The ponderous caravan tumbled slowly towards the end of sky, in delight, in grace untelling how many tons of water were held in cumulus vertical development. The lifespan of such a cloud is about forty minutes before it dissolves or becomes a cumulonimbus formed by warm updrafts of moist air. Traveling west back into the city, I saw above and before me the vault of heaven filled with these roiling giants scudding as a behemothic zoo, heavy with rain gathered from a glacial lake. Fat, white, held in aerial suspension, they bloomed upwards in convective efflorescence, a line of cloud cells as glorious as a garden full of hollyhocks and summer lilies.
Darker blues slid alongside pale tones of grey; one tower caught the setting sun to be illuminated from within, displaying a blue lantern glow with edges lavender. There were churning eruptions of monstrous white rufflings, stirring back, curling under as ivory meristems. Some piled upwards into dense turrets, building girth for tomorrow's thunderstorm. The clouds of severe weather are the cumulonimbus, divided by shape into Latin: arcus, calvus, capillatus, incus, mammatus, pannus, pileus, praecipitatio, tuba, velum and virga. It never occurred to me that clouds fight gravity, they certainly are within the atmosphere and therefore subject to its force; but according to meteorologists, they stay in the air because water vapor is lighter than oxygen or nitrogen, making them less dense than the air around them. Essentially, they float, pushed by drafts and layers of wind. I should look up more often, but maybe not while driving.
It rained most all day today in downpours that lasted 20 minutes each, giving the air a good washing. The clouds brought in a cold front, dropping temperature down to mid-fifties, causing people to look for soup and last year's sweater. The clouds have flattened, and are only discernible by the lowered ceiling of murkiness; also, the stars are blocked by the blanket of clouds that appear as shadows, there are no brilliant points in the sky this evening. Do you see? In the city, the buildings and lamps throw an artificial light, creating a sepulcherish orange glow in the night atmosphere...not far away, beyond the architecture of cement, how clear is your darkness? Are the astral maps visible, calling you to paths beyond dreams? Do you check the back door, call in the dog, stow wet shoes under a bench? Is there pause to look up at the night sky, where spin the planets before turning back to familiarity? Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius. Fall skies, deep clouds, earth change, sleep well. Nodding children, love to all, paws to tail, head to rest. Good night, good night.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Lessening
Most of what happens to us goes slowly, such as the morning you water the small parsley and see that it has browned, the reaction to the lessening sunlight on a poor windowsill. Why not just go buy a few bunches to chop and freeze? I guess I like the illusion of doing things on my own, of producing a plant from seed to clip for soups; production was meager, it really never was enough except for the minor excitement of see? I got parsley! There was a crate of it at the farmer's market: fat, crisp, bouquets to flurry the knives through, making bits of green.
One past life, I learned to chop it quickly with two knives in each hand, it goes fine quickly but once minced, you are not done or you will have slime in half an hour in a hot kitchen. Put the stuff inside a clean tea towel and however much green juice you wring out determines how fluffy, separate, and friable the end product will be. The drier it is, the longer it lasts and the nicer it looks on a plate, each green speck standing alone. Do this squeezing business when shredding potatoes for pancakes or hash browns, and the end product will also be lighter, with a nice crunch.
On the windowsill, there is also a beginning of an orange tree growing from seed that I hope will produce flowers. My grandfather would start them and get wee, bitter oranges that weren't good for anything but see? I gotta orange! I love the scent of orange blossoms and would wear that cheapola souvenir cologne from Florida, or add orange water to a pudding or cake frosting and just breathe it in. This sapling stretches towards the light, pressing against the glass of the window. Before the frosts come, I will move it back from the glass pane and give it a plant suntan with a lamp.
The leaves of growing things have aged, you can tell, even before the colored maples erupt. Growth is slower, sparser, or not at all; weeds have gone to seed, and once tender sprouts are fibrous and woody. Most things are tired, having put their energy into reproduction for the short northern season; the only frantic movement is from the wild animals eating all they can of this last, slowly gracious buffet of seed and shoot. The groundhogs are loaded and round, the one crossing the street in front of my car last week was large as a Daschund. His speed was clocked at walk, no running effort at his weight. How the birds survive is a mystery; today I saw a tiny female finch sitting atop a spent echinacea blossom, less than five feet away from me. She picked diligently at the seed, smartly working the husks.
