carried away as I do about stocking the pantry, making food for the freezer, perfecting jam. I just don't want to stop, and luckily, neither does she.

Part of the appeal of canning is the control you have over what you're making. You decide where the produce comes from, you decide how to flavor it, and how much sugar goes into it. But another part of canning that is really wonderful is how productive it makes you feel. I love cleaning my house; I always enjoy that feeling of walking into my son's bathroom and NOT seeing the evidence that his pee-aim is not yet mature. But the satisfaction of cleaning lasts exactly five minutes if you have children, or are me. Canning is productive in a longer lasting way. Long into winter you open your cupboards and enjoy the hard work you did at the end of summer. It helps to punctuate the seasons. It places you right in the middle of what it means to be a part of this planet. Harvesting, preparing, storing against famine, like squirrels. (I've actually been accused of storing nuts in my large cheeks. I always choose to take that as a twisted compliment, otherwise I might want to hurt someone.)

Picking, preparing, and storing food is to me one of the most fundemental acts of love, and nurture. Sex is all well and good, but feeding yourself and your family the highest quality food that you can is amazingly satisfying. It would be even better if my child would actually eat regular food...but even though he doesn't, I make it available to him every day. He loved the apple cider we pressed and canned from his Grandpa Lars' apple orchard. When he drank every quart of it that I canned, even though it wasn't the same as eating bowls of spinach, I felt warm and so deeply satisfied to have provided him with something grown and made by his own family. All that work I did, leaning over the hot steam, transformed itself into liquid love. (Good God, that sounds so dirty and disgusting!!!) And it became a part of my child's life, his body, his growth, and maybe even his memories. You just don't get that from a bottle of Ocean Spray apple juice.

I am a chipmonk collecting nuts. I am a squirrel putting acorns in the dark cavities of tree trunks. I feel the air changing; I feel the light weakening; I hear the almost inaudible rustling of dried leaves detatching themselves from summer-burnt trees, falling in symphony to the ground in tiny drifts that will become larger as the month progresses. I am part of something so much bigger than myself. I am witness to such better things than war and complicated human relationships. I revert, as the cold begins to lick the tomato skins, to a simpler being. One that only sees the gorgeousness of vines dying off, leaving the fruits behind that they've been feeding all summer. Melons, cantaloups, grapes, and winter squashes peppering the ground like muted smooth jewels. Like lingering summer music. Like my ancestors before me, I gather them up and see the future in my basket full of the harvest.

I love this time of year almost more than any other.