Keep It Growing: Poems about Gardening

We moved into our Olympia house four years ago in late November, too late to do anything about yard or garden. The first spring brought recognition that we were the proud owners of an awful lot of false dandelion, burdock, and a layer of clay, none of which was particularly conducive to the kind of vegetable gardening and naturescaping that I hoped to do.

That meant a year of gardening in pots (tomatoes and herbs) and using my Grampa's Weed Puller weekend after weekend. I plugged the holes with a bit of compost and clover seed, seeking to add some health to the soil and habitat for pollinators when it bloomed. On the side of the property that gets the best sunlight we began laying plans for gardening in raised beds. My sweetheart worked to level the ground for a terraced set-up that will eventually hold six beds. We put in two raised metal bins on another side of the property suitable for growing greens.

Fast forward and I have three of the planned six beds on that sunny side. The raspberries and tayberries we put in next to the house are thriving; the raspberries I didn't prune last fall even gifted me a second late crop of some big, beautiful jewels. The elderberry bush put on so many berries this year that unfortunately the sheer weight broke off a major branch, but the bush has already propagated a little neighboring bush. The nectaplum (a nectarine and plum hybrid), hazelnut, and almond trees are well established and will start producing sometime in the next few years. 

And the tomatoes in those beds! Whoa. Definitely should have planted them with big strong trellises to climb on. I had to muscle those much-needed trellises in late to get the vines up off the ground and somehow got away with it, but next year they'll be trained from the beginning.

As I start each morning with poetry, naturally I find poems that celebrate the earthy abundance of gardening. Before this year's harvest of vegetables and herbs ends, I'll share this harvest of poems.

"Believe This"
Richard Levine

....All morning,
muscling my will against that of the wild,
to claim a place in the bounty of earth,
seed, root, sun and rain, I offered my labor
as a kind of grace, 

"Tender"
Jose Antonio Rodriguez

But about the strength and will to cradle the plants
Outside—the pruning, the watering, the sheltering

In found tarps and twine against the coldest nights.
To lean into the day’s hard edge,

And still find that reserve of tenderness
For the bougainvillea, the hibiscus, the blue morning.

"Patriotism"
Ellie Schoenfeld

My country is this dirt
that gathers under my fingernails
when I am in the garden.
The quiet bacteria and fungi,
all the little insects and bugs
are my compatriots.

"Gardening as a Form of Worship"
Bruce Taylor

To bring us to our knees.
To bring us back to quiet.
Inclined as we are
to this labor and attention.

"Vegetable Love in Texas"
Carol Coffee Reposa

Farmers say
There are two things
Money can't buy:
Love and homegrown tomatoes.

"A Warm Summer in San Francisco"
Carolyn Miller 

Although I watched and waited for it every day,
somehow I missed it, the moment when everything reached
the peak of ripeness.

"Slower"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

They are beautiful, the Japanese eggplant,
dangling beneath wide fringed leaves.

"Therapy from the Garden"
Glenn Morazzini

From the lettuce there is common sense for narcissism:
acceptance as side dish, garnish for a meaty sandwich.
If that leaf isn’t the dose, there’s always the soil
people shovel and level, rake and make wishful with seed,

"An Observation"
May Sarton

True gardeners cannot bear a glove
Between the sure touch and the tender root,
Must let their hands grow knotted as they move
With a rough sensitivity about
Under the earth, between the rock and shoot,
Never to bruise or wound the hidden fruit.

"The Seven of Pentacles"
Marge Piercy

as things grow in the real world, slowly enough.
If you tend them properly, if you mulch, if you water,
if you provide birds that eat insects a home and winter food,
if the sun shines and you pick off caterpillars,

"Towel and Basin"
Michael Escoubas

This morning I plodded in pajamas
and bare toes toting my full water pitcher,
prepared as an offering for my
hanging blue Fan plant. The tall
grass washed my feet as Jesus might.