It is the beginning of fall, noted by the constellation Pegasus rising in eastern dark. Neptune and Uranus rise aside it, Pisces below. Blankets have been brought to the sofa, cozy all around for humans and cats, windows closed, kitchen now quiet. Cyclic beings, we tend to drowse more at this latitude during fall and winter, a possible reason for the gaudiness of the holidays as enlivening tonics. I like the thicker clothing and socks, and the finishing rituals of gathering produce for later suppers. Apples are jarred as applesauce, and this year I will try making sauerkraut.
Sleep then, as you are meant to. Climb in and under, pull covers up and let go of everything, for that is how we learn as we enter our dreams. Mindstuff solidifies under deep layers of brain, you'd be amazed at the stages and levels of electrical activity that busies itself in the rooms of the cerebral while we sleep.
Night, oh night, how easy it is to fall in your lap. Sleep well.
One past life, I learned to chop it quickly with two knives in each hand, it goes fine quickly but once minced, you are not done or you will have slime in half an hour in a hot kitchen. Put the stuff inside a clean tea towel and however much green juice you wring out determines how fluffy, separate, and friable the end product will be. The drier it is, the longer it lasts and the nicer it looks on a plate, each green speck standing alone. Do this squeezing business when shredding potatoes for pancakes or hash browns, and the end product will also be lighter, with a nice crunch.
On the windowsill, there is also a beginning of an orange tree growing from seed that I hope will produce flowers. My grandfather would start them and get wee, bitter oranges that weren't good for anything but see? I gotta orange! I love the scent of orange blossoms and would wear that cheapola souvenir cologne from Florida, or add orange water to a pudding or cake frosting and just breathe it in. This sapling stretches towards the light, pressing against the glass of the window. Before the frosts come, I will move it back from the glass pane and give it a plant suntan with a lamp.
The leaves of growing things have aged, you can tell, even before the colored maples erupt. Growth is slower, sparser, or not at all; weeds have gone to seed, and once tender sprouts are fibrous and woody. Most things are tired, having put their energy into reproduction for the short northern season; the only frantic movement is from the wild animals eating all they can of this last, slowly gracious buffet of seed and shoot. The groundhogs are loaded and round, the one crossing the street in front of my car last week was large as a Daschund. His speed was clocked at walk, no running effort at his weight. How the birds survive is a mystery; today I saw a tiny female finch sitting atop a spent echinacea blossom, less than five feet away from me. She picked diligently at the seed, smartly working the husks.
It is the beginning of fall, noted by the constellation Pegasus rising in eastern dark. Neptune and Uranus rise aside it, Pisces below. Blankets have been brought to the sofa, cozy all around for humans and cats, windows closed, kitchen now quiet. Cyclic beings, we tend to drowse more at this latitude during fall and winter, a possible reason for the gaudiness of the holidays as enlivening tonics. I like the thicker clothing and socks, and the finishing rituals of gathering produce for later suppers. Apples are jarred as applesauce, and this year I will try making sauerkraut.
Sleep then, as you are meant to. Climb in and under, pull covers up and let go of everything, for that is how we learn as we enter our dreams. Mindstuff solidifies under deep layers of brain, you'd be amazed at the stages and levels of electrical activity that busies itself in the rooms of the cerebral while we sleep.
Night, oh night, how easy it is to fall in your lap. Sleep well.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Fishwife's Floor
I should know better, I can't eat and then feel sad about it. Living animals rendered into delicious dinner at my own hand rattles me and there lies the hypocrisy. "I weep for you, " the Walrus said, "I deeply sympathize." It was mussels.
I had a coupon for a dollar off from the seafood department at the grocer's; lobsters on ice waved feebly in hopes of homicide to put them out of their misery, others in the tank were livelier and higher priced. If I ever kill a lobster again, it will happen only with vast amounts of alcohol saucing the cook-murderer. The last one, with all the assurances of primitive nervous systems by instructive how-to's, fought back, at least I think it did. I nipped the spinal cord, split the head in two, put it in a pail of vodka to make it drunk, yet when dunking it headfirst into the boiling mass, the poor, half-chopped up beast heard the calvary call and rallied, legs a-waving, trying to climb out of the pot. Lord, I cried. Ate him, but cried through the butter.
