Love Apples

Squirrels & Pumpkins

Tori: Why are the pumpkins at that angle? And why are the stems not showing?

R.: How can you have forgotten? Our squirrels have a penchant for pumpkin seeds.

Ah yes--they were brazen this year. Much of the pumpkins is actually hollowed out by them.

I had forgotten, but how could I indeed? The pumpkin's--Lino's pride--are usually placed in waiting on the kitchen porch. Squirrels line up, as though pupils waiting their turn, 3 or 4 at a time.

In Montreal, you can always tell tourists when they take photos of squirrels, while the rest of us wonder what their meat might taste like. Making peace with our household gods has meant a modus vivendi with the squirrels. We accept that $60 of every $100 we spend on the garden is taken in squirrel tax. By tomorrow, I'm pretty sure the same proportion will have applied to the pumpkins.

And yes, that is snow. Sigh.

Walnuts. Earth.

I just get lost in them, even looking at them here.

**

It was meant to be a short stroll in the Botanics. The weather was pronounced iffy. I expected my mum to tire quickly because we got a later-than-usual start. But the gardens performed their usual magic: we forgot limitations as we started for an unassuming corner of the grounds.
There was much to make us stop. When flashy autumn yields to muted colours and fallen leaves, suddenly things that were hidden--branch stem vein--come to the fore. They don’t jump into the eye, mind you; they need be sought. We did, and saw.

**

I have a thing for nuts in their outer husks. The more vulnerable story--before only hard shell. They made me think of oranges and peaches, but decidedly unjuicy--more still-life than fruit.

**

Something broke the bounds of their mesmerism. I walked on. But they've stayed with me. Or at least so in a more applied state: I couldn't wait to come home and sauté some in duck fat; salt; eat.

An Inconvenient New Addiction: Fresh Fennel Seeds

We were staying at B.'s for the night. Breakfast was something I was distinctly looking forward to. A tumble of eggs, and coffee, kids, and needing to dash for ballet lessons, and "where are my shoes?"

On the outside, it might have seemed chaotic--but for me on the inside, it was the great serenity of life that works.

Then in no time, it became serene on the outside too. Just grownups in the garden, looking at how it has changed over summer. How this plant did. How that one didn't. How "flowers that don't have a scent just piss me off," and other such words, their truth, momentarily irrefutable.

In the middle of it, B. pulls off some seeds: "Here. taste this."

I did. Of course I did. And as I did, B. tells me "It's fresh fennel seed. If I could have this as gum, I'd chew it all the time."

Oh yes. Invasion of gentlest fennel. Intense. Green. Wet. I was suddenly needing it every day.

In the photo, the branch that's bare shows the seeds I ate.

Copyright 2008. All rights reserved for photos and text.

Prince Edward Island, Me, & Wild Thyme.

It happens sometimes that life's truths just slam you into knowing them. They don’t wait, they don't seduce, they don’t even demand. They merely assert: I am here--it's up to you whether or not you are changed by me, but for an instant at least, something will change.

And so, driving from a warm September swim at Dalvay beach, on the north shore of the island, with my mind full of what's next. Just like that--the car crashes onto it: thyme. It felt like a solid wall. Heavy, heady, purifying, bracing.

Pull over. Roll down the windows. And as though for the first time in months, breathe.

Wild thyme is abundant in PEI. Round patches of it dot meadows. These are, however, discrete manifestations. Often you only take notice once you've trod on some. The scent wafts up; instantly intoxicates.

It must have been just just cut, part of a whole field. And though I'm still deciphering how this encounter will change things, the lead possibilities so far are:

1. Thyme in throngs mutes the rest of the day.
2. Wild beats cultivated.

Redemption in a Thimble.

I couldn't begin to write an exhaustive list of everything about which I seem keen to feel guilt. The no-fail top hits:
Guilt for not being outside on a sunny morning
Guilt for not using cosy-making rain to curl up with books
Guilt for letting peaches go off

I've guilts enough to circle the earth. Yet one I didn't used to have, has, I find out, been given to me in marriage: the guilt of passing wild-foods by.

One of the things that most struck and amused me when R. and I started going to Prince Edward Island to see close family friends was to have R. and our friend M. be in total, silent, agreement about what to do when confronted with berries in situ.

Fifteen years ago. In the car.
R.: "Is that a Saskatoon bush? Yeah, it is! With a LOT of fruit."
M.: "I've some bowls in the trunk."
Tori: "Erm. But aren't we going to be late?"
Normally-attentive R. and M. ignore me utterly.

I've since learned that to R, wild foods mean hold the presses. As a kid, my mum could often be heard saying: "A day's never the same once you've gone swimming." I find the truth of this staggering to this day. Now in my life with R., I get to add that a day will change direction--jam will want cooking, fingers and lips will want staining--after an encounter with wild berries.

In New Brunswick some weeks ago, scouting beaches for a family picnic, we came across some raspberries. Screech to a halt. Stand in a ditch. Doesn't matter if they're sour: a moral imperative has newly-indoctrinated-me declaring them a feast. Look at me!! I'm a member of this tribe!

Then, a few days ago, we're out walking. Near the end of the trail, we came across bushes of thimbleberries: a real test, as thimbleberries are all talk and no action: they might announce themselves juicy and sweet, but they're flat and fibrous. I couldn't help but laugh at us as we were standing there with our mouths full.

Tori: "You know, this isn't food, right?"
R.: "Heathen."

On Pessimism, Optimism, and Green Sleeves.

In June--on St-Jean-Baptiste to be exact, Quebec's Fete Nationale--I mocked my very good friend P. on something he revealed. The four of us were having a picnic on the mountain. It was a luscious wet-warm evening, and we were all drunk on deep breaths of the outdoors, a day off, the official beginning of summer. Well, those things plus Manhattans. We'd made celebratory toasts with each round; inevitably there came one to the holiday, at its deepest meaning. It was I who spoke the words: "To the Longest Day of the Year!!" Joyful noises followed, but then P. looked down into his glass, and spoke of it as a depressing thing: "I can't help but think how each day from now on will be shorter than the last." And so immediately came the next toast from me, just as golden-pink light bathed us all: "To P. and eternal optimism!!"

The incident came back to me yesterday, with the realisation that I teased him in the way one does when the thing is not only true of the teasee, but also the teaser. I see the extent to which I'm just the same. M y mother, R. and I were on our weekly stroll in the Botanical Gardens. My mum was directing us passed the arboretum to a patch of lotus flowers that she hoped would be in bloom. (Were they ever!) On our way, we came across what looked to me from a distance to be the fuzzy greens that surround chestnuts.

I love to handle chestnuts. There are countless photos of me, young and old, in Budapest, holding them up to the camera. And so, as though on automatic pilot, I walked over to pick some up, to coax them out of their sleeves, to absent-mindedly find my way to play and worship at this altar of my childhood.

As I got closer I saw these weren't chestnuts at all. The cream-coloured nuts were surrounded, but not covered, by the spiny green casings. I looked up at the tree, and didn't recognise it, but the handy sign on the trunk announced a hazelnut. I'm not even certain these are the kind we eat, but this didn't stop me from runaway fantasies of all that I would bake with hazelnut come autumn. No real-life hazelnut could make me as excited about them than this unruly clump of promise.

Undoubtedly it is a flaw that I find more valuable the promise of something, than its fulfilment, no matter how perfect. Yet perhaps just now, I don't mind, save that I need apologise to P., for pretending even for a second to be anything but in total agreement with him on the subject. Plus, I should have said what's blatantly so, it's a kind of optimism just the same.