"Practice" 
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I plunge my hands into the soil
and tug on the long white bindweed roots
that cling to the cool damp dark.
Never once have I pulled the whole plant.
Always, the bindweed comes back.

"More"
James Crews

I know it’s summer when we wade out
into the field and pick these crisp wonders,
tiny cucumbers bleached of their green
as if they’ve already seen too much
of this dazzling light, and can take no more.

"Planting the Sand Cherry"
Ann Struthers

It is important for me to be down on my knees,
my fingers sifting the black earth,
making those things grow which will grow.

"Ode to Digging Potatoes"

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Each firm, red-skinned round

I pull from the earth is a small proof

of how things can grow in the dark—

"On the Cusp of Equinox"
Joan Mazza

Summer ends with a chill over the garden,

breath of coolness to make the spinach

and lettuce happy. I pick another bucket

of tomatoes, more chewed each harvest,

and welcome the wildlife to this messy table

A Year of Poems: October

Compiling these lists helps me anticipate the change of season by reminding me of the beauty in each month. Fall is my favorite season in many ways and October embodies it beautifully. We are leaving summer, summer is leaving us as autumn shares her glory and we soak up the sun while we can.

As with all my poetry collections, I share a few lines, not necessarily the first ones, to give you a taste of what you'll find if you follow the link to savor the whole poem.

"Outside" by Dolores Stewart

October.  Its brilliant festival of dry
and moist decay.  Its spicy, musky scent.

"A Leaf" by Bronislaw Maj

A leaf, one of the last, parts from a maple branch:
it is spinning in the transparent air of October, falls
on a heap of others, stops, fades.

"Some October" by Barbara Crooker

Some October, when the leaves turn gold, ask
me if I've done enough to deserve this life
I've been given. 

"Into this Foggy Morning Comes a Song" by Judith Heron

driven by no other instrument than dew
how it gathers into one small drop
falls from a fading apple leaf

"Ode to October" by MK Creel

October lulls us with
its smoky, cinder scent—

leaf pyres, Hickory bark,
pine sap and pith. 

"Reel" by Barbara Crooker

It's half-past October, the woods
are on fire, blue skies stretch
all the way to heaven. 

"Early October Snow" by Robert Haight

The pumpkins, still in the fields, are planets
shrouded by clouds.
The Weber wears a dunce cap
and sits in the corner by the garage
where asters wrap scarves
around their necks to warm their blooms.

"October's Bright Blue Weather" by Helen Hunt Jackson

O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather;

"October-Midst" by Eve Merriam

The mornings careless, sun-sprawled, radical with light,
roller-coaster air; plunging to bottomless bright
then giddying climb to shattering sky-sight
blue!

"Flathead Lake, October" by Geraldine Connolly

so too, autumn descends,

to steal the glistening
summer from our open hands.

"October" by Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow's wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.

"October 10" by Wendell Berry

Now the only flowers
are beeweed and aster, spray
of their white and lavender
over the brown leaves.

"Mystery" by C.G. Hanzlicek

Roots, the leaves turning,
The spiders hard at their geometry lessons,
The seed that obeys perfectly
Its own limits,
The worms turning among the leaves,
Turning the leaves to compost,

A Year of Poems

• A Year of Poems: January
• A Year of Poems: February
• A Year of Poems: March 
• A Year of Poems: April
• A Year of Poems: May
• A Year of Poems: June
• A Year of Poems: July
• A Year of Poems: August
• A Year of Poems: September

Apples, Apples, Apples!

It's apple season on top of tomato season and people are leaving bags just sitting out by the curb. Trees in the public right of way are dropping their bounty on the ground. People are posting on Buy Nothing: "Neighbor's tree is dropping apples in my yard. Please take these or I'll be composting them."

I abhor food waste thanks to my Depression-era parents so all that free food has to be put to some good use, right? And apples are my favorite fruit.

