Getting it Done

All gardeners really want is for things to be beautiful, for plants to grow, to sit at the table with a plate of steaming vegetables after a hard days work. I’ve been thinking about how easy it is to put food by, how easy it is to dry fruit—pears?—with a food dryer, to steam and freeze vegetables—if there are any left. Sour kraut from your cabbage—you could still have some cabbage left in the garden. I made sour kraut once. It was the best thing I’d ever tasted. Not like this stuff you buy in a can or in a jar. It was just salty enough and just tart enough. I made it in a crock. I don’t know where I got a crock, but I had one.

It was the first house that Jack and I owned—my first husband—and my kitchen was awful—a stove, a bit of counter, and a farm sink. All this on one wall, on the opposite wall, the refrigerator, the door to the basement, the door to the back porch. The other two walls, door to the dining room and window to the yard. So that was it. My kitchen in the condo has more counter space. I think I had a rolling table, that’s where I kept the kraut, by the window.

So all you do is chop the cabbage and salt it, put it in the crock. I think it makes it’s own juice—cabbage is juicy you know. You weight it down with a plate and wait. Everything has to be super clean. If not, you could grow mold and nothing else. Well it worked, and then I baked rye bread and made corned beef. Jack and I ate this meal more than once, as I grew lots of cabbage. I also made pickles this way. I wanted to farm, but it didn’t work out so well this lifetime. It's just too exhausting.

A psychic once told me that Jack and I had been together for four lifetimes. Once I left him, once he left me, once we stayed for the whole shabang. We were farmers. And here we were in this life, living on mini-farms, making pottery and selling it at craft stores. Up there where the council sits and observes us humans (theoretically) they’re nodding, yes, they did it again.
This sounds weird, but it’s early still, what can I say? I’m tired. Yes, and it’s about time for my spinach and egg omelet. Today is a writing day, tomorrow a garden day. And the weather, still holding.
Ciao! Flower