Waiting

October 13, 2016October 13, 2016 / Apple Hill Cottage / 8 Comments

Everywhere i look i see a poem waiting:
Kentucky Wonder Beans
the muddy garden shoes by the door waiting
for my feet
to deliver me to a place of peace and solitude
where peppers bow and dance on heavy laden stalks.
Arugula sings as it grows — Taste me Taste me —
and beans swing through their jungle playing
hide and seek with the leaves;

the two flannel shirts shrugged off in haphazard heaps Okra
on the chair in the mudroom
— his and hers — sleeves entangled, plaids clashing,
waiting for him to say (In the cool of the evening)
Have you seen my flannel shirt?
and she will know exactly where it is;

the okra on the counter, cut into symmetrical flowers,
waiting to be made into thick aromatic okra stew.
A friend brought it —
His wife said Don’t bring me any more okra.
I love okra, he grinned.
Maybe i won’t plant so much next year;

the glossy green peppers piled precariously basket of peppers
in the wicker basket — waiting their turn to be
sliced diced and frozen for winter’s
friday night fiestas;

the dark brown just-plowed garden dirt
drinking up the rain
waiting for the creamy garlic cloves
in their smooth purply skins
to spend the winter buried
in the snow-covered earth;
freshly plowed

the lime green clock on the kitchen wall
bought at Walmart for $3.99
ticking away the seconds minutes hours
ticking away summer into fall
ticking away seasons into years — waiting
for someone to notice minute and hour hands
colliding with dizzying disorienting
speed.
kitchen clock

the rowdy beans

September 18, 2016September 17, 2016 / Apple Hill Cottage / 2 Comments

jungle of beans I pulled up one row of the rowdy jungle of green beans this morning. A few tiny white and yellow blossoms were dangling on the ends of brown leaves but I have a pantry full of beans.

a mess of beans

We can eat beans every day for a month this winter and still have some left

but those unruly beans shaded the pepper plants that are still growing.

And the autumn sun will love those peppers and caress them and grow them;

we don’t have enough peppers to eat every day for a month this winter.

It’s like life that way — choices every day.

I hated to chop those Blue Lake Pole Beans down.

Kentucky Wonder Beans

They have been a wonder this summer.

Not only have they been charming in the garden on our string trellises,

but we ate them as often as we liked;

I’ve canned them, frozen them, pickled them;

I have them drying for shell beans in every spare spot in the kitchen and back porch,

and enough to plant for next year.

And yes, there’s a recipe here…

Dilled Green Beans or Dilly Beans

Fill pint jars with lovely long green beans. Holding the jars on the side, put the beans in one at a time until you have a filled jar. To each pint jar, add some grinds of crushed red pepper, 1/2 teaspoon mustard seed, 1/2 teaspoon dill seed, and a garlic clove (or two). If you have dill flowers, you can add one to the bottom of the jar before you put in the beans, or the top of the jar afterwards. (If using the dill flowers, omit the dill seed.)

Make a brine of equal amounts of vinegar and water. I used 5 cups of each. To 10 cups of vinegar and water, add 1/2 cup pickling or kosher salt. Heat the brine to boiling; then carefully pour the brine over the beans leaving 1/4 inch head space in the jars. Seal with canning lids and process in a boiling water bath for 5 minutes.

You can see these were canned earlier in the season when my dill was still plentiful…

These will look (and taste) delicious on the Thanksgiving relish tray

with pickled beets and gingered yellow squash pickles.

August Is Yellow

September 13, 2016June 20, 2017 / Apple Hill Cottage / 9 Comments

Part One
the august sun shines like a spotlight on the ten year old
joyfully riding her new green bicycle (without the training wheels) 
down the gravel driveway.

like a pro, not even braking,
she leans to the left and whizzes onto the dirt path
packed down through years of truck tires.

through the trees she rides, slowing now, for the pull of the dirt
is harder on bicycle tires (though easier on knees).
the trees bow to her, the queen of the bicycle.

the sun glints through the leaves and the air is
saturated with the sweet scent of ripe peaches
and the hum of satisfied and satiated bees.

she pays no attention to the glorious around her
because she is ten years old and not yet aware
that her childhood Augusts were golden.


Part Two
the grandfather is waiting for her to tire of riding circles 
in the orchard. he figures it will take twice (maybe three times)
and she’ll be ready to listen to the lesson that peaches teach.

he has the ladder ready when 
she drops her bike next to the dusty green farm truck.
“Help me pick some peaches?” he asks.

he steadies the ladder and guides her small hand as they reach,
touching the fuzz gently, gently, every squeeze will bruise these 
peaches easy as you bruise those knees.

gently gently she places the peach in the basket looped over her 
      skinny arm.
he moves her hand to another hanging low on the branch. 
see this green? see this fuzz? peaches have to ripen on the tree.

their juices have to be warmed by the hot August sun. they take 
their time ripening and can’t be hurried. you can’t pick the tree 
clean, you have to go again and again to the same tree. 
       peaches teach patience.

together they fill the basket, moving the ladder around the tree
taking their time — savoring the tree-ripened juicy chin-sticky 
sweet yellow sweltering August patience-teaching peaches.

patience is not his usual shape, this short round man in the straw 
hat and farm clothes teaching peaches to the skinny girl with bruised
      knees. 
she learned peaches. she learned love. she still stamps her foot at
      patience

and she can’t abide sickly grocery store peaches.

For the next few weeks I’m taking an online poetry course over at Monna McDiarmid’s place. This first week we were asked to write about childhood, and if we wanted, to use the color yellow. I probably won’t post all the poems, but this one I liked because it was such a good memory of my grandfather, who built Apple Hill Cottage. And my sister sent me this photo just as I was writing the poem…It’s a work in progress. Comments welcome.