Food
I've always been a picky eater.
And then I began to garden. Funny, how watching tomatoes grow makes them more palatable. I would sit outside and write, smelling the burgeoning tomato vines, the slick peppers, all my herbs, and suddenly the idea of having a salad for lunch sounded pretty good. Especially eating lettuce plucked from my own backyard soil, tomatoes, green, red, and yellow peppers, cucumbers and crunchy raw peas. I would add some basil, chives and rosemary and I had a delicious salad.
A large red tomato, sliced into thin rounds and then baked in the oven with a sliver of mozzarella on top of it became a fine dinner.
Zucchini bread does wear thin, though. Zucchinis just don't know when to stop. They are so hardy and ask for so little tending. They just want you to put them in the ground as seedlings and then ignore them. Suddenly, you have so many zucchini that you are sneaking it into everything: bread, salads, side dishes of all kinds. I've even seen it in macaroni and cheese. I don't plant zucchini anymore but occasionally volunteer zucchini tiptoes in. I allow it. Anything that wants to live that much deserves a chance.
I remember the first time that I planted potatoes. I'd never done it before and was so thrilled when the dirt became small little mounds and under those mounds were so many potatoes. It was like....SURPRISE!
Having a vegetable garden has given me a palate. I see everything growing so prettily and am moved to have a taste. I sometimes take a book and a salt shaker out into the back yard with me and grab a firm tomato, bite into it and salt it and eat while I read. It is helpful to remember a napkin.
We tried pumpkins once and were so overwhelmed by their size that we didn't plant them again. They sort of bullied their way all over the back fence. The poor peonies were beside themselves. What had been their little home suddenly was overrun with giant orange heads. And those pumpkins were so greedy to propagate, when we carved them open to make jack o'lanterns, they were so full of seeds that they puffed right up out of the top. We roasted them and they were delicious, but in deference to the peonies who were there first and have delicate dispositions, we have refrained from planting pumpkins again.
I've always been good with plants. Give me any plant and it will thrive with me. A tiny jade plant, the size of a baby's fist sat on my desk at work for many years. It kept outgrowing its container, so I finally took it home and placed it on a dresser that faces the south. That jade is now almost as big as I am. I polish its leaves every week with a soft chamois dustcloth.
Who would have guessed that I am a plant whisperer? I admit it is all in my adoration and respect for them. I have always loved trees, felt them to be alive and sentient. Growing up in my small town, I used to go for long walks and literally hug trees. Once, when I passed a group of our neighbor's children on the road home, one told me that he had seen me hugging a tree and asked me why I did that.
I felt embarrassed. Caught. And then, I didn't. I told him that I just really loved trees. This, I suppose was the beginning of my reputation for being a bit strange. Don't care. Not sorry. This feeling has moved to my plants. I talk to them. Sing them songs. I am not a gifted singer so this might be torture instead of comfort; I'll never know.
But, I have conversations with those flowers and vegetables. I will gently finger an almost ripe tomato.
"You are lovely," I will tell it, bending for a sniff.
My lilies of the valley emit the most subtle perfume I have ever known. Sometimes, I sit outside at dusk when they are the most fragrant and tell them that they are too gorgeous for words. I thank them.
I admit to kissing a pepper on more than one occasion. They are just too irresistible. Like baby feet.
Plants grow for me. The hawthorne tree in our front yard (also known as a "witch tree" because of its gnarled body) could win a twisting tree contest. We hang ribbons and clover crowns on it. In return, it gives us a bumper crop of hawthorne berries every year. Unfortunately, the tree hangs over our driveway, so T ends up shoveling the berries into our yard. They are not good to eat, have a bitter taste that not even the birds enjoy, although once they begin to ferment the mosquitoes quite enjoy them. I am told that humans should be careful not to eat many of them since their seeds are rife with cyanide.
That may come in handy if we ever have a serious enemy......just kidding.
Well, you decide.
We plant whisperers can be mysterious.
