FIELD NOTES: Goodbye to summer friends...

...Sunday morning at the flea market...backyard at the grill...a glass of evening wine with jazz at the bistro set on the deck outside the kitchen...or...just keepin' cool around the house...& garden...snipping chives & mint...during one-too-humid-summer-spent-waiting-for-a-breath-of-fresh-air...

FIELD NOTES: I am taken aback by my own reaction…

Friday afternoon

...the pure child-like intensity of it…it’s just a box, but I dance around the kitchen because it contains my spice order from Penzeys. There is minced onion and garlic and parsley…tenderness and sweetness plucked from nature, dried and preserved until cooking will bring it back to life…as old as human nature itself, driving joy, passion, lust, trade, exploration, exploitation and conquest throughout its history in the world. But my unabashed joy is not false or tainted with the instant gratification of consumerism. It is me finding a vacuum that has been created by the absence of simple daily pleasures due to the recent nature of things. It is me inhaling a memory…and the anticipation of creating new ones…of taste, of family pleasure, of growing seasons, of the miracle of the human body filtered through our senses. And what else is in the box?...Penzeys first cookbook, a jewel of a book in any category, not just cooking…and still more…their usual generosity of throwing in a free sample jar of one of their spices is multiplied by three…and it happens to be all of my favorite spice, Tuscan Sunset. As I begin to read about the Penzey family in the book, I would like them to know how much they lightened my day with just a box…

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.

FIELD NOTES: The pineapple sage is closed down like an umbrella...

“Sick” Day, through the window

...due to my unintentional neglect. I called in sick to work because I feel similarly. I rinse the breakfast dishes in the sink and wonder, what now, has blown into the backyard. Sometimes it feels as if I am deliberately placed downwind from the debris of others. But not today, it is not a bright pink candy wrapper, but a lone impatiens blooming in the middle of the lawn! Last summer the deer availed themselves of my hanging baskets as if they were salad bowls and now perhaps they have brought back one of the flowers (albeit with less than delicate means) as a peace offering. I am reminded of my father's wit in the story he liked to curb my wishing moods with, the one about the little girl who wanted a pony and all she got was manure, but her optimism was so great that she declared "Oh goody, goody! I almost got a horse!" How lucky I am today to have gotten a flower. Thanks, Dad.

FIELD NOTES: I meant to take a group picture...

Sometime later in October

...of my late geraniums, the headiest and longest lingering set of potted geraniums I ever remember having, but a storm came. Finally. All desperate for rainwater, we cannot complain, although asking for your thirst to be quenched and getting a bucket dumped on your head are not the same things. You don’t quite know what hit you or why it did or maybe you didn’t phrase your request properly. I don’t remember what it was that I made myself attend to: Getting to work on time? Cleaning the sink? Making the bed? But I do recall wanting to take a picture of my beautiful geraniums. And what elicits a sigh more than putting something off and too lately realizing that THAT was the most important thing you would have done that day? I did save the parsley – sort of. I always grow more than I can use, chop it down and out of guilt try to save it. This time I stuffed a huge bunch in a big pitcher of water, but all I ‘had time for’ was one tabouli salad so when the parsley eventually yellowed I again acted out of guilt and composted it. It was the least I could do. Last season, I snipped it into ice cube trays filled with broth to use in winter soups, but consistently forgot the bag of cubes entombed in the freezer. More waste, more guilt, more domestic neglect. My favorite from the kitchen herb garden is the pineapple sage – nature’s Juicy Fruit – I snipped it, bundled it and hung it upside down to dry. I like to put it in my winter teas. At least I always mean to…