Tomato Soup for the Soul

Winter came so hard and fast this year that we’re still reeling from blow.  Oftentimes there’s more of a gradual winding down to winter.  The autumn days slowly cool into the 50’s, then the 40’s, and finally dally awhile below freezing like a little caution sign and to temper our nerves.  But autumn inevitably returns awhile to warm our souls again, and even when the temperatures take a stronger liking to the lower digits, autumn will generally pay another visit or two before finally circling the globe to elsewhere.

Not this year.  Ol’ man winter had his date set on the calendar, with nowhere else to go after that.  He flew in and dropped us down to the shuddering teens with a knock-out blow that came outta’ nowhere.  Then while we were still fumbling for our snow boots and ice scrapers he set up shop in our corner of the ring.  Now the landscape is totally transformed with long icicles off the eves and snow stuck everywhere, stubborn-like, and we’re still scrambling to get plastic on the windows!

I never actually finished with autumn, or even summer for that matter.  There are still tomatoes stuck in Ziploc bags in the freezer waiting to be canned for the year.  Fearing the hard-won fruit will soon be burnt by their long stay in the deep-freeze, I recently resurrected a bag of the hardened, ruby globes and set them out to thaw.  Thawing tomatoes are not especially appetizing to look at and I tried to shield them from the wary eyes of my partner as she spied the pile of wrinkly, translucent mush.

“They’ll make good soup,” I assured us both.

Scrumptious soup, in fact – full with chunky things and herbs like you don’t get in a canned variety.  Now I sit in a sunny nook of the kitchen overlooking the frozen tundra outside while basking in rays that made the very fruit I’m eating ripen to perfection.  It’s like a little bit of summer’s past circling back ‘round to tarry awhile, and it’s warming me deeply from the inside out!

Recipe:  Scrumptious Tomato Soup for the Soul

• Saute’ some onion in a pot with a little olive oil.

• Add tomatoes.  Peeling is not necessary.  Neither is thawing.

• If add water, add only a very small amount.

• Allow to simmer a long time.  Mash the tomatoes as necessay.  It’s not necessary to remove the peeling.

• Add salt, pepper, herbs and sugar to taste.

• Add some of the broth to milk in a separate bowl.  Add slowly and with stirring to avoid curdling the milk.  Then return the milk mixture to the soup pot.

• ENJOY!

Last Cull of the Season

Greens ready for the freezer.

It was Thanksgiving Day and I hadn’t paid much attention to the forecast until that afternoon. “Oh, no!  A hard freeze tonight!” I exclaimed, aghast. “I need to pull in the greens!” Suddenly, my plans for the remainder of the holiday – to spend thankful, together-time with my sweetheart inside our warm, cozy home - were displaced by the sudden need to cull the last of the produce for the season.

It happens this way every year – a sudden moment of panic occurs, forestalled by the glorious and pleasant autumn days, when autumn crisply turns to winter, regardless of the date on the calendar.

I warmed myself with a cup of hot coffee, donned layers of clothing and an extra waterproof jacket, and ventured outside into the icy, drizzling rain. “I should’ve done this sooner,” I muttered, frustrated with the new agenda.

Chaotic congregations of black birds thronged overhead, flocking in waves towards treetops south of our property.  They squawked wildly.  “It’s gonna get cold tonight! It’s gonna get cold!” they seemed to cry as they jostled for favored roosting positions.

I approached the tall, sturdy Brussels sprout plants first and grasped the heavy leaves, hurriedly snapping them off by the handful with sharp, downward yanks.  There was a bumper crop of the leaves this year, and their removal revealed thick stalks densely studded with the toothsome, pearly globes.  “WOW - More than I thought!” I exclaimed, swiftly severing the stalks at the base.

I sped over to the bed of mustard greens, racing to gather a final crop before my fingers froze, and caught sight of the chard whose leaves had grown the full length of my arm.  “MY – that will make a good meal or two!” I exclaimed as I tore the rumpled leaves from the plant.