But on a display made to look like a wooden dock were bags of mussels; now, I love shellfish but am often relegated to canned because I hate to kill them. Canned this and thats are turned into food; smoked oysters, minced clams, scraped out of their shells and prepared by someone else. Do you think a carrot screams when pulled from the soil? Oh boy, maybe, thinks I. There is a division of vegan that only consumes fruit, aptly named fruitarians, who work with the idea that fruit wants to be eaten since it is produced by the plant as a method of reproduction. The apple, pear, peach or grape is given to us as part of a universe based on love that doesn't require destruction of the host plant or animal. This appeals to me, yet I imagine a diet of only fruit and nuts would someday provoke a morning fight between me and the cats when the pop tab cracked open on the succulent salmon meow puree. I'd spread it on nut flour toast, just for a bit of fish.
The part where I would be the one responsible for sizzling the blue-shelled mussels did occur to me in the store. I thought, nahhh, grow up, you can do this, and the ocean salt they carried ignited the desire for fresh; I could smell the Atlantic as I drove home. Everything is eaten by something else, I rationalized, usually in a brutal manner. How am I different? One of the shells was partially open, so I tapped and it shut: someone was home and definitely alive. Crap.
Scrubbing them was sad, spreading them in the baking dish and blanketing them with olive oil and butter bothered me. What did they think was happening? Could I put them in the freezer so they would go to sleep before I put them in the oven? Since they don't have brains, do they have tenure at the university? There is a sea squirt that swims till it finds a rock to cling to; once anchored, it no longer needs the ganglia associated with movement, so it then eats its own "brain" for nutrition. What is the problem, sensitive human?
Recent science says that human development was brought back from extinction by groups living near the ocean, whose seafood diet was more stable than that of the inland carnivores who had to run and catch game. Our large brain size is being debated as a possible result of the essential brain nutrients found in shellfish, a richer source than red meat. Omega-three fatty acids and high protein gave the advantage, besides the less dangerous risk of gathering shellfish compared to skinning a sabertooth. The idea of time may have been supported by watching the tides ebb and flow, giving the idea of when to gather clams would be best. Middens, which are mounds of shells, are found in coastal areas around the world and are sometimes over nine meters deep. Knowing this doesn't make buttering and baking them easier.
What did make it better was covering the dish with foil, putting their solemn blue shells out of sight and into the oven. I left the kitchen so any hissing liquid noises or screaming would not be heard, and watched the clock. After, lifting the foil released aromas of broth and butter, garlic and parsley, and there is now leftover mussel broth in the freezer for later soup. They were delicious, the shells clattered and made a pile on newspaper, the cat played with one scuttering across the kitchen floor. I scrubbed a few to keep as examples of bivalves for class, and tossed the rest into the garbage chute. Primitive thing in a shell, what have I turned into?
Supper is over, night has slipped into place. Tulip is half on my lap, head resting on the arm of the sofa, and she is a furry hot water bottle warming me this cooler evening, before the apartment complex has turned on any heat. Min is snoring behind us in her perch on the bookshelf, and there is broccoli soup cooling in the kitchen that needs to be put away. Sleep well in your oyster beds, listen to the tides pulling and pushing as they did hundreds of thousands of years ago, when the months began by lunar and luteal signs of neap and ebb. Covers up to chin, dream of coming and going. Sleep well.
I had a coupon for a dollar off from the seafood department at the grocer's; lobsters on ice waved feebly in hopes of homicide to put them out of their misery, others in the tank were livelier and higher priced. If I ever kill a lobster again, it will happen only with vast amounts of alcohol saucing the cook-murderer. The last one, with all the assurances of primitive nervous systems by instructive how-to's, fought back, at least I think it did. I nipped the spinal cord, split the head in two, put it in a pail of vodka to make it drunk, yet when dunking it headfirst into the boiling mass, the poor, half-chopped up beast heard the calvary call and rallied, legs a-waving, trying to climb out of the pot. Lord, I cried. Ate him, but cried through the butter.
