Quilts & Potatoes

I always thought the Palouse looked like a giant quilt, all those plowed fields, fallow dirt next to squares of spring wheat. A patchwork of greens and browns and the little strips of unfarmable land, sagebrush covered—a lovely sage green. The community garden is a patchwork, too. Not as lovely from a distance, in fact somewhat homely with the netting and posts and garden art, a garage sale of plants. But up close, it is beautiful. The colors and scents delicious. Once an art teacher said to me, paint dead leaves. I was painting all these swirling, twisting leaves at the time. So I tried it, sketching the curled and dried leaves of the tomato plants, the twists of corn silk on the aging ears of corn, the sunflowers, with their huge leaves browning and curling. The airbrush painting ended up printed in a herb magazine. To me it looks like tobacco hanging to dry in a North Carolina barn.

I lived in North Carolina for a couple of months. Ended up in Boone where I worked as a key-punch operator in a college computer office. All that big equipment that took up several rooms we now have stored in little boxes, laptops, etc. Amazing. Anyway, the neighbors had a garden in the yard between our rental house and their home. One day the used the pitchfork and pulled out spuds the size of grapefruit. It was amazing to see. I remember those potatoes like it was yesterday. Mashing them, making the little mound on the plate with the spoon indentation, a lake for gravy. All those delicious potatoes.

If you grow potatoes, it will be time to dig them and let them air dry. Clean off the dirt with a brush or rag and store them in a bag in the cupboard or basement. They need to be dry and dark. Light makes them sprout and also makes them turn green. I've grown many different varieties of potatoes—yellow fin, red potatoes, and the regular Idaho Spud. My mother once said she picked potatoes when she was a kid. I said you don't pick potatoes, you dig them. She looked at me very indignantly, she had a way of doing that, we picked them she said—off the ground, they'd been turned up by the tractor. Oh, I see. I imagine the field and my mother and her sister and brothers, picking potatoes in the hot fall sun.

I'm thinking of potato salad, potato pancakes, baked potatoes, French fries, potato puffels, potato soufflé. hash browns. Here's a book of spud recipes that looks interesting- More Than Mashed

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