Getting the apples home carries its own stories and memories. The first ones this year grow close to home. There's a wide shared-use path near our house on the way to Squaxin Park. A tree there that produces somewhat bland gold apples with a bit of blush to their cheeks produces early, which was helpful when I wanted to make chutneys in August. I rode my bike down and picked up the ones I could salvage the most from.

My Sweet Hubs, knowing of my fondness for gleaning, spotted a tree producing beautiful snappy green and gold apples on another street as we biked along one day. I stopped and filled my panniers and I've done it again since then. That spot has the apples falling on deep, soft grass so they don't get as bruised as the ones falling on the path. 

The third big batch came from one of those neighbors leaving bags by the sidewalk. I saw them one day and didn't stop to pick them up. A couple of days later as I drove past en route to the office to return a vehicle used for a work trip, there they still sat. I stopped and picked up three of the bags. 

When I got to the office and went to carry them in so I could load them into my panniers to carry home by bike, a scene worthy of Laurel and Hardy ensued. The bottoms of the bags had softened sitting in the grass and apples began escaping and rolling across the garage floor. I'd get some contained and others would leak out a different corner. I chased them down and after many attempts worked out a precarious system of balancing the bags atop a notebook. Made it upstairs, genuinely worn out by the effort, and transferred them into the bike bags at last.

My list of recipes made, and recipes I considered that I may come back to if I spot more apples in the wild:

• Hot & Spicy Zucchini Chutney: 8 half-pints, 9 quarter-pints
• Blackberry Apple Chutney: 4 half-pints, 8 quarter-pints
• Apple Mint Jelly: 4 quarter-pints, made using this Ball recipe found via Reddit but without the pectin because of this Apple Mint Jelly recipe, although I didn't put chopped mint in as the latter calls for because jelly should be clear, not look as if you dropped something into the pot accidentally
• Chunky Caramel Apple Jam: Found this one via the Food in Jars Facebook group. 5 half-pints, 7 quarter-pints. I forgot to add the vanilla at the end and it still tasted great.
• Indian Apple Chutney: 13 half-pints
• Plain old Canned Apples packed in juice: 7 quarts
• Plain old Applesauce: 4 pints
• Maple Applesauce: 7 pints
• Apple Ginger Jelly: I did the prep for this and put the juice in the fridge while I traveled for work. Ended up with 12 cups of juice after the first straining, strained again after I came back and took out around a cup of pulp I added to the apple butter process below. The jelly turned out the most beautiful rosy color thanks to some of the apples having a blush to the peels. Yield: 5 half-pints, 7 quarter-pints

Chai-Ginger Apple Butter

I put the cooked apple/ginger mash from the jelly prep through a food mill, ending up with a bit over 4 cups. The second straining of the juice yielded another cup or so. The pulp was pretty bland, with a hint of ginger. I had in mind turning it into applesauce but I already have several pints so instead I made apple butter. My recipe is a mash-up of:

• Slow Cooker Chai-Ginger Apple Butter 
• Adding vinegar similar to the level of Alison Roman's Apple Butter Recipe in the New York Times
• Using maple syrup thanks to Food in Jars' Maple Bourbon Apple Butter (can substitute apple cider for the bourbon if you make that one)

I've found that apple butter recipes vary widely in how much vinegar they add; I want this to be tangy because it isn't jam, so the Bon Appetit Apple Butter doesn't sound vinegary enough. Other possibilities considered that are also low on vinegar, from Food in Jars: Low-Sugar Apple Ginger Not-Quite-Butter, or another deep, multispiced Apple Butter along the lines of Spiced Apple Butter. 

For spices you'll taste and adjust toward the end, when flavors have concentrated. I started with less than what I list here and increased.