But on a display made to look like a wooden dock were bags of mussels; now, I love shellfish but am often relegated to canned because I hate to kill them. Canned this and thats are turned into food; smoked oysters, minced clams, scraped out of their shells and prepared by someone else. Do you think a carrot screams when pulled from the soil? Oh boy, maybe, thinks I. There is a division of vegan that only consumes fruit, aptly named fruitarians, who work with the idea that fruit wants to be eaten since it is produced by the plant as a method of reproduction. The apple, pear, peach or grape is given to us as part of a universe based on love that doesn't require destruction of the host plant or animal. This appeals to me, yet I imagine a diet of only fruit and nuts would someday provoke a morning fight between me and the cats when the pop tab cracked open on the succulent salmon meow puree. I'd spread it on nut flour toast, just for a bit of fish.
The part where I would be the one responsible for sizzling the blue-shelled mussels did occur to me in the store. I thought, nahhh, grow up, you can do this, and the ocean salt they carried ignited the desire for fresh; I could smell the Atlantic as I drove home. Everything is eaten by something else, I rationalized, usually in a brutal manner. How am I different? One of the shells was partially open, so I tapped and it shut: someone was home and definitely alive. Crap.
Scrubbing them was sad, spreading them in the baking dish and blanketing them with olive oil and butter bothered me. What did they think was happening? Could I put them in the freezer so they would go to sleep before I put them in the oven? Since they don't have brains, do they have tenure at the university? There is a sea squirt that swims till it finds a rock to cling to; once anchored, it no longer needs the ganglia associated with movement, so it then eats its own "brain" for nutrition. What is the problem, sensitive human?
Recent science says that human development was brought back from extinction by groups living near the ocean, whose seafood diet was more stable than that of the inland carnivores who had to run and catch game. Our large brain size is being debated as a possible result of the essential brain nutrients found in shellfish, a richer source than red meat. Omega-three fatty acids and high protein gave the advantage, besides the less dangerous risk of gathering shellfish compared to skinning a sabertooth. The idea of time may have been supported by watching the tides ebb and flow, giving the idea of when to gather clams would be best. Middens, which are mounds of shells, are found in coastal areas around the world and are sometimes over nine meters deep. Knowing this doesn't make buttering and baking them easier.
What did make it better was covering the dish with foil, putting their solemn blue shells out of sight and into the oven. I left the kitchen so any hissing liquid noises or screaming would not be heard, and watched the clock. After, lifting the foil released aromas of broth and butter, garlic and parsley, and there is now leftover mussel broth in the freezer for later soup. They were delicious, the shells clattered and made a pile on newspaper, the cat played with one scuttering across the kitchen floor. I scrubbed a few to keep as examples of bivalves for class, and tossed the rest into the garbage chute. Primitive thing in a shell, what have I turned into?
Supper is over, night has slipped into place. Tulip is half on my lap, head resting on the arm of the sofa, and she is a furry hot water bottle warming me this cooler evening, before the apartment complex has turned on any heat. Min is snoring behind us in her perch on the bookshelf, and there is broccoli soup cooling in the kitchen that needs to be put away. Sleep well in your oyster beds, listen to the tides pulling and pushing as they did hundreds of thousands of years ago, when the months began by lunar and luteal signs of neap and ebb. Covers up to chin, dream of coming and going. Sleep well.
Monday, September 5, 2011
If Wishes Were Horses
Alan Rickman, the British actor, was dressed in a black jacket and rubbing my ankle; I didn't believe it, but there he was. He was massaging away, head bent over in concentration, and then meowed: rowr rowr rrrrrt? The dream flew to the ceiling and I paddled to half-consciousness; Rickman had turned into Steve the cat, who was having a middle of the night date with my leg. Really, this was a surprise as the cat is getting less interested in this sort of nonsense, mainly as self-preservation from the tired-of-your-sorry-ass girl cats who put up with nothing. He still has a retaliatory chomp mark on his neck that is healing from his last bad idea, ministrations of peroxide and sulfate daily.