And then I began to garden. Funny, how watching tomatoes grow makes them more palatable. I would sit outside and write, smelling the burgeoning tomato vines, the slick peppers, all my herbs, and suddenly the idea of having a salad for lunch sounded pretty good. Especially eating lettuce plucked from my own backyard soil, tomatoes, green, red, and yellow peppers, cucumbers and crunchy raw peas. I would add some basil, chives and rosemary and I had a delicious salad.
A large red tomato, sliced into thin rounds and then baked in the oven with a sliver of mozzarella on top of it became a fine dinner.
Zucchini bread does wear thin, though. Zucchinis just don't know when to stop. They are so hardy and ask for so little tending. They just want you to put them in the ground as seedlings and then ignore them. Suddenly, you have so many zucchini that you are sneaking it into everything: bread, salads, side dishes of all kinds. I've even seen it in macaroni and cheese. I don't plant zucchini anymore but occasionally volunteer zucchini tiptoes in. I allow it. Anything that wants to live that much deserves a chance.
I remember the first time that I planted potatoes. I'd never done it before and was so thrilled when the dirt became small little mounds and under those mounds were so many potatoes. It was like....SURPRISE!
Having a vegetable garden has given me a palate. I see everything growing so prettily and am moved to have a taste. I sometimes take a book and a salt shaker out into the back yard with me and grab a firm tomato, bite into it and salt it and eat while I read. It is helpful to remember a napkin.
We tried pumpkins once and were so overwhelmed by their size that we didn't plant them again. They sort of bullied their way all over the back fence. The poor peonies were beside themselves. What had been their little home suddenly was overrun with giant orange heads. And those pumpkins were so greedy to propagate, when we carved them open to make jack o'lanterns, they were so full of seeds that they puffed right up out of the top. We roasted them and they were delicious, but in deference to the peonies who were there first and have delicate dispositions, we have refrained from planting pumpkins again.
I've always been good with plants. Give me any plant and it will thrive with me. A tiny jade plant, the size of a baby's fist sat on my desk at work for many years. It kept outgrowing its container, so I finally took it home and placed it on a dresser that faces the south. That jade is now almost as big as I am. I polish its leaves every week with a soft chamois dustcloth.
Who would have guessed that I am a plant whisperer? I admit it is all in my adoration and respect for them. I have always loved trees, felt them to be alive and sentient. Growing up in my small town, I used to go for long walks and literally hug trees. Once, when I passed a group of our neighbor's children on the road home, one told me that he had seen me hugging a tree and asked me why I did that.
I felt embarrassed. Caught. And then, I didn't. I told him that I just really loved trees. This, I suppose was the beginning of my reputation for being a bit strange. Don't care. Not sorry. This feeling has moved to my plants. I talk to them. Sing them songs. I am not a gifted singer so this might be torture instead of comfort; I'll never know.
But, I have conversations with those flowers and vegetables. I will gently finger an almost ripe tomato.
"You are lovely," I will tell it, bending for a sniff.
My lilies of the valley emit the most subtle perfume I have ever known. Sometimes, I sit outside at dusk when they are the most fragrant and tell them that they are too gorgeous for words. I thank them.
I admit to kissing a pepper on more than one occasion. They are just too irresistible. Like baby feet.
Plants grow for me. The hawthorne tree in our front yard (also known as a "witch tree" because of its gnarled body) could win a twisting tree contest. We hang ribbons and clover crowns on it. In return, it gives us a bumper crop of hawthorne berries every year. Unfortunately, the tree hangs over our driveway, so T ends up shoveling the berries into our yard. They are not good to eat, have a bitter taste that not even the birds enjoy, although once they begin to ferment the mosquitoes quite enjoy them. I am told that humans should be careful not to eat many of them since their seeds are rife with cyanide.
That may come in handy if we ever have a serious enemy......just kidding.
Well, you decide.
We plant whisperers can be mysterious.
Comments
Post a Comment