Sunday, October 10, 2010

Would You Eat This?

I'm guessing you probably wouldn't.  What kind of person would look at something all split and browning and puckered and think hey, let's give that a try?  Well, I would, and I'm glad I did, because that melon, which spontaneously cracked open after a week in my fridge and which I then left untouched for another four long weeks, daily observing its demise with a certain amount of dismay accompanied by the vague feeling that this melon--which faced me at eye level every morning and night as if to say "your Summer is over, and what have you done?"; which I knew to be the end of a chain of events circling the last few years (from my innocent dreams of cultivating such sumptuous roundness to the gathering of many seeds to the promise of stout magical seedlings to their delicate struggle against a season of cold to a little taste of magic frozen possibility to the coming of another Spring to my mother's continuing commitment to a Summer of perfect growing conditions to a bumper crop to the hands that picked it to the day it cracked to the weeks it gently pulled away) and yet was unable to truly appreciate, even with the awareness that it could not have been brought into existence without me, in some way--this melon was seemingly less a pleasure to be enjoyed than a manifestation of the unrealized potential of several months of my own growing season, as well as being the largest representative of a very small harvest now going to waste in my kitchen though I was not so long ago capable of handling bushels...so I was a little skeptical about cutting it in half this afternoon but thought what the hell.  As it turned out, it's still completely perfect inside, cracks and scars and all, not merely edible but actually good, the way a melon should be, and moreover it is the only crisply deliciously sweetly juicy thing that could possibly make any kind of sense today.  So let that be a lesson to me: there are plenty worse things than having a cracked melon.  (Yes, I downed the whole thing.)


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In other news, I made a very late decision to stay at home today so that I could devote a little attention to my lately neglected yard and gardens.  I'm glad I did; the simple routine of mowing the lawn got me looking around at all the digging I've done here and all the little plants I've put in (some, not so small...the Datura could seriously cover a queen-size mattress, at least) and I realized that--though I might have done more--I've made a reasonable amount of progress here during the past eleven months.  Among my other small efforts this afternoon, I filled in a few deep-ish holes in the lawn and moved the last of the shit pile onto the dirt pile--oh and by the way, a few weeks ago I redistributed what was left of the previous owner's "pumpkin patch" into a new bed formation and laid down new paths...all worked out pretty nicely.  Also, after nearly a year of our not having really crossed paths, I finally met my southern neighbor--a nice simple bachelor--who pulled up while I was out by the garage, moving manure.  We chatted for a while and I learned a few new things about my place, among them that there were at one time three apple trees in my backyard which were all struck by lightning (presumably not at the same time), and that this entire neighborhood was once a dump, which (so he says) is why such oddities as mug handles and marbles and the like keep turning up in the gardens around here.  (That may explain some things, but I suspect it was gnomes who left the tiny green treasure chest I found in the garden today, discreetly snuggled into the side of a mound.)  I also found out that his family has a cabin very close to where I grew up....Small world.  Huh.


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It's Sunday morning now.  It's been a while since I spent a morning out in the garden...it felt good to sow seeds--rye & vetch on the new garden beds and around the hive, crimson and red clover on the mound in the center--and to rake them under the cover of loose soil...I just realized that those may have been the first actual seeds I've put in the ground here...oh, no--there was the pumpkin, sole gesture of hope, still blossoming freely... Well, anyway, I'm headed out now, to join family and friends for a barn dance, up north.  Enjoy the day.  

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