This morning, I continued with the applesauce project, pleased that a change in weather brought in much cooler temperatures that get people thinking of hot food, of stirring things that take hours of a fire to accomplish. Cats are more wont to lay in your lap, you can put real clothing on, and entering a parked car is comfortable. Open a car door on summer's black asphalt day, and you are hit with a wall of hot air that literally pushes you back like a small blast furnace. I am grateful for the cooler days of socks and blankets, of a cake in the oven and a pot on the stove, of breathing the refreshing lake air in gulps as I walk down to the rocks.
I wish the clouds would go, there is a supernova that exploded twenty-one million years ago and is visible near the handle of the Big Dipper, best viewing around this Wednesday/Thursday. Scientists are looking towards this Type 1a flare for theoretical support that either the universe is flying apart, accelerated by an unknown force labeled dark energy; or that the regal force of gravity just doesn't work the same everywhere. Fabulous. Whoosh.
Time now for another blanket to be settled over the bed; jars have been put up, plans for another variety this weekend. Life goes on in one way or another, sometimes looking back is not such a bad thing, contrary to the story concerning pillars of salt. I am glad to refind canning things, it gives me a sense of continuity and son Brian is already planning a trip for applesauce. He reports that nets have been put around the spires at the National Cathedral, as the repair work goes on at a feverish pace to ready the place for a September 11th service. He will sleep tonight under a deepening sky, under light from twenty-one million years ago, light that saw a cooling earth and the formation of grasslands for running herds. Dream of things to be, of things that were; sleep well, my love to you stays always.
This morning, I continued with the applesauce project, pleased that a change in weather brought in much cooler temperatures that get people thinking of hot food, of stirring things that take hours of a fire to accomplish. Cats are more wont to lay in your lap, you can put real clothing on, and entering a parked car is comfortable. Open a car door on summer's black asphalt day, and you are hit with a wall of hot air that literally pushes you back like a small blast furnace. I am grateful for the cooler days of socks and blankets, of a cake in the oven and a pot on the stove, of breathing the refreshing lake air in gulps as I walk down to the rocks.
I wish the clouds would go, there is a supernova that exploded twenty-one million years ago and is visible near the handle of the Big Dipper, best viewing around this Wednesday/Thursday. Scientists are looking towards this Type 1a flare for theoretical support that either the universe is flying apart, accelerated by an unknown force labeled dark energy; or that the regal force of gravity just doesn't work the same everywhere. Fabulous. Whoosh.
Time now for another blanket to be settled over the bed; jars have been put up, plans for another variety this weekend. Life goes on in one way or another, sometimes looking back is not such a bad thing, contrary to the story concerning pillars of salt. I am glad to refind canning things, it gives me a sense of continuity and son Brian is already planning a trip for applesauce. He reports that nets have been put around the spires at the National Cathedral, as the repair work goes on at a feverish pace to ready the place for a September 11th service. He will sleep tonight under a deepening sky, under light from twenty-one million years ago, light that saw a cooling earth and the formation of grasslands for running herds. Dream of things to be, of things that were; sleep well, my love to you stays always.
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Putting Away
A simple sound from far ago came back today, and it tickled awake an awareness of something I love: lids of water bath processed jars popping as they cooled. I had dragged home the first mountain of apples, chopped out the centers, and loaded the slowcooker with quartered apples and cider. I cored the pips to eliminate the bitter almond influence, preferring a smooth, apple fragrance that speaks of fall evenings and deep stews. Also, apple seeds contain a tiny bit of a cyanide compound that metabolizes into hydrogen cyanide when released into the body. The same for cherry pits, and the two that can get you into trouble, peach and apricot pits. We don't want that.
Going to market is a heady experience, for each apple variety offers a singular talent and there is so much to discover. They have started to come in; my favorite for applesauce, the Paula Reds, are already almost at the end of their run. Gingergolds and Jersey Macs are starting, but I wait for some of the older names to arrive for making pies, crisps, and of course, more applesauce. I am done with college, and have all the necessary paperwork that says I can teach children according to New York State standards, so I have time for revisiting some of the things that had to be forgotten for a little bit.