• Cooked-down apples put through a food mill, or applesauce: 4-5 cups
• Apple cider vinegar: 1/2 c.
• Maple syrup: 1/4 c. (I might increase this next time)
• Brown sugar: 2/3 c.
• Ginger: If you didn't cook the apples with a few slices of fresh ginger, stir in 2 t. ginger paste from a tube, or add 1 t. powdered ginger
• Candied ginger: 1/3-1/2 c., chopped fine
• Cinnamon: 1 t.
• Cardamom: 1 t.
• Cloves: 1/4 t.
• Allspice: 1/8 t.
• Pepper: 1/4 t.
• Salt (sea salt or pickling salt preferred): 1-1/2 t.

I used the slow cooker set on low and cooked all day, stirring and tasting occasionally. As it darkened and thickened I decided it was still a bit bland so I increased the vinegar, added brown sugar, and increased the spices to bring the amounts up to what I list above. By 10:00 p.m. I had canned the Apple Ginger Jelly along with a batch of Tomato Chutney (8 half-pints, 3 quarter-pints). I turned the cooker off, went to bed, and started it up again the next morning to cook for another hour or so. 

Before jarring it up for canning I used the immersion blender to break down the candied ginger and a few stray bits of fiber that had made it through the food mill. That worked okay but it isn't silky smooth; a pickier or more careful cook might want to run it through a blender or mill it again, although at this point it was hot and I didn't want to handle the blender business with a thick, hot paste that's likely to backfire.

Yield: 1 half-pint, 4 quarter-pints

Not made yet, but keeping the link handy in case another bag or two falls into my hands:

• Rosh Hashanah Apple Jam with Rosewater: Very fitting since apples are a member of the rose family. I'll be careful if I make this one because I've had some dishes with rosewater that were so heavily floral it was a bit like eating hand lotion

Zucchini Tomato Salsa (Everyone Needs Salsa, or, What to Do with a Really Giant Zucchini)

OK, definitely should have taken a picture of the giant zucchini. It was roughly two feet long and at least 6-8 inches wide at the big end. One of those white and green striped variety, not the solid green. I looked up zucchini varieties and this was a cocozelle.

It sat in the garage fridge giving me guilty feelings for a long time, at least four weeks after Sweet Hubs brought it home from the RC flying club field where someone said, "Who wants a zucchini?" Hubs knows how I love to preserve foods and that I could turn it into something so he said yes.

It sat so long I thought maybe it would have aged out of utility, but no, when I finally brought it out of the fridge on a sunny Saturday after I had bread in the oven and had made some sourdough discard crackers it was as firm as the day he brought it home. I'm saving seeds from this one to plant for next year.

Speaking of seeds, a summer squash this size has seeds big enough to do something with. Enter this recipe for oven-roasted zucchini seeds. But what about the rest of it?

I'd already made a big batch of Hot & Spicy Zucchini Chutney. I love that so I could see making it again but I've also made a huge batch of Indian Apple Chutney and a smallish batch of Blackberry Apple Chutney and I have some Green Tomato Chutney left from last year. I may be over-chutneyed, if such a thing is possible. I still have jars and jars of pickles from last year, so no pickles, and relish is pretty close to pickles so no relish. Time to mix things up.

Zucchini Salsa to the rescue! I found two similar recipes, both calling for cups and cups of zucchini. Conveniently they also called for cups and cups of tomatoes and my garden produces several pounds a day right now, so I was all set there. 

• Zucchini Salsa from Food.com has half the quantity of tomatoes to zucchini, with onions given in terms of number of onions, not chopped cups, which isn't helpful since onion sizes vary; maybe 1/3 the quantity of zucchini?, and 4 peppers, again without giving chopped cup quantities so I'd guess 2-3 cups or 1/5 the quantity of zucchini.
• Zingy Zucchini Salsa from The Vibrant Veggie has 2/3 the quantity of tomatoes to zucchini, 1/3 the quantity of onions, 1/6 the quantity of peppers.

