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desperanceYesterday we were mostly out, at the farmers' market and the community garden plant sale and an SCA event down by Hollister*. Today I am mostly in and out about the house, getting things done in the garden and in the kitchen and on the computer.
Here's a thing, though: I do love growing fruits and vegetables, and I do enjoy preparing and cooking and eating them - but I really, really don't like picking, gathering, harvesting. I leave things way too long on the plant or in the ground, often till they run to seed or rot or get eaten by snails or [your catastrophic ending here]. Partly I think it's a remembered aversion to family outings; I always hated blackberrying, everything about it was a disappointment, from the physical uncomfort to the lamentable quantities we gathered to the eventual taste of what we did with 'em. And then seeds got stuck between my teeth.
Mostly, though, I think it's an aspect of my hoardy nature. If I pick them, then I don't have them any longer, y'know?
Obviously, I could do with getting over this. I am trying. I haven't quite settled on dinner tonight, but we have rice and green garlic and fava beans, and chicken and kale tops and sugar snap peas, and two elements of that are from my garden**. And today I'm putting in a lot more harvestable commodities, courtesy of the Charles St Gardens people: tomatoes and peppers and Chinese long beans and lemongrass***.
As it happens, I am also working through the final draft of Being Small, and as it happens, this text is also very much about hoarding, inter alia. There are rumours that aspects may be vaguely autobiographical****.
Here, have a snippet from early on. The boy is speaking of his mother and her Moleskine habit:
She scatters, where I glean. She sketches on one side of the paper only, leaves whole pages blank and then abandons what she’s made. I gather them up, these little black books, I hoard them all and write on the reverse, in all the blanks, I fill those bare white spaces. Profligacy, parsimony: she can’t keep hold of what’s important, and I can’t let anything go. I’m only ever generous with words. Even then, my handwriting is – well, crabbed. Tight, held back, to make the most of all that open paper. Controlled or cramped or crushed; cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d. What I’m trying not to say, since you ask, what I like never to say is that it’s small.
*I mention this only for the amusement of the young, who have Hollister spelled out on half their clothing and have no idea that it's a place of remarkable meaninglessness, worth mentioning only because there is nothing there worth mentioning.
**From the fava jungle and the kale trees, since you ask.
***Actually I'm quite good about harvesting herbs. Also, another thing I'm doing today, I"m hacking back the rosemary before it eats us entirely. The way I"m treating it, in England it would certainly die; I just hope my California friends are right in their sanguinity.
****Oh, hush.
Here's a thing, though: I do love growing fruits and vegetables, and I do enjoy preparing and cooking and eating them - but I really, really don't like picking, gathering, harvesting. I leave things way too long on the plant or in the ground, often till they run to seed or rot or get eaten by snails or [your catastrophic ending here]. Partly I think it's a remembered aversion to family outings; I always hated blackberrying, everything about it was a disappointment, from the physical uncomfort to the lamentable quantities we gathered to the eventual taste of what we did with 'em. And then seeds got stuck between my teeth.
Mostly, though, I think it's an aspect of my hoardy nature. If I pick them, then I don't have them any longer, y'know?
Obviously, I could do with getting over this. I am trying. I haven't quite settled on dinner tonight, but we have rice and green garlic and fava beans, and chicken and kale tops and sugar snap peas, and two elements of that are from my garden**. And today I'm putting in a lot more harvestable commodities, courtesy of the Charles St Gardens people: tomatoes and peppers and Chinese long beans and lemongrass***.
As it happens, I am also working through the final draft of Being Small, and as it happens, this text is also very much about hoarding, inter alia. There are rumours that aspects may be vaguely autobiographical****.
Here, have a snippet from early on. The boy is speaking of his mother and her Moleskine habit:
She scatters, where I glean. She sketches on one side of the paper only, leaves whole pages blank and then abandons what she’s made. I gather them up, these little black books, I hoard them all and write on the reverse, in all the blanks, I fill those bare white spaces. Profligacy, parsimony: she can’t keep hold of what’s important, and I can’t let anything go. I’m only ever generous with words. Even then, my handwriting is – well, crabbed. Tight, held back, to make the most of all that open paper. Controlled or cramped or crushed; cabin’d, cribb’d, confin’d. What I’m trying not to say, since you ask, what I like never to say is that it’s small.
*I mention this only for the amusement of the young, who have Hollister spelled out on half their clothing and have no idea that it's a place of remarkable meaninglessness, worth mentioning only because there is nothing there worth mentioning.
**From the fava jungle and the kale trees, since you ask.
***Actually I'm quite good about harvesting herbs. Also, another thing I'm doing today, I"m hacking back the rosemary before it eats us entirely. The way I"m treating it, in England it would certainly die; I just hope my California friends are right in their sanguinity.
****Oh, hush.