My grandfather would make applesauce without peeling the apples, and the morning dawn rosy color suffused throughout the labeled jars, making it much more attractive than whatever yellow stuff came out of a can. He put up a few pints each fall, using MacIntoshes and Jonathans to produce a creamy textured sauce blended with a small amount of sugar and cinnamon. It was my favorite thing he made besides his grilled cheese with sliced pickles inside, or his version of an ice cream cone with a squirt of whipped cream and peanuts. I wish I knew him better, he died quickly one fall day while bringing up pine seedlings he had started in trays down in the small cellar. A stroke felled him, he was gone before the ambulance came.
Most everyone on my grandparent's street had fruit trees in their backyards, many folks being just a generation away from immigration, or like my grandparents, new to city life, having moved here from Elmira, New York. My grandmother grew her huge roses, my grandfather tended his trees. In a small backyard there were a Stanley plum, peach, cherry, and apple trees. Grapevines sprawled over the arbor he built, and were just beginning to produce. He grew begonias, gloxinias, and other fussy things that needed to be taken in before frost.
My Mom didn't do applesauce, but canned tomatoes, peaches, and the sacred chili sauce, all of which required scalding to loosen the skin of each tomato, of each peach. When you looked at the bushels on the kitchen floor, you can only put on an apron and dive in. Mom dunked, I peeled. The heat of summer was compounded by vats of boiling water and we were wringing wet, but that's the way it is, tomatoes don't arrive in January. When in my own kitchen, I was determined to create applesauce like the marvelous stuff Grandpa had made. It took a few forays with different varieties before I got the hang of it, but it happened.
The success of canning combined with a gathering instinct inherent in most humans exploded; I tried everything a water bath canner could process. Peaches, tomatoes, pears, pickles, applesauce, apple butter, and homemade catsup were jarred up and put in a cupboard for winter meals. I made rhubarb jam, catnip jelly, and yellow beans in mustard sauce. A thick slice of bread with my apple butter will fortify those who slog to school or work through any snowstorm that nature or the boss hands out, it's that good.
Viewing the stalls of fruits and vegetable fusillade makes the kitchen pots rattle in my head, there is so much, so delicious, such a gift, it's the season. The summer fruits are here, but a few farms are bringing in the heavier produce of fall; the butternuts, cumbersome heads of cauliflower, lumbering cabbages; all portents of root cellar recipes, when you would sell your dog to the circus to get a decent tomato, a peach, an ear of corn for goodness sake. Staving off the shuttered cold with an open jar of homemade catsup for french fries is a happy thing to do, tossing a quart of peaches together with sugar, egg, and flour make a cobbler able to saturate the home with a bit of life stolen from a summer day, when a farmer arose at three a.m. to load wooden baskets filled by hands that reached to pick the sun from branches. For you. For me. For their own satisfaction of creating in a smaller paradise.
Well I have to go buy more jars; the crockpot will ally in making the catsup without me worrying about setting something on fire by leaving the pot to simmer overnight on a gas flame. A heavy thickness has hung over the city all day, the rain hasn't broke through the low clouds, and of course the humidity added to the inside by canning makes the air feel compressed. Not even eight o'clock, and it's almost all dark. Yesterday I saw the moon, a half-slice of pink near the southern horizon; the moon always cheers me up, even more than the sun. Maybe because the moon won't slice your retinas out if you look directly at it. Fascinating to see the shadows of craters, I have a friend who plants according to the lunar phases, plants in the half-dark so the roots aren't shocked by sunlight.
Sleep well, friend, whether you are on this side of the planet or over the Pole to the east. If it were so still, would the sound of heads flopping down be discernible as the sun set in each time zone? Is there planetary noise as the earth wakes, if not just the gulls at dawn or the slap of paper delivery at the door? Is there noise as we spin? We are in atmosphere, and are rotating at 1,070 miles per hour at the equator; that has to make some sort of noise, do you think? Whoosh? Let me know, I'm busy dreaming of applesauce. Sleep, let your paws run in your dreams as you pull through fields deep and green in that time where there is no time, no clocks, no when, just is. Sleep.
Going to market is a heady experience, for each apple variety offers a singular talent and there is so much to discover. They have started to come in; my favorite for applesauce, the Paula Reds, are already almost at the end of their run. Gingergolds and Jersey Macs are starting, but I wait for some of the older names to arrive for making pies, crisps, and of course, more applesauce. I am done with college, and have all the necessary paperwork that says I can teach children according to New York State standards, so I have time for revisiting some of the things that had to be forgotten for a little bit.
