Tag Archives: Produce

The Catch-Up-to-Fall Challenge

Many homeowners in my small town not only have caught up with fall, they can rock on porches or by fireplaces — depending on temperatures — until Thanksgiving.

Their scraggly flowers now nourish compost piles. These Fall Go-Getters ordered bulbs in July and have planted them in well-fertilized beds.

Why hurry them to the compost pile? They’re still blooming, aren’t they?

On a scale of one to five, they’ve earned a six.

My flowerbeds? Half-dead blooms huddle around my house — though the fake, sunflower-laden hat on our front door earns two points.

Super-organized souls not only keep up with the seasons, they forge ahead. By August, autumn wreaths adorned their doors. “Welcome, Fall!” signs, pumpkins and jewel-colored chrysanthemums decorated their porches by September 1. Six points.

One house boasted acres of inflatable skeletons and chain saw murderers. Must I give credit to these scary overachievers?

Sigh. They must have worked day and night. Six points.

However, I itched to inform those Halloween enthusiasts about my porch’s genuine spider webs, which stick to visitors when they enter. Now, that’s fall authenticity. Three points for me.

Especially since cobwebs abound not only outside, but inside. Cleaning disturbs autumn’s ambience, so I avoid it. Two points for me.

I do envy self-starters their autumn interior décor (six points again). Fireplace mantels boast Hobby Lobby’s colorful leaves and fall flower arrangements, 50 percent off. Mine still features tulips — but peach-colored, like some fall leaves. Don’t they count for a half-point?

So far, Go-Getters have scored 24 points. Me? Seven-and-a-half.

But, wait. There’s more!

Go-Getters’ freezers, defrosted last spring, abound with perfectly stacked storage containers of homegrown, self-picked produce labeled with contents, date and time processed.

Six points again.

However, homegrown and self-picked produce also abounds in my freezer. So, there!

But I must remove 10 sort-of-labeled, amoeba-shaped packages to find something unexpired for supper. Three points.

Fall Go-Getters: 30. Me: 10-and-a-half.

It’s only October. I’ll make a run between now and Thanksgiving.

Then Hubby peers outside. “Beautiful day. Want to go for a hike?”

If I do, I’ll never catch up …

“Sure.”

Light shimmers through oaks’ and maples’ leaves embroidered with scarlet, gold and russet. Crickets and cicadas sing an end-of-summer concert. Cornfields rustle a welcome: “Our Creator throws a great harvest party, doesn’t He!”

I’ve caught up with fall.

This Go-Slower earns nothing, but she’s just been given 100 points.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Have you caught up with fall?

That Between-Holidays Feeling

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The calendar gap spanning Halloween and Thanksgiving gives me that between-holidays feeling.

Many, craving Christmas, skip it.

Me? I want to slow down. With no more scary skulls, spider webs and zombies, why not continue the fun of pumpkins, cute scarecrows and gorgeous leaves?

Another cause for celebration: colder weather brings comfort food — though the official Comfort Food Day is December 5. Do holiday authorities really think I’ll wait that long for chicken and noodles?

Fortunately, this influx of calorie-rich food is accompanied by baggy sweaters, lifesavers until New Year’s resolutions ruin everything.

Not all between-holiday positives are unhealthy. Though the growing season is finished, carrots, still residing in our garden, will bless our table. Tomatoes and peppers rescued from frost glow in golden and red splendor before patio doors. Why my parents ripened garden produce on paper grocery sacks, I don’t know. But following suit recalls their love of autumn and determination not to let food go to waste.

Rescue efforts during this between season include the migration of shivering, potted plants from porches to places inside. For plant lovers like me — and my longsuffering husband — this can prove challenging:

Me: I can’t let this begonia freeze. It started blooming again. My zinnias. My herbs —

Husband: How many pots have you brought in?

Me: So far, only 37.

Hubby: Where will you put them? What will we do with them at Thanksgiving? You know Tate [our toddler grandson] loves plants.

Me: Let’s hide them in our room.

Hubby: (resignedly) Gives a whole new meaning to “flower bed,” right?

Sadly, this between season doesn’t preclude yardwork. Not only should I trim perennials and compost withered annuals, but thousands of leaves wait to pounce on us. No raking deadlines are etched in stone, but this must be accomplished by Thanksgiving, right?

As should major indoor cleaning. My chaotic office — drafted as a “spare bedroom” during the holidays — couldn’t provide overnight accommodations for a visiting chihuahua. Our neglected home dictates a major cleanup. However, we have six grandsons, ages 3 to 15. Given Thanksgiving and Christmas family gatherings, why would anyone possessing a brain cell perform such an exercise in futility?

Wait.

I, too, have shifted to pondering the holiday season. Thoughts of cooking, shopping and wrapping cram my mind like too many ornaments on a gaudy Christmas tree.

Friends who are aliens already have completed shopping and wrapping. They’ve designed and frozen perfect cookies for Santa — plus enough for the entire state of Indiana.

But I still sip pumpkin spice lattes when I can find them. Savor that rare, soon-to-vanish feeling of having some money.

Let’s enjoy between-holidays feelings while we can.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Are you in a hurry for Christmas?

