I always think of a movie trailer voice-over man speaking in capital letters when I see/hear/read the word "harvest". THE HARVEST IS COMING. Or THE HARVEST HAS COME. Or even better, IT'S HARVEST TIIIIIME. You understand, of course.
But when I say THE HARVEST right now, I'm not talking about killing people, like our friend the film trailer voice-over man would be (OBVIOUSLY), I'm talking about being a lawn farmer.
I love that people are growing food in their yards. I don't think it's weird at all, or self-righteous, or a waste of time. I think it's a fantastic use of space and that green growing things will always be good for people, unless we're talking about English ivy, morning glory, blackberries, kudzu or Spartina anglica. Invasives aside, fresh food is good, plants are good, clean outdoor air is good, dirt is good. Good things.
I am, as you would expect, a complete failure at lawn farming, mostly because I am very lazy. Also I have dogs who take enormous pleasure in laying waste to plant beds of all varieties, and children who ask "What's this, Mama?" while holding up a freshly plucked tomato sprout between their fingers.
But this spring, one of Mr. Terrible's coworkers gave him a packet of seeds with which to grow some kind of edible pea pods, which was very nice of her. I let them languish in a stupid, unguarded location for a while, until one of the kids said "What's this?" holding up a packet of edible pea pod seeds with its entire top half torn away. The peas sprayed all over the floor and rolled about like marbles. I rounded them up and took them all outside where I dumped them unceremoniously in the one lonely, empty vegetable bed we'd built from salvage wood two years back.
"There," I thought. And "Bah."
What I didn't expect was that we would have had a spectacularly soggy spring that would unfold into a decidedly moist summer, alternating, however improbably, between not-to-hot sunny summer days and not-too-cool deluges. A springsummer.
You know who likes this? Not me.
The peas.
I have accidental peas, the tenacious shooting sprouts of probably over a dozen plucky little germinators. I have done nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing to help these poor fellows-I didn't even bother to cover them with soil when I poured them out on the ground-and yet here they are growing in a verdant heap, tangled in and around one another, unsupported by a trellis or poles. They just lie there all day, rained on by the rain, sunned on by the sun, procreating.
Is there much in the world more beautiful than a pea blossom? Say it, too: pea blossom.
Today I deigned to look closely at the pea jungle and, behold, there were thin ripe pods ready to eat.
Each of us pulled one, the girls and I, and ate together: accidental undeserving lawn farmers sharing the warm crisp snapping crinkle of the taste of green.