My grandfather would make applesauce without peeling the apples, and the morning dawn rosy color suffused throughout the labeled jars, making it much more attractive than whatever yellow stuff came out of a can. He put up a few pints each fall, using MacIntoshes and Jonathans to produce a creamy textured sauce blended with a small amount of sugar and cinnamon. It was my favorite thing he made besides his grilled cheese with sliced pickles inside, or his version of an ice cream cone with a squirt of whipped cream and peanuts. I wish I knew him better, he died quickly one fall day while bringing up pine seedlings he had started in trays down in the small cellar. A stroke felled him, he was gone before the ambulance came.
Most everyone on my grandparent's street had fruit trees in their backyards, many folks being just a generation away from immigration, or like my grandparents, new to city life, having moved here from Elmira, New York. My grandmother grew her huge roses, my grandfather tended his trees. In a small backyard there were a Stanley plum, peach, cherry, and apple trees. Grapevines sprawled over the arbor he built, and were just beginning to produce. He grew begonias, gloxinias, and other fussy things that needed to be taken in before frost.
My Mom didn't do applesauce, but canned tomatoes, peaches, and the sacred chili sauce, all of which required scalding to loosen the skin of each tomato, of each peach. When you looked at the bushels on the kitchen floor, you can only put on an apron and dive in. Mom dunked, I peeled. The heat of summer was compounded by vats of boiling water and we were wringing wet, but that's the way it is, tomatoes don't arrive in January. When in my own kitchen, I was determined to create applesauce like the marvelous stuff Grandpa had made. It took a few forays with different varieties before I got the hang of it, but it happened.
The success of canning combined with a gathering instinct inherent in most humans exploded; I tried everything a water bath canner could process. Peaches, tomatoes, pears, pickles, applesauce, apple butter, and homemade catsup were jarred up and put in a cupboard for winter meals. I made rhubarb jam, catnip jelly, and yellow beans in mustard sauce. A thick slice of bread with my apple butter will fortify those who slog to school or work through any snowstorm that nature or the boss hands out, it's that good.
Viewing the stalls of fruits and vegetable fusillade makes the kitchen pots rattle in my head, there is so much, so delicious, such a gift, it's the season. The summer fruits are here, but a few farms are bringing in the heavier produce of fall; the butternuts, cumbersome heads of cauliflower, lumbering cabbages; all portents of root cellar recipes, when you would sell your dog to the circus to get a decent tomato, a peach, an ear of corn for goodness sake. Staving off the shuttered cold with an open jar of homemade catsup for french fries is a happy thing to do, tossing a quart of peaches together with sugar, egg, and flour make a cobbler able to saturate the home with a bit of life stolen from a summer day, when a farmer arose at three a.m. to load wooden baskets filled by hands that reached to pick the sun from branches. For you. For me. For their own satisfaction of creating in a smaller paradise.
Well I have to go buy more jars; the crockpot will ally in making the catsup without me worrying about setting something on fire by leaving the pot to simmer overnight on a gas flame. A heavy thickness has hung over the city all day, the rain hasn't broke through the low clouds, and of course the humidity added to the inside by canning makes the air feel compressed. Not even eight o'clock, and it's almost all dark. Yesterday I saw the moon, a half-slice of pink near the southern horizon; the moon always cheers me up, even more than the sun. Maybe because the moon won't slice your retinas out if you look directly at it. Fascinating to see the shadows of craters, I have a friend who plants according to the lunar phases, plants in the half-dark so the roots aren't shocked by sunlight.
Sleep well, friend, whether you are on this side of the planet or over the Pole to the east. If it were so still, would the sound of heads flopping down be discernible as the sun set in each time zone? Is there planetary noise as the earth wakes, if not just the gulls at dawn or the slap of paper delivery at the door? Is there noise as we spin? We are in atmosphere, and are rotating at 1,070 miles per hour at the equator; that has to make some sort of noise, do you think? Whoosh? Let me know, I'm busy dreaming of applesauce. Sleep, let your paws run in your dreams as you pull through fields deep and green in that time where there is no time, no clocks, no when, just is. Sleep.
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