I collected a last bag of lettuce for early winter salads and then spied feathery greens poking through the leaf mulch in the pole bean row.  “Carrots?” I surmised.  “I thought they never grew,” I puzzled, recalling the drought-ridden spring when I first planted the seeds.  I pulled the delicate fronds and bright orange giants sprang from the ground. They were not shaped like ordinary carrots either, but were thick-figured creations with arms and legs like they’d created quite a life for themselves during the half-year they spent in the ground!

For two full hours I pulled, picked and packed the final harvest of the season, finding far more bounty than I had ever imagined. Bags and buckets of produce crowded the counters and floor of our tiny kitchen, and then I worked long into the night processing all the intake. In the wee hours of the morning I finally lumbered into bed, heavy with fatigue from the last cull of the season, but I couldn’t imagine being more grateful.

The Happy Patch

Daffodils asleep.

I never really PLAN on planting spring bulbs. Instead, it’s generally a spontaneous act instigated by a walk through the local hardware store en route to something entirely different. Then I see them - bins of bulbs reduced to half price, and I succumb every time. It’s usually after Thanksgiving when this occurs and snow is in the forecast, and I anxiously wonder whether the ground is too cold already for planting anything.

 “I’ll need something to perk me up in the springtime,” I said to myself recently while sorting through  an assortment of daffodil bulbs. The sun is awfully shy in the late of winter in central Ohio, preferring instead to huddle behind an interminable cover of cloud for days on end. It affects me badly when I miss the golden rays for too long, and I often succumb to a late winter malaise.

“I need a patch I can see from my window,” I continued, as I arrived home, bulbs in hand, and scanned the yard for a place to plant them. We do have spring flowers in our yard, but they are meant for the neighbors and passers-by, as they grow within feet of our house and cannot be seen from my own office window.

But the view of the yard from my window is rather limited, and I struggled to find a location for a new patch of flowers. The roots of the tree dominating the yard would not allow a cluster of daffodils nearby. And digging in a new bed along the walkway was too much work, and besides - they’d look too formal lined up along its edge. The only other space available was smack-dab in the center of the lawn, which didn’t exactly work aesthetically.

“Do you mind if I plant them in the middle of the yard?” I asked my partner hesitantly. “Of course not. Plant them anywhere you want!” she answered enthusiastically. Aesthetics rarely concern her, and sometimes that’s a helpful thing!

I grabbed a shovel from the garage and proceeded to dig a circular hole in the middle of the lawn and within line sight of my office window. “I’ll call it The Happy Patch,” I said to myself, pressing the bulbs into the chilly earth.

And that’s what it will be. One morning in the late and gray of winter I’ll peer from my window and there they’ll be – bright yellow beacons bursting gaily onto the weary landscape. I’ll smile, and together we’ll swing and sway in the breezy spring and dance the sun to life again!

Autumn Potpourri

What a stunning potpourri is autumn, with leaves the colors of pumpkins and harvest aromas filling the air. There are hayrides and scarecrows and jack-o-lanterns peering from porches. The garden, full with offerings of the later season, brings pilings of squash, potatoes, and frost-sweetened greens. The last of the herbs are collected, a pie is baked to warm up the kitchen, and tomatoes are pulled from the plants while green.

I love autumn, with leaves raked in piles large enough to dive into and bury myself in memories of childhood treasure hunts for popcorn balls and peanut brittle. The joys of the season continue into adulthood with apple-picking, autumn drives, and wide-eyed children posing as princes, cats, and the little Queen Bee. Festivals of all kinds fill the calendar, spurred by regional harvests and the cooling air. There are samplings of apple butter, corn soup and pawpaw preserves, and blue-ribbon recipes for sale in jars.

As I meander the out-of-doors this time of year I savor the sounds of the settling woods and the  spicy-rich aroma of the mown fields and soil. The multitude of elements creating autumn magically combine with the mystery of the season. The alchemy of change stirs the air until one evening, in the stillness of endeavors finally exhausted, the exquisitry of winter softly arrives and settles upon the rooftops, smoothes the garden furrows, and all is quieted again.

just SIT

I shuffled with labored gait onto the garden pathway with a very heavy heart. “I haven’t  been able to do ANYTHING in the garden,” I lamented. THIS due to an ongoing struggle with foot problems that has left me hobbling around in a walking cast. By the time the most necessary of daily tasks are complete, I am so heavy with fatigue from dragging the lame limb everywhere I go that I have little energy left to limp out to the garden. This particular evening, however, I was determined to enjoy an autumn salad before the first frost retires the burgeoning bed of lettuce.

