Gifts of Grand Proportions
I have been spoiled this summer. My sister and brother-in-law gave me bouquets of arugula, swiss chard, salad greens; bags of string beans, cherry tomatoes, zucchini, summer squash; the occasional pepper and cucumber; even wonder of wonders, little dishes of raspberries. A good friend snapped off crunchy leaves of green and purple kale, filled a bag, and said, “Come by for more if you want.”
I am singing an encomium to my sister, brother-in-law, my friend, to all of the front and backyard gardeners who till and compost the earth, plant the seeds, weed and water and watch over so that the rest of us can know goodness, can be truly fed. They give us a gift of grand proportions.
How to even describe the thrill of biting into a sun-warmed tomato or a snappy green bean or an edgy kale leaf or a milk and honey ear of corn? It’s like eating summer itself: the sultry nights and damp breezes; the sound of baseball games and laughter and the earth breathing; the fragrance of nodding roses, grill smoke, salt, and low tide; the feeling of the sun soaking into the back of your neck; the childhood memories of all those years when summer stretched out like a ribbon to the moon.
We have just passed the equinox when the day is equal to the night. Asters and mums, pumpkins and gourds, and tidy bundles of wood have replaced the pots of basil and hanging baskets of petunias by the front doors of supermarkets. The morning comes ever later, the evening ever sooner. The air is blue and edged with crispness that marks the leaves of the chestnut trees that fall brown and brittle in the street.
Summer leaves gently in early September. The gardeners, of course, know before the rest of us, taking note of what is getting spindly, yellow, dried, sparse. They follow the light and its increasing reticence, its thinning, its pulling away as it is called to other landscapes, other horizons. September’s end leaves us pulling on sweaters, checking the furnace, hungering for apples and warm things like socks and soups and books and the company of each other.
My brother-in-law is now growing potatoes. He puts them in a bag and gives them to me, coated with dirt and oddly shaped with funny little specks and eyes. I roast them with rosemary and pepper and oil, grateful for the hot oven and the comforting aroma that warms the rooms of my house, grateful for the steadying flavor of roots and cellars, and most especially grateful for the gardeners still bearing gifts of grand proportions even as September wanes.