Sunday, October 12, 2008

FIELD NOTES: "Breakdown garden"...

Columbus Day Weekend

...is on my list because not only do I have a few extra days off from school, but the weather is glorious for October - 70 degrees and sunny! The necks of the sweet basil hang down with the burden of going to seed, two green tomatoes the size of golf balls (and just as hard) still cling to life inside their cage, the Kentucky Wonder green beans are beginning to wonder if there is any longer a point to their existence, there is little evidence left of the pickling cukes and only the parsley remains forlornly looking around for its companions until I break it off at its base and stand it up in a large glass of water to await the supper salad. As I untie the bean poles and prepare to remove the mass of yellow, brown and green vines to the compost, I spy a couple of green pods suspended vertically. They are still tender! I find myself stuffing them into my mouth like a primate in the wild or a person without a home. I go down on my knees into the dark and dry garden soil pawing through the tangle to find more late bloomers. I eat them – maybe four or five – biting off their umbilical tips and spitting them out with no sense of etiquette or propriety while relishing the snap and crunch and green juice inside my mouth. A person of the twenty-first century can still sow a seed, harvest a garden and survive even in the midst of Wall Street collapsing under its virtual importance.