“But it’s not all about WORK!!!” came the instant reply in my head. “It’s about the SPACE, and the BEAUTY. Come out here when the sun is shining, and just SIT and ENJOY the space, the SPIRIT of what you’ve created!” I had to admit that I’d never ventured out to the garden just to SIT. I’ve generally got a zillion things I aim to accomplish - way more than I can count on my own allotment of fingers and toes. In fact, I’m known to take LISTS to the garden, something that probably ought to be outlawed and relegated to the “way too busy to enjoy the process” category.

“Okay. I’ll SIT,” I replied, and determined to do just that. The following day I  shuffled my way out to the bench by the crumpled vines I’ve yet to gather, and facing the collards so run-amok with aphids that I doubt I’ll get any to eat myself, and I just SAT for awhile. It took some doing, at first, to slow the busying of my mind so tempted to note the chores left undone, but with a “hush” of myself a time or two I quieted down to hear the last of the crickets chirping in the weeds and the rasping leaves of corn long spent. I gazed at the scattering of zinnias slowly folding for the season, and even lay on my back on a warm patch of clippings dried on the ground. A butterfly fluttered delicate white wings through the bold, azure sky and a yellow spotted beetle dithered about the coiled cone of a morning glory flower. My heart warmed in the softened glow of the mellow autumn sun and I eased myself down to the gentle ebbing there is of everything this time of year. A productive time it was, I have to say, an easing unto rest, and I’ve decided, of course, that I must arrange for more of these times before the winter’s cold arrives, and that I must “just SIT” more often.

Kitty and the Crickets

Huckleberry Huckstable

One of the great pleasures of the waning summer days is listening to the resounding chorus of crickets outside, and yet it’s amazing how many of the musical critters make their way INSIDE to scitter about the house. Perhaps they’re attracted by the unusually loud soloists already in residence in the corners and crevices of our home, playing their tunes loudly enough to keep us awake at night. And yet their bold tunes make them enticing targets of Huckleberry, our sweetest, dearest of feline companions who morphs into lethal  exterminator at even the shyest chirp. “Huck” (for short) is horribly effective at scrampling the winless creatures and slowly, methodically amputating their hindquarters. One morning I collected SEVEN corpses, legs strewn mercilessly about the house. Occasionally I’ll find a cricket still clinging to dear life, pitifully scooting along with one dreary leg and eagerly climbing onto my hand for an escort to ANYWHERE else. But I can’t catch them PRIOR to their hour of need! No, they hop too quickly away, confident in their navigational abilities and proud of their warmer home. But as their songs expire one by one, I am left to collect the dry, lifeless bodies of the little instrumentalists. Efforts to extract any cricket-empathy from sweet kitty are hopeless, and any attempt to rescue the hapless critters are met with a torrid look of disdain. There is some comfort, if that is an accurate word, in the fact that as the season progresses I see their expired bodies outside as well, having found their mates and prepared progeny for the following season. And maybe it helps to view Huckleberry as the valiant mercenary on mission to bring an early end to the crickets’ fruitless search for food and warmth in later life.

No. It doesn’t.

Last of the Summer Tomatoes

There’s something extra special about the last of the summer tomatoes, those stragglers in the later, waning sun that take so much time to ripen. But when they do - Oh, the wait is so worth the while! When I finally pluck that last, reddened fruit from the tangle of collapsing vines and browning leaves and plunge the long-awaited gem into my mouth, the heightened burst of flavor tingles my tongue and dazzles my eyes!

It seems that all of the color and flavor the summer has to offer is concentrated down into the last of the yield loitering on the vine, a final offering of the season reserving its best for the very, very last. I can never wait to return to the house with the long-awaited prize, sampling the deeply reddened jewel there on the spot at the feet of the tangled, expiring plants. And there I rejoice, with the last of the crickets chirping and the birds darting overhead, I rejoice and give an extra special thanks.