Summer Field

Even the furrows would be dry, and a wealth of dusty soil would expand itself into the air when you pulled weeds.  Weeds are tough, the taproot of a dandelion goes deep, wild chicory even more tenacious.  Plantain was easy, but outnumbered the rest.  If I was smart, Mom's trowel would have been with me, but, most of the time I was snagged by Auntie Anne, who promised a Spanish peanut cookie if you pulled a row.  She would come out and check; they were very good cookies.

So I pulled weeds from the green beans, carrots, and cucumber vines; the corn outgrew the other plants, so it wasn't necessary to clean around the stalks.  As a kid, you're closer to the ground anyway, but not strong enough to pull the most stubborn of mustard plants.  They fought; in fact one knocked me out cold.

The stem was growing out of a crick, over which a plank had been placed for access to the back fields. I was picking flowers to give to my Mom, and the yellow blossoms would have rounded out a meager bouquet.  Standing on the plank, I grabbed and pulled and pulled.  Nothing; this thing's roots were held fast by an underground giant.  After working at the stem, the giant's wife must have called him to a supper of fee-fie-fo-fum bonebread, for suddenly the entire plant came up from the clay bed that it had been hanging onto.

Released, the force of pulling tossed me backwards, and the next I knew was blackness just before my eyes opened to birds flying above in the blue sky.  My palms were bloodied with grey slivers of wood from the old board, and I yelled murder as Mom took tweezers and needle to remove what she could.

Auntie Anne's vegetable garden was huge, dug up by my Uncle Termite's tractor, and, being ground, the earth would catch me when I toppled.  Working down the row, you met new friends.  Guess who was the one to pick up toads, because when you do, they let go with a flood of urine.   Toad pee.  You hook them under their arms and hold them away from you, preferably in the direction of a  cousin.  Once that's over, they blink and would rather be on the  ground; however, hold them gently and they settle into your warm hand.  Pretty forgiving, toads.

Ladybugs, grasshoppers, snakes, rocks, and caterpillars; sometimes a preying mantis, that most Confucian of insects.  Confucius say, cricket sing once; now sing in my belly.  A mantid will buzz through an exoskeleton like it was a pretzel stick.  I saw one eat the head off of a struggling cricket, hold the still flapping body like an ice cream cone, and delight in the creamy, greeny-brown goosh inside.  These are ferocious beings; once upon a barn, I witnessed an indignant mantid strike a defensive ninja pose with a cat.  The cat wasn't truly after the thing, but was curious to play with it to death.  I scooted the fuzzer, and moved the small demitasse to a safer spot in the bushes, so the cat wouldn't get its pride hurt.

Sticky with dirt and plant sap after pulling a row, I would have earned a cookie and a carrot to have. Never washed it, but wiped most of the soil off, and agreed with my cousin that carrots taste best with a bit of dirt in the crevices.  Come again tomorrow, my aunt would say;  I'd make sure that I was someplace else, at least until the blisters went away.  Yet, eating a garden-fresh carrot is unparalleled to anything a grocery can offer; the varieties available from seed are tenderer, sweeter, and sometimes grow legs, as recently happened to a friend.  I wonder if she ever heard wee footsteps out the backdoor.

I am old enough to remember that fruits and vegetables came in seasons; you could get strawberries only once a year, the same with peaches, asparagus, or any other succulent produce.  It was a treat to slice into the first melon, slice strawberries with sugar, have that first ear of corn; you did yourself proud because it would soon end.  This morning, I had a tomato for breakfast; just chunked it up and ate it with a fork.  It was delicious and full of summer, but not quite the epitome of tomatoes.  The season is just starting to rev up in the northeast, and almost nothing says it's hot, the green leaves are out, and birds are singing like a tomato.  Unless it's corn.  There's a farmer at the market who is known for his corn, and sells out before half the morning has gone by.  Why, yes, I think I changed the vote to corn on the cob.

But sit on the backsteps and spit watermelon seeds into the grass in hopes of growing miracle vines in a week when you're a kid.  I've become dainty (sort of) and now spoon seeds onto a plate or stick to seedless.  Rosy red juice, flesh eaten as far down into the white rind as you could; pure fun.  Nowadays we dissect reasons to eat sweet fruit, and concoct rosters of pros and cons.  High sugar content, sure; but rich in Vitamins A and C, antioxidants, potassium, and fiber, and it isn't even a fruit.  Related to  cucumbers, pumpkins, and squashes; the cucurbits, a watermelon is part of the gourd family.  Still going with corn as the favorite, which is not a vegetable either, but a grain.  So much isn't what we called it.

Watermelon at twilight, watching the sun go down, then throw your paper plate into the fire.  I miss my Auntie Anne; Uncle Termite, not so much.  The kids would run around, swat at mosquitoes, and catch fireflies in a jar.  Go in for a bath and scrub off, get to bed and listen to night sounds.  Large moths banging against the screened windows, raccoons squalling at each other, owls, bullfrogs, farm dogs barking, lost cows echoing into the dark, and a far, far away train whose tracks went through the wood, sounding a singular, piercing, heart-wrenching, wavering call as it neared the intersection with a country road.  In the morning, split hoof footprints would be in the mud, telling of silent deer; the smaller paws told of fox and weasel, sometimes decorated with chicken feathers from Wuller's hens.

The sun is setting sooner, we have passed midsummer and are rejoicing in the beginning harvest of the summer crops.  Don't let them pass without indulging, it feeds earth into you with minerals, iron, potassium, copper; it fills you with sun through the vitamins and chlorophyll produced by light from a star.  Hear the planets rotate and revolve, in spite of the vacuum of airless space, they hum; our own, Terra, has the rumble of tectonic plates, the singing of our magnetic fields, the crush of ocean waves colliding, the sizzling crackle of the Borealis; tuck under the covers and dream of songs. Listen to rains over summer fields.  Good night.