About the peppers: Mine have been coming on, mostly sweet and a couple with a little heat: Padron, which has a nice tongue-tingling quality without burning, and pepperoncini that's pretty mild. Since pepper heat varies across varieties this seems like a great place to customize to your family's Scoville settings with a mix of sweet peppers and whatever else turns your cranks. I started mild figuring I could adjust with the dried chili spices I'd add later.

The two recipes varied in a couple of techniques. 

To drain or not to drain: After salting the zucchini, onion, and peppers and leaving them to sit anywhere from 3-24 hours, do you drain off the juice or not? One did, one didn't. The juice is more to cook down but with the other veggies in there it carries some flavor. 

After around four hours of soaking I drained off about 2-1/2 cups of liquid and saved it in case I ended up cooking down too much. At the end because I used very juicy homegrown tomatoes it had a fair amount of liquid but I didn't want to turn it into completely broken down mush so I called it done. 

Next time I'd salt only the zucchini and drain that, press it to get even more water out, then add the other vegetables that aren't as watery and start cooking. Or I might even start the zucchini cooking on its own, drain the liquid produced after a while, then add everything else. That would allow a shorter cook time with the tomatoes, onions, and peppers to keep some of the individual veggie qualities without being too watery.

Cook time: The Zippy recipe cooks on a low temp for an hour after bringing to a boil, the Food.com recipe for only 15 minutes. If you want the veggies on the raw side you could go for that short cook time but I wanted more melding of flavors and time for the vegetables to break down a bit. That did result in a lot more release of the liquids but it had a chance to boil off a bit.

Proportions: From the comments on the one at Food.com, a lot of people add ingredients and reduce the acid component willy-nilly before canning. I hope everyone's all right over there. I stayed away from too much ad-libbing and improv and paid attention to ratios of ingredients.

This giant squash produced 16 cups of shredded flesh even after taking out the guts with the seeds. Tracking my adjustments to the two recipes, here's where I landed:

• 16 cups shredded zucchini
• 6 cups diced onion; I had white on hand but yellow would work fine, even red
• 2 cups diced peppers; roughly half sweet red bell, a couple of Padrons,one jalapeño, the rest pepperoncini
• 1/4 c. + 1-1/2 T. salt (any kind, table salt, sea salt, pickling salt) sprinkled over the shredded zucchini, onion, and sweet/hot peppers
• 12 cups diced tomatoes (mixed yellow, orange, red, black, striped)
• 2-2/3 cups apple cider vinegar (could use another that's also 5% acidity such as regular distilled vinegar, red or white wine vinegar; lime juice could also be substituted for part of this if it's 5% acidity)
• 1/3 + 1/2 cup sugar (can use white or brown) (I started with 1/3 cup, which was the amount for 12 cups of zucchini, because I wanted to taste first; I ended up adding 1/4 cup and then another 1/4 cup to offset the vinegariness)
• 8 cloves garlic (when in doubt I add extra garlic; you could increase this)
• 1 T. dry mustard
• 1 T. cumin
• 1 t. chipotle (I like a smoky quality to my salsa; you could use chili powder instead)
• 1 t. chili powder
• 1 T. dried cilantro, optional (dried because I had it; I'd rather have chopped up a bunch of fresh cilantro to throw in but not everyone loves it)
• 1/8 t. cayenne (added after I tasted with all of the above)

Put the drained zucchini in a large pot, add the chopped tomatoes and all other ingredients. Or, as noted above, cook the zucchini on its own for a few minutes to release more liquid, drain that off, then add the other ingredients.

Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally, then reduce to a simmer. Cook for 30-45 minutes or so. Depending how cooked down and thick you like your salsa you may want to adjust the cooking time to less or more.

Meanwhile prep your jars for hot water bath canning. 

My yield with these quantities: 10 full pints, one pint jar not quite full, but more than 1/2 pint so gosh darn, we'll just have to eat that one right away. (Yes, I could freeze it. Hush.) I processed for 20 minutes.