Our House, a Museum?

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When my family visited Grandma and Grandpa, no staged historical setup could rival their living museum.

Neither learned to drive. When they left their tiny town — a rarity — they took a Greyhound bus.

Grandpa plowed with a horse named John. Grandma wore sunbonnets while gardening and bringing cows home. The animals obligingly produced creamy milk my grandparents churned, plunging the dasher up-down, up-down. I could barely raise it, but Grandma helped me shape butter in a wooden mold etched with flowers.

They drew water from a well. Its iciness felt good on steamy days when we bathed in washtubs.

Grandma and Grandpa didn’t own a television. We grandkids barely survived a week without “Gilligan’s Island,” almost forgetting the words to the theme song (gasp)!

To our dismay, our grandparents’ diet centered on their garden’s produce — collards, okra, and black-eyed peas. At night, smothered in featherbeds on sweaty, 90-degree nights, we wondered if we’d live to see the light of day.

I decided I would never grow that old. My house would never become a museum.

Fast-forward several decades. Our grandson stares at our phone. “You have a landline?”

His tone implies, do you also wear a bustle?

“Yes,” I said, “but we own smartphones, too.”

When I demonstrate I can turn mine on, he looks relieved. Still — “What’s that curly thing on your landline?”

“A cord. All phones used to have them.” I chuckle. “Does look like a Slinky.”

“What’s a Slinky?”

While Hubby and I possess reasonably current laptops and tablet, our grandchildren, accustomed to über-fast technology, consider them fossils, incapable of supporting all-important video games. One child even asks where we dug them up.

We attempt board games instead, playing our own Trivial Pursuit. The teens didn’t know a thing about Betty Ford, leisure suits or other crucial 1970s facts.

Even our children consider us relics. Why? Just because we drive a 10-year-old sedan. Because I play a piano powered up only by my fingers. That not only stacks of CDs and DVDs clutter our home, but cassette tapes I rewind with a pencil point because boom boxes’ features have died. We even own a turntable and vinyl records.

Our kids try to update us. Now proud owners of a Keurig^® coffee maker, Hubby and I claim to be cool.

In return, we attempt to give them perspective: “Hey, we possess items older than we are.”

Grandma and Grandpa Oglesbee, my dad’s parents.

When they stare in disbelief, we point to Great-grandma Norris’s china and silverware. Great-grandma Phillips’s wedding chest. Great-uncle Clarence’s World War II flag with 48 stars.

They are visiting a museum for free, too.

That’s what grandparents are for, right?

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What relics resided in your grandparents’ home — besides them?

Tomato Tales

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I appreciate dedicated farmers and truckers who continue to bring us produce during this challenging time.

Still, grocery-store tomatoes provide fresh gardening inspiration. They also inspired my tomato-loving dad. One February day long ago, he filled egg cartons with dirt. In our mother’s clean kitchen.

My siblings and I awaited her fiery, fly-swatter judgment.

Instead, Mom said, “I can almost taste the tomatoes now.”

Dad explained he was planting seeds that would grow into tomato seedlings, which we’d later plant in our garden. Unfortunately, only a few lived.

Though Dad doubted the scrawny survivors would produce, he planted them. One he named Methuselah, after the biblical character who lived 969 years, almost filled our family’s pantry by itself.

Methuselah grew as tall as I and spread out as if king of the tomato patch. Dad often counted more than 70 big, juicy tomatoes on Methuselah’s branches. We hauled bushel basketfuls from the garden until Mom locked us out. After canning for weeks in 90-degree weather, she considered the bumper crop a for-real attack of killer tomatoes.

Decades later, my husband and I relived that abundance when we bought a house with a garden full of tomato plants, heavy with fruit. We would enjoy fresh-tomato goodness — with almost zero work!

I thought.

Eventually, I understood why Mom ran screaming from the patch when new blossoms appeared. Way too many tomatoes! Lacking canning equipment or a freezer, we put dozens outside with a “free” sign.

Still, that tomato-y summer ruined us forever. The following spring, we could hardly wait to raise our own. Where to buy seedlings?

Hubby’s barber shop, the source of all small-town wisdom, supplied the answer. The local Future Farmers of America raised and sold seedlings every May.

Since then, we’ve grown tomatoes every year. Red sunshine not only tickles our taste buds during summer, but during winter in homemade spaghetti sauce, chili and stews.

This year, however, the Future Farmers cannot grow seedlings. When Covid-19 first struck, I feared a run on gardening supplies.

Hubby gave me a you’re-so-paranoid look. “It’s not even Easter.”

With a few more gentle (Ahem!) reminders, he tried to order seeds online. Garden websites sang a unanimous song: sold out.

Would a similar run gobble up all seedlings? Would we be condemned to store-bought tomatoes forever?

Having learned his lesson (Always listen to your paranoid wife.), Hubby tracked down and planted tomato seeds. The seedlings will mature too late to plant at the usual time. But we’ll repot and keep them indoors. We’ll share them with others, spoiling them forever for tomatoes that taste like red sunshine — one small way to sweeten this pandemic.

Methuselah would be proud.

Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What’s your favorite fresh veggie?