Some days...

I'd be remiss or at least untrue to you, novice gardener, if I implied that every day is a new adventure run between the garden and the kitchen. Some days are, indeed, full of creative recipe-tweaking as you can your relishes and jellies, pickles and sauces. But some days, the wise gardener has perfunctory work to do.

For instance, today I had peppers to freeze and tomatoes to peel. Tomorrow I hope to buy a few more tomatoes at the farmer's market...enough to turn them into spaghetti sauce to can or freeze. Mine are dwindling enough that I have to supplement as I bought a shorter-lived variety of plant this year. While I'm there, I might grab a little more corn to put up for winter, too; even though I don't look forward to another day of shucking, boiling, stripping and freezing ear after ear. Tedious work after the first few times, as the novelty of the new season wanes. Tomorrow, making sauce will be a little more entertaining, but for today, it was simply cutting and chopping, cleaning and peeling.

Some days are just like that.

Nevertheless, these are the days I always look back on the most gratefully. These days when I don't want to work the garden, but do it anyway. When winter spins out long and cold, and I thaw that corn and catch a whiff of it bubbling on the stove, or open a jar of vine-ripened tomatoes, the smells of summer rush back to brighten an otherwise aroma-less, dreary, winter day. Those are the times I'm always glad I pushed myself to stay at the kitchen counter rather than taking a book and a glass of tea to that wicker chair on the front porch, starting my mid-afternoon break a little early.




Maybe that's why I was gifted with a random treasure as I passed the window over my backyard garden. There in the forest of dying dill and aging zinnias, a brilliantly golden finch perched happily. He waited long enough for me to retrieve my camera. Waited while I focused the lens on him. And then, he gracefully leaned in to kiss the heart of the flower.


Some days are just like that.